Lethal White

particularly angry Matthew had sounded in the background of his calls to Robin,
to discuss their pressured, unstable and occasionally dangerous job. She had
twice sounded distinctly underwhelmed about the prospect of digging in the hard
ground at the bottom of the dell, and now asked to drive the BMW rather than
the tank-like Land Rover.
He had almost forgotten his suspicion of a couple of months ago, that Robin
might be trying to get pregnant. Into his mind swam the vision of Charlotte’s
swollen belly at the dinner table. Robin wasn’t the kind of woman who’d be able
to walk away from her child as soon as it left the womb. If Robin was
pregnant…
Logical and methodical as he usually was, and aware in one part of himself
that he was theorizing on scant data, Strike’s imagination nevertheless showed
him Matthew, the father-to-be, listening in on Robin’s tense request for time off
for scans and medical checks, gesticulating angrily at her that the time had come
to stop, to go easy on herself, to take better care.
Strike turned back to Jimmy Knight’s blog, but it took him a little longer
than usual to discipline his troubled mind back into obedience.

---

61
Oh, you can tell me. You and I are such friends,
you know.
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
Fellow Tube travelers gave Strike a slightly wider berth than was necessary
on Saturday morning, even allowing for his kit bag. He generally managed to cut
a path easily through crowds, given his bulk and his boxer’s profile, but the way
he was muttering and cursing as he struggled up the stairs at Wembley Stadium
station—the lifts weren’t working—made passersby extra careful to neither
jostle nor impede him.
The primary reason for Strike’s bad mood was Mitch Patterson, whom he
had spotted that morning from the office window, skulking in a doorway, dressed
in jeans and a hoodie entirely unsuited to his age and bearing. Puzzled and
angered by the private detective’s reappearance, but having no route out of the
building except by the front door, Strike had called a cab to wait for him at the
end of the street, and left the building only once it was in position. Patterson’s
expression when Strike had said “Morning, Mitch” might have amused Strike, if
he hadn’t been so insulted that Patterson had thought he could get away with
watching the agency in person.
All the way to Warren Street station, where he asked the cab to drop him,
Strike had been hyper-alert, worried that Patterson had been there as a distraction
or decoy, enabling a second, less obtrusive tail to follow him. Even now, as he
clambered, panting, off the top of the stairs at Wembley, he turned to scrutinize
the travelers for the one who ducked down, turned back or hastily concealed
their face. None of them did so. On balance, Strike concluded that Patterson had
been working alone; victim, perhaps, of one of the manpower problems so
familiar to Strike. The fact that Patterson had chosen to cover the job rather than
forgo it suggested that somebody was paying him well.
Strike hoisted his kit bag more securely onto his shoulder and set off towards
the exit.
Having pondered the question during his inconvenient journey to Wembley,
Strike could think of three reasons why Patterson had reappeared. The first was
that the press had got wind of some interesting new development in the Met
investigation into Chiswell’s death, and that this had led a newspaper to rehire

---

Patterson, his remit to find out what Strike was up to and how much he knew.
The second possibility was that someone had paid Patterson to stalk Strike,
in the hopes of impeding his movements or hampering his business. That
suggested that Patterson’s employer was somebody that Strike was currently
investigating, in which case, Patterson doing the job himself made sense: the
whole point would be to destabilize Strike by letting him know that he was being
watched.
The third possible reason for Patterson’s renewed interest in him was the one
that bothered Strike most, because he had a feeling it was most likely to be the
true one. He now knew that he had been spotted in Franco’s with Charlotte. His
informant was Izzy, whom he had called in the hope of fleshing out details of the
theory he hadn’t yet confided to anyone.
“So, I hear you had dinner with Charlotte!” she had blurted, before he had
managed to pose a question.
“There was no dinner. I sat with her for twenty minutes because she was
feeling ill, then left.”
“Oh—sorry,” said Izzy, cowed by his tone. “I—I wasn’t prying—Roddy
Fforbes was in Franco’s and he spotted the pair of you…”
If Roddy Fforbes, whoever he was, was spreading it around London that
Strike was taking his heavily pregnant, married ex-fiancée out for dinner while
her husband was in New York, the tabloids would definitely be interested,
because wild, beautiful and aristocratic Charlotte was news. Her name had
peppered gossip columns since she was sixteen years old, her various
tribulations—running away from school, the stints in rehab and in psychiatric
clinics—were well documented. It was even possible that Patterson had been
hired by Jago Ross, who could certainly afford it. If the side effect of policing
his wife’s movements was ruining Strike’s business, Ross would undoubtedly
consider that a bonus.
Robin, who was sitting a short distance away from the station in the Land
Rover, saw Strike emerge onto the pavement, kit bag over his shoulder, and
registered that he looked as bad-tempered as she had ever seen him. He lit a
cigarette, scanning the street until his eye found the Land Rover at the end of a
series of parked vehicles and he began to limp, unsmiling, towards her. Robin,
whose own mood was perilously low, could only assume that he was angry at
having to make the long trip to Wembley with what appeared to be a heavy bag
and a sore leg.
She had been awake since four o’clock that morning, unable to get back to
sleep, cramped and unhappy on Vanessa’s hard sofa, thinking about her future,

---

and about the row she had had with her mother by phone. Matthew had called
the house in Masham, trying to reach her, and Linda was not only desperately
worried, but furious that Robin hadn’t told her what was going on first.
“Where are you staying? With Strike?”
“Of course I’m not staying with Strike, why on earth would I be—?”
“Where, then?”
“With a different friend.”
“Who? Why didn’t you tell us? What are you going to do? I want to come
down to London to see you!”
“Please don’t,” said Robin through gritted teeth.
Her guilt about the expense of the wedding she and Matthew had put her
parents to, and about the embarrassment her mother and father were about to
endure in explaining to their friends that her marriage was over barely a year
after it had begun, weighed heavily on her, but she couldn’t bear the prospect of
Linda badgering and cajoling, treating her as though she were fragile and
damaged. The last thing she needed right now was her mother suggesting that
she go back to Yorkshire, to be cocooned in the bedroom that had witnessed
some of the worst times of her life.
After two days viewing a multitude of densely packed houses, Robin had put
down a deposit on a box room in a house in Kilburn, where she would have five
other housemates, and into which she would be able to move the following
week. Every time she thought of the place, her stomach turned over in
trepidation and misery. At the age of almost twenty-eight, she would be the
oldest housemate.
Trying to propitiate Strike, she got out of the car and offered to help him with
the kit bag, but he grunted at her that he could manage. As the canvas hit the
metal floor of the Land Rover she heard a loud clattering of heavy metal tools
and experienced a nervous spasm in her stomach.
Strike, who had taken fleeting stock of Robin’s appearance, had his worst
suspicions strengthened. Pale, with shadows beneath her eyes, she managed to
look both puffy and drawn and also seemed to have lost weight in the few days
since he’d last seen her. The wife of his old army friend Graham Hardacre had
been hospitalized in the early stages of pregnancy because of persistent
vomiting. Perhaps one of Robin’s important appointments had been to address
that problem.
“You all right?” Strike asked Robin roughly, buckling up his seatbelt.
“Fine,” she said, for what felt like the umpteenth time, taking his shortness as
annoyance at his long Tube journey.
They drove out of London without talking. Finally, when they had reached

---

the M40, Strike said:
“Patterson’s back. He was watching the office this morning.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Has there been anyone round your place?”
“Not that I know of,” said Robin, after an almost imperceptible hesitation.
Perhaps this was what Matthew had been calling her about, when he had tried to
reach her in Masham.
“You didn’t have any trouble getting away this morning?”
“No,” said Robin, honestly enough.
In the days that had elapsed since she’d walked out, she had imagined telling
Strike that her marriage was over, but had not yet been able to find a form of
words that she knew she would be able to deliver with the requisite calm. This
frustrated her: it ought, she told herself, to be easy. He was the friend and
colleague who had been there when she’d called off the wedding and who knew
about Matthew’s previous infidelity with Sarah. She ought to be able to tell him
casually mid-conversation, as she had with Raphael.
The problem was that on the rare occasions when she and Strike had shared
revelations about their love lives, it had been when one of them had been drunk.
Otherwise, a profound reserve on such matters had always lain between them, in
spite of Matthew’s paranoid conviction that they spent most of their working
lives in flirtation.
But there was more to it than that. Strike was the man she had hugged on the
stairs at her wedding reception, the man with whom she had imagined walking
out on her husband before the marriage could be consummated, the man for
whom she had spent nights of her honeymoon wearing a groove in the white
sand as she paced alone, wondering whether she was in love with him. She was
afraid of giving herself away, afraid of betraying what she had thought and felt,
because she was sure that if he ever had the merest suspicion of what a
disruptive factor he had been, in both the beginning and the end of her marriage,
it would surely taint their working relationship, as certainly as it would surely
prejudice her job if he ever knew about the panic attacks.
No, she must appear to be what he was—self-contained and stoic, able to
absorb trauma and limp on, ready to face whatever life flung at her, even what
lay at the bottom of the dell, without flinching or turning away.
“So what d’you think Patterson’s up to?” she asked.
“Time will tell. Did your appointments go all right?”
“Yes,” said Robin, and to distract herself from the thought of her tiny new
rented room, and the student couple who had shown her around, casting
sideways glances at the strangely grown-up woman who was coming to live with

---

them, she said, “There are biscuits in the bag back there. No tea, sorry, but we
can stop if you like.”
The thermos was back in Albury Street, one of the things she had forgotten
to sneak out of the house when she had returned while Matthew was at work.
“Thanks,” said Strike, though without much enthusiasm. He was wondering
whether the reappearance of snacks, given his self-proclaimed diet, might not be
further proof of his partner’s pregnancy.
Robin’s phone rang in her pocket. She ignored it. Twice that morning, she
had received calls from the same unknown number and she was afraid that it
might be Matthew who, finding himself blocked, had borrowed another phone.
“D’you want to get that?” asked Strike, watching her pale, set profile.
“Er—not while I’m driving.”
“I can answer it, if you want.”
“No,” she said, a little too quickly.
The mobile stopped ringing but, almost at once, began again. More than ever
convinced that it was Matthew, Robin took the phone out of her jacket, saying:
“I think I know who it is, and I don’t want to talk to them just now. Once
they hang up, could you mute it?”
Strike took the mobile.
“It’s been put through from the office number. I’ll turn it to speakerphone,”
said Strike helpfully, given that the ancient Land Rover didn’t have a functioning
heater, let alone Bluetooth, and he did so, holding the mobile close to her mouth,
so that she could make herself heard over the rattle and growl of the drafty
vehicle.
“Hello, Robin here. Who’s this?”
“Robin? Don’t you mean Venetia?” said a Welsh voice.
“Is that Mr. Winn?” said Robin, eyes on the road, while Strike held the
mobile steady for her.
“Yes, you nasty little bitch, it is.”
Robin and Strike glanced at each other, startled. Gone was the unctuous,
lascivious Winn, keen to charm and impress.
“Got what you were after, haven’t you, eh? Wriggling up and down that
corridor, sticking your tits in where they weren’t wanted, ‘oh, Mr. Winn—’” he
imitated her the same way Matthew did, high-pitched and imbecilic, “‘—oh,
help me, Mr. Winn, should I do charity or should I do politics, let me bend a bit
lower over the desk, Mr. Winn.’ How many men have you trapped that way, how
far do you go—?”
“Have you got something to tell me, Mr. Winn?” asked Robin loudly, talking
over him. “Because if you’ve just called to insult me—”

---

“Oh, I’ve got plenty to bloody tell you, plenty to bloody tell you,” shouted
Winn. “You are going to pay, Miss Ellacott, for what you’ve done to me, pay for
the damage you’ve done to me and my wife, you don’t get off that easily, you
broke the law in this office and I’m going to see you in court, do you understand
me?” He was becoming almost hysterical. “We’ll see how well your wiles work
on a judge, shall we? Low-cut top and ‘oh, I think I’m overheating—’”
A white light seemed to be encroaching on the edges of Robin’s vision, so
that the road ahead turned tunnel-like.
“NO!” she shouted, taking both hands off the wheel before slamming them
back down again, her arms shaking. It was the “no” she had given Matthew, a
“no” of such vehemence and force that it brought Geraint Winn up short in
exactly the same way.
“Nobody made you stroke my hair and pat my back and ogle my chest, Mr.
Winn, that wasn’t what I wanted, though I’m sure it gives you a bit of a kick to
think it was—”
“Robin!” said Strike, but he might as well have been one more creak of the
car’s ancient chassis, and she ignored, too, Geraint’s sudden interjection, “Who
else is there? Was that Strike?”
“—you’re a creep, Mr. Winn, a thieving creep who stole from a charity and
I’m not only happy I got the goods on you, I’ll be delighted to tell the world
you’re flicking out pictures of your dead daughter while you’re trying to peer
down young women’s shirts—”
“How dare you!” gasped Winn, “are there no depths—you dare mention
Rhiannon—it’s all going to come out, Samuel Murape’s family—”
“Screw you and screw your bloody grudges!” shouted Robin. “You’re a
pervy, thieving—”
“If you’ve got anything else to say, I suggest you put it in writing, Mr.
Winn,” Strike shouted into the mobile, while Robin, hardly knowing what she
was doing, continued to yell insults at Winn from a distance. Ending the call
with a jab of the finger, Strike grabbed the wheel as Robin again removed both
hands from it to gesticulate.
“Fuck’s sake!” said Strike, “pull over—pull over, now!”
She did as he told her automatically, the adrenaline disorientating her like
alcohol, and when the Land Rover lurched to a halt she threw off her seatbelt
and got out on the hard shoulder, cars whizzing past her. Hardly knowing what
she was doing she began to stumble away from the Land Rover, tears of rage
sliding down her face, trying to outpace the panic now lapping at her, because
she had just irrevocably alienated a man they might need to talk to again, a man
who had already been talking about revenge, who might even be the one paying

---

Patterson…
“Robin!”
Now, she thought, Strike, too, would think her a flake, a damaged fool who
should never have taken on this line of work, the one who ran when things got
tough. It was that which made her wheel around to face him as he hobbled along
the hard shoulder after her, and she wiped her face roughly on her sleeve and
said, before he could tell her off, “I know I shouldn’t have lost it, I know I’ve
fucked up, I’m sorry.” But his answer was lost in the pounding in her ears and,
as though it had been waiting for her to stop running, the panic now engulfed
her. Dizzy, unable to order her thoughts, she collapsed on the verge, dry bristles
of grass prickling through her jeans as, eyes shut and head in hands, she tried to
breathe herself back to normality as the traffic zoomed past.
She wasn’t quite sure whether one minute or ten had elapsed, but finally her
pulse slowed, her thoughts became ordered and the panic ebbed away, to be
replaced by mortification. After all her careful pretense that she was coping, she
had blown it.
A whiff of cigarette smoke reached her. Opening her eyes, she saw Strike’s
legs sticking out on the ground to her right. He, too, had sat down on the verge.
“How long have you been having panic attacks?” he asked conversationally.
There seemed no point dissembling any more.
“About a year,” she muttered.
“Been getting help with them?”
“Yes. I was in therapy for a bit. Now I do CBT exercises.”
“Do you, though?” Strike asked mildly. “Because I bought vegetarian bacon
a week ago, but it’s not making me any healthier, just sitting there in the fridge.”
Robin began to laugh and found that she couldn’t stop. More tears leaked
from her eyes. Strike watched her, not unkindly, smoking his cigarette.
“I could have been doing them a bit more regularly,” Robin admitted at last,
mopping her face again.
“Anything else you fancy telling me, now we’re getting into things?” asked
Strike.
He felt he ought to know the worst now, before he gave her any advice on
her mental condition, but Robin seemed confused.
“Any other health matters that might affect your ability to work?” he
prompted her.
“Like what?”
Strike wondered whether a direct inquiry constituted some kind of
infringement of her employment rights.
“I wondered,” he said, “whether you might be, ah, pregnant.”

---

Robin began to laugh again.
“Oh God, that’s funny.”
“Is it?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, “I’m not pregnant.”
Strike now noticed that her wedding and engagement rings were missing. He
had become so used to seeing her without them as she impersonated Venetia Hall
and Bobbi Cunliffe that it had not occurred to him that their absence today might
be significant, yet he didn’t want to pose a direct question, for reasons that had
nothing at all to do with employment rights.
“Matthew and I have split up,” Robin said, frowning at the passing traffic in
an effort not to cry again. “A week ago.”
“Oh,” said Strike. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
But his concerned expression was at total odds with his actual feelings. His
dark mood had lightened so abruptly that it was akin to having moved from
sober to three pints down. The smell of rubber and dust and burned grass
recalled the car park where he had accidentally kissed her, and he drew on his
cigarette again and tried hard not to let his feelings show in his face.
“I know I shouldn’t have spoken to Geraint Winn like that,” said Robin, tears
now falling again. “I shouldn’t have mentioned Rhiannon, I lost control and—
it’s just, men, bloody men, judging everyone by their bloody selves!”
“What happened with Matt—?”
“He’s been sleeping with Sarah Shadlock,” said Robin savagely. “His best
friend’s fiancée. She left an earring in our bed and I—oh bugger.”
It was no use: she buried her face in her hands and, with a sense of having
nothing to lose now, cried in earnest, because she had thoroughly disgraced
herself in Strike’s eyes, and the one remaining piece of her life that she had been
seeking to preserve had been tainted. How delighted Matthew would be to see
her falling apart on a motorway verge, proving his point, that she was unfit to do
the job she loved, forever limited by her past, by having, twice, been in the
wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong men.
A heavy weight landed across her shoulders. Strike had put his arm around
her. This was simultaneously comforting and ominous, because he had never
done that before, and she was sure that this was the precursor to him telling her
that she was unfit to work, that they would cancel the next interview and return
to London.
“Where have you been staying?”
“Vanessa’s sofa,” said Robin, trying frantically to mop her streaming eyes
and nose: snot and tears had made the knees of her jeans soggy. “But I’ve got a
new place now.”

---

“Where?”
“Kilburn, a room in a shared house.”
“Bloody hell, Robin,” said Strike. “Why didn’t you tell me? Nick and Ilsa
have got a proper spare room, they’d be delighted—”
“I can’t sponge off your friends,” said Robin thickly.
“It wouldn’t be sponging,” said Strike. He jammed his cigarette in his mouth
and started searching his pockets with his free hand. “They like you and you
could stay there for a couple of weeks until—aha. I thought I had one. It’s only
creased, I haven’t used it—don’t think so, anyway—”
Robin took the tissue and, with one hearty blow of her nose, demolished it.
“Listen,” Strike began, but Robin interrupted at once:
“Don’t tell me to take time off. Please don’t. I’m fine, I’m fit to work, I
hadn’t had a panic attack in ages before that one, I’m—”
“—not listening.”
“All right, sorry,” she muttered, the sodden tissue clutched in her fist. “Go
on.”
“After I got blown up, I couldn’t get in a car without doing what you’ve just
done, panicking and breaking out in a cold sweat and half suffocating. For a
while I’d do anything to avoid being driven by someone else. I’ve still got
problems with it, to tell the truth.”
“I didn’t realize,” said Robin. “You don’t show it.”
“Yeah, well, you’re the best driver I know. You should see me with my
bloody sister. Thing is, Robin—oh, bollocks.”
The traffic police had arrived, pulling up behind the abandoned Land Rover,
apparently puzzled as to why the occupants were sitting fifty yards away on the
verge, to all appearances unconcerned with the fate of their poorly parked
vehicle.
“Not in too much of a hurry to get help, then?” said the portlier of the two
sarcastically. He had the swagger of a man who thinks himself a joker.
Strike removed his arm from around Robin’s shoulders and both stood up, in
Strike’s case, clumsily.
“Car sickness,” Strike told the officer blandly. “Careful, or she might puke
on you.”
They returned to the car. The first officer’s colleague was peering at the tax
disk on the ancient Land Rover.
“You don’t see many of this age still on the roads,” he commented.
“It’s never let me down yet,” said Robin.
“Sure you’re all right to drive?” Strike muttered, as she turned the ignition
key. “We could pretend you’re still feeling ill.”

---

“I’m fine.”
And this time, it was true. He had called her the best driver he knew, and it
might not be much, but he had given her back some of her self-respect, and she
steered seamlessly back onto the motorway.
There was a long silence. Strike decided that further discussion of Robin’s
mental health ought to wait until she wasn’t driving.
“Winn said a name at the end of the call there,” he mused, taking out his
notebook. “Did you hear?”
“No,” muttered Robin, shamefaced.
“It was Samuel something,” Strike said, making a note. “Murdoch?
Matlock?”
“I didn’t hear.”
“Cheer up,” said Strike bracingly, “he probably wouldn’t have blurted it out
if you hadn’t been yelling at him. Not that I recommend calling interviewees
thieving perverts in future…”
He stretched around in his seat, reaching for the carrier bag in the back.
“Fancy a biscuit?”

---

62