Lethal White

by Galbraith, Robert

  ‘How was the burial connected with them?’

  Billy seemed confused. He opened his mouth to say something, appeared to change his mind, frowned around the pale pink walls and fell to gnawing his forefinger again. Finally, he said:

  ‘I don’t know why I said that.’

  It didn’t feel like a lie or a denial. Billy seemed genuinely surprised by the words that had fallen out of his mouth.

  ‘You can’t remember hearing anything, or seeing anything, that would make you think he was burying the child for the Chiswells?’

  ‘No,’ said Billy slowly, brow furrowed. ‘I just . . . I thought then, when I said it . . . he was doing a favour for . . . like I heard something, after . . . ’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Ignore that, I don’t know why I said it.’

  People, places and things, thought Strike, taking out his notebook and opening it.

  ‘Other than Jimmy and the little girl who died,’ said Strike, ‘what can you remember about the group of people who went to the horse that night? How many of them would you say were there?’

  Billy thought hard.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe . . . maybe eight, ten people?’

  ‘All men?’

  ‘No. There were women, too.’

  Over Billy’s shoulder, Strike saw the female psychiatrist raise her eyebrows.

  ‘Can you remember anything else about the group? I know you were young,’ Strike said, anticipating Billy’s objection, ‘and I know you might have been given something that disorientated you, but can you remember anything you haven’t told me? Anything they did? Anything they were wearing? Can you remember anyone’s hair or skin colour? Anything at all?’

  There was a long pause, then Billy closed his eyes briefly and shook his head once, as though disagreeing firmly with a suggestion only he could hear.

  ‘She was dark. The little girl. Like . . . ’

  By a tiny turn of his head, he indicated the female doctor behind him.

  ‘Asian?’ said Strike.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Billy, ‘yeah. Black hair.’

  ‘Who carried you up the hill?’

  ‘Jimmy and one of the other men took turns.’

  ‘Nobody talked about why they were going up there in the dark?’

  ‘I think they wanted to get to the eye,’ said Billy.

  ‘The eye of the horse?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Billy, and he ran his hands nervously over his shaven head. ‘There are stories about the eye, you know. He strangled her in the eye, I know that. I can remember that, all right. She pissed herself as she died. I saw it spattering on the white.’

  ‘And you can’t remember anything about the man who did it?’

  But Billy’s face had crumpled. Hunched over, he heaved with dry sobs, shaking his head. The male doctor half rose from his seat. Billy seemed to sense the movement, because he steadied himself and shook his head.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he said, ‘I want to tell him. I’ve got to know if it’s real. All my life, I can’t stand it any more, I’ve got to know. Let him ask me, I know he’s got to. Let him ask me,’ said Billy, ‘I can take it.’

  The psychiatrist sat slowly back down.

  ‘Don’t forget your tea, Billy.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Billy, blinking away the tears in his eyes and wiping his nose on the back of his sleeve. ‘All right.’

  He took the mug between his bandaged hand and his good one, and took a sip.

  ‘OK to continue?’ Strike asked him.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Billy quietly. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Can you remember anyone ever mentioning a girl called Suki Lewis, Billy?’

  Strike had expected a ‘no’. He had already turned the page to the list of questions written under the heading ‘Places’ when Billy said:

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What?’ said Strike.

  ‘The Butcher brothers knew her,’ said Billy. ‘Mates of Jimmy’s from home. They did a bit of work round the Chiswells’ place sometimes, with Dad. Bit of gardening and help with the horses.’

  ‘They knew Suki Lewis?’

  ‘Yeah. She ran away, didn’t she?’ said Billy. ‘She was on the local news. The Butchers were excited because they seen her picture on the telly and they knew her family. Her mum was a headcase. Yeah, she was in care and she ran away to Aberdeen.’

  ‘Aberdeen?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s what the Butchers said.’

  ‘She was twelve.’

  ‘She had family up there. They let her stay.’

  ‘Is that right?’ said Strike.

  He wondered whether Aberdeen had seemed unfathomably remote to the teenage Butchers of Oxfordshire, and whether they had been more inclined to believe this story because it was, to them, uncheckable and so, strangely, more believable.

  ‘We’re talking about Tegan’s brothers, right?’ asked Strike.

  ‘You can see he’s good,’ Billy said naively over his shoulder, to the male psychiatrist, ‘can’t you? See how much he knows? Yeah,’ he said, turning back to Strike. ‘She’s their little sister. They were like us, working for the Chiswells. There used to be a lot to do in the old days, but they sold off a lot of the land. They don’t need so many people any more.’

  He drank some more tea, the mug in both hands.

  ‘Billy,’ said Strike, ‘d’you know where you’ve been since you came to my office?’

  At once, the tic reappeared. Billy’s right hand released the warm mug and touched his nose and chest in quick, nervous succession.

  ‘I was . . . Jimmy doesn’t want me to talk about that,’ he said, setting the mug clumsily back on the desk. ‘He told me not to.’

  ‘I think it’s more important you answer Mr Strike’s questions than worry about what your brother thinks,’ said the male doctor, from behind Strike. ‘You know, you don’t have to see Jimmy if you don’t want to, Billy. We can ask him to give you some time here, to get better in peace.’

  ‘Did Jimmy visit you where you’ve been staying?’ Strike asked.

  Billy chewed his lip.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said at last, ‘and he said I had to stay there or I’d cock everything up for him again. I thought the door had explosives round it,’ he said, with a nervy laugh. ‘Thought if I tried to go out the door I’d explode. Probably not right, is it?’ he said, appearing to search Strike’s expression for a clue. ‘I get ideas about stuff sometimes, when I’m bad.’

  ‘Can you remember how you got away from the place you were being kept?’

  ‘I thought they switched off the explosives,’ said Billy. ‘The guy told me to run for it and I did.’

  ‘What guy was this?’

  ‘The one who was in charge of keeping me there.’

  ‘Can you remember anything you did while you were being kept captive?’ Strike asked. ‘How you spent your time?’

  The other shook his head.

  ‘Can you remember,’ said Strike, ‘carving anything, into wood?’

  Billy’s gaze was full of fear and wonder. Then he laughed.

  ‘You know it all,’ he said, and held up his bandaged left hand. ‘Knife slipped. Went right in me.’

  The male psychiatrist added helpfully:

  ‘Billy had tetanus when he came in. There was a very nasty infected gash on that hand.’

  ‘What did you carve into the door, Billy?’

  ‘I really did that, then, did I? Carved the white horse on the door? Because afterwards I didn’t know if I really did that or not.’

  ‘Yeah, you did it,’ said Strike. ‘I’ve seen the door. It was a good carving.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Billy, ‘well, I used to – do some of that. Carving. For my dad.’

  ‘What did you carve the horse onto?’

  ‘Pendants,’ said Billy, surprisingly. ‘On little circles of wood with leather through ’em. For tourists. Sold them in a shop over in Wantage.’
r />   ‘Billy,’ said Strike, ‘can you remember how you ended up in that bathroom? Did you go there to see someone, or did somebody take you there?’

  Billy’s eyes roamed around the pink walls again, a deep furrow between his eyes as he thought.

  ‘I was looking for a man called Winner . . . no . . . ’

  ‘Winn? Geraint Winn?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Billy, again surveying Strike with astonishment. ‘You know everything. How do you know all this?’

  ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ said Strike. ‘What made you want to find Winn?’

  ‘Heard Jimmy talking about him,’ said Billy, gnawing at his nail again. ‘Jimmy said Winn was going to help find out all about the kid who was killed.’

  ‘Winn was going to help find out about the child who was strangled?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Billy, nervously. ‘See, I thought you were one of the people trying to catch me and lock me up, after I saw you. Thought you were trying to trap me and – I get like that, when I’m bad,’ he said hopelessly. ‘So I went to Winner – Winn – instead. Jimmy had a phone number and address for him written down, so I went to find Winn and then I got caught.’

  ‘Caught?’

  ‘By the – brown-skinned bloke,’ mumbled Billy, with a half-glance back at the female psychiatrist. ‘I was scared of him, I thought he was a terrorist and he was going to kill me, but then he told me he was working for the government, so I thought the government wanted me kept there in his house and the doors and windows were wired with explosives . . . but I don’t think they were, really. That was just me. He probably didn’t want me in his bathroom. Probably wanted to get rid of me all along,’ said Billy, with a sad smile. ‘And I wouldn’t go, because I thought I’d get blown up.’

  His right hand crept absently back to his nose and chest.

  ‘I think I tried to call you again, but you didn’t answer.’

  ‘You did call. You left a message on my answering machine.’

  ‘Did I? Yeah . . . I thought you’d help me get out of there . . . sorry,’ said Billy, rubbing his eyes. ‘When I’m like that, I don’t know what I’m doing.’

  ‘But you’re sure you saw a child strangled, Billy?’ asked Strike quietly.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Billy bleakly, raising his face. ‘Yeah, that never goes away. I know I saw it.’

  ‘Did you ever try and dig where you thought—?’

  ‘Christ, no,’ said Billy. ‘Go digging right by my dad’s house? No. I was scared,’ he said weakly. ‘I didn’t want to see it again. After they buried her, they let it grow over, nettles and weeds. I used to have dreams like you wouldn’t believe. That she climbed up out of the dell in the dark, all rotting, and tried to climb in my bedroom window.’

  The psychiatrists’ pens moved scratchily across their papers.

  Strike moved down to the category of ‘Things’ that he had written on his notebook. There were only two questions left.

  ‘Did you ever put a cross in the ground where you saw the body buried, Billy?’

  ‘No,’ said Billy, scared at the very idea. ‘I never went near the dell if I could avoid it, I never wanted to.’

  ‘Last question,’ Strike said. ‘Billy, did your father do anything unusual for the Chiswells? I know he was a handyman, but can you think of anything else he—?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ said Billy.

  He seemed suddenly more frightened than he had seemed all interview.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Strike carefully, watching his reaction. ‘I just wondered—’

  ‘Jimmy warned me about this! He told me you were snooping around Dad. You can’t blame us for that, we had nothing to do with it, we were kids!’

  ‘I’m not blaming you for anything,’ said Strike, but there was a clatter of chairs: Billy and the two psychiatrists had got to their feet, the female’s hand hovering over a discreet button beside the door that Strike knew must be an alarm.

  ‘Has this all been to get me to talk? You trying to get me and Jimmy in trouble?’

  ‘No,’ said Strike, hoisting himself to his feet, too. ‘I’m here because I believe you saw a child strangled, Billy.’

  Agitated, mistrustful, Billy’s unbandaged hand touched his nose and chest twice in quick succession.

  ‘So why’re you asking what Dad did?’ he whispered. ‘That’s not how she died, it was nothing to do with that! Jimmy’ll fucking tan me,’ he said in a broken voice. ‘He told me you were after him for what Dad did.’

  ‘Nobody’s going to tan anyone,’ said the male psychiatrist firmly. ‘Time’s up, I think,’ he said briskly to Strike, pushing open the door. ‘Go on, Billy, out you go.’

  But Billy didn’t move. The skin and bone might have aged, but his face betrayed the fear and hopelessness of a small, motherless child whose sanity had been broken by the men who were supposed to protect him. Strike, who had met countless rootless and neglected children during his rackety, unstable childhood, recognised in Billy’s imploring expression a last plea to the adult world, to do what grown-ups were meant to do, and impose order on chaos, substitute sanity for brutality. Face to face, he felt a strange kinship with the emaciated, shaven-headed psychiatric patient, because he recognised the same craving for order in himself. In his case, it had led him to the official side of the desk, but perhaps the only difference between the two of them was that Strike’s mother had lived long enough, and loved him well enough, to stop him breaking when life threw terrible things at him.

  ‘I’m going to find out what happened to the kid you saw strangled, Billy. That’s a promise.’

  The psychiatrists looked surprised, even disapproving. It was not part of their profession, Strike knew, to make definitive statements or guarantee resolutions. He put his notebook back into his pocket, moved from behind the desk and held out his hand. After a few long moments’ consideration, the animosity seemed to seep out of Billy. He shuffled back to Strike, took his proffered hand and held it overlong, his eyes filling with tears.

  In a whisper, so that neither of the doctors could hear, he said:

  ‘I hated putting the horse on them, Mr Strike. I hated it.’

  57

  Have you the courage and the strength of will for that, Rebecca?

  Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

  Vanessa’s one-bedroomed flat occupied the ground floor of a detached house a short distance from Wembley Stadium. Before leaving for work that morning, she had given Robin a spare key to her flat, along with a kindly assurance that she knew that it would take Robin longer than a couple of days to find a new place to live, and that she didn’t mind her staying until she managed to do so.

  They had sat up late drinking the night before. Vanessa had told Robin the full story of finding out that her ex-fiancé had cheated on her, a story full of twists and counter-twists that Vanessa had never told before, which included the setting up of two fake Facebook pages as bait for both her ex and his lover, which had resulted, after three months of patient coaxing, in Vanessa receiving nude pictures from both of them. As impressed as she was shocked, Robin had laughed as Vanessa re-enacted the scene in which she passed her ex the pictures, hidden inside the Valentine card she had handed across a table for two in their favourite restaurant.

  ‘You’re too nice, girl,’ said Vanessa, steely-eyed over her Pinot Grigio. ‘At a bare minimum I’d have kept her bleeding earring and turned it into a pendant.’

  Vanessa was now at work. A spare duvet sat neatly folded at the end of the sofa on which Robin was sitting, with her laptop open in front of her. She had spent the entire afternoon scanning available rooms in shared properties, which were all she could possibly afford on the salary that Strike was paying her. The memory of the bunk bed in Flick’s flat kept recurring as she scanned the adverts in her price range, some of which featured stark, barrack-like rooms with multiple beds inside them, others with photographs that looked as though they ought to feature attached to news stories about reclusive hoarde
rs discovered dead by neighbours. Last night’s laughter seemed remote now. Robin was ignoring the painful, hard lump in her throat that refused to dissolve, no matter how many cups of tea she consumed.

  Matthew had tried to contact her twice that day. Neither time had she picked up and he hadn’t left a message. She would need to contact a lawyer about divorce soon, and that would cost money she didn’t have, but her first priority had to be finding herself a place to live and continuing to put in the usual number of hours on the Chiswell case, because if Strike had cause to feel she wasn’t pulling her weight she would be endangering the only part of her life that currently had worth.