Lethal White

It is best for you not to know. Best for us both.
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
At half past eleven the following Friday, a suited and freshly shaven Strike
emerged from Green Park Tube station and proceeded along Piccadilly. Double-
deckers rolled past the windows of luxury shops, which were capitalizing on
Olympics fever to push an eclectic mix of goods: gold-wrapped chocolate
medals, Union Jack brogues, antique sporting posters and, over and again, the
jagged logo that Jimmy Knight had compared to a broken swastika.
Strike had allowed a generous margin of time to reach Pratt’s, because his
leg was again aching after two days in which he had rarely been able to take the
weight off his prosthesis. He had hoped that the tech conference in Epping
Forest, where he had spent the previous day, might have offered intervals of rest,
but he had been disappointed. His target, the recently fired partner of a start-up,
was suspected of trying to sell key features of their new app to competitors. For
hours, Strike had tailed the young man from booth to booth, documenting all his
movements and his interactions, hoping at some point that he would tire and sit.
However, between the coffee bar where customers stood at high tables, to the
sandwich bar where everyone stood and ate sushi with their fingers out of plastic
boxes, the target had spent eight hours walking or standing. Coming after long
hours of lurking in Harley Street the day before, it was hardly surprising that the
removal of his prosthesis the previous evening had been an uncomfortable affair,
the gel pad that separated stump from artificial shin difficult to prize off. As he
passed the cool off-white arches of the Ritz, Strike hoped Pratt’s contained at
least one comfortable chair of generous proportions.
He turned right into St. James’s Street, which led him in a gentle slope
straight down to the sixteenth-century St. James’s Palace. This was not an area
of London that Strike usually visited on his own account, given that he had
neither the means nor the inclination to buy from gentlemen’s outfitters, long-
established gun shops or centuries-old wine dealers. As he drew nearer to Park
Place, though, he was visited by a personal memory. He had walked this street
more than ten years previously, with Charlotte.
They had walked up the slope, not down it, heading for a lunch date with her
father, who was now dead. Strike had been on leave from the army and they had

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recently resumed what was, to everyone who knew them, an incomprehensible
and obviously doomed affair. On neither side of their relationship had there ever
been a single supporter. His friends and family had viewed Charlotte with
everything from mistrust to loathing, while hers had always considered Strike,
the illegitimate son of an infamous rock star, as one more manifestation of
Charlotte’s need to shock and rebel. Strike’s military career had been nothing to
her family, or rather, it had been just another sign of his plebeian unfitness to
aspire to the well-bred beauty’s hand, because gentlemen of Charlotte’s class did
not enter the Military Police, but Cavalry or Guards regiments.
She had clutched his hand very tightly as they entered an Italian restaurant
somewhere nearby. Its precise location escaped Strike now. All he remembered
was the expression of rage and disapproval on Sir Anthony Campbell’s face as
they had approached the table. Strike had known before a word was spoken that
Charlotte had not told her father that she and Strike had resumed their affair, or
that she would be bringing him with her. It had been a thoroughly Charlottian
omission, prompting the usual Charlottian scene. Strike had long since come to
believe that she engineered situations out of an apparently insatiable need for
conflict. Prone to outbursts of lacerating honesty amid her general mythomania,
she had told Strike towards the end of their relationship that at least, while
fighting, she knew she was alive.
As Strike drew level with Park Place, a line of cream-painted townhouses
leading off St. James’s Street, he noted that the sudden memory of Charlotte
clinging to his hand no longer hurt, and felt like an alcoholic who, for the first
time, catches a whiff of beer without breaking into a sweat or having to grapple
with his desperate craving. Perhaps this is it, he thought, as he approached the
black door of Pratt’s, with its wrought iron balustrade above. Perhaps, two years
after she had told him the unforgivable lie and he had left for good, he was
healed, clear of what he sometimes, even though not superstitious, saw as a kind
of Bermuda triangle, a danger zone in which he feared being pulled back under,
dragged to the depths of anguish and pain by the mysterious allure Charlotte had
held for him.
With a faint sense of celebration, Strike knocked on the door of Pratt’s.
A petite, motherly woman opened up. Her prominent bust and alert, bright-
eyed mien put him in mind of a robin or a wren. When she spoke, he caught a
trace of the West Country.
“You’ll be Mr. Strike. The minister’s not here yet. Come along in.”
He followed her across the threshold into a hall through which could be
glimpsed an enormous billiard table. Rich crimsons, greens and dark wood
predominated. The stewardess, who he assumed was Georgina, led him down a

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set of steep stairs, which Strike took carefully, maintaining a firm grip on the
banister.
The stairs led to a cozy basement. The ceiling had sunk so low that it
appeared partially supported by a large dresser on which sundry porcelain
platters were displayed, the topmost ones half embedded into the plaster.
“We aren’t very big,” she said, stating the obvious. “Six hundred members,
but we can only serve fourteen a meal at a time. Would you like a drink, Mr.
Strike?”
He declined, but accepted an invitation to sit down in one of the leather
chairs grouped around an aged cribbage board.
The small space was divided by an archway into sitting and dining areas.
Two places had been set at the long table in the other half of the room, beneath
small, shuttered windows. The only other person in the basement apart from
himself and Georgina was a white-coated chef working in a minuscule kitchen a
mere yard from where Strike sat. The chef bade Strike welcome in a French
accent, then continued carving cold roast beef.
Here was the very antithesis of the smart restaurants where Strike tailed
errant husbands and wives, where the lighting was chosen to complement glass
and granite, and sharp-tongued restaurant critics sat like stylish vultures on
uncomfortable modern chairs. Pratt’s was dimly lit. Brass picture lights dotted
walls papered in dark red, which was largely obscured by stuffed fish in glass
cases, hunting prints and political cartoons. In a blue and white tiled niche along
one side of the room sat an ancient iron stove. The china plates, the threadbare
carpet, the table bearing its homely load of ketchup and mustard all contributed
to an ambience of cozy informality, as though a bunch of aristocratic boys had
dragged all the things they liked about the grown-up world—its games, its drink
and its trophies—down into the basement where Nanny would dole out smiles,
comfort and praise.
Twelve o’clock arrived, but Chiswell did not. “Georgina,” however, was
friendly and informative about the club. She and her husband, the chef, lived on
the premises. Strike could not help but reflect that this must be some of the most
expensive real estate in London. To maintain the little club, which, Georgina told
him, had been established in 1857, was costing somebody a lot of money.
“The Duke of Devonshire owns it, yes,” said Georgina brightly. “Have you
seen our betting book?”
Strike turned the pages of the heavy, leather-bound tome, where long ago
wagers had been recorded. In a gigantic scrawl dating back to the seventies, he
read: “Mrs. Thatcher to form the next government. Bet: one lobster dinner, the
lobster to be larger than a man’s erect cock.”

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He was grinning over this when a bell rang overhead.
“That’ll be the minister,” said Georgina, bustling away upstairs.
Strike replaced the betting book on its shelf and returned to his seat. From
overhead came heavy footsteps and then, descending the stairs, the same
irascible, impatient voice he had heard on Monday.
“—no, Kinvara, I can’t. I’ve just told you why, I’ve got a lunch meeting…
no, you can’t… Five o’clock, then, yes… yes… yes!… Goodbye!”
A pair of large, black-shod feet descended the stairs until Jasper Chiswell
emerged into the basement, peering around with a truculent air. Strike rose from
his armchair.
“Ah,” said Chiswell, scrutinizing Strike from beneath his heavy eyebrows.
“You’re here.”
Jasper Chiswell wore his sixty-eight years reasonably well. A big, broad
man, though round-shouldered, he still had a full head of gray hair which,
implausible though it seemed, was his own. This hair made Chiswell an easy
target for cartoonists, because it was coarse, straight and rather long, standing
out from his head in a manner that suggested a wig or, so the unkind suggested, a
chimney brush. To the hair was added a large red face, small eyes and a
protuberant lower lip, which gave him the air of an overgrown baby perpetually
on the verge of a tantrum.
“M’wife,” he told Strike, brandishing the mobile still in his hand. “Come up
to town without warning. Sulking. Thinks I can drop everything.”
Chiswell stretched out a large, sweaty hand, which Strike shook, then eased
off the heavy overcoat he was wearing despite the heat of the day. As he did so,
Strike noticed the pin on his frayed regimental tie. The uninitiated might think it
a rocking horse, but Strike recognized it at once as the White Horse of Hanover.
“Queen’s Own Hussars,” said Strike, nodding at it as both men sat down.
“Yerse,” said Chiswell. “Georgina, I’ll have some of that sherry you gave me
when I was in with Alastair. You?” he barked at Strike.
“No thanks.”
Though nowhere near as dirty as Billy Knight, Chiswell did not smell very
fresh.
“Yerse, Queen’s Own Hussars. Aden and Singapore. Happy days.”
He didn’t seem happy at the moment. His ruddy skin had an odd, plaque-like
appearance close up. Dandruff lay thick in the roots of his coarse hair and large
patches of sweat spread around the underarms of his blue shirt. The minister
bore the unmistakable appearance, not unusual in Strike’s clients, of a man under
intense strain, and when his sherry arrived, he swallowed most of it in a single
gulp.

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“Shall we move through?” he suggested, and without waiting for an answer
he barked, “We’ll eat straight away, Georgina.”
Once they were seated at the table, which had a stiff, snowy-white tablecloth
like those at Robin’s wedding, Georgina brought them thick slices of cold roast
beef and boiled potatoes. It was English nursery food, plain and unfussy, and
none the worse for it. Only when the stewardess had left them in peace, in the
dim dining room full of oil paintings and more dead fish, did Chiswell speak
again.
“You were at Jimmy Knight’s meeting,” he said, without preamble. “A
plainclothes officer there recognized you.”
Strike nodded. Chiswell shoved a boiled potato in his mouth, masticated
angrily, and swallowed before saying:
“I don’t know who’s paying you to get dirt on Jimmy Knight, or what you
may already have on him, but whoever it is and whatever you’ve got, I’m
prepared to pay double for the information.”
“I haven’t got anything on Jimmy Knight, I’m afraid,” said Strike. “Nobody
was paying me to be at the meeting.”
Chiswell looked stunned.
“But then, why were you there?” he demanded. “You’re not telling me you
intend to protest against the Olympics?”
So plosive was the “p” of “protest” that a small piece of potato flew out of
his mouth across the table.
“No,” said Strike. “I was trying to find somebody I thought might be at the
meeting. They weren’t.”
Chiswell attacked his beef again as though it had personally wronged him.
For a while, the only sounds were those of their knives and forks scraping the
china. Chiswell speared the last of his boiled potatoes, put it whole into his
mouth, let his knife and fork fall with a clatter onto his plate and said:
“I’d been thinking of hiring a detective before I heard you were watching
Knight.”
Strike said nothing. Chiswell eyed him suspiciously.
“You have the reputation of being very good.”
“Kind of you to say so,” said Strike.
Chiswell continued to glare at Strike with a kind of furious desperation, as
though wondering whether he dared hope that the detective would not prove yet
another disappointment in a life beset with them.
“I’m being blackmailed, Mr. Strike,” he said abruptly. “Blackmailed by a
pair of men who have come together in a temporary, though probably unstable,
alliance. One of them is Jimmy Knight.”

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“I see,” said Strike.
He, too, put his knife and fork together. Georgina appeared to know by some
psychic process that Strike and Chiswell had eaten their fill of the main course.
She arrived to clear away, reappearing with a treacle tart. Only once she had
retired to the kitchen, and both men had helped themselves to large slices of
pudding, did Chiswell resume his story.
“There’s no need for sordid details,” he said, with an air of finality. “All you
need to know is that Jimmy Knight is aware that I did something that I would not
wish to see shared with the gentlemen of the fourth estate.”
Strike said nothing, but Chiswell seemed to think his silence had an
accusatory flavor, because he added sharply:
“No crime was committed. Some might not like it, but it wasn’t illegal at the
—but that’s by the by,” said Chiswell, and took a large gulp of water. “Knight
came to me a couple of months ago and asked for forty thousand pounds in hush
money. I refused to pay. He threatened me with exposure, but as he didn’t appear
to have any proof of his claim, I dared hope he would be unable to follow
through on the threat.
“No press story resulted, so I concluded that I was right in thinking he had no
proof. He returned a few weeks later and asked for half the former sum. Again, I
refused.
“It was then, thinking to increase the pressure on me, I assume, that he
approached Geraint Winn.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know who—?”
“Della Winn’s husband.”
“Della Winn, the Minister for Sport?” said Strike, startled.
“Yes, of course Della-Winn-the-Minister-for-Sport,” snapped Chiswell.
The Right Honorable Della Winn, as Strike knew well, was a Welshwoman
in her early sixties who had been blind since birth. No matter their party
affiliation, people tended to admire the Liberal Democrat, who had been a
human rights lawyer before standing for Parliament. Usually photographed with
her guide dog, a pale yellow Labrador, she had been much in evidence in the
press of late, her current bailiwick being the Paralympics. She had visited Selly
Oak while Strike had been in the hospital, readjusting to the loss of his leg in
Afghanistan. He had been left with a favorable impression of her intelligence
and her empathy. Of her husband, Strike knew nothing.
“I don’t know whether Della knows what Geraint’s up to,” said Chiswell,
spearing a piece of treacle tart and continuing to speak while he chewed it.
“Probably, but keeping her nose clean. Plausible deniability. Can’t have the
sainted Della involved in blackmail, can we?”

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“Her husband’s asked you for money?” asked Strike, incredulous.
“Oh no, no. Geraint wants to force me from office.”
“Any particular reason why?” said Strike.
“There’s an enmity between us dating back many years, rooted in a wholly
baseless—but that’s irrelevant,” said Chiswell, with an angry shake of the head.
“Geraint approached me, ‘hoping it isn’t true,’ and ‘offering me a chance to
explain.’ He’s a nasty, twisted little man who’s spent his life holding his wife’s
handbag and answering her telephone calls. Naturally he’s relishing the idea of
wielding some actual power.”
Chiswell took a swig of sherry.
“So, as you can see, I’m in something of a cleft stick, Mr. Strike. Even if I
were minded to pay off Jimmy Knight, I still have to contend with a man who
wants my disgrace, and who may well be able to lay hands on proof.”
“How could Winn get proof?”
Chiswell took another large mouthful of treacle tart and glanced over his
shoulder to check that Georgina remained safely in the kitchen.
“I’ve heard,” he muttered, and a fine mist of pastry flew from the slack lips,
“that there may be photographs.”
“Photographs?” repeated Strike.
“Winn can’t have them, of course. If he had, it would all be over. But he
might be able to find a way of getting hold of them. Yerse.”
He shoved the last piece of tart into his mouth, then said:
“Of course, there’s a chance the photographs don’t incriminate me. There are
no distinguishing marks, so far as I’m aware.”
Strike’s imagination frankly boggled. He yearned to ask, “Distinguishing
marks on what, Minister?” but refrained.
“It all happened six years ago,” continued Chiswell. “I’ve been over and over
the damn thing in my head. There were others involved who might have talked,
but I doubt it, I doubt it very much. Too much to lose. No, it’s all going to come
down to what Knight and Winn can dig up. I strongly suspect that if he gets hold
of the photographs, Winn will go straight to the press. I don’t think that would be
Knight’s first choice. He simply wants money.
“So here I am, Mr. Strike, a fronte praecipitium, a tergo lupi. I’ve lived with
this hanging over me for weeks now. It hasn’t been enjoyable.”
He peered at Strike through his tiny eyes, and the detective was irresistibly
put in mind of a mole, blinking up at a hovering spade that waited to crush it.
“When I heard you were at that meeting I assumed you were investigating
Knight and had some dirt on him. I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way
out of this diabolical situation is to find something that I can use against each of

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them, before they get their hands on those photographs. Fight fire with fire.”
“Blackmail with blackmail?” said Strike.
“I don’t want anything from them except to leave me the hell alone,”
snapped Chiswell. “Bargaining chips, that’s all I want. I acted within the law,” he
said firmly, “and in accordance with my conscience.”
Chiswell was not a particularly likable man, but Strike could well imagine
that the ongoing suspense of waiting for public exposure would be torture,
especially to a man who had already endured his fair share of scandals. Strike’s
scant research on his prospective client the previous evening had unearthed
gleeful accounts of the affair that had ended his first marriage, of the fact that his
second wife had spent a week in a clinic for “nervous exhaustion” and of the
grisly drug-induced car crash in which his younger son had killed a young
mother.
“This is a very big job, Mr. Chiswell,” said Strike. “It’ll take two or three
people to thoroughly investigate Knight and Winn, especially if there’s time
pressure.”
“I don’t care what it costs,” said Chiswell. “I don’t care if you have to put
your whole agency on it.
“I refuse to believe there isn’t anything dodgy about Winn, sneaking little
toad that he is. There’s something funny about them as a couple. She, the blind
angel of light,” Chiswell’s lip curled, “and he, her potbellied henchman, always
scheming and backstabbing and grubbing up every freebie he can get. There
must be something there. Must be.
“As for Knight, Commie rabble rouser, there’s bound to be something the
police haven’t yet caught up with. He was always a tearaway, a thoroughly nasty
piece of work.”
“You knew Jimmy Knight before he started trying to blackmail you?” asked
Strike.
“Oh, yes,” said Chiswell. “The Knights are from my constituency. The father
was an odd-job man who did a certain amount of work for our family. I never
knew the mother. I believe she died before the three of them moved into Steda
Cottage.”
“I see,” said Strike.
He was recalling Billy’s anguished words, “I seen a child strangled and