Lethal White

1. Call Wardle
Text note found in Flick’s flat,
Update on police case if possible.
2. Call Izzy
Show her stolen note.
Ask: was Freddie’s money clip ever found?
Tegan’s details?
Need phone number for Raphael.
Also phone number, if poss, for Della Winn
3. Call Barclay
Give update.
Cover Jimmy & Flick again
When does Jimmy visit Billy?
4. Call hospital
Try and arrange interview with Billy when Jimmy not there.
5. Call Robin
Arrange interview with Raphael
6. Call Della
Try and arrange interview
After a little further thought, he finished the list with
7. Buy teabags/beer/bread
After tidying up the Chiswell file, tipping the overflowing ashtray into the
bin, opening the window wider to admit more cold, fresh air, Strike went for a
last pee, cleaned his teeth, switched off the lights and returned to his bedroom,
where a single reading lamp still burned.
Now, with his defenses weakened by beer and tiredness, the memories he
had sought to bury in work forced their way to the forefront of his mind. As he
undressed and removed his prosthetic leg, he found himself going back over
every word Charlotte had said to him across the table for two in Franco’s,

---

remembering the expression of her green eyes, the scent of Shalimar reaching
him through the garlic fumes of the restaurant, her thin white fingers playing
with the bread.
He got into bed between the chilly sheets and lay, hands behind his head,
staring up into the darkness. He wished he could feel indifferent, but in fact his
ego had stretched luxuriously at the idea that she had read all about the cases that
had made his name and that she thought about him while in bed with her
husband. Now, though, reason and experience rolled up their sleeves, ready to
conduct a professional post-mortem on the remembered conversation,
methodically disinterring the unmistakable signs of Charlotte’s perennial will to
shock and her apparently insatiable need for conflict.
The abandonment of her titled husband and newborn children for a famous,
one-legged detective would certainly constitute the crowning achievement of a
career of disruption. Having an almost pathological hatred of routine,
responsibility or obligation, she had sabotaged every possibility of permanence
before she had to deal with the threats of boredom or compromise. Strike knew
all this, because he knew her better than any other human being, and he knew
that their final parting had happened at the exact moment where real sacrifice
and hard choices had to be made.
But he also knew—and the knowledge was like ineradicable bacteria in a
wound that stopped it ever healing—that she loved him as she had never loved
anyone else. Of course, the skeptical girlfriends and wives of his friends, none of
whom had liked Charlotte, had told him over and over again, “That’s not love,
what she does to you,” or, “Not being funny, Corm, but how do you know she
hasn’t said exactly the same to all the others she’s had?” Such women saw his
confidence that Charlotte loved him as delusion or egotism. They had not been
present for those times of total bliss and mutual understanding that remained
some of the best of Strike’s life. They had not shared jokes inexplicable to any
other human being but himself and Charlotte, or felt the mutual need that had
drawn them back together for sixteen years.
She had walked from him straight into the arms of the man she thought
would hurt Strike worst, and indeed, it had hurt, because Ross was the absolute
antithesis of him and had dated Charlotte before Strike had even met him. Yet
Strike remained certain her flight to Ross had been self-immolation, done purely
for spectacular effect, a Charlottian form of sati.