Lethal White

… I do not want to see your defeat, Rebecca.
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
The car park at Newbury Racecourse was already jam-packed when they
arrived. Many of the people heading for the ticket marquee were dressed for
comfort, like Strike and Robin, in jeans and jackets, but others had donned
fluttering silk dresses, suits, padded waistcoats, tweed hats and corduroy trousers
in shades of mustard and puce that reminded Robin of Torquil.
They queued for tickets, each lost in their thoughts. Robin was afraid of what
was coming once they reached the Crafty Filly, where Tegan Butcher worked.
Certain that Strike had not yet had his full say on her mental health, she was
afraid that he had merely postponed the announcement that he wanted her to
return to a desk job in the office.
In fact, Strike’s mind was temporarily elsewhere. The white railings
glimpsed beyond the small marquee where the crowd queued for tickets, and the
abundance of tweed and corduroy, were reminding him of the last time he had
been at a racecourse. He had no particular interest in the sport. The one constant
paternal figure in his life, his uncle Ted, had been a footballing and sailing man,
and while a couple of Strike’s friends in the army had enjoyed a bet on the
horses, he had never seen the attraction.
Three years previously, though, he had attended the Epsom Derby with
Charlotte and two of her favorite siblings. Like Strike, Charlotte came from a
disjointed and dysfunctional family. In one of her unpredictable effusions of
enthusiasm, Charlotte had insisted on accepting Valentine and Sacha’s invitation,
notwithstanding Strike’s lack of interest in the sport and his barely cordial
feelings towards both men, who considered him an inexplicable oddity in their
sister’s life.
He had been broke at the time, setting up the agency on a shoestring, already
being chased by lawyers for repayment of the small loan he had taken from his
biological father, when every bank had turned him down as a bad risk.
Nevertheless, Charlotte had been incensed when, after losing a fiver on the nose
on the favorite, Fame and Glory, who had come in second, he had refused to
place another bet. She had refrained from calling him puritanical or
sanctimonious, plebeian or penny-pinching, as she had done previously when he

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had refused to emulate the reckless and ostentatious spending of her family and
friends. Egged on by her brothers, she had chosen to lay larger and larger bets
herself, finally winning £2500 and insisting that they visit the champagne tent,
where her beauty and high spirits had turned many heads.
As he walked with Robin up a wide tarmacked thoroughfare that ran parallel
from the racetrack itself behind the towering stands, past coffee bars, cider stalls
and ice cream vans, the jockeys’ changing rooms and owners’ and trainers’ bar,
Strike thought about Charlotte, and gambles that came off, and gambles that
didn’t, until Robin’s voice pulled him back to the present.
“I think that’s the place.”
A painted sign showed the head of a dark, winking filly in a snaffle bit hung
on the side of a one-story brick bar. The outdoor seating area was crowded.
Champagne flutes clinked amid a buzz of talk and laughter. The Crafty Filly
overlooked the paddock where horses would shortly be paraded, around which a
further crowd had begun to congregate.
“Grab that high table,” Strike told Robin, “and I’ll get drinks and tell Tegan
we’re here.”
He disappeared into the building without asking her what she wanted.
Robin sat down at one of the tall tables with its metal bar-chairs, which she
knew Strike preferred because getting on and off them would be easier on his
amputated leg than the low wickerwork sofas. The whole outside area sat
beneath a canopy of polyurethane to protect drinkers from non-existent rain. The
sky was cloudless today, the day warm with a light breeze that barely moved the
leaves of the topiary plants at the entrance to the bar. It would be a clear night for
digging in the dell outside Steda Cottage, Robin thought, always assuming that
Strike wasn’t about to cancel the expedition, because he thought her too unstable
and emotional to take along.
That thought turned her insides even colder and she fell to reading the
printed lists of runners they had been given, along with their cardboard entry
tags, until a half-bottle of Moët & Chandon landed unexpectedly in front of her
and Strike sat down, holding a pint of bitter.
“Doom Bar on draft,” he said cheerfully, tipping his glass to her before
taking a sip. Robin looked blankly at the little bottle of champagne, which she
thought resembled bubble bath.
“What’s this for?”
“Celebration,” said Strike, having taken a sizable gulp of his beer. “I know
you’re not supposed to say it,” he went on, rummaging through his pockets for
cigarettes, “but you’re well shot of him. Sleeping with his mate’s fiancée in the
marital bed? He deserves everything that’s coming to him.”

---

“I can’t drink. I’m driving.”
“That’s just cost me twenty-five quid, so you can take a token swig.”
“Twenty-five quid, for this?” said Robin, and taking advantage of Strike
lighting his cigarette, she surreptitiously wiped her leaking eyes again.
“Tell me something,” said Strike, as he waved his match, extinguishing it.
“D’you ever think about where you see the agency going?”
“What d’you mean?” said Robin, looking alarmed.
“My brother-in-law was giving me the third degree about it, night the
Olympics started,” said Strike. “Banging on about reaching a point where I
didn’t have to go out on the street any more.”
“But you wouldn’t want that, would y—wait,” said Robin, panicking. “Are
you trying to tell me I’ve got to go back to the desk and answering the phones?”
“No,” said Strike, blowing smoke away from her, “I just wondered whether
you give the future any thought.”
“You want me to leave?” asked Robin, still more alarmed. “Go and do
something el—?”
“Bloody hell, Ellacott, no! I’m asking you whether you think about the
future, that’s all.”
He watched as Robin uncorked the little bottle.
“Yes, of course I do,” she said uncertainly. “I’ve been hoping we can get the
bank balance a bit healthier, so we aren’t living hand to mouth all the time, but I
love the—” her voice wobbled, “—the job, you know I do. That’s all I want. Do
it, get better at it and… I suppose make the agency the best in London.”
Grinning, Strike clinked his beer glass against her champagne.
“Well, bear in mind we want exactly the same thing while I’m saying the
next bit, all right? And you might as well drink. Tegan can’t take a break for
forty minutes, and we’ve got a lot of time to kill before we head over to the dell
this evening.”
Strike watched her take a sip of champagne before going on.
“Pretending you’re OK when you aren’t isn’t strength.”
“Well, that’s where you’re wrong,” Robin contradicted him. The champagne
had fizzed on her tongue and seemed to give her courage even before it hit her
brain. “Sometimes, acting as though you’re all right, makes you all right.
Sometimes you’ve got to slap on a brave face and walk out into the world, and
after a while it isn’t an act anymore, it’s who you are. If I’d waited to feel ready
to leave my room after—you know,” she said, “I’d still be in there. I had to leave
before I was ready. And,” she said, looking him directly in the eyes, her own
bloodshot and swollen, “I’ve been working with you for two years, watching you
plow on no matter what, when we both know any doctor would have told you to

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put your leg up and rest.”
“And where did that get me, eh?” asked Strike reasonably. “Invalided out for
a week, with my hamstring screaming for mercy every time I walk more than
fifty yards. You want to draw parallels, fine. I’m dieting, I’ve been doing my
stretches—”
“And the vegetarian bacon, rotting away in the fridge?”
“Rotting? That stuff’s like industrial rubber, it’ll outlive me. Listen,” he said,
refusing to be deflected, “it’d be a bloody miracle if you hadn’t suffered any
after-effects from what happened last year.” His eyes sought the tip of the purple
scar on her forearm, visible beneath the cuff of her shirt. “Nothing in your past
precludes you from doing this job, but you need to take care of yourself if you
want to keep doing it. If you need time off—”
“—that’s the last thing I want—”
“This isn’t about what you want. It’s about what you need.”
“Shall I tell you something funny?” said Robin. Whether because of the
mouthful of champagne, or for some other reason, she had experienced a
startling lift in mood that made her loose-tongued. “You’d have thought I’d have
had panic attacks galore over the last week, wouldn’t you? I’ve been trying to
find a place to live, looking round flats, traveling all over London, I’ve had loads
of people coming up unexpectedly behind me—that’s a major trigger,” she
explained. “People behind me, when I don’t know they’re there.”
“Don’t think we need Freud to explain that one.”
“But I’ve been fine,” said Robin. “I think it’s because I haven’t had to—”
She stopped short, but Strike thought he knew what the end of the sentence
would have been. Taking a chance, he said:
“This job becomes well-nigh impossible if your home life’s screwed up. I’ve
been there. I know.”
Relieved to have been understood, Robin drank more champagne then said in
a rush:
“I think it’s made me worse, having to hide what’s going on, having to do the
exercises in secret, because any sign I wasn’t a hundred percent and Matthew
would be yelling at me again for doing this job. I thought it was him trying to
reach me on the phone this morning, that’s why I didn’t want to take the call.
And when Winn started calling me those names, it—well, it felt as though I had
taken the call. I don’t need Winn to tell me I’m basically a pair of walking tits, a
stupid, deluded girl who doesn’t realize that’s my only useful attribute.”