Lethal White

amour propre was wounded at the thought that he could have been so described.
“OK,” he said, after a moment or two, “OK, let’s see… what if it was a
waiter Flick shagged, but she’s maliciously claiming it was me because of her
class warrior bullshit and the grudge her boyfriend’s got against my family?”
“You stole her flatmate’s credit card out of her bag in the kitchen.”
She could tell by the tightening of his mouth that he had not expected this.
Doubtless he had thought that given Flick’s lifestyle, suspicion would fall on
anyone passing through her tiny, overcrowded flat, and perhaps especially
Jimmy.
“Proof?” he said again.
“Flick can provide the date you were at her flat and if Laura testifies her
credit card went missing that night—”
“But with no firm evidence I was ever there—”
“How did Flick find out about the gallows? We know she told Jimmy about
them, not the other way around.”
“Well, it can’t have been me, can it? I’m the only member of the family who
never knew.”
“You knew everything. Kinvara had the full story from your father, and she
passed it all to you.”
“No,” said Raphael, “I think you’ll find Flick heard about the gallows from
the Butcher brothers. I’m reliably informed that one of them lives in London
now. Yeah, I think I’ve heard a rumor one of them shagged their mate Jimmy’s
girlfriend. And believe me, the Butcher brothers aren’t going to come over well
in court, pair of shifty oiks driving gallows around under cover of darkness. I’m
going to look a lot more plausible and presentable than Flick and the Butchers if
this comes to court, I really am.”
“The police have got phone records,” Robin persisted. “They know about an

---

anonymous call to Geraint Winn, which was made around the time Flick found
out about the gallows. We think you tipped off Winn anonymously about Samuel
Murape. You knew Winn had a grudge against the Chiswells. Kinvara told you
everything.”
“I don’t know anything about that phone call, Your Honor,” said Raphael,
“and I’m very sorry that my late brother was a prize cunt to Rhiannon Winn, but
that’s nothing to do with me.”
“We think you made that threatening call to Izzy’s office, the first day you
were there, talking about people pissing themselves as they die,” said Robin,
“and we think it was your idea for Kinvara to pretend she kept hearing intruders
in the grounds. Everything was designed to create as many witnesses as possible
to the fact that your father had reason to be anxious and paranoid, that he might
crack under extreme pressure—”
“He was under extreme pressure. He was being blackmailed by Jimmy
Knight. Geraint Winn was trying to force him out of his job. Those aren’t lies,
they’re facts and they’re going to be pretty sensational in a courtroom, especially
once the Samuel Murape story gets out.”
“Except that you made stupid, avoidable mistakes.”
He sat up straighter and leaned forwards, his elbow sliding a few inches, so
that the nozzle of the gun grew larger. His eyes, which had been smudges in the
shadow, became clearly defined again, onyx black and white. Robin wondered
how she had ever thought him handsome.
“What mistakes?”
As he said it, Robin saw, out of the corner of her eye, a flashing blue light
glide over the bridge just visible through the window to her right, which was
blocked from Raphael’s view by the side of the boat. The light vanished and the
bridge was reabsorbed by the deepening darkness.
“For one thing,” said Robin carefully, “it was a mistake to keep meeting
Kinvara in the lead-up to the murder. She kept pretending she’d forgotten where
she was meeting your father, didn’t she? Just to get a couple of minutes with
you, just to see you and check up on you—”
“That’s not proof.”
“Kinvara was followed to Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons on her birthday.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Who by?”
“Jimmy Knight. Flick’s confirmed it. Jimmy thought your father was with
Kinvara and wanted to confront him publicly about not giving him his money.
Obviously, your father wasn’t there, so Jimmy went home and wrote an angry
blog about how High Tories spend their money, mentioning Le Manoir aux

---

Quat’Saisons by name.”
“Well, unless he saw me sneaking into Kinvara’s hotel suite,” said Raphael,
“which he didn’t, because I took fucking good care to make sure nobody did,
that’s all supposition, too.”
“All right,” said Robin, “what about the second time you were overheard
having sex in the gallery bathroom? That wasn’t Francesca. You were with
Kinvara.”
“Prove it.”
“Kinvara was in town that day, buying lachesis pills and pretending she was
angry that your father was still seeing you, which was all part of the cover story
that she hated you. She rang your father to check that he was having lunch
elsewhere. Strike overheard that call. What you and Kinvara didn’t realize was
that your father was having lunch only a hundred yards away from where you
were having sex.
“When your father forced his way into the bathroom, he found a tube of
lachesis pills on the floor. That’s why he nearly had a heart attack. He knew
that’s what she’d come to town for. He knew who’d just been having sex with
you in the bathroom.”
Raphael’s smile was more of a grimace.
“Yeah, that was a fuck-up. The day he came into our office, talking about
Lachesis—‘knows when everyone’s number’s up’—I realized later, he was
trying to put the frighteners on me, wasn’t he? I didn’t know what the hell he
was on about at the time. But when you and your crippled boss mentioned the
pills at Chiswell House, Kinvara twigged: they fell out of her pocket while we
were screwing. We hadn’t known what first tipped him off… it was only after I
heard he was ringing Le Manoir about Freddie’s money clip that I knew he must
have realized something was going on. Then he invited me over to Ebury Street
and I knew he was about to confront me about it, and we needed to get a move
on, killing him.”
The entirely matter-of-fact way he discussed patricide chilled Robin. He
might have been talking about wallpapering a room.
“He must’ve been planning to produce those pills during his big ‘I know
you’re fucking my wife’ speech… why didn’t I spot them on the floor? I tried to
put the room straight afterwards, but they must’ve rolled out of his pocket or
something… it’s harder than you’d think,” said Raphael, “tidying up around a
corpse you’ve just dispatched. I was surprised, actually, how much it affected
me.”
She had never heard his narcissism so clearly. His interest and sympathy was
entirely for himself. His dead father was nothing.

---

“The police have taken statements from Francesca and her parents, now,”
Robin said. “She absolutely denies being in the bathroom with you that second
time. Her parents never believed her, but—”
“They didn’t believe her because she’s even fucking dumber than Kinvara.”
“The police are combing through security camera footage from the shops she
says she was in, while you and Kinvara were in the bathroom.”
“OK,” said Raphael, “well, worst comes to the worst, and they can prove she
wasn’t with me, I might have to come clean about the fact that it was another
young lady I was with in the bathroom that day, whose reputation I’ve been
chivalrously trying to defend.”
“Will you really be able to find a woman to lie for you, in court, on a murder
charge?” asked Robin, in disbelief.
“The woman who owns this houseboat is mad for me,” said Raphael softly.
“We had a thing going before I went inside. She visited me in jail and
everything. She’s in rehab right now. Crazy bitch, loves drama. Thinks she’s an
artist. She drinks too much, she’s a real pain in the arse, actually, but she fucks
like a rabbit. She never bothered taking the spare key to this place off me, and
she keeps a key to her mummy’s house in that drawer over there—”
“It wouldn’t happen to be her mother’s house where you had the helium,
tubing and gloves delivered, would it?” asked Robin.
Raphael blinked. He hadn’t expected that.
“You needed an address that didn’t seem connected to you. You made sure it
was delivered while the owners were away, or at work, then you could let
yourself in, collect the failed delivery card…”
“Pick it up, disguised and get it couriered it off to dear old Dad’s house,
yeah.”
“And Flick took delivery and Kinvara made sure she hid it from your father
until it was time to kill him?”
“That’s right,” said Raphael. “You pick up a lot of tips in jail. Fake IDs,
vacant buildings, empty addresses, you can do a hell of a lot with them. Once
you’re dead—” Robin’s scalp prickled—“nobody’s going to connect me with
any of the addresses.”
“The owner of this barge—”
“Is going to be telling everyone she was having sex with me in Drummond’s
bathroom, remember? She’s on my team, Venetia,” he said quietly, “so it’s not
looking good for you, is it?”
“There were other mistakes,” said Robin, her mouth dry.
“Like?”
“You told Flick your father needed a cleaner.”

---

“Yeah, because it makes her and Jimmy look fishy as hell, that she wheedled
her way into my father’s house. The jury’ll be focused on that, not how she
found out he wanted a cleaner. I’ve already told you, she’s going to look like a
grubby little tart with a grudge in the dock. That’s just one more lie.”
“But she stole a note from your father, a note he wrote while he was trying to
check Kinvara’s story with Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. I found it in her
bathroom. She’d lied, told him her mother was going to the hotel with her.
They’d never normally give out information about guests, but he was a
government minister and he’d previously been there, so we think he managed to
trick them into agreeing that they could remember the family vehicle there and
that it was a shame her mother hadn’t made it. He made a note of the suite
Kinvara was in, probably pretending he’d forgotten it, and he was trying to get
hold of the bill, to see whether there was any sign of two lots of breakfast or
dinner, I suppose. When the prosecution produce the note and the bill in court
—”
“You found that note, did you?” said Raphael.
Robin’s stomach turned over. She had not meant to give Raphael another
reason to shoot her.
“I knew I’d underestimated you after that dinner we had, at Nam Long Le
Shaker,” said Raphael. It wasn’t a compliment. His eyes were narrowed, his
nostrils flared in dislike. “You were a mess, but you were still asking fucking
inconvenient questions. You and your boss were cozier with the police than I
expected, too. And even after I tipped off the Mail—”
“That was you,” said Robin, wondering how she had never realized. “You put
the press and Mitch Patterson back on us…”
“I told them you’d left your husband for Strike, but that he was still shagging
his ex. Izzy had given me that bit of gossip. I thought you needed slowing down,
you two, because you kept poking away at my alibi… but after I’ve shot you,”—
an icy chill ran the length of Robin’s body—“your boss’ll be busy answering the
press’s questions about how your body ended up in a canal, won’t he? I think
that’s called killing two birds with one stone.”
“Even if I’m dead,” said Robin, her voice as steady as she could make it,
“there’ll still be your father’s note and the hotel’s testimony—”
“OK, so he was worried about what Kinvara was doing at Le Manoir,” said
Raphael roughly. “I’ve just told you, nobody saw me on the premises. The stupid
cow did ask for two glasses with the champagne, but she could’ve been with
someone else.”
“You aren’t going to have any opportunity to cook up a new story with her,”
said Robin, her mouth drier than ever, her tongue sticking to the roof of her

---

mouth as she tried to sound calm and confident. “She’s in custody now, she isn’t
as clever as you—and you made other mistakes,” Robin rushed on, “stupid ones,
because you had to enact the plan in a hurry once you realized your father was
onto you.”
“Like?”
“Like Kinvara taking away the packaging on the amitriptyline, after she’d
doctored the orange juice. Kinvara forgetting to tell you the trick to closing the
front door properly. And,” said Robin, aware that she was playing her very last
card, “her throwing the front door key to you, at Paddington.”
In the wordless space that now stretched between them, Robin thought she
heard footsteps close at hand. She didn’t dare look out of the window in case she
alerted Raphael, who appeared too appalled by what she had just said to take in
anything else.
“‘Throwing the front door key to me?’” repeated Raphael, with fragile
bravado. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“The keys to Ebury Street are restricted, almost impossible to copy. The pair
of you only had access to one: hers, because your father was suspicious of you
both by the time he died, and he’d made sure the spare was out of your reach.
“She needed the key to get into the house and doctor the orange juice and
you needed it to go in early next morning and suffocate him. So you cobbled
together a plan at the last minute: she’d pass you the key at a prearranged spot at
Paddington, where you’d be disguised as a homeless person.
“You were caught on camera. The police have got people enlarging and
clarifying the image right now. They think you must have bought things from a
charity shop in haste, which might produce another useful witness. The police
are now combing CCTV footage for your movements from Paddington
onwards.”
Raphael said nothing at all for nearly a minute. His eyes were moving
fractionally from left to right, as he tried to find a loophole, an escape.
“That’s… inconvenient,” he said finally. “I didn’t think I was on camera,
sitting there.”
Robin thought she could see hope slipping away from him now. Quietly, she
continued, “As per your plan, Kinvara arrived home in Oxfordshire, called
Drummond and left a message that she wanted the necklace valued, to set up that
whole back-up story.
“Early next morning, another burner phone was used to call both Geraint
Winn and Jimmy Knight. Both were lured out of their houses, presumably with a
promise of information on Chiswell. That was you, making sure they were in the
frame if murder was suspected.”

---

“No proof,” muttered Raphael automatically, but still his eyes darted this
way and that, searching for invisible lifelines.
“You let yourself into the house very early in the morning, expecting to find
your father almost comatose after his early morning orange juice, but—”
“He was out of it, at first,” said Raphael. His eyes had become glazed, and
Robin knew that he was remembering what had happened, watching it, inside his
head. “He was slumped on the sofa, very groggy. I walked straight past him into
the kitchen, opened my box of toys—”
For a sliver of a second, Robin saw again the shrink-wrapped head, the gray
hair pressed around the face so that only the gaping black hole of the mouth was
visible. Raphael had done that; Raphael, who currently had a gun pointing at her
face.
“—but while I’m arranging everything, the old bastard wakes up, sees me
fixing the tubing onto the helium canister and comes back to fucking life. He
staggers up, grabs Freddie’s sword off the wall and tries to fight, but I got it off
him. Bent the blade doing it. Forced him down into the chair—he was still
struggling—and—”
Raphael mimed putting the bag over his father’s head.
“Caput.”
“And then,” said Robin, her mouth still dry, “you made those phone calls
from his phone that were supposed to establish your alibi. Kinvara had told you
his passcode, of course. And you left, without closing the door properly.”
Robin didn’t know whether she was imagining movement out of the porthole
to her left. She kept her eyes fixed on Raphael, and the slightly wavering gun.
“Loads of this is circumstantial,” he muttered, eyes still glazed. “Flick and
Francesca have both got motives for lying about me… I didn’t end it well with
Francesca… I might still have a chance… I might…”
“There’s no chance, Raff,” said Robin. “Kinvara isn’t going to lie for you
much longer. When they tell her the truth about ‘Mare Mourning,’ she’s going to
put everything together for the first time. I think you insisted she move it into to
the drawing room, to protect it from the damp in the spare room. How did you
manage that? Did you make up some rubbish about it reminding you of her dead
mare? Then she’s going to realize you started up the affair again once you knew
its true value, and that all the dreadful things you said to her when you ended it
were true. And worst of all,” said Robin, “she’s going to realize that when the
two of you heard intruders in the grounds—real ones, this time—you let the
woman you were supposedly madly in love with walk out into the grounds in the
dark, in her nightdress, while you stayed behind to protect—”
“All right!” he shouted suddenly and he advanced the gun nozzle until it

---

pressed into her forehead again. “Stop fucking talking, will you?”
Robin sat quite still. She imagined how it would feel when he pressed the
trigger. He had said he would shoot her through a cushion to muffle the sound,
but perhaps he had forgotten, perhaps he was about to lose control.
“D’you know what it’s like in jail?” he asked.
She tried to say “no,” but the sound wouldn’t come.
“The noise,” he whispered. “The smell. The ugly, dumb people—like
animals, some of them. Worse than animals. I never knew there were people like
it. The places they make you eat and shit. Watching your back all the time,
waiting for violence. The clanging, the yelling and the fucking squalor. I’d rather
be buried alive. I won’t do it again…
“I was going to have a dream life. I was going to be free, totally free. I’d
never have to kowtow to the likes of fucking Drummond again. There’s a villa
on Capri I’ve had my eye on for a long time. View out over the Gulf of Naples.
Then I’d have a nice pad in London… new car, once my fucking ban’s lifted…
imagine walking along and knowing you could buy anything, do anything. A
dream life…
“Couple of little problems to get out of the way before I was completely
sorted… Flick, easy: late night, dark road, knife in the ribs, victim of street
crime.
“And Kinvara… once she’d made a will in my favor, after a few years, she’d
have broken her neck riding an unsuitable horse or drowned out in Italy… she’s
a terrible swimmer…
“And then all of them could fuck themselves, couldn’t they? The Chiswells,
my whore of a mother. I’d need nothing from anyone. I’d have everything…
“But that’s all gone,” he said. Dark-skinned though he was, she saw that he
had turned ashen, the dark shadows beneath his eyes hollow in the half-light.
“It’s all gone. You know what, Venetia? I’m going to blow your fucking brains
out, because I’ve decided I don’t like you. I think I’d like to see your fucking
head explode before mine comes off—”
“Raff—”
“Raff… Raff… ” he bleated, imitating her, “why do women all think they’re
different? You’re not different, none of you.”
He was reaching for the limp cushion beside him.
“We’ll go together. I’d like to arrive in hell with a sexy girl on my ar—”
With a great splintering of wood, the door crashed open. Raphael spun
around, pointing a gun at the large figure that had just fallen inside. Robin
launched herself over the table to grab his arm, but Raphael knocked her
backwards with his elbow and she felt blood spurt as her lip split.

---

“Raff, no, don’t—don’t!”
He had stood up, stooped in the cramped space, the barrel of the gun in his
mouth. Strike, who had shouldered in the door, stood panting feet away from
him, and behind Strike was Wardle.
“Go on and do it, then, you cowardly little fuck,” said Strike.
Robin wanted to protest, but couldn’t make a noise.
There was a small, metallic click.
“Took out the bullets at Chiswell House, you stupid bastard,” said Strike,
hobbling forwards and smacking the revolver out of Raphael’s mouth. “Not half
as clever as you thought you were, eh?”
There was a great ringing in Robin’s ears. Raphael was spitting oaths in
English and Italian, screaming threats, thrashing and twisting as Strike helped
bend him over the table for Wardle to cuff him, but she stumbled away from the
group as though in a dream, backwards towards the kitchen area of the galley,
where pots and pans were hanging and white kitchen roll sat, ludicrously
ordinary, beside a tiny sink. She could feel her lip swelling where Raphael had
hit her. She tore off some kitchen roll, ran it under the cold tap and pressed it to
her bleeding mouth, while through the porthole she watched uniformed officers
hurrying through the black gates, taking possession of the gun and of the
struggling Raphael, whom Wardle had just dragged onto the bank.
She had just been held at gunpoint. Nothing seemed real. Now the police
were stomping in and out of the barge, but it was all noise and echo, and now she
realized that Strike was standing beside her, and he seemed the only person with
any reality.
“How did you know?” she asked thickly, through the cold wodge of tissue.
“Twigged five minutes after you left. The last three digits on that number
you showed me on those supposed texts from Matthew were the same as one of
the burner phone numbers. Went after you but you were already gone. Layborn
sent panda cars out and I’ve been calling you nonstop ever since. Why didn’t
you pick up?”
“My phone was on silent in my bag. Now it’s in the canal.”
She craved a stiff drink. Maybe, she thought vaguely, there really was a bar
somewhere nearby… but of course, she wouldn’t be allowed to go to a bar. She
was facing hours back at New Scotland Yard. They would need a long statement.
She would have to relive the last hour in detail. She felt exhausted.
“How did you know I was here?”
“Called Izzy and asked if Raphael knew anyone in the vicinity of that fake
address he was trying to get you to. She told me he’d had some posh druggie
girlfriend who owned a barge. He was running out of places to go. The police

---

have been watching his flat for the last two days.”
“And you knew the gun was empty?”
“I hoped it was empty,” he corrected her. “For all I knew, he’d checked it and
reloaded.”
He groped in his pocket. His fingers shook slightly as he lit a cigarette. He
inhaled, then said:
“You did bloody well to keep him talking that long, Robin, but next time you
get a call from an unknown number, you bloody well call it back and check
who’s on the other end. And don’t you ever—ever—tell a suspect anything about
your personal life again.”
“Would it be OK if I have two minutes,” she asked, pressing the cold kitchen
roll against her swollen and bleeding lip, “to enjoy not being dead, before you
start?”
Strike blew out a jet of smoke.
“Yeah, fair enough,” he said, and pulled her clumsily into a one-armed hug.

---