Lethal White

Best, E

12

The atmosphere we breathe is heavy with storms.

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

The sunset cast a ruddy glow across the duvet behind Robin as she sat at the dressing table in her and Matthew’s spacious new bedroom. Next-door’s barbecue was now smoking the air that had earlier been fragrant with honeysuckle. She had just left Matthew downstairs, lying on the sofa watching the warm-up to the England–Italy game, a cold bottle of Peroni in his hand.

Opening the dressing table drawer, she took out a pair of colored contact lenses she had concealed there. After trial and error the previous day, she had decided the hazel ones appeared most natural with her strawberry-blonde hair. Gingerly, she extracted first one, then the other, placing them over her watering blue-gray irises. It was essential that she get used to wearing them. Ideally she would have had them in all weekend, but Matthew’s reaction when he had seen her in them had dissuaded her.

“Your eyes!” he had said, after staring at her, perplexed, for a few seconds. “Bloody hell, that looks horrible, take them out!”

As Saturday had already been ruined by one of their tense disagreements about her job, she had chosen not to wear the lenses all weekend, because they would serve as a constant reminder to Matthew about what she was up to the following week. He seemed to think that working undercover in the House of Commons was tantamount to treason, and her refusal to tell him who either her client or her targets were had further aggravated him.

Robin kept telling herself that Matthew was worried about her safety and that he could hardly be blamed for it. It had become a mental exercise she performed like a penance: you can’t blame him for being concerned, you nearly got killed last year, he wants you to be safe. However, the fact that she had gone for a drink with Strike on Friday seemed to be worrying Matthew far more than any potential killer.

“Don’t you think you’re being bloody hypocritical?” he said.

Whenever he was angry, the skin around his nose and upper lip became taut. Robin had noticed it years ago, but lately it gave her a sensation close to revulsion. She had never mentioned this to her therapist. It had felt too nasty, too visceral.

“How am I hypocritical?”

“Going for cozy little drinks with him—”

“Matt, I work with—”

“—then complaining when I have lunch with Sarah.”

“Have lunch with her!” said Robin, her pulse quickening in anger. “Do it! As a matter of fact, I met her in the Red Lion, out with some men from work. Do you want to call Tom and tell him his fiancée’s drinking with colleagues? Or am I the only one who’s not allowed to do it?”

The skin around his nose and mouth looked like a muzzle as it tightened, Robin thought: a pale muzzle on a snarling dog.

“Would you have told me you’d gone for a drink with him if Sarah hadn’t seen you?”

“Yes,” said Robin, her temper snapping, “and I’d’ve known you’d be a dick about it, too.”

The tense aftermath of this argument, by no means their most serious of the last month, had lingered all through Sunday. Only in the last couple of hours, with the prospect of the England game to cheer him, had Matthew become amiable again. Robin had even volunteered to fetch him a Peroni from the kitchen and kissed him on the forehead before leaving him, with a sense of liberation, for her colored contact lenses and her preparations for the following day.

Her eyes felt gradually less uncomfortable with repeated blinking. Robin moved across to the bed, where her laptop lay. Pulling it towards her, she saw that an email from Strike had just arrived.

Robin,

Bit of research on the Winns attached. I’ll call you shortly for quick brief before tomorrow.

CS

Robin was annoyed. Strike was supposed to be “plugging gaps” and working nights. Did he think she had done no research of her own over the weekend? Nevertheless, she clicked on the first of several attachments, a document summarizing the fruits of Strike’s online labor.

Geraint Winn

Geraint Ifon Winn, d.o.b. 15th July 1950. Born Cardiff. Father a miner. Grammar school educated, met Della at University of Cardiff. Was “property consultant” prior to acting as her election agent and running her Parliamentary office post-election. No details of former career available online. No company ever registered in his name. Lives with Della, Southwark Park Road, Bermondsey.

Strike had managed to dig up a couple of poor-quality pictures of Geraint with his well-known wife, both of which Robin had already found and saved to her laptop. She knew how hard Strike had had to work to find an image of Geraint, because it had taken her a long time the previous night, while Matthew slept, to find them. Press photographers did not seem to feel he added much to pictures. A thin, balding man who wore heavy-framed glasses, he had a lipless mouth, a weak chin and a pronounced overbite, which taken together put Robin in mind of an overweight gecko.

Strike had also attached information on the Minister for Sport.

Della Winn

D.o.b. 8th August 1947. Née Jones. Born and raised Vale of Glamorgan, Wales. Both parents teachers. Blind from birth due to bilateral microphthalmia. Attended St. Enodoch Royal School for the Blind from age 5–18. Won multiple swimming awards as teenager. (See attached articles for further details, also of The Playing Field charity.)

Even though Robin had read as much as she could about Della over the weekend, she plowed diligently through both articles. They told her little that she did not already know. Della had worked for a prominent human rights charity before successfully standing for election in the Welsh constituency in which she had been born. She was a long-time advocate for the benefit of sports in deprived areas, a champion of disabled athletes and a supporter for projects that used sport to rehabilitate injured veterans. The founding of her charity, the Level Playing Field, to support young athletes and sportspeople facing challenges, whether of poverty or physical impairment, had received a fair amount of press coverage. Many high-profile sportspeople had given their time to fundraisers.

The articles that Strike had attached both mentioned something that Robin already knew from her own research: the Winns, like the Chiswells, had lost a child. Della and Geraint’s daughter and only offspring had killed herself at the age of sixteen, a year before Della had stood for Parliament. The tragedy was mentioned in every profile Robin had read on Della Winn, even those lauding her substantial achievements. Her maiden speech in Parliament had supported a proposed bullying hotline, but she had never otherwise discussed her child’s suicide.

Robin’s mobile rang. After checking that the bedroom door was closed, Robin answered.

“That was quick,” said Strike thickly, through a mouthful of Singapore noodles. “Sorry—took me by surprise—just got a takeaway.”

“I’ve read your email,” said Robin. She heard a metallic snap and was sure he was opening a can of beer. “Very useful, thanks.”

“Got your disguise sorted?” Strike asked.

“Yes,” said Robin, turning to examine herself at the mirror. It was strange how much a change of eye color transformed your face. She was planning to wear a pair of clear-lensed glasses over her hazel eyes.

“And you know enough about Chiswell to pretend to be his goddaughter?”

“Of course,” said Robin.

“Go on then,” said Strike, “impress me.”

“Born 1944,” Robin said at once, without reading her notes. “Studied Classics at Merton College, Oxford, then joined Queen’s Own Hussars, saw active service in Aden and Singapore.

“First wife, Lady Patricia Fleetwood, three children: Sophia, Isabella and Freddie. Sophia’s married and lives in Northumberland, Isabella runs Chiswell’s Parliamentary office—”

“Does she?” said Strike, sounding vaguely surprised, and Robin was pleased to know that she had discovered something he did not.

“Is she the daughter you knew?” she asked, remembering what S

trike had said in the office.

“Wouldn’t go as far as ‘knew.’ I met her a couple of times with Charlotte. Everyone called her ‘Izzy Chizzy.’ One of those upper-class nicknames.”

“Lady Patricia divorced Chiswell after he got a political journalist pregnant—”

“—which resulted in the disappointing son at the art gallery.”

“Exactly—”

Robin moved the mouse around to bring up a saved picture, this time of a dark and rather beautiful young man in a charcoal suit, heading up courtroom steps accompanied by a stylish, black-haired woman in sunglasses whom he closely resembled, though she looked hardly old enough to be his mother.

“—but Chiswell and the journalist split up not long after Raphael was born,” said Robin.

“The family calls him ‘Raff,’” said Strike, “and the second wife doesn’t like him, thinks Chiswell should have disowned him after the car crash.”

Robin made a further note.

“Great, thanks. Chiswell’s current wife, Kinvara, was unwell last year,” Robin continued, bringing up a picture of Kinvara, a curvaceous redhead in a slinky black dress and heavy diamond necklace. She was some thirty years younger than Chiswell and pouting at the camera. Had she not known, Robin would have guessed them father and daughter rather than a married couple.

“With nervous exhaustion,” said Strike, beating her to it. “Yeah. Drink or drugs, d’you reckon?”

Robin heard a clang and surmised that Strike had just dropped an empty Tennent’s can in the office bin. He was alone, then. Lorelei never stayed in the tiny flat upstairs.

“Who knows?” said Robin, her eyes still on Kinvara Chiswell.

“One last thing,” said Strike. “Just in. A couple of kids went missing in Oxfordshire around the right time to tally with Billy’s story.”

There was a brief pause.

“You still there?” asked Strike.

“Yes… I thought you don’t believe Chiswell strangled a child?”

“I don’t,” said Strike. “The timescale doesn’t fit, and if Jimmy knew a Tory minister had strangled a kid, he wouldn’t have waited twenty years to try and monetise it. But I’d still like to know whether Billy’s imagining that he saw someone throttled. I’m going to do a bit of digging on the names Wardle’s given me and if either seem credible I might ask you to sound Izzy out. She might remember something about a kid disappearing in the vicinity of Chiswell House.”

Robin said nothing.

“Like I said in the pub, Billy’s very ill. It’s probably nothing,” said Strike, with a trace of defensiveness. As he and Robin were both well aware, he had previously jettisoned paid cases and rich clients to pursue mysteries that others might have let lie. “I just—”

“—can’t rest easy until you’ve looked into it,” said Robin. “All right. I understand.”

Unseen by her, Strike grinned and rubbed his tired eyes.

“Well, best of luck tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll be on my mobile if you need me.”

“What are you going to be up to?”

“Paperwork. Jimmy Knight’s ex doesn’t work Mondays. I’m off to Manchester to find her on Tuesday.”

Robin experienced a sudden wave of nostalgia for the previous year, when she and Strike had undertaken a road trip together to interrogate women left behind in the wake of dangerous men. She wondered whether he had thought about it while he planned this journey.

“Watching England–Italy?” she asked.

“Yeah,” said Strike. “There’s nothing else, is there?”

“No,” said Robin hurriedly. She had not meant to sound as though she wanted to detain him. “Speak soon, then.”

She cut the call on his farewell and tossed the mobile aside onto the bed.

13

I am not going to let myself be beaten to the ground by the dread of what may happen.

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

The following morning, Robin woke, gasping, her fingers at her own throat, trying to loosen a non-existent hold. She was already at the bedroom door when Matthew woke, confused.

“It’s nothing, I’m fine,” she muttered, before he could articulate a question, groping to find the handle that would let her out of the bedroom.

The surprise was that it hadn’t happened more often since she had heard the story of the strangled child. Robin knew exactly how it felt to have fingers close tightly around your neck, to feel your brain flood with darkness, to know that you were seconds from being blotted out of existence. She had been driven into therapy by sharp-edged fragments of recollection that were unlike normal memories and which had the power to drag her suddenly out of her body and plunge her back into a past where she could smell the strangler’s nicotine-stained fingers, and feel the stabber’s soft, sweatshirted belly against her back.

She locked the bathroom door and sat down on the floor in the loose T-shirt she had worn to bed, focusing on her breathing, on the feel of the cool tiles beneath her bare legs, observing, as she had been taught, the rapid beating of her heart, the adrenaline jolting through her veins, not fighting her panic, but watching it. After a while, she consciously noticed the faint smell of the lavender body wash she had used last night, and heard the distant passing of an airplane.

You’re safe. Just a dream. Just a dream.

Through two closed doors, she heard Matthew’s alarm go off. A few minutes later, he knocked on the door.

“You all right?”

“Fine,” Robin called back, over the running tap.

She opened the door.

“Everything OK?” he asked, watching her closely.

“Just needed a pee,” said Robin brightly, heading back to the bedroom for her colored contact lenses.

Before starting work with Strike, Robin had signed on with an agency called Temporary Solutions. The offices to which they had sent her were jumbled in her memory now, so that only anomalies, eccentrics and oddities remained. She remembered the alcoholic boss whose dictated letters she had reworded out of kindness, the desk drawer she had opened to find a complete set of dentures and a pair of stained underpants, the hopeful young man who had nicknamed her “Bobbie” and tried, ineptly, to flirt over their back-to-back monitors, the woman who had plastered the interior of her cubicle workspace with pictures of the actor Ian McShane and the girl who had broken up with her boyfriend on the telephone in the middle of the open-plan office, indifferent to the prurient hush falling over the rest of the room. Robin doubted whether any of the people with whom she had come into glancing contact remembered her any better than she remembered them, even the timid romancer who had called her “Bobbie.”

However, from the moment that she arrived at the Palace of Westminster, she knew that what happened here would live in her memory forever. She felt a ripple of pleasure simply to leave the tourists behind and pass through the gate where the policeman stood guard. As she approached the palace, with its intricate gold moldings starkly shadowed in the early morning sun, the famous clock tower silhouetted against the sky, her nerves and her excitement mounted.

Strike had told her which side door to use. It led into a long, dimly lit stone hall, but first she must pass through a metal detector and X-ray machine of the kind used at airports. As she took off her shoulder bag to be scanned, Robin noticed a tall, slightly disheveled natural blonde in her thirties waiting a short distance away, holding a small package wrapped in brown paper. The woman watched as Robin stood for an automated picture that would appear on a paper day pass, to be worn on a lanyard around her neck, and when the security man waved Robin on, stepped forwards.

“Venetia?”

“Yes,” said Robin.

“Izzy,” said the other, smiling and holding out a hand. She was wearing a loose blouse with a splashy pattern of oversize flowers on it, and wide-legged trousers. “This is from Papa.” She pressed the package she was holding into Robin’s hands. “I’m rilly sorry, we’ve got to dash—so glad you got here on tim

e—”

She set off at a brisk walk, and Robin hastened to follow.

“—I’m in the middle of printing off a bunch of papers to take over to Papa at DCMS—I’m snowed under just now. Papa being Minister for Culture, with the Olympics coming, it’s just crazy—”

She led Robin at a near jog through the hall, which had stained-glass windows at the far end, and off along labyrinthine corridors, talking all the while in a confident, upper-class accent, leaving Robin impressed by her lungpower.

“Yah, I’m leaving at the summer recess—setting up a decorating company with my friend Jacks—I’ve been here for five years—Papa’s not happy—he needs somebody rilly good and the only applicant he liked turned us down.”

She talked over her shoulder at Robin, who was hurrying to keep up.

“I don’t s’pose you know any fabulous PAs?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Robin, who had retained no friends from her temping career.

“Nearly there,” said Izzy, who had led Robin through a bewildering number of narrow corridors, all carpeted in the same forest green as the leather seats Robin had seen in the Commons on TV. At last they reached a side-passage off which led several heavy wooden doors, arched in the gothic style.

“That,” said Izzy in a stage whisper, pointing as they passed the first door on the right, “is Winn’s. This,” she said, marching to the last door on the left, “is ours.”

She stood aside to let Robin pass into the room first.

The office was cramped and cluttered. The arched stone windows were hung with net curtains, beyond which lay the terrace bar, where shadowy figures moved against the dazzling brightness of the Thames. There were two desks, a multitude of bookshelves and a sagging green armchair. Green drapes hung at the overflowing bookshelves that covered one wall, only partially concealing the untidy stacks of files stacked there. On top of a filing cabinet stood a TV monitor, showing the currently empty interior of the Commons, its green benches deserted. A kettle sat beside mismatched mugs on a low shelf and had stained the wallpaper above it. The desktop printer whirred wheezily in a corner. Some of the papers it was disgorging had slid onto the threadbare carpet.