Lethal White

by Galbraith, Robert

  However, she had not only been waiting patiently at the table, she had immediately wrong-footed him with what he mentally characterised as a strategic retreat. Far from forcing a discussion about the future of their relationship, she had apologised for what she claimed to have been a foolish and precipitate declaration of love in bed, which she knew had embarrassed him and which she sincerely regretted.

  Strike, who had drunk most of a pint on sitting down, bolstering himself, as he had imagined, for the unpleasant task of explaining that he did not want their relationship to become either more serious or permanent, was stymied. Her claim that she had said ‘I love you’ as a kind of cri de joie rendered his prepared speech useless, and given that she had looked very lovely in the lamp-lit restaurant, it had been easier and pleasanter to accept her explanation at face value rather than force a rupture that, clearly, neither of them wanted. They had texted and spoken a few times during the subsequent week apart, though nowhere near as often as he had talked to Robin. Lorelei had been perfectly understanding about his need to keep a low profile for a while once he explained that his late client had been the government minister who had suffocated in a plastic bag.

  Lorelei had even been unfazed when he refused her invitation to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics with her, because he’d already agreed to spend the evening at Lucy and Greg’s. Strike’s sister was as yet unwilling to let Jack out of her sight, and had therefore declined Strike’s offer to take him to the Imperial War Museum over the weekend, offering dinner instead. When he explained to Lorelei how matters stood, Strike could tell that she was hoping that he would ask her to come with him to meet some of his family for the first time. He said, truthfully, that his motive for going alone was to spend time with the nephew whom he felt he had neglected, and Lorelei accepted this explanation good-naturedly, merely asking whether he was free the following night.

  As the taxi bore him from Bromley South station towards Lucy and Greg’s, Strike found himself mulling the situation with Lorelei, because Lucy usually demanded a bulletin on his love life. This was one of the reasons he avoided these kinds of get-togethers. It troubled Lucy that her brother was still, at the age of nearly thirty-eight, unmarried. She had gone so far, on one embarrassing occasion, as to invite to dinner a woman whom she imagined he might fancy, which had taught him only that his sister grossly misjudged his taste and needs.

  As the taxi bore him deeper and deeper into middle-class suburbia, Strike found himself face to face with the uncomfortable truth, which was that Lorelei’s willingness to accept the casualness of their current arrangement did not stem from a shared sense of disengagement, but from a desperation to keep him on almost any terms.

  Staring out of the window at the roomy houses with double garages and neat lawns, his thoughts drifted to Robin, who called him daily when her husband was out, and then to Charlotte, holding lightly to his arm as she walked down the Lancaster House staircase in her spike-heeled boots. It had been convenient and pleasurable to have Lorelei in his life these past ten and a half months, affectionately undemanding, erotically gifted and pretending not to be in love with him. He could let the relationship continue, tell himself that he was, in that meaningless phrase, ‘seeing how things went’, or he could face the fact that he had merely postponed what must be done, and the longer he let things drift, the more mess and pain would result.

  These reflections were hardly calculated to cheer him up, and as the taxi drew up outside his sister’s house, with the magnolia tree in the front garden, and the net curtain twitching excitedly, he felt an irrational resentment towards his sister, as though all of it was her fault.

  Jack opened the front door before Strike could even knock. Given his state the last time Strike had seen him, Jack looked remarkably well, and the detective was torn between pleasure at his recovery, and annoyance that he hadn’t been allowed to take his nephew out, rather than making the long and inconvenient journey to Bromley.

  However, Jack’s delight in Strike’s arrival, his eager questions about everything Strike remembered about their time together in hospital, because he himself had been glamorously unconscious, were touching, as was the fact that Jack insisted upon sitting next to his uncle at dinner, and monopolised his attention throughout. It was clear that Jack felt that they had become more closely bonded for each having passed through the tribulation of emergency surgery. He demanded so many details of Strike’s amputation that Greg put down his knife and fork and pushed away his plate with a nauseated expression. Strike had previously formed the impression that Jack, the middle son, was Greg’s least favourite. He took a slightly malicious pleasure in satisfying Jack’s curiosity, especially as he knew that Greg, who would usually have shut the conversation down, was exercising unusual restraint given Jack’s convalescent state. Unconscious of all undercurrents, Lucy beamed throughout, her eyes barely leaving Strike and Jack. She asked Strike nothing about his private life. All she seemed to ask was that he would be kind and patient with her son.

  Uncle and nephew left the dinner table on excellent terms, Jack choosing a seat next to Strike on the sofa to watch the Olympics opening ceremony and chattering nonstop while they waited for the live broadcast to start, expressing the hope, among other things, that there would be guns, cannons and soldiers.

  This innocent remark reminded Strike of Jasper Chiswell and his annoyance, reported by Robin, that Britain’s military prowess was not to be celebrated on this largest of national stages. This made Strike wonder whether Jimmy Knight was sitting in front of a TV somewhere, readying himself to sneer at what he had castigated as a carnival of capitalism.

  Greg handed Strike a bottle of Heineken.

  ‘Here we go!’ said Lucy excitedly.

  The live broadcast began with a countdown. A few seconds in, a numbered balloon failed to burst. Let it not be shit, thought Strike, suddenly forgetting everything else in an upsurge of patriotic paranoia.

  But the opening ceremony had been so very much the reverse of shit that Strike stayed to watch the whole thing, voluntarily missing his last train, accepting the offer of the sofa bed and breakfasting on Saturday morning with the family.

  ‘Agency doing well, is it?’ Greg asked him over the fry-up Lucy had cooked.

  ‘Not bad,’ said Strike.

  He generally avoided discussing his business with Greg, who seemed to have been wrong-footed by Strike’s success. His brother-in-law had always given the impression of being irritated by Strike’s distinguished military career. As he fielded Greg’s questions about the structure of the business, the rights and responsibilities of his freelance hires, Robin’s special status as salaried partner and the potential for expansion, Strike detected, not for the first time, Greg’s barely disguised hope that there might be something Strike had forgotten or overlooked, too much the soldier to easily navigate the civilian business world.

  ‘What’s the ultimate aim, though?’ he asked, while Jack sat patiently at Strike’s side, clearly hoping to talk more about the military. ‘I suppose you’ll be looking to build up the business so that you don’t need to be out on the street? Direct them all from the office?’

  ‘No,’ said Strike. ‘If I’d wanted a desk job I’d’ve stayed in the army. The aim is to build up enough reliable employees that we can sustain a steady workload, and make some decent money. Short term, I want to build up enough money in the bank to see us through the lean times.’

  ‘Seems under-ambitious,’ said Greg. ‘With the free advertising you got after the Ripper case—’

  ‘We’re not talking about that case now,’ said Lucy sharply, from beside the frying pan, and with a glance at his son Greg fell silent, permitting Jack to re-enter the conversation with a question about assault courses.

  Lucy, who had loved every moment of her brother’s visit, glowed with pleasure as she hugged him goodbye after breakfast.

  ‘Let me know when I can take Jack out,’ said Strike, while his nephew beamed up at him.
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  ‘I will, and thanks so much, Stick. I’ll never forget what you—’

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ Strike said, thumping her gently on the back. ‘He did it himself. He’s tough, aren’t you, Jack? Thanks for a nice evening, Luce.’

  Strike considered that he had got out just in time. Finishing his cigarette outside the station, with ten minutes to kill before the next train to central London, he reflected that Greg had reverted over breakfast to that combination of chirpiness and heartiness with which he usually treated his brother-in-law, while Lucy’s enquiries after Robin as he put on his coat had shown signs of becoming a wide-ranging enquiry into his relationships with women in general. His thoughts had just returned dispiritedly towards Lorelei when his mobile rang.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is this Cormoran?’ said an upper-class female voice he did not immediately recognise.

  ‘Yes. Who’s this?’

  ‘Izzy Chiswell,’ she said, sounding as though she had a head cold.

  ‘Izzy!’ repeated Strike, surprised. ‘Er . . . how are you?’

  ‘Oh, bearing up. We, ah, got your invoice.’

  ‘Right,’ said Strike, wondering whether she was about to dispute the total, which was large.

  ‘I’d be very happy to give you payment immediately, if you could . . . I wonder whether you could possibly come and see me? Today, if that’s convenient? How are you fixed?’

  Strike checked his watch. For the first time in weeks he had nothing to do except make his way to Lorelei’s later for dinner, and the prospect of collecting a large cheque was certainly welcome.

  ‘Yeah, that should be fine,’ he said. ‘Where are you, Izzy?’

  She gave him her address in Chelsea.

  ‘I’ll be about an hour.’

  ‘Perfect,’ she said, sounding relieved. ‘I’ll see you then.’

  38

  Oh, this killing doubt!

  Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

  It was almost midday when Strike arrived at Izzy’s mews house in Upper Cheyne Row in Chelsea, a quietly expensive stretch of houses which, unlike those of Ebury Street, were tastefully mismatched. Izzy’s was small and painted white, with a carriage lamp beside the front door, and when Strike rang the doorbell she answered within a few seconds.

  In her loose black trousers and a black sweater too warm for such a sunny day, Izzy reminded Strike of the first time he had met her father, who had been sporting an overcoat in June. A sapphire cross hung around her neck. Strike thought that she had gone as far into official mourning as modern-day dress and sensibilities would permit.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ she said nervously, not making eye contact, and standing back, waved him into an airy open-plan sitting and kitchen area, with white walls, brightly patterned sofas and an Art Nouveau fireplace with sinuous, moulded female figures supporting the mantelpiece. The long rear windows looked out onto a small, private courtyard, where expensive wrought iron furniture sat among carefully tended topiary.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Izzy, waving him towards one of the colourful sofas. ‘Tea? Coffee?’

  ‘Tea would be great, thanks.’

  Strike sat down, unobtrusively extracted a number of uncomfortable, beaded cushions from beneath him, and took stock of the room. In spite of the cheery modern fabrics, a more traditional English taste predominated. Two hunting prints stood over a table laden with silver-framed photographs, including a large black and white study of Izzy’s parents on their wedding day, Jasper Chiswell dressed in the uniform of the Queen’s Own Hussars, Lady Patricia toothy and blonde in a cloud of tulle. Over the mantelpiece hung a large watercolour of three blond toddlers, which Strike assumed represented Izzy and her two older siblings, dead Freddie and the unknown Fizzy.

  Izzy clattered around, dropping teaspoons and opening and closing cupboards without finding what she was looking for. At last, turning down Strike’s offer of help, she carried a tray bearing a teapot, bone china mugs and biscuits the short distance between kitchenette and coffee table, and set it down.

  ‘Did you watch the opening ceremony?’ she asked politely, busy with teapot and strainer.

  ‘I did, yeah,’ said Strike. ‘Great, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Well, I liked the first part,’ said Izzy, ‘all the industrial revolution bit, but I thought it went, well, a bit PC after that. I’m not sure foreigners will really get why we were talking about the National Health Service, and I must say, I could have done without all the rap music. Help yourself to milk and sugar.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  There was a brief silence, broken only by the tinkling of silver and china; that plush kind of silence achievable in London only by people with plenty of money. Even in winter, Strike’s attic flat was never completely quiet: music, footsteps and voices filled the Soho street below, and when pedestrians forsook the area, traffic rumbled through the night, while the slightest breath of wind rattled his insecure windows.

  ‘Oh, your cheque,’ gasped Izzy, jumping up again to fetch an envelope on the kitchen side. ‘Here.’

  ‘Thanks very much,’ said Strike, taking it from her.

  Izzy sat down again, took a biscuit, changed her mind about eating it and put it on her plate instead. Strike sipped tea that he suspected was of the finest quality, but which, to him, tasted unpleasantly of dried flowers.

  ‘Um,’ said Izzy at last, ‘it’s quite hard to know where to begin.’

  She examined her fingers, which were unmanicured.

  ‘I’m scared you’ll think I’m bonkers,’ she muttered, glancing up at him through her fair lashes.

  ‘I doubt that,’ said Strike, putting down his tea and adopting what he hoped was an encouraging expression.

  ‘Have you heard what they found in Papa’s orange juice?’

  ‘No,’ said Strike.

  ‘Amitriptyline tablets, ground up into powder. I don’t know whether you – they’re anti-depressants. The police say it’s quite an efficient, painless suicide method. Sort of belt and – belt and braces, the pills and the – the bag.’

  She took a sloppy gulp of tea.

  ‘They were quite kind, really, the police. Well, they have training, don’t they? They told us, if the helium’s concentrated enough, one breath and you’re . . . you’re asleep.’

  She pursed her lips together.

  ‘The thing is,’ she said loudly, in a sudden rush of words, ‘I absolutely know that Papa would never have killed himself, because it was something he detested, he always said it was the coward’s way out, awful for the family and everybody left behind.

  ‘And it was strange: there was no packaging for the amitriptyline anywhere in the house. No empty boxes, no blister packs, nothing. Of course, a box would have Kinvara’s name on it. Kinvara’s the one who’s prescribed amitriptyline. She’s been taking them for over a year.’

  Izzy glanced at Strike to see what effect her words had had. When he said nothing, she plunged on.

  ‘Papa and Kinvara rowed the night before, at the reception, right before I came over to talk to you and Charlie. Papa had just told us he’d asked Raff to come over to the Ebury Street house next morning. Kinvara was furious. She asked why and Papa wouldn’t tell her, he just smiled, and that infuriated her.’

  ‘Why would—?’

  ‘Because she hates all of us,’ said Izzy, correctly anticipating Strike’s question. Her hands were clutched together, the knuckles white. ‘She’s always hated anything and anyone that competed with her for Papa’s attention or his affection, and she particularly hates Raff, because he looks just like his mother, and Kinvara’s always been insecure about Ornella, because she’s still very glamorous, but Kinvara doesn’t like that Raff’s a boy, either. She’s always been frightened he’d replace Freddie, and maybe get put back in the will. Kinvara married Papa for his money. She never loved him.’

  ‘When you say “put back”—’

  ‘Papa wrote Raff out of his will when Raff ran – when he did the thing �
� in the car. Kinvara was behind that, of course, she was egging Papa on to have nothing more to do with Raff at all – anyway, Papa told us at Lancaster House he’d invited Raff around next day and Kinvara went quiet, and a couple of minutes later she suddenly announced that she was leaving and walked out. She claims she went back to Ebury Street, wrote Papa a farewell note – but you were there. Maybe you saw it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Strike. ‘I did.’

  ‘Yes, so, she claims she wrote that note, packed her bag, then caught the train back to Woolstone.

  ‘The way the police were questioning us, they seemed to think Kinvara leaving him would have made Papa kill himself, but that’s just too ridiculous for words! Their marriage has been in trouble for ages. I think he’d been able to see through her for months and months before then. She’s been telling crazy fibs and doing all kinds of melodramatic things to try and keep Papa’s interest. I promise you, if Papa had believed she was about to leave him, he’d have been relieved, not suicidal, but of course, he wouldn’t have taken that note seriously, he’d have known perfectly well it was more play-acting. Kinvara’s got nine horses and no income. She’ll have to be dragged out of Chiswell House, just like Tinky the First – my Grandpa’s third wife,’ Izzy explained. ‘The Chiswell men seem to have a thing for women with big boobs and horses.’