Lethal White

… and now we can go in to supper. Will you come
in, Mr. Kroll?
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
Chiswell’s Mercedes turned the corner of St. James’s Street onto Pall Mall
and set off along Cleveland Row.
“What’s going on?” growled Chiswell, as the car slowed, then stopped.
The shouting ahead was not of the excited, enthusiastic kind that royalty or
celebrities might expect. Several uniformed officers were converging on the
crowd on the left-hand side of the street which was jostling and pushing as it
tried to move away from what appeared to be a confrontation between police and
protestors. Two disheveled men in jeans and T-shirts emerged from the fray, both
held in armlocks by uniformed officers: Jimmy Knight, and a youth with limp
blond dreadlocks.
Then Robin bit back a cry of dismay as a hobbling, bloody Strike appeared,
also being led along by police. Behind them, an altercation in the crowd had not
subsided, but was growing. A barrier swayed.
“Pull up, PULL UP!” bellowed Chiswell at the driver, who had just begun to
accelerate again. Chiswell wound down his window. “Door open—Venetia, open
your door!—that man!” Chiswell roared at a nearby policeman, who turned,
startled, to see the Minister for Culture shouting at him and pointing at Strike.
“He’s my guest—that man—bloody well let him go!”
Confronted by an official car, a government minister, the steely, patrician

---

voice, the brandishing of a thick embossed invitation, the policeman did as he
was told. Most people’s attention was focused on the increasingly violent brawl
between police and CORE, and the consequent trampling and pushing of the
crowd trying to get away from it. A couple of cameramen had broken away from
the press pen up ahead, and were running towards the fracas.
“Izzy, move up—get in, GET IN!” Chiswell snarled at Strike through the
window.
Robin squeezed backwards, half-sitting in Izzy’s lap to accommodate Strike
as he clambered into the back seat. The door slammed. The car rolled on.
“Who are you?” squealed the frightened Kinvara, who was now pinned
against the opposite door by Izzy. “What’s going on?”
“He’s a private detective,” growled Chiswell. His decision to bring Strike
into the car seemed born of panic. Twisting around in his seat to glare at Strike,
he said, “How does it help me if you get bloody arrested?”
“They weren’t arresting me,” said Strike, dabbing his nose with the back of
his hand. “They wanted to take a statement. Knight attacked me when I went for
his placard. Cheers,” he added, as, with difficulty given how tightly compressed
they all were, Robin passed him a box of tissues that had been lying on the ledge
behind the rear seat. He pressed one to his nose. “I got rid of the placard,” Strike
added, through the blood-stained tissue, but nobody congratulated him.
“Jasper,” said Kinvara, “what’s going—?”
“Shut up,” snapped Chiswell, without looking at her. “I can’t let you out in
front of all these people,” he told Strike angrily, as though the latter had
suggested it. “There are more photographers… You’ll have to come in with us.
I’ll fix it.”
The car was now proceeding towards a barrier where police and security
were checking ID and investigations.
“Nobody say anything,” Chiswell instructed. “Shut up,” he added pre-
emptively to Kinvara, who had opened her mouth.
A Bentley up ahead was admitted and the Mercedes rolled forwards.
In pain, because she was bearing a good proportion of Strike’s weight across
her left hip and leg, Robin heard screeching from behind the car. Turning, she
saw a young woman running after the car, a female police officer chasing her.
The girl had wild tomato-red hair, a T-shirt with a logo of broken Olympic rings
on it, and she screamed after Chiswell’s car:
“He put the fucking horse on them, Chiswell! He put the horse on them, you
cheating, thieving bastard, you murderer—”
“I have a guest here who didn’t get his invitation,” Chiswell was shouting
through his wound-down window to the armed policeman at the barrier.

---

“Cormoran Strike, the amputee. He’s been in the papers. There was a balls-up at
my department, his invitation didn’t go. The prince,” he said, with breathtaking
chutzpah, “asked to meet him specifically!”
Strike and Robin were watching what was happening behind the car. Two
policemen had seized the struggling Flick and were escorting her away. A few
more cameras flashed. Caving under the weight of ministerial pressure, the
armed policeman requested ID of Strike. Strike, who always carried a couple of
forms of identification, though not necessarily in his own name, passed over his
genuine driving license. A queue of stationary cars grew longer behind them.
The prince was due in fifteen minutes’ time. Finally, the policeman waved them
through.
“Shouldn’t have done that,” said Strike in an undertone to Robin. “Shouldn’t
have let me in. Bloody lax.”
The Mercedes swung around the inner courtyard and arrived, finally, at the
foot of a shallow flight of red-carpeted steps, in front of an enormous, honey-
colored building that resembled a stately home. Wheelchair ramps had been set
either side of the carpet, and a celebrated wheelchair basketball player was
already maneuvering his way up one.
Strike pushed open the door, clambered out of the car, then turned and
reached back inside to assist Robin. She accepted the offer of help. Her left leg
was almost completely numb from where he’d sat on her.
“Nice to see you again, Corm,” said Izzy, beaming, as she got out behind
Robin.
“Hi, Izzy,” said Strike.
Now burdened with Strike whether he wanted him or not, Chiswell hurried
up the steps to explain to one of the liveried men standing outside the front door
that Strike must be admitted without his invitation. They heard a recurrence of
the word “amputee.” All around them, more cars were releasing their smartly
dressed passengers.
“What’s all this about?” Kinvara said, who had marched around the rear of
the Mercedes to address Strike. “What’s going on? What does my husband need
a private detective for?”
“Will you be quiet, you stupid, stupid bitch?”
Stressed and disturbed though Chiswell undoubtedly was, his naked hostility
shocked Robin. He hates her, she thought. He genuinely hates her.
“You two,” said the minister, pointing at his wife and daughter, “get inside.
“Give me one good reason I should keep paying you,” he added, turning on
Strike as still more people spilled past them. “You realize,” said Chiswell, and in
his necessarily quiet fury, spit flew from his mouth onto Strike’s tie, “I’ve just

---

been called a bloody murderer in front of twenty people, including press?”
“They’ll think she’s a crank,” said Strike.
If the suggestion brought Chiswell any comfort, it didn’t show.
“I want to see you tomorrow morning at ten o’clock,” he told Strike. “Not at
my office. Come to the flat in Ebury Street.” He turned away, then, as an
afterthought, turned back. “You too,” he barked at Robin.
Side by side, they watched him lumbering up the steps.
“We’re about to get sacked, aren’t we?” whispered Robin.
“I’d say it’s odds on,” said Strike, who, now that he was on his feet, was in
considerable pain.
“Cormoran, what was on the placard?” said Robin.
Strike allowed a woman in peach chiffon to pass, then said quietly:
“Picture of Chiswell hanging from a gallows and, beneath him, a bunch of
dead children. One odd thing, though.”
“What?”
“All the kids were black.”
Still dabbing at his nose, Strike reached inside his pocket for a cigarette, then
remembered where he was and let his hand fall back to his side.
“Listen, if that Elspeth woman’s in here, you might as well try and find out
what else she knows about Winn. It’ll help justify our final invoice.”
“OK,” said Robin. “The back of your head’s bleeding, by the way.”
Strike dabbed at it ineffectually with the tissues he had pocketed and began
to limp up the steps beside Robin.
“We shouldn’t be seen together any more tonight,” he told her, as they passed
over the threshold into a blaze of ochre, scarlet and gold. “There was a café in
Ebury Street, not far from Chiswell’s house. I’ll meet you there at nine o’clock
tomorrow, and we can face the firing squad together. Go on, you go ahead.”
But as she moved away from him, towards the grand staircase, he called after
her:
“Nice dress, by the way.”

---

33