Lethal White

Strike was longing to lie down or, failing that, to get back into the car with Shanker, where he could at least recline the seat. He had had barely two hours’ slumber in the past forty-eight, and a mixture of heavy-duty painkillers and what was now four pints was rendering him so sleepy that he kept dozing off against the hand supporting his head, jerking back awake as his temple slid off his knuckles.

He had never asked Robin what either of her parents did for a living. If Michael Ellacott alluded to his profession at any point during his speech, Strike missed it. He was a mild-looking man, almost professorial, with his horn-rimmed glasses. The children had all got his height, but only Martin had inherited his dark hair and hazel eyes.

The speech had been written, or perhaps rewritten, when Robin was jobless. Michael dwelled with patent love and appreciation on Robin’s personal qualities, on her intelligence, her resilience, her generosity and her kindness. He had to stop and clear his throat when he started to speak of his pride in his only daughter, but there was a blank where her achievements ought to have been, an empty space for what she had actually done, or lived through. Of course, some of the things that Robin had survived were unfit to be spoken in this giant humidor of a room, or heard by these feathered and buttonholed guests, but the fact of her survival was, for Strike, the highest proof of those qualities and to him it seemed, sleep-befuddled though he was, that an acknowledgment ought to have been made.

Nobody else seemed to think so. He even detected a faint relief in the crowd as Michael drew to a conclusion without alluding to knives or scars, gorilla masks or balaclavas.

The time had come for the bridegroom to speak. Matthew got to his feet amid enthusiastic applause, but Robin’s hands remained in her lap as she stared at the window opposite, where the sun now hung low in the cloudless sky, casting long dark shadows over the lawn.

Somewhere in the room, a bee was buzzing. Far less concerned about offending Matthew than he had been about Michael, Strike adjusted his position in his chair, folding his arms and closing his eyes. For a minute or so, he listened as Matthew told how he and Robin had known each other since childhood, but only in their sixth form had he noticed how very good-looking the little girl who had once beaten him in the egg-and-spoon race had become…

“Cormoran!”

He jerked awake suddenly and, judging by the wet patch on his chest, knew that he had been drooling. Blearily he looked around at Stephen, who had elbowed him.

“You were snoring,” Stephen muttered.

Before he could reply the room broke into applause again. Matthew was sitting down, unsmiling.

Surely it had to be nearly over… but no, Matthew’s best man was getting to his feet. Now that he was awake again, Strike had become aware just how full his bladder was. He hoped to Christ this bloke would speak fast.

“Matt and I first met on the rugby pitch,” he said and a table towards the rear of the room broke into drunken cheers.

“Upstairs,” said Robin. “Now.”

They were the first words she had spoken to her husband since they had sat down at the top table. The applause for the best man’s speech had barely died away. Strike was standing, but she could tell that he was only heading for the bathroom because she saw him stop a waiter and ask directions. In any case, she knew, now, that he wanted her back, and was convinced that he would stay long enough to hear her agreement. The look they had exchanged during the starters had told her as much.

“They’ll be bringing in the band in half an hour,” said Matthew. “We’re s’posed to—”

But Robin walked off towards the door, taking with her the invisible isolation cell that had kept her cold and tearless through her father’s speech, through Matthew’s nervous utterings, through the tedium of the familiar old anecdotes from the rugby club regurgitated by the best man. She had the vague impression that her mother tried to waylay her as she plowed through the guests, but paid no attention. She had sat obediently through the meal and the speeches. The universe owed her an interlude of privacy and freedom.

Up the staircase she marched, her skirt held out of the way of her cheap shoes, and off along a plush carpeted corridor, unsure where she was going, with Matthew’s footsteps hurrying behind her.

“Excuse me,” she said to a waistcoated teenager who was wheeling a linen basket out of a cupboard, “where’s the bridal suite?”

He looked from her to Matthew and smirked, actually smirked.

“Don’t be a jerk,” said Robin coldly.

“Robin!” said Matthew, as the teenager blushed.

“That way,” said the youth hoarsely, pointing.

Robin marched on. Matthew, she knew, had the key. He had stayed at the hotel with his best man the previous evening, though not in the bridal suite.

When Matthew opened the door, she strode inside, registering the rose petals on the bed, the champagne standing in its cooler, the large envelope inscribed to Mr. and Mrs. Cunliffe. With relief, she saw the holdall that she had intended to take as hand luggage to their mystery honeymoon. Unzipping it, she thrust her uninjured arm inside and found the brace that she had removed for the photographs. When she had pulled it back over her aching forearm, with its barely healed wound, she wrenched the new wedding ring off her finger and slammed it down on the bedside table beside the champagne bucket.

“What are you doing?” said Matthew, sounding both scared and aggressive. “What—you want to call it off? You don’t want to be married?”

Robin stared at him. She had expected to feel release once they were alone and she could speak freely, but the enormity of what he had done mocked her attempts to express it. She read his fear of her silence in his darting eyes, his squared shoulders. Whether he was aware of it or not, he had placed himself precisely between her and the door.

“All right,” he said loudly, “I know I should’ve—”

“You knew what that job meant to me. You knew.”

“I didn’t want you to go back, all right?” Matthew shouted. “You got attacked and stabbed, Robin!”

“That was my own fault!”

“He fucking sacked you!”

“Because I did something he’d told me not to do—”

“I knew you’d fucking defend him!” Matthew bellowed, all control gone. “I knew if you spoke to him you’d go scurrying back like some fucking lapdog!”

“You don’t get to make those decisions for me!” she yelled. “Nobody’s got the right to intercept my fucking calls and delete my messages, Matthew!”

Restraint and pretense were gone. They heard each other only by accident, in brief pauses for breath, each of them howling their resentment and pain across the room like flaming spears that burned into dust before touching their target. Robin gesticulated wildly, then screeched with pain as her arm protested sharply, and Matthew pointed with self-righteous rage at the scar she would carry forever because of her reckless stupidity in working with Strike. Nothing was achieved, nothing was excused, nothing was apologized for: the arguments that had defaced their last twelve months had all led to this conflagration, the border skirmishes that presage war. Beyond the window, afternoon dissolved rapidly into evening. Robin’s head throbbed, her stomach churned, her sense of being stifled threatened to overcome her.

“You hated me working those hours—you didn’t give a damn that I was happy in my job for the first time in my life, so you lied! You knew what it meant to me, and you lied! How could you delete my call history, how could you delete my voicemail—?”

She sat down suddenly in a deep, fringed chair, her head in her hands, dizzy with the force of her anger and shock on an empty stomach.

Somewhere, distantly in the carpeted hush of the hotel corridors, a door closed, a woman giggled.

“Robin,” said Matthew hoarsely.

She heard him approaching her, but she put out a hand, holding him away.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Robin, I shouldn’t have done it, I know that.

I didn’t want you hurt again.”

She barely heard him. Her anger was not only for Matthew, but also for Strike. He should have called back. He should have tried and kept trying. If he had, I might not be here now.

The thought scared her.

If I’d known Strike wanted me back, would I have married Matthew?

She heard the rustle of Matthew’s jacket and guessed that he was checking his watch. Perhaps the guests waiting downstairs would think that they had disappeared to consummate the marriage. She could imagine Geoffrey making ribald jokes in their absence. The band must have been in place for an hour. Again she remembered how much this was all costing her parents. Again, she remembered that they had lost deposits on the wedding that had been postponed.

“All right,” she said, in a colorless voice. “Let’s go back down and dance.”

She stood up, automatically smoothing her skirt. Matthew looked suspicious.

“You’re sure?”

“We’ve got to get through today,” she said. “People have come a long way. Mum and Dad have paid a lot of money.”

Hoisting her skirt up again, she set off for the suite door.

“Robin!”

She turned back, expecting him to say “I love you,” expecting him to smile, to beg, to urge a truer reconciliation.

“You’d better wear this,” he said, holding out the wedding ring she had removed, his expression as cold as hers.

Strike had not been able to think of a better course of action, given that he intended to stay until he had spoken to Robin again, than continuing to drink. He had removed himself from Stephen and Jenny’s willing protection, feeling that they ought to be free to enjoy the company of friends and family, and fallen back on the methods by which he usually repelled strangers’ curiosity: his own intimidating size and habitually surly expression. For a while he lurked at the end of the bar, nursing a pint on his own, and then repaired to the terrace, where he had stood apart from the other smokers and contemplated the dappled evening, breathing in the sweet meadow smell beneath a coral sky. Even Martin and his friends, now full of drink themselves and smoking in a circle like teenagers, failed to muster sufficient nerve to badger him.

After a while, the guests were skillfully rounded up and ushered en masse back into the wood-paneled room, which had been transformed in their absence into a dance floor. Half the tables had been removed, the others shifted to the sides. A band stood ready behind amplifiers, but the bride and groom remained absent. A man whom Strike understood to be Matthew’s father, sweaty, rotund and red-faced, had already made several jokes about what they might be getting up to when Strike found himself addressed by a woman in a tight turquoise dress whose feathery hair adornment tickled his nose as she closed in for a handshake.

“It’s Cormoran Strike, isn’t it?” she said. “What an honor! Sarah Shadlock.”

Strike knew all about Sarah Shadlock. She had slept with Matthew at university, while he was in a long-distance relationship with Robin. Once again, Strike indicated his bandage to show why he could not shake her hand.

“Oh, you poor thing!”

A drunk, balding man who was probably younger than he looked loomed up behind Sarah.

“Tom Turvey,” he said, fixing Strike with unfocused eyes. “Bloody good job. Well done, mate. Bloody good job.”

“We’ve wanted to meet you for ages,” said Sarah. “We’re old friends of Matt and Robin’s.”

“Shacklewell Rip—Ripper,” said Tom, on a slight hiccup. “Bloody good job.”

“Look at you, you poor thing,” said Sarah again, touching Strike on the bicep as she smiled up into his bruised face. “He didn’t do that to you, did he?”

“Ev’ryone wants to know,” said Tom, grinning blearily. “Can hardly contain their bloody selves. You should’ve made a speech instead of Henry.”

“Ha ha,” said Sarah. “Last thing you’d want to do, I expect. You must have come here straight from catching—well, I don’t know—did you?”

“Sorry,” said Strike, unsmiling, “police have asked me not to talk about it.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the harried MC, who had been caught unawares by Matthew and Robin’s unobtrusive entrance into the room, “please welcome Mr. and Mrs. Cunliffe!”

As the newlyweds moved unsmilingly into the middle of the dance floor, everybody but Strike began to applaud. The lead singer of the band took the microphone from the MC.

“This is a song from their past that means a lot to Matthew and Robin,” the singer announced, as Matthew slid his hand around Robin’s waist and grasped her other hand.

The wedding photographer moved out of the shadows and began clicking away again, frowning a little at the reappearance of the ugly rubber brace on the bride’s arm.

The first acoustic bars of “Wherever You Will Go” by The Calling struck up. Robin and Matthew began to revolve on the spot, their faces averted from each other.

So lately, been wondering,

Who will be there to take my place

When I’m gone, you’ll need love

To light the shadows on your face…

Strange choice for an “our song,” Strike thought… but as he watched he saw Matthew move closer to Robin, saw his hand tighten on her narrow waist as he bent his handsome face to whisper something in her ear.

A jolt somewhere around the solar plexus pierced the fug of exhaustion, relief and alcohol that had cushioned Strike all day long from the reality of what this wedding meant. Now, as Strike watched the newlyweds turn on the dance floor, Robin in her long white dress, with a circlet of roses in her hair, Matthew in his dark suit, his face close to his bride’s cheek, Strike was forced to recognize how long, and how deeply, he had hoped that Robin would not marry. He had wanted her free, free to be what they had been together. Free, so that if circumstances changed… so the possibility was there… free, so that one day, they might find out what else they could be to each other.

Fuck this.

If she wanted to talk, she would have to call him. Setting down his empty glass on a windowsill, he turned and made his way through the other guests, who shuffled aside to let him pass, so dark was his expression.

As she turned, staring into space, Robin saw Strike leaving. The door opened. He was gone.

“Let go of me.”

“What?”

She pulled free, hoisted up her dress once more for freedom of movement, then half-walked, half-ran off the dance floor, almost careering into her father and Aunt Sue, who were waltzing sedately nearby. Matthew was left standing alone in the middle of the room as Robin fought her way through the startled onlookers towards the door that had just swung shut.

“Cormoran!”

He was already halfway down the stairs, but on hearing his name he turned back. He liked her hair in its long loose waves beneath the crown of Yorkshire roses.

“Congratulations.”

She walked down another couple of steps, fighting the lump in her throat.

“You really want me back?”

He forced a smile.

“I’ve just driven for bloody hours with Shanker in what I strongly suspect is a stolen car. Of course I want you back.”

She laughed, though tears sprang to her eyes.

“Shanker’s here? You should have brought him in!”

“Shanker? In here? He’d have been through everyone’s pockets then nicked the reception till.”

She laughed some more, but tears spilled out of her brimming eyes and bounced down her cheek.

“Where are you going to sleep?”

“In the car, while Shanker drives me home. He’s going to charge me a fortune for this. Doesn’t matter,” he added gruffly, as she opened her mouth. “Worth it if you’re coming back. More than worth it.”

“I want a contract this time,” said Robin, the severity of her tone belied by the expression of her eyes. “A proper one.”

“You’ve got it.”

??

?OK, then. Well, I’ll see you…”

When would she see him? She was supposed to be on honeymoon for two weeks.

“Let me know,” said Strike.

He turned and began to descend the stairs again.

“Cormoran!”

“What?”

She walked towards him until she stood on the step above. Their eyes were on a level now.

“I want to hear all about how you caught him and everything.”

He smiled.

“It’ll keep. Couldn’t have done it without you, though.”

Neither of them could tell who had made the first move, or whether they acted in unison. They were holding each other tightly before they knew what had happened, Robin’s chin on Strike’s shoulder, his face in her hair. He smelled of sweat, beer and surgical spirits, she, of roses and the faint perfume that he had missed when she was no longer in the office. The feel of her was both new and familiar, as though he had held her a long time ago, as though he had missed it without knowing it for years. Through the closed door upstairs the band played on:

I’ll go wherever you will go

If I could make you mine…

As suddenly as they had reached for each other, they broke apart. Tears were rolling down Robin’s face. For one moment of madness, Strike yearned to say, “Come with me,” but there are words that can never be unsaid or forgotten, and those, he knew, were some of them.

“Let me know,” he repeated. He tried to smile, but it hurt his face. With a wave of his bandaged hand, he continued down the stairs without looking back.

She watched him go, wiping the hot tears frantically from her face. If he had said “come with me,” she knew she would have gone: but then what? Gulping, wiping her nose on the back of her hand, Robin turned, hoisted up her skirts again, and climbed slowly back towards her husband.