Lethal White

He took Ecstasy and ran his car into a mother of a four-year-old. He barely
served a third of his sentence and now his father’s put him on the taxpayer’s
payroll.

---

“How do I do this, then?” asked Raphael, moving behind Izzy’s desk.
“Just press play, I expect,” Robin muttered, sipping her coffee and
pretending to make notes on a pad.
Canned messages began to issue from the answering machine, drowning out
the faint hum of conversation from the terrace beyond the net-curtained window.
A man named Rupert asked Izzy to call him back about “the AGM.”
A constituent called Mrs. Ricketts spoke for two solid minutes about traffic
along the Banbury road.
An irate woman said crossly that she ought to have expected an answering
machine and that MPs ought to be answering to the public personally, then spoke
until cut off by the machine about her neighbors’ failure to lop overhanging
branches from a tree, in spite of repeated requests from the council.
Then a man’s growl, almost theatrically menacing, filled the quiet office:
“They say they piss themselves as they die, Chiswell, is that true? Forty
grand, or I’ll find out how much the papers will pay.”

---

20
We two have worked our way forward in complete
companionship.
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
Strike had selected the Two Chairmen for his Wednesday evening catch-up
with Robin because of its proximity to the Palace of Westminster. The pub was
tucked away on a junction of centuries-old back streets—Old Queen Street,
Cockpit Steps—amid a motley collection of quaint, sedate buildings that stood at
oblique angles to each other. Only as he limped across the road and saw the
hanging metal sign over the front door did Strike realize that the “two chairmen”
for whom the pub was named were not, as he had assumed, joint managers of a
board, but lowly servants carrying the heavy load of a sedan chair. Tired and sore
as Strike was, the image seemed appropriate, although the occupant of the sedan
chair in the pub sign was a refined lady in white, not a large, curmudgeonly
minister with wiry hair and a short temper.
The bar was crowded with after-work drinkers and Strike had a sudden
apprehension that he might not get a seat inside, an unwelcome prospect,
because leg, back and neck were tight and sore after yesterday’s long drive and
the hours he had spent in Harley Street today, watching Dodgy Doc.
Strike had just bought a pint of London Pride when the table by the window
became free. With a turn of speed born of necessity, he nabbed the high bench
with its back to the street before the nearest group of suited men and women
could annex it. There was no question of anybody challenging his right to sole
occupancy of a table made for four. Strike was large enough, and surly enough in
appearance to make even this group of civil servants doubt their ability to
negotiate a compromise.
The wooden-floored bar was what Strike mentally categorized as “upmarket
utilitarian.” A faded mural on the back wall depicted bewigged eighteenth-
century men gossiping together, but otherwise all was pared-back wood and
monochrome prints. He peered out of the window to see whether Robin was
within sight, but as there was no sign of her he drank his beer, read the day’s
news on his phone and tried to ignore the menu lying on the table in front of
him, which was taunting him with a picture of battered fish.
Robin, who had been due to arrive at six, was still absent at half past. Unable

---

to resist the picture on the menu any longer, Strike ordered himself cod and chips
and a second pint, and read a long article in The Times about the upcoming
Olympics opening ceremony, which was really a long list of the ways in which
the journalist feared it might misrepresent and humiliate the nation.
By a quarter to seven, Strike was starting to worry about Robin. He had just
decided to call her when she came hurrying in through the door, flushed, wearing
glasses that Strike knew she did not need and with an expression that he
recognized as the barely contained excitement of one who has something
worthwhile to impart.
“Hazel eyes,” he noted, as she sat down opposite him. “Good one. Changes
your whole look. What’ve you got?”
“How do you know I’ve—? Well, loads, actually,” she said, deciding it was
not worthwhile toying with him. “I nearly called you earlier but there have been
people around all day, and I had a close shave this morning placing the listening
device.”
“You did it? Bloody well done!”
“Thanks. I really want a drink, hang on.”
She came back with a glass of red wine and launched immediately into an
account of the message that Raphael had found on the answering machine that
morning.
“I had no chance of getting the caller’s number, because there were four
messages after it. The phone system’s antiquated.”
Frowning, Strike asked: “How did the caller pronounce ‘Chiswell,’ can you
remember?”
“They said it right. Chizzle.”
“Fits with Jimmy,” said Strike. “What happened after the call?”
“Raff told Izzy about it when she got back to the office,” said Robin, and
Strike thought he detected a touch of self-consciousness as she said the name
“Raff.” “He didn’t understand what he was passing on, obviously. Izzy called her
dad straight away and he went berserk. We could hear him shouting on the end
of the line, though not much of what he was actually saying.”
Strike stroked his chin, thinking.
“What did the anonymous caller sound like?”
“London accent,” Robin said. “Threatening.”
“‘They piss themselves as they die,’” repeated Strike in an undertone.
There was something that Robin wanted to say, but a brutal personal memory
made it hard for her to articulate.
“Strangling victims—”
“Yeah,” said Strike, cutting her off. “I know.”

---

Both of them drank.
“Well, assuming the call was Jimmy,” Robin went on, “he’s phoned the
department twice today.”
She opened her handbag and showed Strike the listening device hidden
inside it.
“You retrieved it?” he asked, staggered.
“And replaced it with another one,” said Robin, unable to suppress a
triumphant smile. “That’s why I’m late. I took a chance. Aamir, who works with
Winn, left and Geraint came into our office while I was packing up, to chat me
up.”
“He did, did he?” asked Strike, amused.
“I’m glad you find it funny,” said Robin coolly. “He isn’t a nice man.”
“Sorry,” said Strike. “In what way is he not a nice man?”
“Just take it from me,” said Robin. “I’ve met plenty of them in offices. He’s
a pervert, but with creepy add-ons. He was just telling me,” she said, and her
indignation showed in the rising tide of pink in her face, “that I remind him of
his dead daughter. Then he touched my hair.”
“Touched your hair?” repeated Strike, unamused.
“Picked a bit of it off my shoulder and ran it through his fingers,” said Robin.
“Then I think he saw what I thought of him and tried to pass it off as fatherly.
Anyway, I said I needed the loo but asked him to stay put so we could keep
chatting about charities. I nipped down the corridor and swapped the devices.”
“That was bloody good going, Robin.”
“I listened to it on the way here,” said Robin, pulling headphones out of her
pocket, “and—”
Robin handed Strike the headphones.
“—I’ve cued up the interesting bit.”
Strike obediently inserted the earbuds and Robin switched on the tape in her
handbag.
“… at three thirty, Aamir.”
The Welsh male voice was interrupted by the sound of a mobile phone
ringing. Feet scuffled near the power point, the ring ceased and Geraint said:
“Oh, hello Jimmy… half a mo’—Aamir, close that door.”
More scuffling, footsteps.
“Jimmy, yes…?”
There followed a long stretch in which Geraint seemed to be attempting to
stem the flow of a mounting tirade.
“Whoa—now, wai… Jimmy, lis… Jimmy, listen—listen! I know you’ve lost
out, Jimmy, I understand how bitter you—Jimmy, please! We understand your

---

feelings—that’s unfair, Jimmy, neither Della nor I grew up wealth—my father
was a coalminer, Jimmy! Now listen, please! We’re close to getting the