Lethal White

Robin shut herself inside the chipboard cubicle, put down the toilet lid and sat down to read the lengthy text that Barclay had just sent to both her and Strike.

Billy’s been found. He was picked up off street 2 weeks ago. Psychotic episode, sectioned, hospital in north London, don’t know which yet. Wouldn’t tell docs his next of kin till yesterday. Social worker contacted Jimmy this morning. Jimmy wants me to go with him to persuade Billy to discharge himself. Scared what Billy’s going to tell the doctors, says he talks too much. Also, Jimmy’s lost bit of paper with Billy’s name on & he’s shitting himself about it. Asked me if I’d seen it. He says it’s handwritten, no other details, I don’t know why so important. Jimmy thinks Flick’s nicked it. Things bad between them again.

As Robin was reading this for a second time, a response came in from Strike.

Barclay: find out visiting arrangements at the hospital, I want to see Billy. Robin: try and search Flick’s bag.

Thanks, Robin texted back, exasperated. I’d never have thought of that on my own.

She got up, flushed the toilet and returned to the shop, where a gang of black-clad goths were picking over the stock like drooping crows. As she sidled past Flick, Robin saw that her messenger bag was sitting on a shelf beneath the counter. When the group had finally left in possession of essential oils and black candles, Flick took out her phone to check it again, before sinking once more into a morose silence.

Robin’s experience in many temporary offices had taught her that little bonded women more than discovering that they were not alone in their particular man-related miseries. Taking out her own phone, she saw a further text from Strike:

That’s why I get paid the big money. Brains.

Amused against her will, Robin suppressed a grin and said:

“He must think I’m fooking stupid.”

“Wassup?”

“Boyfriend. So-called,” said Robin, ramming her phone back into her pocket. “S’posed to be separated from his wife. Guess where he was last night? Mate of mine saw him leaving hers this morning.” She exhaled loudly and slumped down on the counter.

“Yeah, my boyfriend likes old women and all,” said Flick, picking at her nails. Robin, who had not forgotten that Jimmy had been married to a woman thirteen years his senior, hoped for more confidences, but before she could ask more, another group of young women entered, chattering in a language that Robin did not recognize, though she thought it sounded Eastern European. They clustered around the basket of supposed charms.

“Dziekuje ci,” Flick said, as one of them handed over her money, and the girls laughed and complimented her on her accent.

“What did you just say?” asked Robin, as the party left. “Was that Russian?”

“Polish. Learned a bit from my parents’ cleaner.” Flick hurried on, as though she had given something away, “Yeah, I always got on better with the cleaners than I did with my parents, actually, you can’t call yourself a socialist and have a cleaner, can you? Nobody should be allowed to live in a house too big for them, we should have forcible repossessions, redistribution of land and housing to the people who need it.”

“Too right,” said Robin enthusiastically, and Flick seemed reassured to be forgiven her professional parents by Bobbi Cunliffe, daughter of a dead ex-miner and Yorkshire trade unionist.

“Want a tea?” she offered.

“Aye, that’d be great,” said Robin.

“Have you heard of the Real Socialist Party?” asked Flick, once she had come back into the shop with two mugs.

“No,” said Robin.

“It’s not your normal political party,” Flick assured her. “We’re more like a proper community-based campaign, like, back to the Jarrow marchers, that kind of thing, the real spirit of Labor movement, not an imperialist Tory-lite shower of shite like fucking ‘New Labor.’ We don’t want to play the same old politics game, we want to change the rules of the game in favor of ordinary working—”

Billy Bragg’s version of the “Internationale” rang out. As Flick reached into her bag, Robin realized that this was Flick’s ringtone. Reading the caller’s name, Flick became tense.

“You be all right on your own for a bit?”

“Course,” said Robin.

Flick slid into the back room. As the door swung shut Robin heard her say:

“What’s going on? Have you seen him?”

As soon as the door was securely shut, Robin hurried to where Flick had been standing, crouched down and slid her hand under the leather flap of the messenger bag. The interior resembled the depths of a bin. Her fingers groped through sundry bits of crumpled paper, sweet wrappers, a sticky lump of something Robin thought might be chewed gum, various lid-less pens and tubes of makeup, a tin with a picture of Che Guevara on it, a pack of rolling tobacco that had leaked over the rest of the contents, some Rizlas, some spare tampons and a small, twisted ball of fabric that Robin was afraid might be a pair of worn pants. Trying to flatten out, read and then re-crumple each piece of paper was time-consuming. Most seemed to be abandoned drafts of articles. Then, through the door behind her, she heard Flick say loudly:

“Strike? What the hell…”

Robin froze, listening.

“… paranoid… it alone now… tell them he’s…”

“Excuse me,” said a woman peering over the counter. Robin jumped up. The portly, gray-haired customer in a tie-dyed T-shirt pointed up at the shelf on the wall, “could I see that rather special athame?”

“Which?” asked Robin, confused.

“The athame. The ceremonial dagger,” said the elderly woman, pointing.

Flick’s voice rose and fell in the room behind Robin.

“… it, didn’t you?… member you… pay me back… Chiswell’s money…”

“Mmm,” said the customer, weighing the knife carefully in her hand, “have you anything larger?”

“You had it, not me!” said Flick loudly, from behind the door.

“Um,” said Robin, squinting up at the shelf, “I think this is all we’ve got. That one might be a bit bigger…”

She stood on tiptoe to reach the longer knife, as Flick said:

“Fuck off, Jimmy!”

“There you are,” said Robin, handing over the seven-inch dagger.

With a clatter of falling necklaces, the door behind Robin flew open, hitting her in the back.

“Sorry,” said Flick, seizing her bag and shoving the phone back inside it, breathing hard, her eyes bright.

“Yes, you see, I like the triple moon marking on the smaller one,” said the elderly witch, pointing at the decoration on the hilt of the first dagger, unfazed by Flick’s dramatic reappearance, “but I prefer the longer blade.”

Flick was in that febrile state between fury and tears that Robin knew was one of the most amenable to indiscretion and confession. Desperate to get rid of her tiresome customer, she said bluntly in Bobbi’s thick Yorkshire:

“Well, that’s all we’ve got.”

The customer chuntered a little more, weighing the two knives in her hands, and at last took herself off without buying either.

“Y’all right?” Robin asked Flick at once.

“No,” said Flick. “I need a smoke.”

She checked her watch.

“Tell her I’m taking lunch if she comes back, all right?”

Damn, thought Robin, as Flick disappeared, taking her bag and her promising mood with her.

For over an hour, Robin minded the shop alone, becoming increasingly hungry. Once or twice, Eddie at the record stall peered vaguely into the shop at Robin, but showed no other interest in her activities. In a brief lull between more customers, Robin nipped into the back room to make sure that there wasn’t any food there that she had overlooked. There wasn’t.

At ten to one, Flick strolled back into the shop with a dark, thuggishly handsome man in a tight blue T-shirt. He subjected Robin to the hard, arrogant stare of a certain brand of womanizer, melding appre

ciation and disdain to signal that she might be good-looking, but she would have to try a little harder than that to arouse his interest. It was a strategy that Robin had seen work on other young women in offices. It had never worked on her.

“Sorry I was so long,” Flick told Robin. Her bad mood did not seem entirely dissipated. “Ran into Jimmy. Jimmy, this is Bobbi.”

“All right?” said Jimmy, holding out a hand.

Robin shook it.

“You go,” said Flick to Robin. “Go and get something to eat.”

“Oh, right,” said Robin. “Thanks.”

Jimmy and Flick waited while, under cover of checking her bag for money, Robin crouched down and, hidden by the counter, set her mobile to record before placing it carefully at the back of the dark shelf.

“See tha in a bit, then,” she said brightly, and strolled away into the market.

48

But what do you say to it all, Rebecca?

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

A whining wasp zigzagged from inner to outer rooms of Strike’s office, passing between the two windows that were flung open to admit the fume-laden evening air. Barclay waved the insect away with the takeaway menu that had just arrived with a large delivery of Chinese food. Robin peeled lids off the cartons and laid them out on her desk. Over by the kettle, Strike was trying to find a third fork.

Matthew had been surprisingly accommodating when Robin had called him from Charing Cross Road three-quarters of an hour previously, to say that she needed to meet Strike and Barclay, and was likely to be back late.

“Fine,” he had said, “Tom wants to go for a curry, anyway. I’ll see you at home.”

“How was today?” Robin asked, before he could hang up. “The office out in…”

Her mind went blank.

“Barnet,” he said. “Games developer. Yeah, it was all right. How was yours?”

“Not bad,” said Robin.

Matthew was so determinedly uninterested in the details of the Chiswell job after their many arguments about it that there seemed no point in telling him where she had been, who she was impersonating, or what had happened that day. After they had said goodbye, Robin walked on through meandering tourists and Friday night drinkers, knowing that a casual listener would have taken the conversation to be that of two people connected merely by proximity or circumstance, with no particular liking for each other.

“Want a beer?” Strike asked her, holding up a four pack of Tennent’s.

“Yes, please,” said Robin.

She was still wearing her short black dress and lace-up boots, but had tied back her chalked hair, cleaned her face of its thick makeup and removed her dark lenses. Seeing Strike’s face in a patch of evening sunlight, she thought he looked unwell. There were deeper lines than usual around his mouth and across his forehead, lines etched there, she suspected, by grinding, daily pain. He was also moving awkwardly, using his upper body to turn and trying to disguise his limp as he returned to her desk with the beer.

“What’ve you been up to today?” she asked Strike, as Barclay heaped his plate with food.

“Following Geraint Winn. He’s holed up in a miserable B&B five minutes away from the marital home. He led me all the way into central London and back to Bermondsey again.”

“Risky, following him,” commented Robin. “He knows what you look like.”

“All three of us could’ve been behind him and he wouldn’t have noticed. He’s lost about a stone since I last saw him.”

“What did he do?”

“Went to eat in a place right by the Commons, called the Cellarium. No windows, like a crypt.”

“Sounds cheerful,” said Barclay, settling down on the fake leather sofa and starting on his sweet and sour pork balls.

“He’s like a sad homing pigeon,” said Strike, tipping the whole tub of Singapore noodles onto his own plate, “returning to the place of his former glories with the tourists. Then we went to King’s Cross.”

Robin paused in the act of helping herself to beansprouts.

“Blow job in a dark stairwell,” said Strike matter-of-factly.

“Eurgh,” muttered Robin, continuing to help herself to food.

“Did ye see it, aye?” asked Barclay with interest.

“Back view. Elbowed my way through the front door, then backed out with apologies. He was in no state to recognize me. After that, he bought himself some new socks from Asda and went back to his B&B.”

“There are worse days out,” said Barclay, who had already eaten half the food on his plate. Catching Robin’s eye, he said through a mouthful, “Wife wants me home by half eight.”

“All right, Robin,” said Strike, lowering himself gingerly onto his own desk chair, which he had brought through to the outer office, “let’s hear what Jimmy and Flick had to say to each other when they thought no one was listening.”

He opened a notebook and took a pen from the pot on her desk, leaving his left hand free to fork Singapore noodles into his mouth. Still chewing vigorously, Barclay leaned forwards on the sofa, interested. Robin placed her mobile face up on the desk and pressed “play.”

For a moment there was no sound except faint footsteps, which were Robin’s, leaving the Wiccan’s shop earlier in search of lunch.

“I thought you were here on your own?” said Jimmy’s voice, faint but clear.

“She’s having a day’s trial,” said Flick. “Where’s Sam?”

“I told him I’ll meet him at yours later. Right, where’s your bag?”

“Jimmy, I haven’t—”

“Maybe you picked it up by mistake.”

More footsteps, a scraping of wood and leather, clattering, thunks and furtive rustlings.

“This is a fucking tip.”

“I haven’t got it, how many more times? And you’ve got no right to search that without my—”

“This is serious. I had it in my wallet. Where’s it gone?”

“You’ve dropped it somewhere, haven’t you?”

“Or someone’s taken it.”

“Why would I take it?”

“Insurance policy.”

“That’s a hell of an—”

“But if that’s what you’re thinking, you wanna remember, you fucking nicked it, so it incriminates you as much as me. More.”

“I was only there in the first place because of you, Jimmy!”

“Oh, that’s going to be the story, is it? Nobody bloody made you. You’re the one who started all this, remember.”

“Yeah and I wish I hadn’t, now!”

“Too late for that. I want that paper back and so should you. It proves we had access to his place.”

“You mean it proves a connection between him and Bill—ouch!”

“Oh, fuck off, that didn’t hurt! You demean women who really are knocked around, playing the victim. I’m not kidding, now. If you’ve taken it—”

“Don’t threaten me—”

“What’re you going to do, run off to Mummy and Daddy? How’re they going to feel when they find out what their little girl’s been up to?”

Flick’s rapid breathing now became sobs.

“You nicked money from him, and all,” said Jimmy.

“You thought it was a laugh at the time, you said he deserved it—”

“Try that defense in court, see how far it gets you. If you try and save yourself by throwing me under the bus, I won’t have any fucking problem telling the pigs you were in this thing all the way. So if that bit of paper turns up somewhere I don’t want it to go—”

“I haven’t got it, I don’t know where it is!”

“—you’ve been fucking warned. Give me your front door key.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I’m going over to that shithole you call a flat right now and I’m searching it with Sam.”

“You’re not going over there without me—”

“Why not? Got another Indian waiter sleeping off his hangover there, have you?”

/>

“I never—”

“I don’t give a shit,” said Jimmy. “Screw whoever you like. Give me your key. Give it me.”

More footsteps; a tinkling of keys. The sound of Jimmy walking away and then a cascade of sobs that continued until Robin pressed pause.

“She cried until the shop owner came back,” said Robin, “which was just before I did, and she hardly spoke this afternoon. I tried to walk back to the Tube with her, but she shook me off. Hopefully she’ll be in a more talkative mood tomorrow.”

“So, did you and Jimmy search her flat?” Strike asked Barclay.

“Aye. Books, drawers, under her mattress. Nothing.”

“What exactly did he say you were looking for?”

“‘Bit o’ paper wi’ handwriting an’ Billy’s name on,’ he says. ‘I had it in me wallet and it’s gone.’ Claims it’s somethin’ tae do with a drugs deal. He thinks I’m some ned who’ll believe anythin’.”

Strike put down his pen, swallowed a large mouthful of noodles and said:

“Well, I don’t know about you two, but what jumps out at me is ‘it proves we had access.’”

“I think I might know a bit more about that,” said Robin, who had so far successfully concealed her excitement about what she was about to reveal. “I found out today that Flick can speak a bit of Polish, and we know she stole cash from her previous place of work. What if—?”

“‘I do that cleaning,’” said Strike, suddenly. “That’s what she said to Jimmy, on the march, when I was following them! ‘I do that cleaning, and it’s disgusting’… Bloody hell—you think she was—?”

“Chiswell’s Polish cleaner,” said Robin, determined not to be robbed of her moment of triumph. “Yes. I do.”

Barclay was continuing to shovel pork balls into his mouth, though his eyes were suitably surprised.

“If that’s true, it changes bloody everything,” said Strike. “She’d have had access, been able to snoop around, take stuff into the house—”