Lethal White

  “Oh no,” she said softly, coming to a halt at the foot of the bed.

  “Robin, you didn’t have to—”

  “I know I didn’t,” said Robin. She pulled a chair up beside Strike’s. “But I wouldn’t want to have to deal with this alone. Be careful, it’s hot,” she added, passing him a tea.

  He took the cup from her, set it down on the bedside cabinet, then reached out and gripped her hand painfully tightly. He had released her before she could squeeze back. Then both sat staring at Jack for a few seconds, until Robin, her fingers throbbing, asked:

  “What’s the latest?”

  “He still needs the oxygen and he’s not peeing enough,” said Strike. “I don’t know what that means. I’d rather have a score out of ten or—I don’t fucking know. Oh, and they want to X-ray his chest in case they punctured his lungs putting that tube in.”

  “When was the operation?”

  “Yesterday afternoon. He collapsed doing cross-country at school. Some friend of Greg and Lucy’s who lives right by the school came with him in the ambulance and I met them here.”

  Neither spoke for a while, their eyes on Jack.

  Then Strike said, “I’ve been a bloody terrible uncle. I don’t know any of their birthdays. I couldn’t have told you how old he was. The dad of his mate’s who brought him in knew more than me. Jack wants to be a soldier, Luce says he talks about me and he draws me pictures and I never even bloody thank him.”

  “Well,” said Robin, pretending not to see that Strike was dabbing roughly at his eyes with his sleeve, “you’re here for him right now when he needs you and you’ve got plenty of time to make it up to him.”

  “Yeah,” said Strike, blinking rapidly. “You know what I’ll do if he—? I’ll take him to the Imperial War Museum. Day trip.”

  “Good idea,” said Robin kindly.

  “Have you ever been?”

  “No,” said Robin.

  “Good museum.”

  Two nurses, one male, one the woman whom Strike had earlier snubbed, now approached.

  “We need to X-ray him,” said the girl, addressing Robin rather than Strike. “Would you mind waiting outside the ward?”

  “How long will you be?” asked Strike.

  “Half an hour. Forty minutes-ish.”

  So Robin fetched Strike’s crutches and they went to the canteen.

  “This is really good of you, Robin,” Strike said over two more pallid teas and some ginger biscuits, “but if you’ve got things to do—”

  “I’ll stay until Greg and Lucy come,” said Robin. “It’ll be awful for them, being so far away. Matt’s twenty-seven and his dad was still worried sick when Matt was so ill in the Maldives.”

  “Was he?”

  “Yeah, you know, when he—oh, of course. I never told you, did I?”

  “Told me what?”

  “He got a nasty infection on our honeymoon. Scratched himself on some coral. They were talking about airlifting him off to hospital at one point, but it was OK. Wasn’t as bad as they first thought.”

  As she said it, she remembered pushing open the wooden door still hot from the daylong sun, her throat constricted with fear as she prepared to tell Matthew she wanted an annulment, little knowing what she was about to face.

  “You know, Matt’s mum died not that long ago, so Geoffrey was really scared about Matt… but it was all OK,” Robin repeated, taking a sip of her tepid tea, her eyes on the woman behind the counter, who was ladling baked beans onto a skinny teenager’s plate.

  Strike watched her. He had sensed omissions in her story. Blame sea-borne bacteria.

  “Must’ve been scary,” he said.

  “Well, it wasn’t fun,” said Robin, examining her short, clean fingernails, then checking her watch. “If you want a cigarette we should go now, he’ll be back soon.”

  One of the smokers they joined outside was wearing pajamas. He had brought his drip with him, and held it tightly like a shepherd’s crook to keep himself steady. Strike lit up and exhaled towards a clear blue sky.

  “I haven’t asked about your anniversary weekend.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t work,” said Robin quickly. “It had been booked and—”

  “That’s not why I was asking.”

  She hesitated.

  “It wasn’t great, to be honest.”

  “Ah, well. Sometimes when there’s pressure to have a good time—”

  “Yes, exactly,” said Robin.

  After another short pause she asked:

  “Lorelei’s working today, I suppose?”

  “Probably,” said Strike. “What is this, Saturday? Yeah, I suppose so.”

  They stood in silence while Strike’s cigarette shrank, millimeter by millimeter, watching visitors and arriving ambulances. There was no awkwardness between them, but the air seemed charged, somehow, with things wondered and unspoken. Finally Strike pressed out the stub of his cigarette in a large open ashtray that most smokers had ignored and checked his phone.

  “They boarded twenty minutes ago,” he said, reading Lucy’s last text. “They should be here by three.”

  “What happened to your mobile?” asked Robin, looking at the heavily sellotaped screen.

  “Fell on it,” said Strike. “I’ll get a new one when Chiswell pays us.”

  They passed the X-ray machine being rolled out of the ward as they walked back inside.

  “Chest looks fine!” said the radiographer pushing it.

  They sat by Jack’s side talking quietly for another hour, until Robin went to buy more tea and chocolate bars from nearby vending machines, which they consumed in the waiting room while Robin filled Strike in about everything she had discovered about Winn’s charity.

  “You’ve outdone yourself,” said Strike, halfway down his second Mars bar. “That was excellent work, Robin.”

  “You don’t mind that I told Chiswell?”

  “No, you had to. We’re up against it time-wise with Mitch Patterson sniffing round. Has this Curtis-Lacey woman accepted the invitation to the reception?”

  “I’ll find out on Monday. What about Barclay? How’s he getting on with Jimmy Knight?”

  “Still nothing we can use,” Strike sighed, running a hand over the stubble that was rapidly becoming a beard, “but I’m hopeful. He’s good, Barclay. He’s like you. Got an instinct for this stuff.”

  A family shuffled into the waiting room, the father sniffing and the mother sobbing. The son, who looked barely older than six, stared at Strike’s missing leg as though it was merely one more horrible detail in the nightmarish world he had suddenly entered. Strike and Robin glanced at each other and left, Robin carrying Strike’s tea as he swung along on his crutches.

  Once settled beside Jack again, Strike asked, “How did Chiswell react when you told him everything you’d got on Winn?”

  “He was delighted. As a matter of fact, he offered me a job.”

  “I’m always surprised that doesn’t happen more often,” said Strike, unperturbed.

  Just then, the anesthetist and surgeon converged at the foot of Jack’s bed again.

  “Well, things are looking up,” said the anesthetist. “His X-ray’s clear and his temperature’s coming down. That’s the thing with children,” he said, smiling at Robin. “They travel fast in both directions. We’re going to see how he manages with a little less oxygen, but I think we’re getting on top of things.”

  “Oh, thank God,” said Robin.

  “He’s going to live?” said Strike.

  “Oh yes, I think so,” said the surgeon, with a touch of patronage. “We know what we’re doing in here, you know.”

  “Gotta let Lucy know,” muttered Strike, trying and failing to get up, feeling weaker at good news than he’d felt at bad. Robin fetched his crutches and helped him into a standing position. As she watched him swinging towards the waiting room, she sat back down, exhaled loudly and put her face briefly into her hands.

  “Always worst for the mothe
rs,” said the anesthetist kindly.

  She didn’t bother to correct him.

  Strike was away for twenty minutes. When he returned, he said:

  “They’ve just landed. I’ve warned her how he looks, so they’re prepared. They should be here in about an hour.”

  “Great,” said Robin.

  “You can head off, Robin. I didn’t mean to balls up your Saturday.”

  “Oh,” said Robin, feeling oddly deflated. “OK.”

  She stood up, took her jacket off the back of the chair and collected her bag.

  “If you’re sure?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ll probably try and get a kip in now we know he’s going to be all right. I’ll walk you out.”

  “There’s no need—”

  “I want to. I can have another smoke.”

  But when they reached the exit, Strike walked on with her, away from the huddled smokers, past the ambulances and the car park that seemed to stretch for miles, roofs glimmering like the backs of marine creatures, surfacing through a dusty haze.

  “How did you get here?” he asked, once they were away from the crowds, beside a patch of lawn surrounded by stocks whose scent mingled with the smell of hot tarmac.

  “Bus, then cab.”

  “Let me give you the cab fare—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Seriously, no.”

  “Well… thanks, Robin. It made all the difference.”

  She smiled up at him.

  “’S’what friends are for.”

  Awkwardly, leaning on his crutches, he bent towards her. The hug was brief and she broke away first, afraid that he was going to overbalance. The kiss that he had meant to plant on her cheek landed on her mouth as she turned her face towards him.

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said again, blushing.

  “Well, I’d better get back.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  He turned away.

  “Let me know how he is,” she called after him, and he raised one hand in acknowledgment.

  Robin walked away without looking back. She could still feel the shape of his mouth on hers, her skin tingling where his stubble had scratched her, but she did not rub the sensation away.

  Strike had forgotten that he had meant to have another cigarette. Whether because he was now confident that he would be able to take his nephew to the Imperial War Museum, or for some other reason, his exhaustion was now stippled with a crazy light-heartedness, as though he had just taken a shot of spirits. The dirt and heat of a London afternoon, with the smell of stocks in the air, seemed suddenly full of beauty.

  It was a glorious thing, to be given hope, when all had seemed lost.

  27

  They cling to their dead a long time at Rosmersholm.

  Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

  By the time Robin found her way back across London to the unfamiliar cricket ground, it was five in the afternoon and Matthew’s charity match was over. She found him back in his street clothes in the bar, fuming and barely speaking to her. Matthew’s side had lost. The other team was crowing.

  Facing an evening of being ignored by her husband, and having no friends among his colleagues, Robin decided against going on to the restaurant with the two teams and their partners, and made her way home alone.

  The following morning, she found Matthew fully dressed on the sofa, snoring drunkenly. They argued when he woke up, a row that lasted hours and resolved nothing. Matthew wanted to know why it was Robin’s job to hurry off and hold Strike’s hand, given that he had a girlfriend. Robin maintained that you were a lousy person if you left a friend alone to cope with a possibly dying child.

  The row escalated, attaining levels of spite that had never yet been reached in a year of marital bickering. Robin lost her temper, and asked whether she was not owed time off for good behavior, after a decade spent watching Matthew strut around various sports fields. He was genuinely stung.

  “Well, if you don’t enjoy it, you should have said!”

  “Never occurred to you I might not, did it? Because I’m supposed to see all your victories as mine, aren’t I, Matt? Whereas my achievements—”

  “Sorry, remind me what they are again?” Matthew said, a low blow he had never thrown at her before. “Or are we counting his achievements as yours?”

  Three days passed, and they had not forgiven each other. Robin had slept in the spare room every night since their row, rising early each morning so she could leave the house before Matthew was out of the shower. She felt a constant ache behind the eyes, an unhappiness which was easier to ignore while at work, but which settled back over her like a patch of low pressure once she turned her footsteps homewards each night. Matthew’s silent anger pressed against the walls of their house, which, while twice the size of any space they had shared before, seemed darker and more cramped.

  He was her husband. She had promised to try. Tired, angry, guilty and miserable, Robin felt as though she were waiting for something definitive to happen, something that would release them both with honor, without more filthy rows, with reasonableness. Over and again, her thoughts returned to the wedding day, when she had discovered that Matthew had deleted Strike’s messages. With her whole heart, she regretted not leaving then, before he could scratch himself on coral, before she could be trapped, as she now saw it, by cowardice disguised as compassion.

  As Robin approached the House of Commons on Wednesday morning, not yet focused on the day ahead, but pondering her marital problems, a large man in an overcoat peeled away from the railings where he had been mingling with the first tourists of the day and walked towards her. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with thick silver hair and a squashed, deeply pitted and lined face. Robin did not realize that she was his object until he halted right in front of her, large feet placed firmly at right angles, blocking her onward progress.

  “Venetia? Can I have a quick word, love?”

  She took a panicked half-step backwards, looking up into the hard, flat face, peppered with wide pores. He had to be press. Did he recognize her? The hazel contact lenses were a little more discernible at close quarters, even through her plain-lensed glasses.

  “Just started working for Jasper Chiswell, haven’t you, love? I was wondering how that came about. How much is he paying you? Known him long?”

  “No comment,” said Robin, trying to sidestep him. He moved with her. Fighting the rising feeling of panic, Robin said firmly, “Get out of my way. I need to get to work.”

  A couple of tall Scandinavian youths with rucksacks were watching the encounter with clear concern.

  “I’m only giving you a chance to tell your side of the story, darling,” said her accoster, quietly. “Think about it. Might be your only chance.”

  He moved aside. Robin knocked into her would-be rescuers as she pushed past them. Shit, shit, shit… who was he?

  Once safely past the security scanner, she moved aside in the echoing stone hall where workers were striding past her and called Strike. He didn’t pick up.

  “Call me, please, urgently,” she muttered to his voicemail.

  Rather than heading for Izzy’s office, or the wide echoing space of Portcullis House, she took refuge in one of the smaller tearooms, which without its counter and till would have resembled a dons’ common room, paneled in dark wood and carpeted in the ubiquitous forest green. A heavy oak screen divided the room, MPs sitting at the far end, away from the lesser employees. She bought a cup of coffee, took a table beside the window, hung her coat on the back of her chair and waited for Strike to call her. The quiet, sedate space did little to calm Robin’s nerves.

  It was nearly three-quarters of an hour before Strike phoned.

  “Sorry, missed you, I was on the Tube,” he said, panting. “Then Chiswell called. He’s only just rung off. We’ve got trouble.”

  “Oh God, what now?” said Robin, setting her coffee down as her stomach contracted in panic.

  “The Sun th
ink you’re the story.”

  And at once, Robin knew whom she had just met outside the Houses of Parliament: Mitch Patterson, the private detective the newspaper had hired.

  “They’ve been digging for anything new in Chiswell’s life, and there you are, good-looking new woman in his office, of course they’re going to check you out. Chiswell’s first marriage split up because he had an affair at work. Thing is, it isn’t going to take them long to find out you aren’t really his goddaughter. Ouch—fuck—”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “First day back on two legs and Dodgy Doc’s finally decided to go and meet a girl on the sly. Chelsea Physic Garden, Tube to Sloane Square and a bugger of a walk. Anyway,” he panted, “what’s your bad news?”

  “It’s more of the same,” said Robin. “Mitch Patterson just accosted me outside Parliament.”

  “Shit. D’you think he recognized you?”

  “He didn’t seem to, but I don’t know. I should clear out, shouldn’t I?” said Robin, contemplating the cream ceiling, which was stuccoed in a pattern of overlapping circles. “We could put someone else in here. Andy, or Barclay?”

  “Not yet,” said Strike. “If you walk out the moment you meet Mitch Patterson, it’ll look like you’re the story for sure. Anyway, Chiswell wants you to go to this reception tomorrow night, to try and get the rest of the dirt on Winn from that other trustee—what was her name, Elspeth? Bollocks—sorry—having trouble here, it’s a bloody woodchip path. Dodgy’s taking the girl for a walk into the undergrowth. She looks about seventeen.”

  “Don’t you need your phone, to take photographs?”

  “I’m wearing those glasses with the inbuilt camera… oh, here we go,” he added quietly. “Dodgy’s copping a feel in some bushes.”

  Robin waited. She could hear a very faint clicking.

  “And here come some genuine horticulturalists,” Strike muttered. “That’s driven them back out into the open…