33
By slow degrees it broke on her slow sense…
That she too in that Eden of delight
Was out of place, and, like the silly kid,
Still did most mischief where she meant most love.
A thought enough to make a woman mad.
Lisburne Road was a quiet residential street of terraced red-brick houses: solid, palatial family homes. As most of the parking spaces were full, Strike and Robin had to park some distance from Katya Upcott’s house, and Strike suffered in silence the renewed twinges of his hamstring and the irritated end of his stump as they proceeded up the street, which was built on a slight incline.
As they approached the front door, the sound of a cello reached them through the downstairs window. So accomplished was the solo that Robin assumed it was a recording, but when Strike pressed the doorbell a long, drawn-out note broke off and they heard a male voice calclass="underline"
‘I’ll get it.’
The door was opened by a thin young man in a very baggy sweatshirt. The most noticeable features of his face were painful-looking raised cauliflower-like bumps over both cheeks and the swelling of one eye.
‘Hi,’ he mumbled. ‘Come in.’
The walls of the hall were painted cream and hung with oil paintings. A stairlift had been installed, and it currently sat at the top landing. Three large cardboard boxes stood beside the stairs. One had been opened and revealed a selection of fabric squares.
‘Oh, thank you, Gus darling!’ said a flustered female voice, and a woman they assumed was Katya Upcott came hurrying downstairs. Like her son, she was thin, but where Gus had dark, thick hair, Katya’s was mousy and sparse. She was wearing a mustard-yellow sweater, which looked homemade, a tweed skirt and sensible sheepskin slippers. A pair of reading glasses swung on a chain around her neck. As Gus retreated into what Strike and Robin assumed was the sitting room and closed the door, Katya said:
‘That’s actually Gus’s bedroom. We remodelled the house to make things easier for Inigo, so he can stay mostly on one level. He’s got ME – Inigo, I mean. So we put Gus downstairs and moved the drawing room upstairs, knocked through, and Inigo has a study and combined bedroom off it, and a bathroom he can get his wheelchair into. Oh’ – she gave a little gasping laugh, and held out a thin hand – ‘I’m Katya, obviously, and you must be, um, Cormoran, and you’re—?’
‘Robin,’ said Robin, who was used to her name not springing as readily to clients’ lips as Strike’s did.
As they followed Katya upstairs, the sound of the cello started up again through Gus’s bedroom door.
‘He’s wonderful,’ said Robin.
‘Yes, isn’t he?’ said Katya, looking delighted by Robin’s praise. ‘He should be doing his final year at the Royal College of Music, but we had to take him out while we try and sort out his urticaria. You saw?’ she whispered, making a circular movement towards her own face with a forefinger. ‘We thought it was under control then it came back with a vengeance, and he got angioedema – even his throat swelled up. He’s been really ill, poor thing, he was in hospital for a bit. But we’ve got him a really good new specialist in Harley Street and hopefully that will sort him out. He just wants to get back to college. Nobody wants to be stuck at home with their parents at that age, do they?’
The entrance to the drawing room had a push button set at waist height beside a snugly fitting door. When Katya pressed the button, the door swung slowly open. Robin wondered how much money it had cost to renovate the house to this standard and assumed that Katya’s crafting supplies business must be doing very well. Once they’d entered the drawing room and the door had closed behind them, the sound of the cello disappeared entirely.
‘We had the door and floor soundproofed,’ Katya explained, ‘so Gus practising doesn’t disturb Inigo when he’s napping. Now, would you like tea? Coffee?’
Before either could answer, a second electric door at the end of the room slid open, and a man in a wheelchair emerged slowly to the accompaniment of ‘The Show Must Go On’ by Queen, which was playing in the room behind him. Puffy-faced and yellowish of skin, he had untidy grey hair and thick lips that gave him a petulant air, and wore half-moon glasses perched on the end of his nose. There were flecks of dandruff on the shoulders of his thin maroon sweater and his legs showed signs of muscle wastage. Without acknowledging either Strike or Robin, he addressed his wife in a slow, quiet voice that gave the impression of a man who spoke only with immense effort.
‘Well, it’s a total mess. Barely turned a penny’s profit this month.’
Then, as though his vision was time-lagged, he gave what Strike considered a slightly hammy performance of a man who’d only just realised there were two strangers in the room.
‘Ah – good afternoon. Excuse me. Trying to make sense of my wife’s accounts.’
‘Darling, you don’t need to do that,’ began Katya, in evident distress. ‘I’ll sort it out later.’
‘Acta non verba,’ said Inigo, and looking up at Strike he added, ‘And you are—?’
‘Cormoran Strike,’ said the detective, holding out his hand.
‘I don’t shake, I’m afraid,’ said Inigo, unsmiling, his hands remaining on his knees. ‘I have to be exceptionally careful about germs.’
‘Ah,’ said Strike. ‘Well, this is Robin Ellacott.’
Robin smiled. Inigo blinked slowly back at her, poker-faced, and she felt as though she’d committed a social solecism.
‘Yes, so – would you like tea or coffee?’ Katya asked Strike and Robin nervously. Both accepted the offer of coffee. ‘Darling?’ she asked Inigo.
‘One of those non-caffeinated teas,’ he said. ‘But not that strawberry thing,’ he called after her, as the door swung closed.
After another slight pause, Inigo said, ‘Sit down, do,’ and rolled himself to sit at the end of the coffee table that stood between twin sofas, both of which were the same mustard yellow as his wife’s sweater. An abstract painting in shades of brown hung over the mantelpiece and a modernist marble sculpture of a woman’s torso sat squatly on a side table. Otherwise, the room was sparsely furnished and devoid of decorative objects, the polished floorboards an ideal surface for the wheelchair. Strike and Robin sat down facing each other on different sofas.
From the side room, which contained a day bed and a desk, Freddie Mercury continued to sing:
It seemed to Strike that Inigo’s entrance into the room had been highly contrived, perhaps even down to the grandeur and melancholy of the song still playing. From putting down his wife’s business in front of strangers and his implausible pretence that he didn’t know, or had forgotten, that Katya had an appointment with two detectives to the unsmiling way he’d offered his justification for not wishing to shake hands, Strike thought he sensed a thwarted, even embittered, will to power.
‘An accountant, are you, Mr Upcott?’ he asked.
‘Why should you think I’m an accountant?’ said Inigo, who appeared offended by the suggestion which, in fact, Strike had made purely to draw him out, without believing it.
‘You said you were sorting out your wife’s—’
‘Any fool can read a spreadsheet – except Katya, it appears,’ said Inigo. ‘She runs a crafting business. Thought she could make a go of it… Ever the optimist.’