Lethal White

Yes, she is a queer one, she is. She has always
been very much on the high horse…
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
While Strike was speeding northwards, Robin was summoned without
explanation to a personal meeting with the Minister for Culture himself.
Walking in the sunshine towards the Department for Culture, Media and
Sport, which stood in a large white Edwardian building a few minutes away
from the Palace of Westminster, Robin found herself almost wishing that she
were one of the tourists cluttering the pavement, because Chiswell had sounded
bad tempered on the phone.
Robin would have given a great deal to have something useful to tell the
minister about his blackmailer, but as she had only been on the job a day and a

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half, all she could say with any certainty was that her first impressions of Geraint
Winn had now been confirmed: he was lazy, lecherous, self-important and
indiscreet. The door of his office stood open more often than not, and his sing-
song voice rang down the corridor as he talked with injudicious levity about his
constituents’ petty concerns, name-dropped celebrities and senior politicians and
generally sought to give the impression of a man for whom running a mere
constituency office was an unimportant sideshow.
He hailed Robin jovially from his desk whenever she passed his open door,
showing a pronounced eagerness for further contact. However, whether by
chance or design, Aamir Mallik kept thwarting Robin’s attempts to turn these
greetings into conversations, either interrupting with questions for Winn or, as he
had done just an hour previously, simply closing the door in Robin’s face.
The exterior of the great block that housed the DCMS, with its stone swags,
its columns and its neoclassical façade, was not reassuring. The interior had been
modernized and hung with contemporary art, including an abstract glass
sculpture that hung from the cupola over the central staircase, up which Robin
was led by an efficient-seeming young woman. Believing her to be the minister’s
goddaughter, her companion was at pains to show her points of interest.
“The Churchill Room,” she said, pointing left as they turned right. “That’s
the balcony he gave his speech from, on VE Day. The minister’s just along
here…”
She led Robin down a wide, curving corridor that doubled as an open-plan
workspace. Smart young people sat at an array of desks in front of lengthy
windows to the right, which looked out onto a quadrangle, which, in size and
scale, bore the appearance of a colosseum, with its high white windowed walls.
It was all very different from the cramped office where Izzy made their instant
coffee from a kettle. Indeed, a large, expensive machine complete with pods sat
on one desk for that purpose.
The offices to the left were separated from this curving space by glass walls
and doors. Robin spotted the Minister for Culture from a distance, sitting at his
desk beneath a contemporary painting of the Queen, talking on the telephone. He
indicated by a brusque gesture that her escort should show Robin inside the
office and continued talking on the telephone as Robin waited, somewhat
awkwardly, for him to finish his call. A woman’s voice was issuing from the
earpiece, high-pitched and to Robin, even eight feet away, hysterical.
“I’ve got to go, Kinvara!” barked Chiswell into the mouthpiece. “Yes…
we’ll talk about this later. I’ve got to go.”
Setting down the receiver harder than was necessary, he pointed Robin to a
chair opposite him. His coarse, straight gray hair stood out around his head in a

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wiry halo, his fat lower lip giving him an air of angry petulance.
“The newspapers are sniffing around,” he growled. “That was m’wife. The
Sun rang her this morning, asking whether the rumors are true. She said ‘what
rumors?’ but the fella didn’t specify. Fishing, obviously. Trying to surprise
something out of her.”
He frowned at Robin, whose appearance he seemed to find wanting.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-seven,” she said.
“You look younger.”
It didn’t sound like a compliment.
“Managed to plant the surveillance device yet?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Robin.
“Where’s Strike?”
“In Manchester, interviewing Jimmy Knight’s ex-wife,” said Robin.
Chiswell made the angry, subterranean noise usually rendered as
“harrumph,” then got to his feet. Robin jumped up, too.
“Well, you’d better get back and get on with it,” said Chiswell. “The
National Health Service,” he added, with no change of tone, as he headed
towards the door. “People are going to think we’re bloody mad.”
“Sorry?” said Robin, entirely thrown.
Chiswell pulled open the glass door and indicated that Robin should pass
through it ahead of him, out into the open-plan area where all the smart young
people sat working beside their sleek coffee machine.
“Olympics opening ceremony,” he explained, following her. “Lefty bloody
crap. We won two bloody world wars, but we’re not supposed to celebrate that.”
“Nonsense, Jasper,” said a deep, melodious Welsh voice close at hand. “We
celebrate military victories all the time. This is a different kind of celebration.”
Della Winn, the Minister for Sport, was standing just outside Chiswell’s
door, holding the leash of her near-white Labrador. A woman of stately
appearance, with gray hair swept back off a broad forehead, she wore sunglasses
so dark that Robin could make out nothing behind them. Her blindness, Robin
knew from her research, had been due to a rare condition in which neither
eyeball had grown in utero. She sometimes wore prosthetic eyes, especially
when she was to be photographed. Della was sporting a quantity of heavy, tactile
jewelry in gold, with a large necklace of intaglios, and dressed from head to foot
in sky blue. Robin had read in one of Strike’s printed profiles of the politician
that Geraint laid out Della’s clothes for her every morning and that it was
simplest for him, not having a great feel for fashion, to select things in the same
color. Robin had found this rather touching when she read it.

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Chiswell did not appear to relish the sudden appearance of his colleague and
indeed, given that her husband was blackmailing him, Robin supposed that this
was hardly surprising. Della, on the other hand, gave no sign of embarrassment.
“I thought we might share the car over to Greenwich,” she said to Chiswell,
while the pale Labrador snuffled gently at the hem of Robin’s skirt. “Give us a
chance to go over the plans for the twelfth. What are you doing, Gwynn?” she
added, feeling the Labrador’s head tugging.
“She’s sniffing me,” said Robin nervously, patting the Labrador.
“This is my goddaughter, ah…”
“Venetia,” said Robin, as Chiswell was evidently struggling to remember her
name.
“How do you do?” said Della, holding out her hand. “Visiting Jasper?”
“No, I’m interning in the constituency office,” said Robin, shaking the warm,
be-ringed hand, as Chiswell walked away to examine the document held by a
hovering young man in a suit.
“Venetia,” repeated Della, her face still turned towards Robin. A faint frown
appeared on the handsome face, half-masked behind the impenetrable black
glasses. “What’s your surname?”
“Hall,” said Robin.
She felt a ridiculous flutter of panic, as though Della were about to unmask
her. Still poring over the document he had been shown, Chiswell moved away,
leaving Robin, or so it felt, entirely at Della’s mercy.
“You’re the fencer,” said Della.
“Sorry?” said Robin, totally confused again, her mind on posts and rails.
Some of the young people around the space-age coffee machine had turned
around to listen, expressions of polite interest on their faces.
“Yes,” said Della. “Yes, I remember you. You were on the English team with
Freddie.”
Her friendly expression had hardened. Chiswell was now leaning over a desk
while he struck through phrases on the document.
“No, I never fenced,” said Robin, thoroughly out of her depth. She had
realized at the mention of the word “team” that swords were under discussion,
rather than fields and livestock.
“You certainly did,” said Della flatly. “I remember you. Jasper’s
goddaughter, on the team with Freddie.”
It was a slightly unnerving display of arrogance, of complete self-belief.
Robin felt inadequate to the job of continuing to protest, because there were now
several listeners. Instead, she merely said, “Well, nice to have met you,” and
walked away.

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“Again, you mean,” said Della sharply, but Robin made no reply.
16