Lethal White

We two go with each other…
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
When he saw Robin was calling him, Strike, who had taken his notebook out
to the Tottenham for a drink, pocketed the former, downed the remainder of his
pint in one and took the call out onto the street.
The mess that building works had made of the top of Tottenham Court Road
—the rubble-strewn channel where a street had been, the portable railings and
the plastic barricades, the walkways and planks that enabled tens of thousands of
people to continue to pass through the busy junction—were so familiar to him
now that he barely noticed them. He had not come outside for the view, but for a
cigarette, and he smoked two while Robin relayed everything that Raphael had
told her.
Once the call was over, Strike returned his mobile to his pocket and
absentmindedly lit himself a third cigarette from the tip of the second and
continued to stand there, thinking deeply about everything she had said and
forcing passersby to navigate around him.
A couple of things that Robin had told him struck the detective as interesting.
Having finished his third cigarette and flicked it into the open abyss in the road,
Strike retreated inside the pub and ordered himself a second pint. A group of
students had now taken his table, so he headed into the back, where high bar
stools sat beneath a stained-glass cupola whose colors were dimmed by night.
Here, Strike took out his notebook again and re-examined the list of names over

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which he had pored in the early hours of Sunday, while he sought distraction
from thoughts of Charlotte. After gazing at it again in the manner of a man who
knows something is concealed there, he turned a few pages to reread the notes he
had made of his interview with Della.
Large, hunch-backed and motionless but for the eyes flicking along the lines
he had scribbled in the blind woman’s house, Strike unknowingly repelled a
couple of timid backpackers who had considered asking whether they might
share his table and take the weight off their blistered feet. Fearing the
consequences of breaking his almost tangible concentration, they retreated
before he noticed them.
Strike turned back to the list of names. Married couples, lovers, business