Lethal White

He told me you were his best. Yerse. Said so.

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26
I am not so entirely alone, even now. There are
two of us to bear the solitude together here.
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
It was four in the morning, the hopeless hour when shivering insomniacs
inhabit a world of hollow shadow, and existence seems frail and strange. Strike,
who had fallen into a doze, woke abruptly in the hospital chair. For a second, all
he felt was his aching body and the hunger that tore at his stomach. Then he saw
his nine-year-old nephew, Jack, who lay motionless in the bed beside him, jelly
pads over his eyes, a tube running down his throat, lines coming out of neck and
wrist. A bag of urine hung from the side of the bed, while three separate drips
fed their contents into a body that appeared tiny and vulnerable amid the softly
humming machines, in the hushed, cavernous space of the intensive care ward.
He could hear the padding of a nurse’s soft shoes somewhere beyond the
curtain surrounding Jack’s bed. They hadn’t wanted Strike to spend the night in
the chair, but he had dug in and his celebrity, minor though it was, combined
with his disability, had worked in his favor. His crutches stood propped against
the bedside cabinet. The ward was overwarm, as hospitals always were. Strike
had spent many weeks in a series of iron beds after his leg had been blown off.
The smell transported him back to a time of pain and brutal readjustment, when
he had been forced to recalibrate his life against a backdrop of endless obstacles,
indignities and privations.
The curtain rustled and a nurse entered the cubicle, stolid and practical in her
overalls. Seeing that he was awake, she gave Strike a brief, professional smile,
then took the clipboard off the end of Jack’s bed and went to take readings from
the screens monitoring his blood pressure and oxygen levels. When she had
finished, she whispered, “Fancy a cup of tea?”
“Is he doing all right?” Strike asked, not bothering to disguise the plea in his
voice. “How’s everything looking?”
“He’s stable. No need to worry. This is what we expect at this stage. Tea?”
“Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks very much.”
He realized that his bladder was full once the curtain had closed behind the
nurse. Wishing he’d thought to ask her to pass his crutches, Strike hoisted
himself up, holding the arm of the chair to steady himself, hopped to the wall

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and grabbed them, then swung out from behind the curtain and off towards the
brightly lit rectangle at the far end of the dark ward.
Having relieved himself at a urinal beneath a blue light that was supposed to
thwart junkies’ ability to locate veins, he headed into the waiting room close to
the ward where, late yesterday afternoon, he had sat waiting for Jack to come out
of emergency surgery. The father of one of Jack’s school friends, with whom
Jack was meant to be staying the night when his appendix burst, had kept him
company. The man had been determined not to leave Strike alone until they had
“seen the little chap out of the woods,” and had talked nervously all the time
Jack had been in surgery, saying things like “they bounce at that age,” “he’s a
tough little bugger,” “lucky we only live five minutes from school” and, over
and over again, “Greg and Lucy’ll be going frantic.” Strike had said nothing,
barely listening, holding himself ready for the worst news, texting Lucy every
thirty minutes with an update.
Not yet out of surgery.
No news yet.
At last the surgeon had come to tell them that Jack, who had had to be
resuscitated on arrival at hospital, had made it through surgery, that he had had
“a nasty case of sepsis” and that he would shortly be arriving in intensive care.
“I’ll bring his mates in to see him,” said Lucy and Greg’s pal excitedly.
“Cheer him up—Pokémon cards—”
“He won’t be ready for that,” said the surgeon repressively. “He’ll be under
heavy sedation and on a ventilator for at least the next twenty-four hours. Are
you the next of kin?”
“No, that’s me,” croaked Strike, speaking at last, his mouth dry. “I’m his
uncle. His parents are in Rome for their wedding anniversary. They’re trying to
get a flight back right now.”
“Ah, I see. Well, he’s not quite out of the woods yet, but the surgery was
successful. We’ve cleaned out his abdomen and put a drain in. They’ll be
bringing him down shortly.”
“Told you,” said Lucy and Greg’s friend, beaming at Strike with tears in his
eyes, “told you they bounce!”
“Yeah,” said Strike, “I’d better let Lucy know.”
But in a calamity of errors, Jack’s panic-stricken parents had arrived at the
airport, only to realize that Lucy had somehow lost her passport between hotel
room and departure gate. In fruitless desperation they retraced their steps, trying
to explain their dilemma to everyone from hotel staff, police and the British

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embassy, with the upshot that they had missed the last flight of the night.
At ten past four in the morning, the waiting room was mercifully deserted.
Strike turned on the mobile he had kept switched off while on the ward and saw
a dozen missed calls from Robin and one from Lorelei. Ignoring them, he texted
Lucy who, he knew, would be awake in the Rome hotel to which, shortly past
midnight, her passport had been delivered by the taxi driver who had found it.
Lucy had implored Strike to send a picture of Jack when he got out of surgery.
Strike had pretended that the picture wouldn’t load. After the stress of the day,
Lucy didn’t need to see her son ventilated, his eyes covered in pads, his body
swamped by the baggy hospital gown.
All looking good, he typed. Still sedated but nurse confident.
He pressed send and waited. As he had expected, she responded within two
minutes.
You must be exhausted. Have they given you a bed at the hospital?
No, I’m sitting next to him, Strike responded. I’ll stay here until you get
back. Try and get some sleep and don’t worry x.
Strike switched off his mobile, dragged himself back onto his one foot,
reorganized his crutches and returned to the ward.
The tea was waiting for him, as pale and milky as anything Denise had made,
but after emptying two sachets of sugar into it, he drank it in a couple of gulps,
eyes moving between Jack and the machines both supporting and monitoring
him. He had never before examined the boy so closely. Indeed, he had never had
much to do with him, in spite of the pictures he drew for Strike, which Lucy
passed on.
“He hero-worships you,” Lucy had told Strike several times. “He wants to be
a soldier.”
But Strike avoided family get-togethers, partly because he disliked Jack’s
father, Greg, and partly because Lucy’s desire to cajole her brother into some
more conventional mode of existence was enervating even without the presence
of her sons, the eldest of whom Strike found especially like his father. Strike had
no desire to have children and while he was prepared to concede that some of
them were likable—was prepared to admit, in fact, that he had conceived a
certain detached fondness for Jack, on the back of Lucy’s tales of his ambition to
join the Red Caps—he had steadfastly resisted birthday parties and Christmas
get-togethers at which he might have forged a closer connection.
But now, as dawn crept through the thin curtains blocking Jack’s bed from
the rest of the ward, Strike saw for the first time the boy’s resemblance to his
grandmother, Strike’s own mother, Leda. He had the same very dark hair, pale

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skin and finely drawn mouth. He would, in fact, have made a beautiful girl, but
Leda’s son knew what puberty was about to do to the boy’s jaw and neck… if he
lived.