Lethal White

by Galbraith, Robert

  ‘Oh, thank God,’ said Robin, surprised at her own relief when she saw Vanessa Ekwensi.

  Vanessa was a police officer: tall, black, with almond-shaped eyes, a model’s figure and a self-possession Robin envied. She had come to the party alone. Her boyfriend, who worked in Forensic Services at the Met, had a prior commitment. Robin was disappointed: she had looked forward to meeting him.

  ‘You all right?’ Vanessa asked as she entered. She was carrying a bottle of red wine and wearing a deep purple slip dress. Robin thought again of the emerald-green Cavalli upstairs and wished she had worn it.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Come through to the back, you can smoke there.’

  She led Vanessa through the sitting room, past Sarah and Matthew, who were now mocking Tom’s baldness to his face.

  The rear wall of the small courtyard garden was covered in ivy. Well-maintained shrubs stood in terracotta tubs. Robin, who did not smoke, had put ashtrays and a few fold-up chairs out there, and dotted tea candles around. Matthew had asked her with an edge in his voice why she was taking so much trouble over the smokers. She had known perfectly well why he was saying it and pretended not to.

  ‘I thought Jemima smoked?’ she asked, with a feigned air of confusion. Jemima was Matthew’s boss.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, caught off balance. ‘Yeah – yeah, but only socially.’

  ‘Well, I’m pretty sure this is a social occasion, Matt,’ said Robin sweetly.

  She fetched Vanessa a drink and came back to find her lighting up, her lovely eyes fixed on Sarah Shadlock, who was still mocking Tom’s hairline, with Matthew her hearty accomplice.

  ‘That’s her, is it?’ Vanessa asked.

  ‘That’s her,’ said Robin.

  She appreciated the small show of moral support. Robin and Vanessa had been friends for months before Robin had confided the history of her relationship with Matthew. Before that they had talked police work, politics and clothes on evenings that took them to the cinema, or to cheap restaurants. Robin found Vanessa better company than any other woman she knew. Matthew, who had met her twice, told Robin he found her ‘cold’, but said he could not explain why.

  Vanessa had had a succession of partners; she had been engaged once, but broken it off when he had cheated. Robin sometimes wondered whether Vanessa found her laughably inexperienced: the woman who’d married her boyfriend from school.

  A few moments later, a dozen people, colleagues of Matthew’s with their partners, who had obviously been to the pub first, streamed into the sitting room. Robin watched Matthew greeting them and showing them where the drinks were. He had adopted the loud, bantering tone that she had heard him using on work nights out. It irritated her.

  The party quickly became crowded. Robin effected introductions, showed people where to find drink, set out more plastic cups and handed a couple of plates of food around because the kitchen was becoming packed. Only when Andy Hutchins and his wife arrived did she feel she could relax for a moment and spend some more time with her own guests.

  ‘I made you some special food,’ Robin told Andy, after she had shown him and Louise out into the courtyard. ‘This is Vanessa. She’s Met. Vanessa, Andy and Louise – stay there, Andy, I’ll get it, it’s dairy-free.’

  Tom was standing against the fridge when she got to the kitchen.

  ‘Sorry, Tom, need to get in—’

  He blinked at her, then moved aside. He was already drunk, she thought, and it was barely nine o’clock. Robin could hear Sarah’s braying laugh from the middle of the crowd outside.

  ‘Lemmelp,’ said Tom, holding the fridge door that threatened to close on Robin as she bent down to the lower shelf to get the tray of dairy-free, non-fried food she had saved for Andy. ‘God, you’ve got a nice arse, Robin.’

  She straightened up without comment. In spite of the drunken grin, she could feel the unhappiness flowing from behind it, like a cool draught. Matthew had told her how self-conscious Tom was about his hairline, that he was even considering a transplant.

  ‘That’s a nice shirt,’ said Robin.

  ‘Wha’ this? You like it? She bought it for me. Matt’s got one like it, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Er – I’m not sure,’ said Robin.

  ‘You’re not sure,’ repeated Tom, with a short, nasty laugh. ‘So much f’ surveillance training. You wanna pay more attention at home, Rob.’

  Robin contemplated him for a moment in equal amounts of pity and anger, then, deciding that he was too drunk to argue with, she left, carrying Andy’s food.

  The first thing she saw as people cleared out of the way to let her back into the courtyard was that Strike had arrived. He had his back to her and was talking to Andy. Lorelei was beside him, wearing a scarlet silk dress, the gleaming fall of dark hair down her back like an advertisement for expensive shampoo. Somehow, Sarah had inveigled her way into the group in Robin’s brief absence. When Vanessa caught Robin’s eye, the corner of her mouth twitched.

  ‘Hi,’ said Robin, setting the platter of food down on the wrought iron table beside Andy.

  ‘Robin, hi!’ said Lorelei. ‘It’s such a pretty street!’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ said Robin, as Lorelei kissed the air behind Robin’s ear.

  Strike bent down, too. His stubble grazed Robin’s face, but his lips did not touch skin. He was already opening one of the six-pack of Doom Bar he had brought with him.

  Robin had mentally rehearsed things to say to Strike once he was in her new house: calm, casual things that made it sound as though she had no regrets, as though there were some wonderful counterweight that he couldn’t appreciate that tipped the scales in Matthew’s favour. She also wanted to question him about the strange matter of Billy and the strangled child. However, Sarah was currently holding forth on the subject of the auction house, Christie’s, where she worked, and the whole group was listening to her.

  ‘Yeah, we’ve got “The Lock” coming up at auction on the third,’ she said. ‘Constable,’ she added kindly, for the benefit of anyone who did not know art as well as she did. ‘We’re expecting it to make over twenty.’

  ‘Thousand?’ asked Andy.

  ‘Million,’ said Sarah, with a patronising little snort of laughter.

  Matthew laughed behind Robin and she moved automatically to let him join the circle. His expression was rapt, Robin noticed, as so often when large sums of money were under discussion. Perhaps, she thought, this is what he and Sarah talk about when they have lunch: money.

  ‘“Gimcrack” went for over twenty-two last year. Stubbs. Third most valuable Old Master ever sold.’

  Out of the corner of her eye, Robin saw Lorelei’s scarlet-tipped hand slide into Strike’s, which had been marked across the palm with the very same knife that had forever scarred Robin’s arm.

  ‘Anyway, boring, boring, boring!’ said Sarah insincerely. ‘Enough work chat! Anyone got Olympics tickets? Tom – my fiancé – he’s furious. We got ping pong.’ She pulled a droll face. ‘How have you lot got on?’

  Robin saw Strike and Lorelei exchange a fleeting look, and knew that they were mutually consoling each other for having to endure the tedium of the Olympics ticket conversation. Suddenly wishing that they hadn’t come, Robin backed out of the group.

  An hour later, Strike was in the sitting room, discussing the England football team’s chances in the European Championships with one of Matthew’s friends from work while Lorelei danced. Robin, with whom he had not exchanged a word since they had met outside, crossed the room with a plate of food, paused to talk to a redheaded woman, then continued to offer the plate around. The way she had done her hair reminded Strike of her wedding day.

  The suspicions provoked by her visit to that unknown clinic uppermost in his mind, he appraised her figure in the clinging grey dress. She certainly didn’t appear to be pregnant, and the fact that she was drinking wine seemed a further counter-indication, but they might only just have begun the process of IVF.

  Directly oppo
site Strike, visible through the dancing bodies, stood DI Vanessa Ekwensi, whom Strike had been surprised to find at the party. She was leaning up against the wall, talking to a tall blond man who seemed, by his over-attentive attitude, to have temporarily forgotten that he was wearing a wedding ring. Vanessa glanced across the room at Strike and by a wry look signalled that she would not mind him breaking up the tête-à-tête. The football conversation was not so fascinating that he would be disappointed to leave it, and at the next convenient pause he circumnavigated the dancers to talk to Vanessa.

  ‘Evening.’

  ‘Hi,’ she said, accepting his peck on the cheek with the elegance that characterised all her gestures. ‘Cormoran, this is Owen – sorry, I didn’t catch your surname?’

  It didn’t take long for Owen to lose hope of whatever he had wanted from Vanessa, whether the mere pleasure of flirting with a good-looking woman, or her phone number.

  ‘Didn’t realise you and Robin were this friendly,’ said Strike, as Owen walked away.

  ‘Yeah, we’ve been hanging out,’ said Vanessa. ‘I wrote her a note after I heard you sacked her.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Strike, swigging Doom Bar. ‘Right.’

  ‘She rang to thank me and we ended up going for a drink.’

  Robin had never mentioned this to Strike, but then, as Strike knew perfectly well, he had been at pains to discourage anything but work talk since she had come back from her honeymoon.

  ‘Nice house,’ he commented, trying not to compare the tastefully decorated room with his combined kitchen and sitting room in the attic over the office. Matthew must be earning very good money to have afforded this, he thought. Robin’s pay rise certainly couldn’t have done it.

  ‘Yeah, it is,’ said Vanessa. ‘They’re renting.’

  Strike watched Lorelei dance for a few moments while he pondered this interesting piece of information. An arch something in Vanessa’s tone told him that she, too, read this as a choice not entirely related to the housing market.

  ‘Blame sea-borne bacteria,’ said Vanessa.

  ‘Sorry?’ said Strike, thoroughly confused.

  She threw him a sharp look, then shook her head, laughing.

  ‘Nothing. Forget it.’

  ‘Yeah, we didn’t do too badly,’ Strike heard Matthew telling the redheaded woman in a lull in the music. ‘Got tickets for the boxing.’

  Of course you fucking did, thought Strike irritably, feeling in his pocket for more cigarettes.

  ‘Enjoy yourself?’ asked Lorelei in the taxi, at one in the morning.

  ‘Not particularly,’ said Strike, who was watching the headlights of oncoming cars.

  He had had the impression that Robin had been avoiding him. After the relative warmth of their conversation on Thursday, he had expected – what? A conversation, a laugh? He had been curious to know how the marriage was progressing, but was not much the wiser. She and Matthew seemed amicable enough together, but the fact that they were renting was intriguing. Did it suggest, even subconsciously, a lack of investment in a joint future? An easier arrangement to untangle? And then there was Robin’s friendship with Vanessa Ekwensi, which Strike saw as another stake in the life she led independently of Matthew.

  Blame sea-borne bacteria.

  What the hell did that mean? Was it connected to the mysterious clinic? Was Robin ill?

  After a few minutes’ silence it suddenly occurred to Strike that he ought to ask Lorelei how her evening had been.

  ‘I’ve had better,’ sighed Lorelei. ‘I’m afraid your Robin’s got a lot of boring friends.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘I think that’s mainly her husband. He’s an accountant. And a bit of a tit,’ he added, enjoying saying it.

  The taxi bowled on through the night, Strike remembering how Robin’s figure had looked in the grey dress.

  ‘Sorry?’ he said suddenly, because he had the impression that Lorelei had spoken to him.

  ‘I said, “What are you thinking about?”’

  ‘Nothing,’ lied Strike, and because it was preferable to talking, he slid an arm around her, pulled her close and kissed her.

  8

  … my word! Mortensgaard has risen in the world. There are lots of people who run after him now.

  Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

  Robin texted Strike on Sunday evening to ask what he wanted her to do on Monday, because she had handed over all her jobs before taking a week’s leave. His terse response had been ‘come to office’, which she duly entered at a quarter to nine the following day, glad, no matter how matters stood between her and her partner, to be back in the shabby old rooms.

  The door to Strike’s inner office was standing open when she arrived. He was sitting behind his desk, listening to someone on his mobile. Sunlight fell in treacle-gold pools across the worn carpet. The soft mumble of traffic was soon obliterated by the rattle of the old kettle and, five minutes after her arrival, Robin set a mug of steaming dark brown Typhoo in front of Strike, who gave her a thumbs up and a silent ‘thanks’. She returned to her desk, where a light was flashing on the phone to indicate a recorded message. She dialled their answering service and listened while a cool female voice informed her that the call had been made ten minutes before Robin had arrived and, presumably, while Strike was either upstairs, or busy with the other call.

  A cracked whisper hissed in Robin’s ear.

  ‘I’m sorry I ran out on you, Mr Strike, I’m sorry. I can’t come back, though. He’s keeping me here, I can’t get out, he’s wired the doors . . . ’

  The end of the sentence was lost in sobs. Worried, Robin tried to attract Strike’s attention, but he had turned in his swivel chair to look out of the window, still listening to his mobile. Random words reached Robin through the pitiable sounds of distress on the phone.

  ‘ . . . can’t get out . . . I’m all alone . . . ’

  ‘Yeah, OK,’ Strike was saying in his office. ‘Wednesday, then, OK? Great. Have a good one.’

  ‘ . . . please help me, Mr Strike!’ wailed the voice in Robin’s ear.

  She smacked the button to switch to speakerphone and at once the tortured voice filled the office.

  ‘The doors will explode if I try and escape Mr Strike, please help me, please come and get me, I shouldn’t have come, I told him I know about the little kid and it’s bigger, much bigger, I thought I could trust him—’

  Strike spun in his desk chair, got up and came striding through to the outer office. There was a clunk as though the receiver had been dropped. The sobbing continued at a distance, as though the distraught speaker was stumbling away from the phone.

  ‘That’s him again,’ said Strike. ‘Billy, Billy Knight.’

  The sobbing and gasping grew louder again and Billy said in a frantic whisper, his lips evidently pressed against the mouthpiece.

  ‘There’s someone at the door. Help me. Help me, Mr Strike.’

  The call was cut.

  ‘Get the number,’ said Strike. Robin reached for the receiver to dial 1471, but before she could do so, the phone rang again. She snatched it up, her eyes on Strike’s.

  ‘Cormoran Strike’s office.’

  ‘Ah . . . yes, good morning,’ said a deep, patrician voice.

  Robin grimaced at Strike and shook her head.

  ‘Shit,’ he muttered, and moved back into his office to get his tea.

  ‘I’d like to speak to Mr Strike, please.’

  ‘I’m afraid he’s on another call right now,’ lied Robin.

  Their standard practice for a year had been to phone the client back. It weeded out journalists and cranks.

  ‘I’ll hold,’ said the caller, who sounded captious, unused to not getting his way.

  ‘He’ll be a while, I’m afraid. Could I take a number and get him to call you back?’

  ‘Well, it needs to be within the next ten minutes, because I’m about to go into a meeting. Tell him I want to discuss a job I’d like him to do for me.’

&n
bsp; ‘I’m afraid I can’t guarantee that Mr Strike will be able to undertake the job in person,’ said Robin, which was also the standard response to deflect press. ‘Our agency’s quite booked up at the moment.’

  She pulled pen and paper towards her.

  ‘What kind of job are you—?’

  ‘It has to be Mr Strike,’ said the voice firmly. ‘Make that clear to him. It has to be Mr Strike himself. My name’s Chizzle.’

  ‘How are you spelling that?’ asked Robin, wondering whether she had heard correctly.

  ‘C – H – I – S – W – E – L – L. Jasper Chiswell. Ask him to call me on the following number.’

  Robin copied down the digits Chiswell gave her and bade him good morning. As she set down the receiver, Strike sat down on the fake leather sofa they kept in the outer room for clients. It had a disobliging habit of making unexpected farting noises when you shifted position.