Lethal White

no, of course not, if you’ve got to work…
But Strike had set out his uncompromising terms at the outset of the
relationship: his work was unpredictable and his finances poor. Hers was the
only bed he intended to visit, but if she sought predictability or permanence, he
was not the man for her. She had appeared content with the deal, and if, over the
course of ten months, she had grown less so, Strike was ready to call things off
with no hard feelings. Perhaps she sensed this, because she had forced no
argument. This pleased him, and not merely because he could do without the
aggravation. He liked Lorelei, enjoyed sleeping with her and found it desirable
—for a reason he did not bother to dwell on, being perfectly aware what it was—
to be in a relationship just now.
The Pad Thai was excellent, their conversation light and amusing. Strike told
Lorelei nothing about his new case, except that he hoped it would be both
lucrative and interesting. After doing the dishes together, they repaired to the
bedroom, with its candy-pink walls and its curtains printed with cartoonish
cowgirls and ponies.
Lorelei liked to dress up. To bed that night, she wore stockings and a black
corset. She had the talent, by no means usual, of staging an erotic scene without
tipping into parody. Perhaps, with his one leg and his broken nose, Strike ought
to have felt ludicrous in this boudoir, which was all frivolity and prettiness, but
she played Aphrodite to his Hephaestus so adeptly that thoughts of Robin and
Matthew were sometimes driven entirely from his mind.
There was, after all, little pleasure to compare with that given by a woman
who really wanted you, he thought next day at lunchtime, as they sat side by side
at a pavement café, reading separate papers, Strike smoking, Lorelei’s perfectly
painted nails trailing absently along the back of his hand. So why had he already
told her that he needed to work this afternoon? It was true that he needed to drop
off the listening devices at Chiswell’s Belgravia flat, but he could easily have
spent another night with her, returned to the bedroom, the stockings and the
basque. The prospect was certainly tempting.
Yet something implacable inside him refused to give in. Two nights in a row
would break the pattern; from there, it would be a short slide into true intimacy.
In the depths of himself Strike could not imagine a future in which he lived with

---

a woman, married or fathered children. He had planned some of those things
with Charlotte, in the days when he had been readjusting to life minus half his
leg. An IED on a dusty road in Afghanistan had blasted Strike out of his chosen
life into an entirely new body and a new reality. Sometimes he saw his proposal
to Charlotte as the most extreme manifestation of his temporary disorientation in
the aftermath of his amputation. He had needed to relearn how to walk, and,
almost as hard, to live a life outside the military. From a distance of two years,
he saw himself trying to hold tight to some part of his past as everything else
slipped away. The allegiance he had given the army, he had transferred to a
future with Charlotte.
“Good move,” his old friend Dave Polworth had said without missing a beat,
when Strike told him of the engagement. “Shame to waste all that combat
training. Slightly increased risk of getting killed, though, mate.”
Had he ever really thought the wedding would happen? Had he truly
imagined Charlotte settling for the life he could give her? After everything they
had been through, had he believed that they could achieve redemption together,
each of them damaged in their own untidy, personal and peculiar ways? It
seemed to the Strike sitting in the sunshine with Lorelei that for a few months he
had both believed it wholeheartedly and known that it was impossible, never
planning more than a few weeks ahead, holding Charlotte at night as though she
were the last human on earth, as though only Armageddon could separate them.
“Want another coffee?” murmured Lorelei.
“I’d better make a move,” said Strike.
“When will I see you?” she asked, as Strike paid the waiter.
“Told you, I’ve got this big new job on,” he said. “Timings are going to be a
bit unpredictable for a while. I’ll call you tomorrow. We’ll go out as soon as I
can get a clear evening.”
“All right,” she said, smiling, and added softly, “Kiss me.”
He did so. She pressed her full lips against his, irresistibly recalling certain
highlights of the early morning. They broke apart. Strike grinned, bade her
goodbye and left her sitting in the sun with her newspaper.
The Minister for Culture did not invite Strike inside when he opened the
door of his house in Ebury Street. Chiswell seemed keen, in fact, for the
detective to leave as quickly as possible. After taking the box of listening
devices, he muttered, “Good, right, I’ll make sure she gets them,” and was on the
point of closing the door when he suddenly called after Strike, “What’s her
name?”
“Venetia Hall,” said Strike.

---

Chiswell shut the door, and Strike turned his tired footsteps back along the
street of quiet golden townhouses, towards the Tube and Denmark Street.
His office seemed stark and gloomy after Lorelei’s flat. Strike threw open the
windows to let in the noise of Denmark Street down below, where music lovers
continued to visit the instrument stores and old record shops that Strike feared
were doomed by the forthcoming redevelopment. The sound of engines and
horns, of conversation and footsteps, of guitar riffs played by would-be
purchasers and the distant bongos of another busker were pleasant to Strike as he
settled to work, knowing that he had hours ahead in the computer chair if he
were to wrest the bare bones of his targets’ lives from the internet.
If you knew where to search and had time and expertise, the outline of many
existences could be unearthed in cyberspace: ghostly exoskeletons, sometimes