Lethal White

Ornella Serafin, with whom he had the affair that broke up his first marriage,”
“voluptuous Kinvara Hanratty, who was thirty years his junior,” “Lieutenant
Freddie Chiswell, eldest son, died in the Iraq war his father had staunchly
supported,” “youngest child Raphael, whose drug-filled joy ride ended in the
death of a young mother.”
Broadsheets contained tributes from friends and colleagues: “a fine mind, a
supremely able minister, one of Thatcher’s bright young men,” “but for a

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somewhat tumultuous private life, there were no heights he might not have
reached,” “the public persona was irascible, even abrasive, but the Jasper
Chiswell I knew at Harrow was a witty and intelligent boy…”
Five days of lurid press coverage passed, yet still, the press’s mysterious
restraint on the subject of Strike and Robin’s involvement held, and still, nobody
had printed a word about blackmail.
On the Friday morning following the discovery of Chiswell’s body, Strike
was sitting quietly at Nick and Ilsa’s kitchen table, sunlight pouring through the
window behind him.
His host and hostess were at work. Nick and Ilsa, who had been trying for
some years to have a baby, had recently adopted a pair of kittens whom Nick had
insisted on calling Ossie and Ricky, after the two Spurs players he had revered in
his teens. The cats, who had only recently consented to sit on the knees of their
adoptive parents, had not appreciated the arrival of the large and unfamiliar
Strike. Finding themselves alone with him, they had sought refuge on top of a
kitchen wall cabinet. He was currently conscious of the scrutiny of four pale
green eyes, which followed his every movement from on high.
Not that he was currently moving a great deal. Indeed, for much of the past
half an hour he had been almost motionless, as he pored over the photographs
that Robin had taken in Ebury Street, which he had printed out in Nick’s study
for convenience. Finally, causing Ricky to jump up in a flurry of upended fur,
Strike isolated nine of the photographs and put the rest in a pile. While Strike
scrutinized his selected images, Ricky settled back down, the tip of a black tail
swaying as he awaited the detective’s next move.
The first photograph that Strike had selected showed a close-up of the small,
semi-circular puncture mark on Chiswell’s left hand.
The second and third pictures showed different angles of the glass that had
sat on the coffee table in front of Chiswell. A powdery residue was visible on the
sides, above an inch of orange juice.
The fourth, fifth and sixth photographs Strike laid together side by side. Each
showed a slightly different angle of the body, with slices of the surrounding
room caught within its frame. Once again, Strike studied the ghostly outline of
the buckled sword in the corner, the dark patch over the mantelpiece where a
picture had previously hung and, beneath this, barely noticeable against the dark
wallpaper, a pair of brass hooks spaced nearly a yard apart.
The seventh and eighth photographs, when placed side by side, showed the
entirety of the coffee table. Kinvara’s farewell letter sat on top of a number of
papers and books, of which only a sliver of one letter was visible, signed by

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“Brenda Bailey.” Of the books, Strike could see nothing but a partial title on an
old cloth edition—“CATUL”—and the lower part of a Penguin paperback. Also
in shot was the upturned corner of the threadbare rug beneath the table.
The ninth and final picture, which Strike had enlarged from yet another shot
of the body, showed Chiswell’s gaping trouser pocket, in which something shiny
and golden had been caught in the flash of Robin’s camera. While he was still
contemplating this gleaming object, Strike’s mobile rang. It was his hostess, Ilsa.
“Hi,” he said, standing up and grabbing the packet of Benson & Hedges and
lighter that lay on the side behind him. With an eruption of claws on wood, Ossie
and Ricky streaked along the top of the kitchen cabinets, in case Strike was
about to start throwing things at them. Checking to see that they were too far
away to make a break for the garden, Strike let himself outside and swiftly
closed the back door. “Any news?”
“Yes. Looks like you were right.”
Strike sat down on a wrought iron garden chair and lit up.
“Go on.”
“I’ve just had coffee with my contact. He can’t speak freely, given the nature
of what we’re talking about, but I put your theory to him and he said ‘That
sounds very plausible.’ Then I said, ‘Fellow politician?’ and he said that sounded
very likely, too, and I said I supposed that in that situation, the press would
appeal, and he said, yes, he thought so, too.”
Strike exhaled.
“I owe you, Ilsa, thanks. The good news is, I’ll be able to get out of your
hair.”
“Corm, we don’t mind you staying, you know that.”
“The cats don’t like me.”
“Nick says they can tell you’re a Gooner.”
“The comedy circuit lost a shining light when your husband decided on
medicine. Dinner’s on me tonight and I’ll clear out afterwards.”
Strike then rang Robin. She picked up on the second ring.
“Everything OK?”
“I’ve found out why the press aren’t all over us. Della’s taken out a super-
injunction. The papers aren’t allowed to report that Chiswell hired us, in case it
breaks the blackmail story. Ilsa’s just met her High Court contact and he
confirmed it.”
There was a pause, while Robin digested this information.
“So Della convinced a judge that Chiswell made up the blackmail?”
“Exactly, that he was using us to dig dirt on enemies. I’m not surprised the
judge swallowed it. The whole world thinks Della’s whiter than white.”

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“But Izzy knew why I was there,” protested Robin. “The family will have
confirmed that he was being blackmailed.”
Strike tapped ash absentmindedly into Ilsa’s pot of rosemary.
“Will they? Or will they want it all hushed up, now he’s dead?”
He took her silence as reluctant agreement.
“The press will appeal the injunction, won’t they?”
“They’re already trying, according to Ilsa. If I were a tabloid editor, I’d be
having us watched, so I think we’d better be careful. I’m going back to the office
tonight, but I think you should stay home.”
“For how long?” said Robin.
He heard the strain in her voice and wondered whether it was entirely due to
the stress of the case.
“We’ll play it by ear. Robin, they know you were the one inside the Houses
of Parliament. You became the story while he was alive and you’re sure as hell
the story now they know who you really are, and he’s dead.”
She said nothing.
“How’re you getting on with the accounts?” he asked.
She had insisted on being given this job, little though either of them enjoyed
it.
“They’d look a lot healthier if Chiswell had paid his bill.”
“I’ll try and tap the family,” said Strike, rubbing his eyes, “but it feels
tasteless asking for money before the funeral.”
“I’ve been looking through the photos again,” said Robin. In daily contact
since finding the body, every one of their conversations wound its way back to
the pictures of Chiswell’s corpse and the room in which they had found him.
“Me too. Notice anything new?”
“Yes, two little brass hooks on the wall. I think the sword was usually—”
“—displayed beneath the missing painting?”
“Exactly. D’you think it was Chiswell’s, from the army?”
“Very possibly. Or some ancestor’s.”
“I wonder why it was taken down? And how it got bent?”
“You think Chiswell grabbed it off the wall to try and defend himself against
his murderer?”
“That’s the first time,” said Robin quietly, “you’ve said it. ‘Murderer.’”
A wasp swooped low over Strike but, repelled by his cigarette smoke, buzzed
away again.
“I was joking.”
“Were you?”
Strike stretched out his legs in front of him, contemplating his feet. Stuck in

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the house, which was warm, he had not bothered with shoes and socks. His bare
foot, which rarely saw sunlight, was pale and hairy. The prosthetic foot, a single
piece of carbon fiber with no individual toes, had a dull gleam in the sunshine.
“There are odd features,” Strike said, as he waggled his remaining toes, “but
it’s been a week and no arrest. The police will have noticed everything we did.”
“Hasn’t Wardle heard anything? Vanessa’s dad’s ill. She’s on compassionate
leave, or I’d’ve asked her.”
“Wardle’s deep in anti-terrorist stuff for the Olympics. Considerately spared
the time to call my voicemail and piss himself laughing at my client dying on
me, though.”
“Cormoran, did you notice the name on those homeopathic pills I trod on?”
“No,” said Strike. This wasn’t one of the photographs he had isolated. “What
was it?”
“Lachesis. I saw it when I enlarged the picture.”
“Why’s that significant?”
“When Chiswell came into our office and quoted that Latin poem at Aamir,
and said something about a man of your habits, he mentioned Lachesis. He said
she was—”
“One of the Fates.”
“—exactly. The one who ‘knew when everyone’s number was up.’”
Strike smoked in silence for a few seconds.
“Sounds like a threat.”
“I know.”
“You definitely can’t remember which poem it was? Author, perhaps?”
“I’ve been trying, but no—wait—” said Robin suddenly. “He gave it a
number.”
“Catullus,” said Strike, sitting up straighter on the iron garden chair.
“How d’you know?”
“Because Catullus’s poems are numbered, not titled, there was an old copy
on Chiswell’s coffee table. Catullus described plenty of interesting habits: incest,
sodomy, child rape… he might’ve missed out bestiality. There’s a famous one
about a sparrow, but nobody buggers it.”
“Funny coincidence, isn’t it?” said Robin, ignoring the witticism.
“Maybe Chiswell was prescribed the pills and that put him in mind of the
Fate?”
“Did he seem to you like the kind of man who’d trust homeopathy?”
“No,” admitted Strike, “but if you’re suggesting the killer dropped a tube of
lachesis as an artistic flourish—”
He heard a distant trill of bells.

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“There’s someone at the door,” said Robin, “I’d better—”
“Check who it is, before you answer,” said Strike. He had had a sudden
presentiment.
Her footsteps were muffled by what he knew was carpet.
“Oh, God.”
“Who is it?”
“Mitch Patterson.”
“Has he seen you?”
“No, I’m upstairs.”
“Then don’t answer.”
“I won’t.”
But her breathing had become noisy and ragged.
“You all right?”
“Fine,” she said, her voice constricted.
“What’s he—?”
“I’m going to go. I’ll call you later.”
The line went dead.
Strike lowered the mobile. Feeling a sudden heat in the fingers of the hand
not holding his phone, he realized his cigarette had burned to the filter. Stubbing
it out on the hot paving stone, he flicked it over the wall into the garden of a
neighbor whom Nick and Ilsa disliked, and immediately lit another, thinking
about Robin.
He was concerned about her. It was to be expected, of course, that she was
experiencing anxiety and stress after finding a body and being interviewed by
the security services, but he had noticed lapses in concentration over the phone,
where she asked him the same thing two or three times. There was also what he
considered her unhealthy eagerness to get back to the office, or out on the street.
Convinced that she ought to be taking some time out, Strike hadn’t told
Robin about a line of investigation he was currently pursuing, because he was
sure she would insist on being allowed to help.
The fact was that, for Strike, the Chiswell case had begun, not with the dead
man’s story of blackmail, but with Billy Knight’s tale of a strangled child
wrapped in a pink blanket in the ground. Ever since Billy’s last plea for help,
Strike had been phoning the telephone number from which it had been made.
Finally, on the previous morning, he had got an answer from a curious passerby,
who had confirmed the phone box’s position on the edge of Trafalgar Square.