Lethal White

But there are so many sorts of white horses in this
world, Mrs. Helseth…
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
“Of course,” said Robin, as they drove towards the village, “a cross sticking
out of the ground doesn’t mean there’s anything buried beneath it.”
“True,” said Strike, who had needed most of his breath on the return walk for
the frequent obscenities he uttered as he stumbled and skidded on the forest
floor, “but it makes you think, doesn’t it?”
Robin said nothing. Her hands on the steering wheel were covered in nettle
stings that prickled and burned.
The country inn they reached five minutes later was the very image of
picture-postcard England, a white, timbered building with leaded bay windows,
moss-covered slates on the roof and climbing red roses around the door. A beer
garden with parasols completed the picture. Robin turned the Land Rover into
the small car park opposite.
“This is getting stupid,” muttered Strike, who had left the cross on the
dashboard and was now climbing out of the car, staring at the pub.
“What is?” asked Robin, coming around the back of the car to join him.
“It’s called the White Horse.”
“After the one up the hill,” said Robin, as they set off across the road
together. “Look at the sign.”
Painted on the board atop a wooden pole was the strange chalk figure they
had seen earlier.
“The pub where I met Jimmy Knight the first time was called the White
Horse, too,” said Strike.
“The White Horse,” said Robin, as they walked up the steps into the beer
garden, Strike’s limp now more pronounced than ever, “is one of the ten most
popular pub names in Britain. I read it in some article. Quick, those people are
leaving—grab their table, I’ll get the drinks.”
The low-ceilinged pub was busy inside. Robin headed first for the Ladies
where she stripped off her jacket, tied it around her waist and washed her
smarting hands. She wished that she had managed to find dock leaves on the
journey back from Steda Cottage, but most of her attention on the return walk

---

had been given to Strike who had nearly fallen twice more and hobbled on
looking furious with himself, repelling offers of assistance with bad grace and
leaning heavily on the walking stick she had fashioned from a branch.
The mirror showed Robin that she was disheveled and grubby compared to
the prosperous middle-aged people she had just seen in the bar, but being in a
hurry to return to Strike and review the morning’s activities, she merely dragged
a brush through her hair, wiped a green stain off her neck and returned to queue
for drinks.
“Cheers, Robin,” said Strike gratefully, when she returned to him with a pint
of Arkell’s Wiltshire Gold, shoving the menu across the table to her. “Ah, that’s
good,” he sighed, taking a swig. “So what’s the most popular one?”
“Sorry?”
“The most popular pub name. You said the White Horse is in the top ten.”
“Oh, right… it’s either the Red Lion or the Crown, I can’t remember which.”
“The Victory’s my real local,” said Strike reminiscently.
He had not been back to Cornwall in two years. He saw the pub now in his
mind’s eye, a squat building of whitewashed Cornish stone, the steps beside it
winding down to the bay. It was the pub in which he had first managed to get
served without ID, sixteen years old and dumped back at his uncle and aunt’s for
a few weeks, while his mother’s life went through one of its regular bouts of
upheaval.
“Ours is the Bay Horse,” said Robin, and she, too, had a sudden vision of a
pub from what she would always think of as home, also white, standing on a
street that led off the market square in Masham. It was there that she had
celebrated her A-level results with her friends, the same night that Matthew and
she had got into a stupid row, and he had left, and she had refused to follow, but
remained with her friends.
“Why ‘bay’?” asked Strike, now halfway down his pint and luxuriating in
the sunshine, his sore leg stretched out in front of him. “Why not just ‘brown’?”
“Well, there are brown horses,” said Robin, “but bay means something
different. Black points: legs, mane and tail.”
“What color was your pony—Angus, wasn’t it?”
“How did you remember that?” asked Robin, surprised.
“Dunno,” said Strike. “Same as you remembering pub names. Some things
stick, don’t they?”
“He was gray.”
“Meaning white. It’s all just jargon to confuse non-riding plebs, isn’t it?”
“No,” said Robin, laughing. “Gray horses have black skin under the white
hair. True whites—”

---

“—die young,” said Strike, as a barmaid arrived to take their order. Having
ordered a burger, Strike lit another cigarette and as the nicotine hit his brain, felt
a wave of something close to euphoria. A pint, a hot day in August, a well-paid
job, food on the way and Robin, sitting across from him, their friendship
restored, if not entirely to what it had been before her honeymoon, then perhaps
as close as was possible, now that she was married. Right now, in this sunny beer
garden, and in spite of the pain in his leg, his tiredness and the unresolved mess
that was his relationship with Lorelei, life felt simple and hopeful.
“Group interviews are never a good idea,” he said, exhaling away from
Robin’s face, “but there were some interesting crosscurrents among the
Chiswells, weren’t there? I’m going to keep working on Izzy. I think she might
be a bit more forthcoming without the family around.”