Lethal White

everything. How do you know all this?”
“I’ve been looking for you,” said Strike. “What made you want to find
Winn?”
“Heard Jimmy talking about him,” said Billy, gnawing at his nail again.
“Jimmy said Winn was going to help find out all about the kid who was killed.”
“Winn was going to help find out about the child who was strangled?”
“Yeah,” said Billy, nervously. “See, I thought you were one of the people
trying to catch me and lock me up, after I saw you. Thought you were trying to
trap me and—I get like that, when I’m bad,” he said hopelessly. “So I went to
Winner—Winn—instead. Jimmy had a phone number and address for him
written down, so I went to find Winn and then I got caught.”
“Caught?”
“By the—brown-skinned bloke,” mumbled Billy, with a half-glance back at
the female psychiatrist. “I was scared of him, I thought he was a terrorist and he

---

was going to kill me, but then he told me he was working for the government, so
I thought the government wanted me kept there in his house and the doors and
windows were wired with explosives… but I don’t think they were, really. That
was just me. He probably didn’t want me in his bathroom. Probably wanted to
get rid of me all along,” said Billy, with a sad smile. “And I wouldn’t go,
because I thought I’d get blown up.”
His right hand crept absently back to his nose and chest.
“I think I tried to call you again, but you didn’t answer.”
“You did call. You left a message on my answering machine.”
“Did I? Yeah… I thought you’d help me get out of there… sorry,” said Billy,
rubbing his eyes. “When I’m like that, I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“But you’re sure you saw a child strangled, Billy?” asked Strike quietly.
“Oh yeah,” said Billy bleakly, raising his face. “Yeah, that never goes away. I
know I saw it.”
“Did you ever try and dig where you thought—?”
“Christ, no,” said Billy. “Go digging right by my dad’s house? No. I was
scared,” he said weakly. “I didn’t want to see it again. After they buried her, they
let it grow over, nettles and weeds. I used to have dreams like you wouldn’t
believe. That she climbed up out of the dell in the dark, all rotting, and tried to
climb in my bedroom window.”
The psychiatrists’ pens moved scratchily across their papers.
Strike moved down to the category of “Things” that he had written on his
notebook. There were only two questions left.
“Did you ever put a cross in the ground where you saw the body buried,
Billy?”
“No,” said Billy, scared at the very idea. “I never went near the dell if I could
avoid it, I never wanted to.”
“Last question,” Strike said. “Billy, did your father do anything unusual for
the Chiswells? I know he was a handyman, but can you think of anything else he
—?”
“What d’you mean?” said Billy.
He seemed suddenly more frightened than he had seemed all interview.
“I don’t know,” said Strike carefully, watching his reaction. “I just wondered
—”
“Jimmy warned me about this! He told me you were snooping around Dad.
You can’t blame us for that, we had nothing to do with it, we were kids!”
“I’m not blaming you for anything,” said Strike, but there was a clatter of
chairs: Billy and the two psychiatrists had got to their feet, the female’s hand
hovering over a discreet button beside the door that Strike knew must be an

---

alarm.
“Has this all been to get me to talk? You trying to get me and Jimmy in
trouble?”
“No,” said Strike, hoisting himself to his feet, too. “I’m here because I
believe you saw a child strangled, Billy.”
Agitated, mistrustful, Billy’s unbandaged hand touched his nose and chest
twice in quick succession.
“So why’re you asking what Dad did?” he whispered. “That’s not how she
died, it was nothing to do with that! Jimmy’ll fucking tan me,” he said in a
broken voice. “He told me you were after him for what Dad did.”
“Nobody’s going to tan anyone,” said the male psychiatrist firmly. “Time’s
up, I think,” he said briskly to Strike, pushing open the door. “Go on, Billy, out
you go.”
But Billy didn’t move. The skin and bone might have aged, but his face
betrayed the fear and hopelessness of a small, motherless child whose sanity had
been broken by the men who were supposed to protect him. Strike, who had met
countless rootless and neglected children during his rackety, unstable childhood,
recognized in Billy’s imploring expression a last plea to the adult world, to do
what grown-ups were meant to do, and impose order on chaos, substitute sanity
for brutality. Face to face, he felt a strange kinship with the emaciated, shaven-
headed psychiatric patient, because he recognized the same craving for order in
himself. In his case, it had led him to the official side of the desk, but perhaps the
only difference between the two of them was that Strike’s mother had lived long
enough, and loved him well enough, to stop him breaking when life threw
terrible things at him.
“I’m going to find out what happened to the kid you saw strangled, Billy.
That’s a promise.”
The psychiatrists looked surprised, even disapproving. It was not part of their
profession, Strike knew, to make definitive statements or guarantee resolutions.
He put his notebook back into his pocket, moved from behind the desk and held
out his hand. After a few long moments’ consideration, the animosity seemed to
seep out of Billy. He shuffled back to Strike, took his proffered hand and held it
overlong, his eyes filling with tears.
In a whisper, so that neither of the doctors could hear, he said:
“I hated putting the horse on them, Mr. Strike. I hated it.”
57

---