Lethal White

Tonight was the final straw. How stupid do you think I am, putting that girl
in your office right under my nose? I hope you realize how ridiculous you
look, how much people are laughing at you, chasing a girl who’s younger than
your daughters.
I’ve had enough. Make a fool of yourself, I don’t care anymore, it’s over.
I’ve gone back to Woolstone. Once I’ve made arrangements for the horses,
I’ll clear out for good. Your bloody horrible children will be happy, but will
you, Jasper? I doubt it, but it’s too late.
K
As Robin bent to take a picture of the note, she heard the front door snap
shut, and with a gasp, she spun around. Strike was standing on the threshold,
large, unshaven, still in the suit he had worn to the reception. He was staring at
the figure in the chair.
“The police are on their way,” said Robin. “I just called them.”

---

Strike moved carefully into the room.
“Holy shit.”
He spotted the cracked tube of pills on the floor, stepped over them, and
scrutinized the tubing and the plastic-covered face.
“Raff said he was behaving strangely,” said Robin, “but I don’t think he ever
dreamed…”
Strike said nothing. He was still examining the body.
“Was that there yesterday evening?”
“What?”
“That,” said Strike, pointing.
There was a semi-circular mark on the back of Chiswell’s hand, dark red
against the coarse, pallid skin.
“I can’t remember,” said Robin.
The full shock of what had happened was starting to hit her and she was
finding it hard to arrange her thoughts, which floated, unmoored and
disconnected, through her head: Chiswell barking through the car window to
persuade the police to let Strike into last night’s reception, Chiswell calling
Kinvara a stupid bitch, Chiswell demanding that they meet him here this
morning. It was unreasonable to expect her to remember the backs of his hands.
“Hmm,” said Strike. He noticed the mobile in Robin’s hand. “Have you
taken pictures of everything?”
She nodded.
“All of this?” he asked, waving a hand over the table. “That?” he added,
pointing at the cracked pills on the carpet.
“Yes. That was my fault. I trod on them.”
“How did you get in?”
“The door was open. I thought he’d left it on the latch for us,” said Robin. “A
workman shouted in the street and I thought it was Chiswell saying ‘come in.’ I
was expecting—”
“Stay here,” said Strike.
He left the room. She heard him climbing the stairs and then his heavy
footsteps on the ceiling above, but she knew that there was nobody there. She
could feel the house’s essential lifelessness, its flimsy cardboard unreality, and,
sure enough, Strike returned less than five minutes later, shaking his head.
“Nobody.”
He walked past her through a door that led off the sitting room and, hearing
his footsteps hit tile, Robin knew that it was the kitchen.
“Completely empty,” Strike said, re-emerging.
“What happened last night?” Robin asked. “You said something funny

---

happened.”
She wanted to discuss a subject other than the awful form that dominated the
room in its grotesque lifelessness.
“Billy called me. He said people were trying to kill him—chasing him. He
claimed to be in a phone box in Trafalgar Square. I went to try and find him, but
he wasn’t there.”
“Oh,” said Robin.
So he hadn’t been with Charlotte. Even in this extremity, Robin registered
the fact, and was glad.
“The hell?” said Strike quietly, looking past her into a corner of the room.
A buckled sword was leaning against the wall in a dark corner. It looked as
though it had been forced or stood on and deliberately bent. Strike walked
carefully around the body to examine it, but then they heard the police car
pulling up outside the house and he straightened up.
“We’ll tell them everything, obviously,” said Strike.
“Yes,” said Robin.
“Except the surveillance devices. Shit—they’ll find them in your office—”
“They won’t,” said Robin. “I took them home yesterday, in case we decided I
needed to clear out because of the Sun.”
Before Strike could express admiration for this clear-eyed foresight,
somebody rapped hard on the front door.
“Well, it’s been nice while it’s lasted, hasn’t it?” Strike said, with a grim
smile, as he moved towards the hall. “Being out of the papers?”

---