Lethal White

Izzy will like being worked on, Robin thought, as she took out her mobile.
“I’ve got something to show you. Look.”
She brought up her photograph of Freddie Chiswell’s birthday party.
“That,” she said, pointing at the girl’s pale, unhappy face, “is Rhiannon
Winn. She was at Freddie Chiswell’s eighteenth birthday party. Turns out—” she
scrolled back a picture, to show the group in white tunics, “they were on the
British fencing team together.”
“Christ, of course,” said Strike, taking the phone from Robin. “The sword—
the sword in Ebury Street. I bet it was Freddie’s!”
“Of course!” echoed Robin, wondering why she hadn’t realized that before.
“That can’t be long before she killed herself,” said Strike, scrutinizing more
closely the miserable figure of Rhiannon Winn at the birthday party. “And—
bloody hell, that’s Jimmy Knight behind her. What’s he doing at a public
schoolboy’s eighteenth?”
“Free drink?” suggested Robin.
Strike gave a small snort of amusement as he handed back Robin’s phone.
“Sometimes the obvious answer is the right one. Was I imagining Izzy
looking self-conscious when the story of Jimmy’s teenage sex appeal came up?”
“No,” said Robin, “I noticed that, too.”
“Nobody wants us to talk to Jimmy’s old mates the Butcher brothers, either.”
“Because they know more than where their sister works?”
Strike sipped his beer, thinking back to what Chiswell had told him the first
time they’d met.
“Chiswell said other people were involved in whatever he did to get
blackmailed, but they had a lot to lose if it got out.”
He took out his notebook and contemplated his own spiky, hard-to-read
handwriting, while Robin sat peacefully enjoying the quiet chatter of the beer

---

garden. A lazy bee buzzed nearby, reminding her of the lavender walk at Le
Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, where she and Matthew had spent their anniversary. It
was best not to compare how she felt now to the way she had felt then.
“Maybe,” said Strike, tapping the open notebook with his pen, “the Butcher
brothers agreed to take on horse-slashing duties for Jimmy while he was in
London? I always thought he might have mates back down here who could’ve
taken care of that side of things. But we’ll let Izzy get Tegan’s whereabouts out
of them before we approach them. Don’t want to upset the client unless it’s
absolutely necessary.”
“No,” agreed Robin. “I wonder… d’you think Jimmy met them when he
came down here looking for Billy?”
“Could well have done,” said Strike, nodding over his notes. “Very
interesting, that. From what they said to each other on that march, Jimmy and
Flick knew where Billy was at the time. They were off to see him when my
hamstring went. Now they’ve lost him again… you know, I’d give a hell of a lot
to find Billy. That’s where all of this started and we’re still—”
He broke off as their food arrived: a burger with blue cheese on it for Strike,
and a bowl of chili for Robin.
“We’re still?” prompted Robin, as the barmaid moved away.
“… none the wiser,” said Strike, “about the kid he claims he saw die. I didn’t
want to ask the Chiswells about Suki Lewis, or not yet. Best not to suggest I’m
interested in anyone but Chiswell’s death right now.”
He picked up his burger and took an enormous bite, his eyes unfocused,
staring out over the road. After demolishing half of his burger, Strike turned
back to his notes.
“Things to be done,” he announced, picking up his pen again. “I want to find
this cleaning woman Jasper Chiswell laid off. She had a key for a bit and she
might be able to tell us how and when the helium got into the house.
“Hopefully Izzy will trace Tegan Butcher for us, and Tegan’ll be able to shed
some light on Raphael’s trip down there on the morning his father died, because
I’m still not buying that story.
“We’ll leave Tegan’s brothers for now, because the Chiswells clearly don’t
want us talking to them, but I might try and have a word with Henry Drummond,
the art dealer.”
“Why?” asked Robin.
“He was an old friend, did Chiswell a favor hiring Raphael. They must’ve
been reasonably close. You never know, Chiswell might’ve told him what the
blackmail was about. And he tried to reach Chiswell early on the morning
Chiswell died. I’d like to know why.

---

“So, going forwards: you’re going to have a bash at Flick at her jewelry
shop, Barclay can stay on Jimmy and Flick, and I’ll tackle Geraint Winn and
Aamir Mallik.”
“They’ll never talk to you,” said Robin at once. “Never.”
“Want to bet?”
“Tenner says they won’t.”
“I don’t pay you enough for you to throw tenners around,” said Strike. “You
can buy me a pint.”
Strike took care of the bill and they headed back across the road to the car,
Robin secretly wishing that there was somewhere else they needed to go,
because the prospect of returning to Albury Street was depressing.
“We might be better off going back on the M40,” said Strike, reading a map
on his phone. “There’s been an accident on the M4.”
“OK,” said Robin.
This would take them past Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. As she reversed out
of the car park, Robin suddenly remembered Matthew’s texts from earlier. He
had claimed to have been messaging work, but she couldn’t remember him ever
contacting his office at a weekend before. One of his regular complaints about
her job was that its hours and responsibilities bled into Saturday and Sunday,
unlike his.
“What?” she said, becoming aware that Strike had just spoken to her.
“I said, they’re supposed to be bad luck, aren’t they?” repeated Strike, as
they drove away from the pub.
“What are?”
“White horses,” he said. “Isn’t there a play where white horses appear as a
death omen?”
“I don’t know,” said Robin, changing gear. “Death rides a white horse in
Revelations, though.”
“A pale horse,” Strike corrected her, winding down the window so that he
could smoke again.
“Pedant.”
“Says the woman who won’t call a brown horse ‘brown,’” said Strike.
He reached for the grubby wooden cross, which was sliding about on the
dashboard. Robin kept her eyes on the road ahead, determinedly focused on
anything but the vivid image that had occurred to her when she had first spotted
it, almost hidden in the thick, whiskered stems of the nettles: that of a child,
rotting in the earth at the bottom of that dark basin in the woods, dead and
forgotten by everyone except a man they said was mad.

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