Lethal White

Don’t cry. Please don’t fucking cry.
“You looked very peaceful. I’ve got to go, Robin’s picking me up at—”
“Ah,” said Lorelei. “No, you wouldn’t want to keep Robin hanging around.”
“I’ll call you,” said Strike.
He thought he caught a sob as he reached the front door, but by making a
noisy business of opening it, he could credibly claim not to have heard.
Having left in plenty of time, Strike made a detour to a handy McDonald’s
for an Egg McMuffin and a large coffee, which he consumed at an unwiped
table, surrounded by other early Saturday risers. A young man with a boil on the
back of his neck was reading the Independent right ahead of Strike, who read the
words Sports Minister in Marriage Split over the youth’s shoulder before he
turned a page.
Drawing out his phone, Strike Googled “Winn marriage.” The news stories
popped up immediately: Minister for Sport Splits from Husband: Separation
“Amicable.” Della Winn Calls Time on Marriage. Blind Paralympics Minister to
Divorce.
The stories from major newspapers were all factual and on the short side, a
few padded out with details of Della’s impressive career within politics and
outside. The press’s lawyers would, of course, be particularly careful around the

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Winns just now, with their super-injunction still in place. Strike finished his
McMuffin in two bites, jammed an unlit cigarette in his mouth and limped out of
the restaurant. Out on the pavement he lit up, then brought up the website of a
well-known and scurrilous political blogger on his phone.
The brief paragraph had been written only a few hours previously.
Which creepy Westminster couple known to share a predilection for
youthful employees are rumored to be splitting at last? He is about to lose
access to the nubile political wannabes on whom he has preyed so long, but
she has already found a handsome young “helper” to ease the pain of
separation.
Less than forty minutes later, Strike emerged from Barons Court Tube station
to lean up against the pillar-box in front of the entrance. Cutting a solitary figure
beneath the Art Nouveau lettering and open segmented pediment of the grand
station behind him, he took out his phone again and continued to read about the
Winns’ separation. They had been married over thirty years. The only couple he
knew who had been together that long were the aunt and uncle back in Cornwall,
who had served as surrogate parents to Strike and his sister during those regular
intervals when his mother had been unwilling or unable to care for them.
A familiar roar and rattle made Strike look up. The ancient Land Rover that
Robin had taken off her parents’ hands was trundling towards him. The sight of
Robin’s bright gold head behind the wheel caught the tired and faintly depressed
Strike off-guard. He experienced a wave of unexpected happiness.
“Morning,” said Robin, thinking that Strike looked terrible as he opened the
door and shoved in a holdall. “Oh, sod off,” she added, as a driver behind her
slammed on his horn, aggravated by the time Strike was taking to get inside.
“Sorry… leg’s giving me trouble. Dressed in a hurry.”
“No problem—and you!” Robin shouted at the driver now overtaking them,
who was gesticulating and mouthing obscenities at her.
Finally dropping down into the passenger seat, Strike slammed the door and
Robin pulled away from the curb.
“Any trouble getting away?” he asked.
“What d’you—?”
“The journalist.”
“Oh,” she said. “No—he’s gone. Given up.”
Strike wondered just how difficult Matthew had been about Robin giving up
a Saturday for work.
“Heard about the Winns?” he asked her.
“No, what’s happened?”

---

“They’ve split up.”
“No!”
“Yep. In all the papers. Listen to this…”
He read aloud the blind item on the political website.
“God,” said Robin quietly.
“I had a couple of interesting calls last night,” Strike said, as they sped
towards the M4.
“Who from?”
“One from Izzy, the other from Barclay. Izzy got a letter from Geraint
yesterday,” said Strike.
“Really?” said Robin.
“Yeah. It was sent to Chiswell House a few days back, not her London flat,
so she only opened it when she went back to Woolstone. I got her to scan and
email it to me. Want to hear?”
“Go on,” said Robin.
“‘My very dear Isabella—’”
“Ugh,” said Robin, with a small shudder.
“‘As I hope you will understand,’” read Strike, “‘Della and I did not feel it
appropriate to contact you in the immediate, shocking aftermath of your father’s
death. We do so now in a spirit of friendliness and compassion.’”
“If you need to point that out…”
“‘Della and I may have had political and personal differences with Jasper,
but I hope we never forgot that he was a family man, and we are aware that your
personal loss will be severe. You ran his office with courtesy and efficiency and
our little corridor will be the poorer for your absence.’”
“He always cut Izzy dead!” said Robin.
“Exactly what Izzy said on the phone last night,” replied Strike. “Stand by,
you’re about to get a mention.
“‘I cannot believe that you had anything to do with the almost certainly
illegal activities of the young woman calling herself “Venetia.” We feel it only
fair to inform you that we are currently investigating the possibility that she may
have accessed confidential data on the multiple occasions she entered this office
without consent.’”
“I never looked at anything except the plug socket,” said Robin, “and I didn’t
access the office on ‘multiple occasions.’ Three. That’s ‘a few,’ at most.”
“‘As you know, the tragedy of suicide has touched our own family. We know
that this will be an extremely difficult and painful time for you. Our families
certainly seem fated to bump into each other in their darkest hours.
“‘Sending our very best wishes, our thoughts are with all of you, etc, etc.’”

---

Strike closed the letter on his phone.
“That’s not a letter of condolence,” said Robin.
“Nope, it’s a threat. If the Chiswells blab about anything you found out about
Geraint or the charity, he’ll go after them, hard, using you.”
She turned onto the motorway.
“When did you say that letter was sent?”
“Five, six days ago,” said Strike, checking.
“It doesn’t sound as though he knew his marriage was over then, does it? All
that ‘our corridor will be poorer for your absence’ guff. He’s lost his job if he’s
split with Della, surely?”
“You’d think so,” agreed Strike. “How handsome would you say Aamir
Mallik is?”
“What?” said Robin, startled. “Oh… the ‘young helper’? Well, he’s OK
looking, but not model material.”
“It must be him. How many other young men’s hands is she holding and
calling darling?”
“I can’t imagine him as her lover,” said Robin.
“‘A man of your habits,’” quoted Strike. “Pity you can’t remember what
number that poem was.”
“Is there one about sleeping with an older woman?”
“The best-known ones are on that very subject,” said Strike. “Catullus was in
love with an older woman.”
“Aamir isn’t in love,” said Robin. “You heard the tape.”
“He didn’t sound smitten, I grant you. I wouldn’t mind knowing what causes
the animal noises he makes at night, though. The ones the neighbors complain
about.”
His leg was throbbing. Reaching down to feel the join between prosthesis
and stump, he knew that part of the problem was having put on the former
hurriedly, in the dark.
“D’you mind if I readjust—?”
“Carry on,” said Robin.
Strike rolled up his trouser leg and proceeded to remove the prosthesis. Ever
since he had been forced to take two weeks off wearing it, the skin at the end of
his stump had shown a tendency to object to renewed friction. Retrieving E45
cream from his holdall, he applied it liberally to the reddened skin.
“Should’ve done this earlier,” he said apologetically.
Deducing from the presence of Strike’s holdall that he had come from
Lorelei’s, Robin found herself wondering whether he had been too pleasurably
occupied to worry about his leg. She and Matthew had not had sex since their

---

anniversary weekend.
“I’ll leave it off for a bit,” said Strike, heaving both prosthesis and holdall
into the back of the Land Rover, which he now saw was empty but for a tartan
flask and two plastic cups. This was a disappointment. There had always been a
carrier bag full of food on the previous occasions they had ventured out of
London by car.
“No biscuits?”
“I thought you were trying to lose weight?”
“Nothing eaten on a car journey counts, any competent dietician will tell you
that.”
Robin grinned.
“‘Calories Are Bollocks: the Cormoran Strike Diet.’”
“‘Hunger Strike: Car Journeys I Have Starved On.’”
“Well, you should’ve had breakfast,” said Robin, and to her own annoyance,
she wondered for the second time whether he had been otherwise engaged.
“I did have breakfast. Now I want a biscuit.”
“We can stop somewhere if you’re hungry,” said Robin. “We should have
plenty of time.”
As Robin accelerated smoothly to overtake a couple of dawdling cars, Strike
was aware of an ease and restfulness that could not be entirely ascribed to the
relief of removing his prosthesis, nor even of having escaped Lorelei’s flat, with
its kitschy décor and its heartsore occupant. The very fact that he had removed
his leg while Robin drove, and was not sitting with all muscles clenched, was
highly unusual. Not only had he had to work hard to overcome anxiety at being
driven by other people in the aftermath of the explosion that had blown off his
leg, he had a secret but deep-rooted aversion to women drivers, a prejudice he
ascribed largely to early, nerve-wracking experiences with all his female
relatives. Yet it was not merely a prosaic appreciation of her competence that had
caused that sudden lifting of the heart when he had seen her driving towards him
this morning. Now, watching the road, he experienced a spasm of memory, sharp
with both pleasure and pain; his nostrils seemed to be full again with the smell of
white roses, as he held her on the stairs at her wedding and he felt her mouth
beneath his in the hot fug of a hospital car park.
“Could you pass me my sunglasses?” asked Robin. “In my bag there.”
He handed them over.
“Want a tea?”
“I’ll wait,” said Robin, “you carry on.”
He reached into the back for the thermos and poured himself a plastic cup
full. The tea was exactly as he liked it.

---

“I asked Izzy about Chiswell’s will last night,” Strike told Robin.
“Did he leave a lot?” asked Robin, remembering the shabby interior of the
house in Ebury Street.
“Much less than you might’ve thought,” said Strike, taking out the notebook
in which he had jotted everything Izzy had told him. “Oliver was right. The
Chiswells are on their uppers—in a relative sense, obviously,” he added.
“Apparently Chiswell’s father spent most of the capital on women and
horses. Chiswell had a very messy divorce from Lady Patricia. Her family was
wealthy and could afford better lawyers. Izzy and her sister are all right for cash
through their mother’s family. There’s a trust fund, which explains Izzy’s smart
flat in Chelsea.
“Raphael’s mother walked away with hefty child support, which seems to
have nearly cleaned Chiswell out. After that, he plunged the little he had left into
some risky equities advised by his stockbroker son-in-law. ‘Torks’ feels pretty
bad about that, apparently. Izzy would rather we didn’t mention it today. The
2008 crash virtually wiped Chiswell out.
“He tried to do some planning against death duties. Shortly after he lost most
of his cash, some valuable family heirlooms and Chiswell House itself were
made over to the eldest grandson—”
“Pringle,” said Robin.
“What?”
“Pringle. That’s what they call the eldest grandson. Fizzy’s got three
children,” Robin explained, “Izzy was always banging on about them: Pringle,
Flopsy and Pong.”
“Jesus Christ,” muttered Strike. “It’s like interviewing the Teletubbies.”
Robin laughed.
“—and otherwise, Chiswell seems to have been hoping he could put himself
right by selling off land around Chiswell House and objects of less sentimental
value. The house in Ebury Street’s been remortgaged.”
“So Kinvara and all her horses are living in her step-grandson’s house?” said
Robin, changing up a gear to overtake a lorry.
“Yeah, Chiswell left a letter of wishes with his will, asking that Kinvara has
the right to remain in the house lifelong, or until she remarries. How old’s this
Pringle?”
“About ten, I think.”
“Well, it’ll be interesting to see whether the family honor Chiswell’s request
given that one of them thinks Kinvara killed him. Mind you, it’s a moot point
whether she’ll have enough money to keep the place running, from what Izzy
told me last night. Izzy and her sister were each left fifty grand, and the

---

grandchildren get ten grand apiece, and there’s hardly enough cash to honor
those bequests. That leaves Kinvara with what’s left from the house in Ebury
Street once it’s sold off and all other personal effects, minus the valuable stuff
that was already put into the grandson’s name. Basically, he’s leaving her with
the junk that wasn’t worth selling and any personal gifts he gave her during the
marriage.”
“And Raphael gets nothing?”
“I wouldn’t feel too sorry for him. According to Izzy, his glamorous mother’s
made a career out of asset-stripping wealthy men. He’s in line to inherit a flat in
Chelsea from her.
“So all in all, it’s hard to make a case for Chiswell being killed for his
money,” said Strike. “What is the other sister’s bloody name? I’m not calling her
Fizzy.”
“Sophia,” said Robin, amused.
“Right, well, we can rule her out. I’ve checked, she was taking a Riding for
the Disabled lesson in Northumberland on the morning he died. Raphael had
nothing to gain from his father’s death, and Izzy thinks he knew it, although
we’ll need to check that. Izzy herself got what she called ‘a bit squiffy’ at
Lancaster House and felt a bit fragile the following day. Her neighbor can vouch
for the fact that she was having tea in the shared courtyard behind their flats at
the time of death. She told me that quite naturally last night.”
“Which leaves Kinvara,” said Robin.
“Right. Now, if Chiswell didn’t trust her with the information that he’d
called in a private detective, he might not have been honest about the state of the
family finances, either. It’s possible she thought she was going to get a lot more
than she has, but—”
“—she’s got the best alibi in the family,” said Robin.
“Exactly,” said Strike.
They had now left behind the clearly man-made border shrubs and bushes
that had lined the motorway as it passed Windsor and Maidenhead. There were
real old trees left and right now, trees that had predated the road, and which
would have seen their fellows felled to make way for it.
“Barclay’s call was interesting,” Strike went on, turning a couple of pages in
his notebook. “Knight’s been in a nasty mood ever since Chiswell died, though
he hasn’t told Barclay why. On Wednesday night he was goading Flick,
apparently, said he agreed with her ex-flatmate that Flick had bourgeois instincts
—d’you mind if I smoke? I’ll wind down the window.”
The breeze was bracing, though it made his tired eyes water. Holding his
burning cigarette out of the car between drags, he went on:

---

“So Flick got really angry, said she’d been doing ‘that shitty job for you’ and
then said it wasn’t her fault they hadn’t got forty grand, at which Jimmy went, to
quote Barclay, ‘apeshit.’ Flick stormed out and on Thursday morning, Jimmy
texted Barclay and told him he was going back to where he grew up, to visit his
brother.”
“Billy’s in Woolstone?” said Robin, startled. She realized that she had come
to think of the younger Knight brother as an almost mythical person.
“Jimmy might’ve been using him as a cover story. Who knows where he’s
really got to… Anyway, Jimmy and Flick reappeared last night in the pub, all
smiles. Barclay says they’d obviously made up over the phone and in the two
days he was away, she’s managed to find herself a nice non-bourgeois job.”
“That was good going,” said Robin.
“How d’you feel about shop work?”
“I did a bit in my teens,” said Robin. “Why?”
“Flick’s got herself a few hours part time in a jewelry shop in Camden. She
told Barclay it’s run by some mad Wiccan woman. It’s minimum wage and the
boss sounds barking mad, so they’re having trouble finding anyone else.”
“Don’t you think they might recognize me?”
“The Knight lot have never seen you in person,” said Strike. “If you did
something drastic with your hair, broke out the colored contact lenses again…
I’ve got a feeling,” he said, drawing deeply on his cigarette, “that Flick’s hiding
a lot. How did she know what Chiswell’s blackmailable offense was? She was
the one who told Jimmy, don’t forget, which is strange.”
“Wait,” said Robin. “What?”
“Yeah, she said, when I was following them on the march,” said Strike.
“Didn’t I tell you?”
“No,” said Robin.
As she said it, Strike remembered that he had spent the week after the march
at Lorelei’s with his leg up, when he had still been so angry at Robin for refusing
to work that he had barely spoken to her. Then they had met at the hospital, and
he had been far too distracted and worried to pass on information in his usual
methodical fashion.
“Sorry,” he said. “It was that week after…”
“Yes,” she said, cutting him off. She, too, preferred not to think about the
weekend of the march. “So what exactly did she say?”
“That he wouldn’t know what Chiswell had done, but for her.”
“That’s weird,” said Robin, “seeing as he’s the one who grew up right beside
them.”
“But the thing they were blackmailing him about only happened six years

---

ago, after Jimmy had left home,” Strike reminded her. “If you ask me, Jimmy’s
been keeping Flick around because she knows too much. He might be scared of
ending it, in case she starts talking.
“If you can’t get anything useful out of her, you can pretend selling earrings
isn’t for you and leave, but the state their relationship’s in, I think Flick might be
in the mood to confide in a friendly stranger. Don’t forget,” he said, throwing the
end of his cigarette out of the window and winding it back up, “she’s also
Jimmy’s alibi for the time of death.”
Excited about the prospect of going back undercover, Robin said:
“I hadn’t forgotten.”
She wondered how Matthew would react if she shaved the sides of her head,
or dyed her hair blue. He had not put up much of a show of resentment at her
spending Saturday with Strike. Her long days of effective house arrest, and her
sympathy about the argument with Tom, seemed to have bought her credit.
Shortly after half past ten, they turned off the motorway onto a country road
that wound down into the valley where the tiny village of Woolstone lay nestled.
Robin parked beside a hedgerow full of Traveler’s Joy, so that Strike could
reattach his prosthesis. Replacing her sunglasses in her handbag, Robin noticed
two texts from Matthew. They had arrived two hours earlier, but the alert of her
mobile must have been drowned out by the racket of the Land Rover.
The first read:
All day. What about Tom?
The second, which had been sent ten minutes later, said:
Ignore last, was meant for work.
Robin was rereading these when Strike said:
“Shit.”
He had already reattached his prosthesis, and was staring through his
window at something she could not see.
“What?”
“Look at that.”
Strike pointed back up the hill down which they had just driven. Robin
ducked her head so that she could see what had caught his attention.
A gigantic prehistoric white chalk figure had been cut into the hillside. To
Robin, it resembled a stylised leopard, but the realization of what it was
supposed to be had already hit her when Strike said:
“‘Up by the horse. He strangled the kid, up by the horse.’”

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