Lethal White

Speak so that I can understand you.
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

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“‘I acted within the law and in accordance with my conscience,’” Strike
quoted Chiswell’s gnomic pronouncement back in Pratt’s. “So he did. Never hid
the fact that he was pro-hanging, did he? I suppose he provided the wood from
his grounds.”
“And the space for Jack o’Kent to build them—which is why Jack o’Kent
warned Raff not to go into the barn, when he was a child.”
“And they probably split the profits.”
“Wait,” said Robin, remembering what Flick had shrieked after the minister’s
car, the night of the Paralympic reception. “‘He put the horse on them’…
Cormoran, d’you think—?”
“Yeah, I do,” said Strike, his thoughts keeping pace with hers. “The last thing
Billy said to me at the hospital was ‘I hated putting the horse on them.’ Even in
the middle of a psychotic episode, Billy could carve a perfect White Horse of
Uffington into wood… Jack o’Kent had his boys carving it onto trinkets for
tourists and onto gallows for export… nice little father-son business he had
going, eh?”
Strike clinked his beer glass against her little champagne bottle and downed
the last dregs of his Doom Bar.
“To our first proper breakthrough. If Jack o’Kent was putting a little bit of
local branding on the gallows, they were traceable back to him, weren’t they?
And not only to him: to the Vale of the White Horse, and to Chiswell. It all fits,
Robin. Remember Jimmy’s placard, with the pile of dead black children on it?
Chiswell and Jack o’Kent were flogging them abroad—Middle East or Africa,
probably. But Chiswell can’t have known they had the horse carved into them—
Christ, no, he definitely didn’t,” said Strike, remembering Chiswell’s words in
Pratt’s, “because when he told me there were photographs, he said ‘there are no
distinguishing marks, so far as I’m aware.’”
“You know how Jimmy said he was owed?” said Robin, following her own
train of thought. “And how Raff said Kinvara thought he had a legitimate claim
for money, at first? What d’you think are the chances that Jack o’Kent left some
gallows ready for sale when he died—”
“—and Chiswell sold them without bothering to track down and pay off
Jack’s sons? Very smart,” said Strike, nodding. “So for Jimmy, this all started as
a demand for his rightful share of his father’s estate. Then, when Chiswell
denied he owed them anything, it turned into blackmail.”
“Not a very strong case for blackmail, though, when you think about it, is
it?” said Robin. “D’you really think Chiswell would have lost a lot of voters
over this? It was legal at the time he sold them, and he was publicly pro-death
penalty, so nobody could say he was a hypocrite. Half the country thinks we

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should bring back hanging. I’m not sure the kind of people who vote for
Chiswell would have thought he did much wrong.”
“Another good point,” conceded Strike, “and Chiswell could probably have
brazened it out. He’d survived worse: impregnating his mistress, divorce, an
illegitimate kid, Raphael’s drugged-up car crash and imprisonment…
“But there were ‘unintended consequences,’ remember?” Strike asked
thoughtfully. “What did those pictures at the Foreign Office show, that Winn was
so keen to get hold of? And who’s that ‘Samuel’ Winn just mentioned on the
phone?”
Strike pulled out his notebook and jotted down a few sentences in his dense,
hard-to-read handwriting.
“At least,” said Robin, “we’ve got confirmation of Raff’s story. The
necklace.”
Strike grunted, still writing. When he’d finished, he said, “Yeah, that was
useful, as far as it went.”
“What d’you mean, ‘as far as it went’?”
“Him heading down to Oxfordshire to stop Kinvara running off with a
valuable necklace is a better story than the trying-to-stop-her-topping-herself
one,” said Strike, “but I still don’t think we’re being told everything.”
“Why not?”
“Same objection as before. Why would Chiswell send Raphael down there as
his emissary, when his wife hated him? Can’t see why Raphael would be any
more persuasive than Izzy.”
“Have you taken against Raphael, or something?”
Strike raised his eyebrows.
“I haven’t got personal feelings for him one way or the other. You?”
“Of course not,” said Robin, a little too quickly. “So, what was that theory
you mentioned, before Tegan arrived?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Strike. “Well, it might be nothing, but a couple of things
Raphael said to you jumped out at me. Got me thinking.”
“What things?”
Strike told her.
“I can’t see what’s significant about any of that.”
“Maybe not in isolation, but try putting it together with what Della told me.”
“Which bit?”
But even when Strike reminded her what Della had said, Robin remained
confused.
“I don’t see the connection.”
Strike got up, grinning.

---

“Mull it over for a while. I’m going to ring Izzy and tell her Tegan’s let the
cat out of the bag about the gallows.”
He walked away and disappeared into the crowds in search of a quiet spot
from which to make his call, leaving Robin to swill the now-tepid champagne
around in the miniature bottle and ponder what Strike had just said. Nothing
coherent emerged from her exhausted attempts to connect the disparate pieces of
information, and after a few minutes she gave up and simply sat there, enjoying
the warm breeze that lifted the hair from her shoulders.
In spite of her tiredness, the shattered state of her marriage and her very real
apprehension about going digging in the dell later that night, it was pleasant to
sit here, breathing in the smells of the racecourse, of soft air redolent of turf,
leather and horse, catching trails of perfume from the women now moving away
from the bar towards the stands, and the smoky whiff of venison burgers cooking
in a van nearby. For the first time in a week, Robin realized that she was actually
hungry.
She picked up the cork of the champagne bottle and turned it over in her
fingers, remembering another cork, the one she had saved from her twenty-first
birthday party, for which Matthew had come home from university with a bunch
of new friends, Sarah among them. Looking back, she knew that her parents had
wanted to throw a big party for her twenty-first in compensation for her not
having the graduation party they had all been expecting.
Strike was taking a long time. Perhaps Izzy was spilling all the details, now
that they knew what the substance of the blackmail had been about, or perhaps,
Robin thought, she simply wanted to keep him on the phone.