Lethal White

vos et irrumabo, Aurelia pathice et cinaede Furi, eh? Poem 16, look it up, you’ll
enjoy it.”
Raphael and Izzy were both staring at their father. Aamir stood for a few
seconds as though he had forgotten what he had come for, then stalked out of the
room.
“A little Classics education for everyone,” said Chiswell, turning to watch
him go with what appeared to be malicious satisfaction. “We are never too old to
learn, eh, Raff?”
Robin’s mobile vibrated on her desk. Strike had texted. They had agreed not
to contact each other during working hours unless it was urgent. She slid the
phone into her bag.
“Where’s my signing pile?” Chiswell asked Izzy. “Have you finished that
letter for Brenda Bloody Bailey?”
“Printing it now,” said Izzy.
While Chiswell scribbled his signature on a stack of letters, breathing like a
bulldog in the otherwise quiet room, Robin muttered something about needing to
get going, and hurried out into the corridor.
Wanting to read Strike’s text without fear of interruption, she followed a
wooden sign to the crypt, hastened down the narrow stone staircase indicated
and found, at the bottom, a deserted chapel.
The crypt was decorated like a medieval jewel casket, every inch of gold
wall embellished with motifs and symbols, heraldic and religious. There were
jewel-bright saints’ pictures above the altar and the sky-blue organ pipes were
wrapped in gold ribbon and scarlet fleurs-de-lys. Robin hurried into a red velvet
pew and opened Strike’s text.

---

Need a favor. Barclay’s done a 10-day stretch on Jimmy Knight, but he’s
just found out his wife’s got to work over the weekend & he can’t get anyone
else to look after the baby. Andy leaves for a week in Alicante with the family
tonight. I can’t tail Jimmy, he knows me. CORE are joining an anti-missile
march tomorrow. Starts at 2, in Bow. Can you do it?
Robin contemplated the message for several seconds, then let out a groan
that echoed around the crypt.
It was the first time in over a year that Strike had asked her to work extra
hours at such short notice, but this was her anniversary weekend. The pricey
hotel was booked, the bags packed and ready in the car. She was supposed to be
meeting Matthew after work in a couple of hours. They were to drive straight to
Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. Matthew would be furious if she said she couldn’t
go.
In the gilded hush of the crypt, the words Strike had said to her when he had
agreed to give her detective training came back to her.
I need someone who can work long hours, weekends… you’ve got a lot of
aptitude for the job, but you’re getting married to someone who hates you doing
it…
And she had told him that it didn’t matter what Matthew thought, that it was
up to her what she did.
Where did her allegiance lie now? She had said that she would stay in the
marriage, promised to give it a chance. Strike had had many hours of unpaid
overtime out of her. He could not claim that she was workshy.
Slowly, deleting words, replacing them, overthinking every syllable, she
typed out a response.
I’m really sorry, but it’s my anniversary weekend. We’ve got a hotel
booked, leaving this evening.
She wanted to write more, but what was there to say? “My marriage isn’t
going well, so it’s important I celebrate it”? “I’d much rather disguise myself as
a protestor and stalk Jimmy Knight”? She pressed “send.”
Sitting waiting for his response, feeling as though she were about to get the
results of medical tests, Robin’s eyes followed the course of twisting vines that
covered the ceiling. Strange faces peered down at her out of the molding, like the
wild Green Man of myth. Heraldic and pagan imagery mingled with angels and
crosses. It was more than a place of God, this chapel. It harked back to an age of
superstition, magic and feudal power.
The minutes slid by and still Strike hadn’t answered. Robin got up and

---

walked around the chapel. At the very back she found a cupboard. Opening it,
she saw a plaque to suffragette Emily Davison. Apparently, she had slept there
overnight so that she could give her place of residence as the House of
Commons on the census of 1911, seven years before women were given the
vote. Emily Davison, she could not help but feel, would not have approved of
Robin’s choice to place a failing marriage above freedom to work.
Robin’s mobile buzzed again. She looked down, afraid of what she was
going to read. Strike had answered with two letters:
OK
A lead weight seemed to slide from her chest to her stomach. Strike, as she
was well aware, was still living in the glorified bedsit over the office and
working through weekends. The only unmarried person at the agency, the
boundary between his professional and private lives was, if not precisely non-
existent, then flexible and porous, whereas hers, Barclay’s and Hutchins’s were
not. And the worst of it was that Robin could think of no way of telling Strike
that she was sorry, that she understood, that she wished things were different,
without reminding both of them of that hug on the stairs at her wedding, now so
long unmentioned that she wondered whether he even remembered it.
Feeling utterly miserable, she retraced her steps out of the crypt, still holding
the papers she had been pretending to deliver.
Raphael was alone in the office when she returned, sitting at Izzy’s PC and
typing at a third of her speed.
“Izzy’s gone with Dad to do something so tedious it just bounced off my
brain,” he said. “They’ll be back in a bit.”
Robin forced a smile, returned to her desk, her mind on Strike.
“Bit weird, that poem, wasn’t it?” Raphael asked.
“What? Oh—oh, that Latin thing? Yes,” said Robin. “It was, a bit.”
“It was like he’d memorized it to use on Mallik. Nobody’s got that at their
fingertips.”
Reflecting that Strike seemed to know strange bits of Latin off by heart, too,
Robin said, “No, you wouldn’t think so.”
“Has he got it in for that Mallik, or something?”
“I really don’t know,” lied Robin.
Running out of ways to occupy her time at the desk, she shuffled papers
again.
“How long are you staying, Venetia?”
“I’m not sure. Until Parliament goes into recess, probably.”
“You seriously want to work here? Permanently?”

---

“Yes,” she said. “I think it’s interesting.”
“What were you doing before this?”
“PR,” said Robin. “It was quite fun, but I fancied a change.”
“Hoping to bag an MP?” he said, with a faint smile.
“I can’t say I’ve seen anyone round here I’d like to marry,” said Robin.
“Hurtful,” said Raphael, with a mock sigh.
Afraid that she had blushed, Robin tried to cover up by bending down to
open a drawer and taking a few objects out at random.
“So, is Venetia Hall seeing anyone?” he persisted, as she straightened up.
“Yes,” she said. “His name’s Tim. We’ve been together a year now.”
“Yeah? What does Tim do?”
“He works at Christie’s,” said Robin.
She had got the idea from the men she had seen with Sarah Shadlock in the
Red Lion: immaculate, suited public-school types of the kind she imagined
Chiswell’s goddaughter would know.
“What about you?” she asked. “Izzy said something—”
“At the gallery?” said Raphael, cutting her off. “That was nothing. She was
too young for me. Her parents have sent her to Florence now, anyway.”
He had swung his chair around to face her, his expression grave and
searching, contemplating her as though he wanted to know something that
common conversation would not yield. Robin broke their mutual gaze. Holding
a look that intense was not compatible with being the contented girlfriend of the
imaginary Tim.
“D’you believe in redemption?”
The question caught Robin totally by surprise. It had a kind of gravity and
beauty, like the gleaming jewel of the chapel at the foot of a winding stair.
“I… yes, I do,” she said.
He had picked up a pencil from Izzy’s desk. His long fingers turned it over
and over as he watched her intently. He seemed to be sizing her up.
“You know what I did? In the car?”
“Yes,” she answered.
The silence that unspooled between them seemed to Robin to be peopled
with flashing lights and shadowy figures. She could imagine Raphael bloody at
the steering wheel, and the broken figure of the young mother on the road, and
the police cars and the incident tape and the gawpers in passing cars. He was
watching her intently, hoping, she thought, for some kind of benison, as though
her forgiveness mattered. And sometimes, she knew, the kindness of a stranger,
or even a casual acquaintance, could be transformative, something to cling to
while those closest to you dragged you under in their efforts to help. She thought

---

of the elderly steward in the Members’ Lobby, uncomprehending but immensely
consoling, his hoarse, kindly words a thread to hold on to, which would lead her
back to sanity.
The door opened again. Both Robin and Raphael jumped as a curvy redhead
entered the room, a visitor’s pass hanging around her neck on a lanyard. Robin
recognized her at once from online photographs as Jasper Chiswell’s wife,
Kinvara.
“Hello,” said Robin, because Kinvara was merely staring blankly at Raphael,
who had swung hastily back to his computer and began typing again.
“You must be Venetia,” said Kinvara, switching her clear golden gaze onto
Robin. She had a high-pitched, girlish voice. Her eyes were catlike in a slightly
puffy face. “Aren’t you pretty? Nobody told me you were so pretty.”
Robin had no idea how to respond to this. Kinvara dropped down into the
sagging chair where Raff usually sat, took off the designer sunglasses holding
her long red hair off her face and shook it loose. Her bare arms and legs were
heavily freckled. The top buttons of her sleeveless green shirt-dress were
straining across her heavy bust.
“Whose daughter are you?” asked Kinvara with a trace of petulance. “Jasper
didn’t tell me. He doesn’t tell me anything he doesn’t have to tell me, actually.
I’m used to it. He just said you’re a goddaughter.”
Nobody had warned Robin that Kinvara did not know who she really was.
Perhaps Izzy and Chiswell had not expected them to come face to face.
“I’m Jonathan Hall’s daughter,” said Robin nervously. She had come up with
a rudimentary background for Venetia-the-goddaughter, but had never expected
to have to elaborate for the benefit of Chiswell’s own wife, who presumably
knew all Chiswell’s friends and acquaintances.
“Who’s he?” asked Kinvara. “I should probably know, Jasper’ll be cross I
haven’t paid attention—”
“He’s in land management up in—”
“Oh, was it the Northumberland property?” interrupted Kinvara, whose
interest had not seemed particularly profound. “That was before my time.”