Lethal White

I have tasted blood now…
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
Three days later, Strike and Robin received an unprecedented invitation. As a
courtesy for having chosen to aid rather than upstage the police in passing on
information about Flick’s stolen note and “Mare Mourning,” the Met welcomed
the detective partners into the heart of the investigation at New Scotland Yard.
Used to being treated by the police as either inconveniences or showboaters,
Strike and Robin were surprised but grateful for this unforeseen thawing of
relations.
On arrival, the tall blonde Scot who was heading the team ducked out of an
interrogation room for a minute to shake hands. Strike and Robin knew that the
police had brought two suspects in for questioning, although nobody had yet
been charged.
“We spent the morning on hysterics and flat denial,” DCI Judy McMurran
told them, “but I think we’ll have cracked her by the end of the day.”
“Any chance we could give them a little look, Judy?” asked her subordinate,
DI George Layborn, who had met Strike and Robin at the door and brought them
upstairs. He was a pudgy man who reminded Robin of the traffic policeman who
had thought he was such a card, back on the hard shoulder where she’d had her
panic attack.
“Go on, then,” said DCI McMurran, with a smile.
Layborn led Strike and Robin around a corner and through the first door on
their right into a dark and cramped area, of which half one wall was a two-way
mirror into an interrogation room.
Robin, who had only ever seen such spaces in films and on TV, was
mesmerized. Kinvara Chiswell was sitting on one side of a desk, beside a thin-
lipped solicitor in a pinstriped suit. White-faced, devoid of makeup, wearing a
pale gray silk blouse so creased she might have slept in it, Kinvara was weeping
into a tissue. Opposite her sat another detective inspector in a far cheaper suit
than the solicitor’s. His expression was impassive.
As they watched, DCI McMurran re-entered the room and took the vacant
chair beside her colleague. After what felt like a very long time, but was
probably only a minute, DCI McMurran spoke.

---

“Still nothing to say about your night at the hotel, Mrs. Chiswell?”
“This is like a nightmare,” whispered Kinvara. “I can’t believe this is
happening. I can’t believe I’m here.”
Her eyes were pink, swollen and apparently lashless now that she had wept
her mascara away.
“Jasper killed himself,” she said tremulously. “He was depressed! Everyone
will tell you so! The blackmail was eating away at him… have you talked to the
Foreign Office yet? Even the idea that there might be photographs of that boy
who was hanged—can’t you see how scared Jasper was? If that had come out—”
Her voice cracked.
“Where’s your evidence against me?” she demanded. “Where is it? Where?”
Her solicitor gave a dry little cough.
“To return,” said DCI McMurran, “to the subject of the hotel. Why do you
think your husband called them, trying to ascertain—”
“It isn’t a crime to go to a hotel!” said Kinvara hysterically, and she turned to
her solicitor, “This is ridiculous, Charles, how can they make a case against me
because I went to a—”
“Mrs. Chiswell will answer any questions you’ve got about her birthday,” the
solicitor told DCI McMurran, with what Robin thought was remarkable
optimism, “but equally—”
The door of the observation room opened and hit Strike.
“No problem, we’ll shift,” Layborn told his colleague. “Come on, gang,
we’ll go to the incident room. Got plenty more to show you.”
As they turned a second corner, they saw Eric Wardle walking towards them.
“Never thought I’d see the day,” he said, grinning as he shook Strike’s hand.
“Actually invited in by the Met.”
“You staying, Wardle?” asked Layborn, who seemed faintly resentful at the
prospect of another policeman sharing the guests he was keen to impress.
“Might as well,” said Wardle. “Find out what I’ve been assisting in, all these
weeks.”
“Must’ve taken its toll,” said Strike, as they followed Layborn into the
incident room, “passing on all that evidence we found.”
Wardle sniggered.
Used as she was to the cramped and slightly dilapidated offices in Denmark
Street, Robin was fascinated to see the space that Scotland Yard devoted to the
investigation into a high profile and suspicious death. A whiteboard on the wall
carried a timeline for the killing. The adjacent wall bore a collage of photographs
of the death scene and the corpse, the latter showing Chiswell freed from his
plastic wrapping, so that his congested face appeared in awful close-up, with a

---

livid scratch down one cheek, the cloudy eyes half open, the skin a dark, mottled
purple.
Spotting her interest, Layborn showed her the toxicology reports and phone
records that the police had used to build their case, then unlocked the large
cupboard where physical evidence was bagged and tagged, including the cracked
tube of lachesis pills, a grubby orange juice carton and Kinvara’s farewell letter
to her husband. Seeing the note that Flick had stolen, and a printout of the
photograph of “Mare Mourning” lying on a spare bed, both of which Robin
knew had now become central to the police case, she experienced a rush of
pride.
“Right then,” said DI Layborn, closing the cupboard and walking over to a
computer monitor. “Time to see the little lady in action.”
He inserted a video disk in the nearest machine, beckoning Strike, Robin and
Wardle closer.
The crowded forecourt of Paddington station was revealed, jerky black and
white figures moving everywhere. The time and date showed in the upper left
corner.
“There she is,” said Layborn, hitting “pause” and pointing a stubby figure at
a woman. “See her?”
Even though blurred, the figure was recognizable as Kinvara. A bearded man
had been caught in the frame, staring, probably because her coat hung open,
revealing the clinging black dress she had worn to the Paralympian reception.
Layborn pressed “play” again.
“Watch her, watch her—gives to the homeless—”
Kinvara had donated to a swaddled man holding a cup in a doorway.
“—watch her,” Layborn said unnecessarily, “straight up to the railway
worker—pointless question—shows him her ticket… watch her, now… off to
the platform, stops and asks another bloke a question, making sure she’s
remembered every bloody step of the way, even if she’s not caught on camera…