Lethal White

Canned messages began to issue from the answering machine, drowning out the faint hum of conversation from the terrace beyond the net-curtained window.

A man named Rupert asked Izzy to call him back about “the AGM.”

A constituent called Mrs. Ricketts spoke for two solid minutes about traffic along the Banbury road.

An irate woman said crossly that she ought to have expected an answering machine and that MPs ought to be answering to the public personally, then spoke until cut off by the machine about her neighbors’ failure to lop overhanging branches from a tree, in spite of repeated requests from the council.

Then a man’s growl, almost theatrically menacing, filled the quiet office:

“They say they piss themselves as they die, Chiswell, is that true? Forty grand, or I’ll find out how much the papers will pay.”

20

We two have worked our way forward in complete companionship.

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

Strike had selected the Two Chairmen for his Wednesday evening catch-up with Robin because of its proximity to the Palace of Westminster. The pub was tucked away on a junction of centuries-old back streets—Old Queen Street, Cockpit Steps—amid a motley collection of quaint, sedate buildings that stood at oblique angles to each other. Only as he limped across the road and saw the hanging metal sign over the front door did Strike realize that the “two chairmen” for whom the pub was named were not, as he had assumed, joint managers of a board, but lowly servants carrying the heavy load of a sedan chair. Tired and sore as Strike was, the image seemed appropriate, although the occupant of the sedan chair in the pub sign was a refined lady in white, not a large, curmudgeonly minister with wiry hair and a short temper.

The bar was crowded with after-work drinkers and Strike had a sudden apprehension that he might not get a seat inside, an unwelcome prospect, because leg, back and neck were tight and sore after yesterday’s long drive and the hours he had spent in Harley Street today, watching Dodgy Doc.

Strike had just bought a pint of London Pride when the table by the window became free. With a turn of speed born of necessity, he nabbed the high bench with its back to the street before the nearest group of suited men and women could annex it. There was no question of anybody challenging his right to sole occupancy of a table made for four. Strike was large enough, and surly enough in appearance to make even this group of civil servants doubt their ability to negotiate a compromise.

The wooden-floored bar was what Strike mentally categorized as “upmarket utilitarian.” A faded mural on the back wall depicted bewigged eighteenth-century men gossiping together, but otherwise all was pared-back wood and monochrome prints. He peered out of the window to see whether Robin was within sight, but as there was no sign of her he drank his beer, read the day’s news on his phone and tried to ignore the menu lying on the table in front of him, which was taunting him with a picture of battered fish.

Robin, who had been due to arrive at six, was still absent at half past. Unable to resist the picture on the menu any longer, Strike ordered himself cod and chips and a second pint, and read a long article in The Times about the upcoming Olympics opening ceremony, which was really a long list of the ways in which the journalist feared it might misrepresent and humiliate the nation.

By a quarter to seven, Strike was starting to worry about Robin. He had just decided to call her when she came hurrying in through the door, flushed, wearing glasses that Strike knew she did not need and with an expression that he recognized as the barely contained excitement of one who has something worthwhile to impart.

“Hazel eyes,” he noted, as she sat down opposite him. “Good one. Changes your whole look. What’ve you got?”

“How do you know I’ve—? Well, loads, actually,” she said, deciding it was not worthwhile toying with him. “I nearly called you earlier but there have been people around all day, and I had a close shave this morning placing the listening device.”

“You did it? Bloody well done!”

“Thanks. I really want a drink, hang on.”

She came back with a glass of red wine and launched immediately into an account of the message that Raphael had found on the answering machine that morning.

“I had no chance of getting the caller’s number, because there were four messages after it. The phone system’s antiquated.”

Frowning, Strike asked: “How did the caller pronounce ‘Chiswell,’ can you remember?”

“They said it right. Chizzle.”

“Fits with Jimmy,” said Strike. “What happened after the call?”

“Raff told Izzy about it when she got back to the office,” said Robin, and Strike thought he detected a touch of self-consciousness as she said the name “Raff.” “He didn’t understand what he was passing on, obviously. Izzy called her dad straight away and he went berserk. We could hear him shouting on the end of the line, though not much of what he was actually saying.”

Strike stroked his chin, thinking.

“What did the anonymous caller sound like?”

“London accent,” Robin said. “Threatening.”

“‘They piss themselves as they die,’” repeated Strike in an undertone.

There was something that Robin wanted to say, but a brutal personal memory made it hard for her to articulate.

“Strangling victims—”

“Yeah,” said Strike, cutting her off. “I know.”

Both of them drank.

“Well, assuming the call was Jimmy,” Robin went on, “he’s phoned the department twice today.”

She opened her handbag and showed Strike the listening device hidden inside it.

“You retrieved it?” he asked, staggered.

“And replaced it with another one,” said Robin, unable to suppress a triumphant smile. “That’s why I’m late. I took a chance. Aamir, who works with Winn, left and Geraint came into our office while I was packing up, to chat me up.”

“He did, did he?” asked Strike, amused.

“I’m glad you find it funny,” said Robin coolly. “He isn’t a nice man.”

“Sorry,” said Strike. “In what way is he not a nice man?”

“Just take it from me,” said Robin. “I’ve met plenty of them in offices. He’s a pervert, but with creepy add-ons. He was just telling me,” she said, and her indignation showed in the rising tide of pink in her face, “that I remind him of his dead daughter. Then he touched my hair.”

“Touched your hair?” repeated Strike, unamused.

“Picked a bit of it off my shoulder and ran it through his fingers,” said Robin. “Then I think he saw what I thought of him and tried to pass it off as fatherly. Anyway, I said I needed the loo but asked him to stay put so we could keep chatting about charities. I nipped down the corridor and swapped the devices.”

“That was bloody good going, Robin.”

“I listened to it on the way here,” said Robin, pulling headphones out of her pocket, “and—”

Robin handed Strike the headphones.

“—I’ve cued up the interesting bit.”

Strike obediently inserted the earbuds and Robin switched on the tape in her handbag.

“… at three thirty, Aamir.”

The Welsh male voice was interrupted by the sound of a mobile phone ringing. Feet scuffled near the power point, the ring ceased and Geraint said:

“Oh, hello Jimmy… half a mo’—Aamir, close that door.”

More scuffling, footsteps.

“Jimmy, yes…?”

There followed a long stretch in which Geraint seemed to be attempting to stem the flow of a mounting tirade.

“Whoa—now, wai… Jimmy, lis… Jimmy, listen—listen! I know you’ve lost out, Jimmy, I understand how bitter you—Jimmy, please! We understand your feelings—that’s unfair, Jimmy, neither Della nor I grew up wealth—my father was a coalminer, Jimmy! Now listen, please! We’re close to getting the pictures!”

There followed a spell in

which Strike thought he heard, very faintly, the rise and fall of Jimmy Knight’s fluent speech at the end of the telephone.

“I take your point,” said Geraint finally, “but I urge you to do nothing rash, Jimmy. He isn’t going to give you—Jimmy, listen! He isn’t going to give you your money, he’s made that perfectly clear. It’s the newspapers now or nothing, so… proof, Jimmy! Proof!”

Another, shorter period of unintelligible gabbling followed.

“I’ve just told you, haven’t I? Yes… no, but the Foreign Office… well, hardly… no, Aamir has a contact… yes… yes… all right then… I will, Jimmy. Good—yes, all right. Yes. Goodbye.”

The clunk of a mobile being set down was followed by Geraint’s voice.

“Stupid prick,” he said.

There were more footsteps. Strike glanced at Robin, who by a rolling gesture of the hand indicated that he should keep listening. After perhaps thirty seconds, Aamir spoke, diffident and strained.

“Geraint, Christopher didn’t promise anything about the pictures.”

Even on the tinny little tape, with the nearby shufflings of paper at Geraint’s desk, the silence sounded charged.

“Geraint, did you h—?”

“Yes, I heard!” snapped Winn. “Good God, boy, a first from the LSE and you can’t think of a way to persuade that bastard to give you pictures? I’m not asking you to take them out of the department, just to get copies. That shouldn’t be beyond the wit of man.”

“I don’t want more trouble,” muttered Aamir.

“Well, I should have thought,” said Geraint, “after everything Della in particular has done for you…”

“And I’m grateful,” said Aamir swiftly. “You know I am… all right, I’ll—I’ll try.”

For the next minute there were no sounds but scuffing footsteps and papers, followed by a mechanical click. The device automatically switched off after a minute of no talking, activated again when somebody spoke. The next voice was that of a different man asking whether Della would be attending “the sub-committee” this afternoon.

Strike removed the earbuds.

“Did you catch it all?” Robin asked.

“I think so,” said Strike.

She leaned back, watching Strike expectantly.

“The Foreign Office?” he repeated quietly. “What the hell can he have done that means the Foreign Office has got pictures?”

“I thought we weren’t supposed to be interested in what he did?” said Robin, eyebrows raised.

“I never said I wasn’t interested. Just that I’m not being paid to find out.”

Strike’s fish and chips arrived. He thanked the barmaid and proceeded to add a generous amount of ketchup to his plate.

“Izzy was completely matter of fact about whatever it is,” said Robin, thinking back. “She couldn’t possibly have spoken about it the way she did if he’d—you know—murdered anybody.”

She deliberately avoided the word “strangled.” Three panic attacks in three days were quite sufficient.

“Got to say,” said Strike, now chewing chips, “that anonymous call makes you—unless,” he said, struck by a thought, “Jimmy’s had the bright idea of trying to drag Chiswell into the Billy business on top of whatever else he’s genuinely done. A child-killing doesn’t have to be true to make trouble for a government minister who’s already got the press on his tail. You know the internet. Plenty of people out there think being a Tory as tantamount to being a child killer. This might be Jimmy’s idea of adding pressure.”

Strike stabbed a few chips moodily with his fork.

“I’d be glad to know where Billy is, if we had somebody free to look for him. Barclay hasn’t seen any sign of him and says Jimmy hasn’t mentioned having a brother.”

“Billy said he was being held captive,” Robin said tentatively.

“Don’t think we can set much store on anything Billy’s saying right now, to be honest. I knew a guy in the Shiners who had a psychotic episode on exercises. Thought he had cockroaches living under his skin.”

“In the—?”

“Shiners. Fusiliers. Want a chip?”

“I’d better not,” sighed Robin, though she was hungry. Matthew, whom she had warned by text that she would be late, had told her he would wait for her to get home, so they could eat dinner together. “Listen, I haven’t told you everything.”

“Suki Lewis?” asked Strike, hopefully.

“I haven’t been able to work her into the conversation yet. No, it’s that Chiswell’s wife claims men have been lurking in the flowerbeds and fiddling with her horses.”

“Men?” Strike repeated. “In the plural?”

“That’s what Izzy said—but she also says Kinvara’s hysterical and attention-seeking.”

“Getting to be a bit of a theme, that, isn’t it? People who’re supposed to be too crazy to know what they’ve seen.”

“D’you think that could have been Jimmy, as well? In the garden?”

Strike thought it over as he chewed.

“I can’t see what he’s got to gain from lurking in the garden or fiddling with horses, unless he’s at the point where he just wants to frighten Chiswell. I’ll check with Barclay and see whether Jimmy’s got a car or mentioned going to Oxfordshire. Did Kinvara call the police?”

“Raff asked that, when Izzy got back,” said Robin, and once again, Strike thought he detected a trace of self-consciousness as she spoke the man’s name. “Kinvara claims the dogs barked, she saw the shadow of a man in the garden, but he ran away. She says there were footprints in the horses’ field next morning and that one of them had been cut with a knife.”

“Did she call a vet?”

“I don’t know. It’s harder to ask questions with Raff in the office. I don’t want to look too nosy, because he doesn’t know who I am.”

Strike pushed his plate away from him and felt for his cigarettes.

“Photos,” he mused, returning to the central point. “Photos at the Foreign Office. What the hell can they show that would incriminate Chiswell? He’s never worked at the Foreign Office, has he?”

“No,” said Robin. “The highest post he’s ever held is Minister for Trade. He had to resign from there because of the affair with Raff’s mother.”

The wooden clock over the fireplace was telling her it was time to leave. She didn’t move.

“You’re liking Raff, then?” Strike said suddenly, catching her off guard.

“What?”

Robin was scared that she had blushed.

“What do you mean, I’m ‘liking’ him?”

“Just an impression I got,” said Strike. “You disapproved of him before you met him.”

“D’you want me to be antagonistic towards him, when I’m supposed to be his father’s goddaughter?” demanded Robin.

“No, of course not,” said Strike, though Robin had the sense that he was laughing at her, and resented it.

“I’d better get going,” she said, sweeping the headphones off the table and back into her bag. “I told Matt I’d be home for dinner.”

She got up, bade Strike goodbye and left the pub.

Strike watched her go, dimly sorry that he had commented on her manner when mentioning Raphael Chiswell. After a few minutes’ solitary beer consumption, he paid for his food and ambled out onto the pavement, where he lit a cigarette and called the Minister for Culture, who answered on the second ring.

“Wait there,” said Chiswell. Strike could hear a murmuring crowd behind him. “Crowded room.”

The clunk of a door closing and the noise of the crowd was muted.

“’M at a dinner,” said Chiswell. “Anything for me?”

“It isn’t good news, I’m afraid,” said Strike, walking away from the pub, up Queen Anne Street, between white painted buildings that gleamed in the dusk. “My partner succeeded in planting the listening device in Mr. Winn’s office this morning. We’ve got a recording of him talking to Jimmy Knight. Winn’s assistan

t—Aamir, is it?—is trying to get copies of those photographs you told me about. At the Foreign Office.”

The ensuring silence lasted so long that Strike wondered whether they had been cut off.

“Minist—?”

“I’m here!” snarled Chiswell. “That boy Mallik, is it? Dirty little bastard. Dirty little bastard. He’s already lost one job—let him try, that’s all. Let him try! Does he think I won’t—I know things about Aamir Mallik,” he said. “Oh yes.”

Strike waited, in some surprise, for elucidation of these remarks, but none were forthcoming. Chiswell merely breathed heavily into the telephone. Soft, muffled thuds told Strike that Chiswell was pacing up and down on carpet.

“Is that all you had to say to me?” demanded the MP at last.

“There was one other thing,” said Strike. “My partner says your wife’s seen a man or men trespassing on your property at night.”

“Oh,” said Chiswell, “yerse.” He did not sound particularly concerned. “My wife keeps horses and she takes their security very seriously.”

“You don’t think this has any connection with—?”

“Not in the slightest, not in the slightest. Kinvara’s sometimes—well, to be candid,” said Chiswell, “she can be bloody hysterical. Keeps a bunch of horses, always fretting they’re going to be stolen. I don’t want you wasting time chasing shadows through the undergrowth in Oxfordshire. My problems are in London. Is that everything?”

Strike said that it was and, after a curt farewell, Chiswell hung up, leaving Strike to limp towards St. James’s Park station.

Settled in a corner seat of the Tube ten minutes later, Strike folded his arms, stretched out his legs and stared unseeingly at the window opposite.

The nature of this investigation was highly unusual. He had never before had a blackmail case where the client was so unforthcoming about his offense—but then, Strike reasoned with himself, he had never had a government minister as a client before. Equally, it was not every day that a possibly psychotic young man burst into Strike’s office and insisted that he had witnessed a child murder, though Strike had certainly received his fair share of unusual and unbalanced communications since hitting the newspapers: what he had once called, over Robin’s occasional protests, “the nutter drawer,” now filled half a filing cabinet.