Lethal White

She wasn’t quite sure whether one minute or ten had elapsed, but finally her pulse slowed, her thoughts became ordered and the panic ebbed away, to be replaced by mortification. After all her careful pretense that she was coping, she had blown it.

A whiff of cigarette smoke reached her. Opening her eyes, she saw Strike’s legs sticking out on the ground to her right. He, too, had sat down on the verge.

“How long have you been having panic attacks?” he asked conversationally.

There seemed no point dissembling any more.

“About a year,” she muttered.

“Been getting help with them?”

“Yes. I was in therapy for a bit. Now I do CBT exercises.”

“Do you, though?” Strike asked mildly. “Because I bought vegetarian bacon a week ago, but it’s not making me any healthier, just sitting there in the fridge.”

Robin began to laugh and found that she couldn’t stop. More tears leaked from her eyes. Strike watched her, not unkindly, smoking his cigarette.

“I could have been doing them a bit more regularly,” Robin admitted at last, mopping her face again.

“Anything else you fancy telling me, now we’re getting into things?” asked Strike.

He felt he ought to know the worst now, before he gave her any advice on her mental condition, but Robin seemed confused.

“Any other health matters that might affect your ability to work?” he prompted her.

“Like what?”

Strike wondered whether a direct inquiry constituted some kind of infringement of her employment rights.

“I wondered,” he said, “whether you might be, ah, pregnant.”

Robin began to laugh again.

“Oh God, that’s funny.”

“Is it?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, “I’m not pregnant.”

Strike now noticed that her wedding and engagement rings were missing. He had become so used to seeing her without them as she impersonated Venetia Hall and Bobbi Cunliffe that it had not occurred to him that their absence today might be significant, yet he didn’t want to pose a direct question, for reasons that had nothing at all to do with employment rights.

“Matthew and I have split up,” Robin said, frowning at the passing traffic in an effort not to cry again. “A week ago.”

“Oh,” said Strike. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

But his concerned expression was at total odds with his actual feelings. His dark mood had lightened so abruptly that it was akin to having moved from sober to three pints down. The smell of rubber and dust and burned grass recalled the car park where he had accidentally kissed her, and he drew on his cigarette again and tried hard not to let his feelings show in his face.

“I know I shouldn’t have spoken to Geraint Winn like that,” said Robin, tears now falling again. “I shouldn’t have mentioned Rhiannon, I lost control and—it’s just, men, bloody men, judging everyone by their bloody selves!”

“What happened with Matt—?”

“He’s been sleeping with Sarah Shadlock,” said Robin savagely. “His best friend’s fiancée. She left an earring in our bed and I—oh bugger.”

It was no use: she buried her face in her hands and, with a sense of having nothing to lose now, cried in earnest, because she had thoroughly disgraced herself in Strike’s eyes, and the one remaining piece of her life that she had been seeking to preserve had been tainted. How delighted Matthew would be to see her falling apart on a motorway verge, proving his point, that she was unfit to do the job she loved, forever limited by her past, by having, twice, been in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong men.

A heavy weight landed across her shoulders. Strike had put his arm around her. This was simultaneously comforting and ominous, because he had never done that before, and she was sure that this was the precursor to him telling her that she was unfit to work, that they would cancel the next interview and return to London.

“Where have you been staying?”

“Vanessa’s sofa,” said Robin, trying frantically to mop her streaming eyes and nose: snot and tears had made the knees of her jeans soggy. “But I’ve got a new place now.”

“Where?”

“Kilburn, a room in a shared house.”

“Bloody hell, Robin,” said Strike. “Why didn’t you tell me? Nick and Ilsa have got a proper spare room, they’d be delighted—”

“I can’t sponge off your friends,” said Robin thickly.

“It wouldn’t be sponging,” said Strike. He jammed his cigarette in his mouth and started searching his pockets with his free hand. “They like you and you could stay there for a couple of weeks until—aha. I thought I had one. It’s only creased, I haven’t used it—don’t think so, anyway—”

Robin took the tissue and, with one hearty blow of her nose, demolished it.

“Listen,” Strike began, but Robin interrupted at once:

“Don’t tell me to take time off. Please don’t. I’m fine, I’m fit to work, I hadn’t had a panic attack in ages before that one, I’m—”

“—not listening.”

“All right, sorry,” she muttered, the sodden tissue clutched in her fist. “Go on.”

“After I got blown up, I couldn’t get in a car without doing what you’ve just done, panicking and breaking out in a cold sweat and half suffocating. For a while I’d do anything to avoid being driven by someone else. I’ve still got problems with it, to tell the truth.”

“I didn’t realize,” said Robin. “You don’t show it.”

“Yeah, well, you’re the best driver I know. You should see me with my bloody sister. Thing is, Robin—oh, bollocks.”

The traffic police had arrived, pulling up behind the abandoned Land Rover, apparently puzzled as to why the occupants were sitting fifty yards away on the verge, to all appearances unconcerned with the fate of their poorly parked vehicle.

“Not in too much of a hurry to get help, then?” said the portlier of the two sarcastically. He had the swagger of a man who thinks himself a joker.

Strike removed his arm from around Robin’s shoulders and both stood up, in Strike’s case, clumsily.

“Car sickness,” Strike told the officer blandly. “Careful, or she might puke on you.”

They returned to the car. The first officer’s colleague was peering at the tax disk on the ancient Land Rover.

“You don’t see many of this age still on the roads,” he commented.

“It’s never let me down yet,” said Robin.

“Sure you’re all right to drive?” Strike muttered, as she turned the ignition key. “We could pretend you’re still feeling ill.”

“I’m fine.”

And this time, it was true. He had called her the best driver he knew, and it might not be much, but he had given her back some of her self-respect, and she steered seamlessly back onto the motorway.

There was a long silence. Strike decided that further discussion of Robin’s mental health ought to wait until she wasn’t driving.

“Winn said a name at the end of the call there,” he mused, taking out his notebook. “Did you hear?”

“No,” muttered Robin, shamefaced.

“It was Samuel something,” Strike said, making a note. “Murdoch? Matlock?”

“I didn’t hear.”

“Cheer up,” said Strike bracingly, “he probably wouldn’t have blurted it out if you hadn’t been yelling at him. Not that I recommend calling interviewees thieving perverts in future…”

He stretched around in his seat, reaching for the carrier bag in the back. “Fancy a biscuit?”

62

… I do not want to see your defeat, Rebecca.

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

The car park at Newbury Racecourse was already jam-packed when they arrived. Many of the people heading for the ticket marquee were dressed for comfort, like Strike and Robin, in jeans and jackets, but others had donned fluttering silk dresses, suits, padded waistcoa

ts, tweed hats and corduroy trousers in shades of mustard and puce that reminded Robin of Torquil.

They queued for tickets, each lost in their thoughts. Robin was afraid of what was coming once they reached the Crafty Filly, where Tegan Butcher worked. Certain that Strike had not yet had his full say on her mental health, she was afraid that he had merely postponed the announcement that he wanted her to return to a desk job in the office.

In fact, Strike’s mind was temporarily elsewhere. The white railings glimpsed beyond the small marquee where the crowd queued for tickets, and the abundance of tweed and corduroy, were reminding him of the last time he had been at a racecourse. He had no particular interest in the sport. The one constant paternal figure in his life, his uncle Ted, had been a footballing and sailing man, and while a couple of Strike’s friends in the army had enjoyed a bet on the horses, he had never seen the attraction.

Three years previously, though, he had attended the Epsom Derby with Charlotte and two of her favorite siblings. Like Strike, Charlotte came from a disjointed and dysfunctional family. In one of her unpredictable effusions of enthusiasm, Charlotte had insisted on accepting Valentine and Sacha’s invitation, notwithstanding Strike’s lack of interest in the sport and his barely cordial feelings towards both men, who considered him an inexplicable oddity in their sister’s life.

He had been broke at the time, setting up the agency on a shoestring, already being chased by lawyers for repayment of the small loan he had taken from his biological father, when every bank had turned him down as a bad risk. Nevertheless, Charlotte had been incensed when, after losing a fiver on the nose on the favorite, Fame and Glory, who had come in second, he had refused to place another bet. She had refrained from calling him puritanical or sanctimonious, plebeian or penny-pinching, as she had done previously when he had refused to emulate the reckless and ostentatious spending of her family and friends. Egged on by her brothers, she had chosen to lay larger and larger bets herself, finally winning £2500 and insisting that they visit the champagne tent, where her beauty and high spirits had turned many heads.

As he walked with Robin up a wide tarmacked thoroughfare that ran parallel from the racetrack itself behind the towering stands, past coffee bars, cider stalls and ice cream vans, the jockeys’ changing rooms and owners’ and trainers’ bar, Strike thought about Charlotte, and gambles that came off, and gambles that didn’t, until Robin’s voice pulled him back to the present.

“I think that’s the place.”

A painted sign showed the head of a dark, winking filly in a snaffle bit hung on the side of a one-story brick bar. The outdoor seating area was crowded. Champagne flutes clinked amid a buzz of talk and laughter. The Crafty Filly overlooked the paddock where horses would shortly be paraded, around which a further crowd had begun to congregate.

“Grab that high table,” Strike told Robin, “and I’ll get drinks and tell Tegan we’re here.”

He disappeared into the building without asking her what she wanted.

Robin sat down at one of the tall tables with its metal bar-chairs, which she knew Strike preferred because getting on and off them would be easier on his amputated leg than the low wickerwork sofas. The whole outside area sat beneath a canopy of polyurethane to protect drinkers from non-existent rain. The sky was cloudless today, the day warm with a light breeze that barely moved the leaves of the topiary plants at the entrance to the bar. It would be a clear night for digging in the dell outside Steda Cottage, Robin thought, always assuming that Strike wasn’t about to cancel the expedition, because he thought her too unstable and emotional to take along.

That thought turned her insides even colder and she fell to reading the printed lists of runners they had been given, along with their cardboard entry tags, until a half-bottle of Moët & Chandon landed unexpectedly in front of her and Strike sat down, holding a pint of bitter.

“Doom Bar on draft,” he said cheerfully, tipping his glass to her before taking a sip. Robin looked blankly at the little bottle of champagne, which she thought resembled bubble bath.

“What’s this for?”

“Celebration,” said Strike, having taken a sizable gulp of his beer. “I know you’re not supposed to say it,” he went on, rummaging through his pockets for cigarettes, “but you’re well shot of him. Sleeping with his mate’s fiancée in the marital bed? He deserves everything that’s coming to him.”

“I can’t drink. I’m driving.”

“That’s just cost me twenty-five quid, so you can take a token swig.”

“Twenty-five quid, for this?” said Robin, and taking advantage of Strike lighting his cigarette, she surreptitiously wiped her leaking eyes again.

“Tell me something,” said Strike, as he waved his match, extinguishing it. “D’you ever think about where you see the agency going?”

“What d’you mean?” said Robin, looking alarmed.

“My brother-in-law was giving me the third degree about it, night the Olympics started,” said Strike. “Banging on about reaching a point where I didn’t have to go out on the street any more.”

“But you wouldn’t want that, would y—wait,” said Robin, panicking. “Are you trying to tell me I’ve got to go back to the desk and answering the phones?”

“No,” said Strike, blowing smoke away from her, “I just wondered whether you give the future any thought.”

“You want me to leave?” asked Robin, still more alarmed. “Go and do something el—?”

“Bloody hell, Ellacott, no! I’m asking you whether you think about the future, that’s all.”

He watched as Robin uncorked the little bottle.

“Yes, of course I do,” she said uncertainly. “I’ve been hoping we can get the bank balance a bit healthier, so we aren’t living hand to mouth all the time, but I love the—” her voice wobbled, “—the job, you know I do. That’s all I want. Do it, get better at it and… I suppose make the agency the best in London.”

Grinning, Strike clinked his beer glass against her champagne.

“Well, bear in mind we want exactly the same thing while I’m saying the next bit, all right? And you might as well drink. Tegan can’t take a break for forty minutes, and we’ve got a lot of time to kill before we head over to the dell this evening.”

Strike watched her take a sip of champagne before going on.

“Pretending you’re OK when you aren’t isn’t strength.”

“Well, that’s where you’re wrong,” Robin contradicted him. The champagne had fizzed on her tongue and seemed to give her courage even before it hit her brain. “Sometimes, acting as though you’re all right, makes you all right. Sometimes you’ve got to slap on a brave face and walk out into the world, and after a while it isn’t an act anymore, it’s who you are. If I’d waited to feel ready to leave my room after—you know,” she said, “I’d still be in there. I had to leave before I was ready. And,” she said, looking him directly in the eyes, her own bloodshot and swollen, “I’ve been working with you for two years, watching you plow on no matter what, when we both know any doctor would have told you to put your leg up and rest.”

“And where did that get me, eh?” asked Strike reasonably. “Invalided out for a week, with my hamstring screaming for mercy every time I walk more than fifty yards. You want to draw parallels, fine. I’m dieting, I’ve been doing my stretches—”

“And the vegetarian bacon, rotting away in the fridge?”

“Rotting? That stuff’s like industrial rubber, it’ll outlive me. Listen,” he said, refusing to be deflected, “it’d be a bloody miracle if you hadn’t suffered any after-effects from what happened last year.” His eyes sought the tip of the purple scar on her forearm, visible beneath the cuff of her shirt. “Nothing in your past precludes you from doing this job, but you need to take care of yourself if you want to keep doing it. If you need time off—”

“—that’s the last thing I want—”

“This isn’t about what you want. It’s about what you n

eed.”

“Shall I tell you something funny?” said Robin. Whether because of the mouthful of champagne, or for some other reason, she had experienced a startling lift in mood that made her loose-tongued. “You’d have thought I’d have had panic attacks galore over the last week, wouldn’t you? I’ve been trying to find a place to live, looking round flats, traveling all over London, I’ve had loads of people coming up unexpectedly behind me—that’s a major trigger,” she explained. “People behind me, when I don’t know they’re there.”

“Don’t think we need Freud to explain that one.”

“But I’ve been fine,” said Robin. “I think it’s because I haven’t had to—”

She stopped short, but Strike thought he knew what the end of the sentence would have been. Taking a chance, he said:

“This job becomes well-nigh impossible if your home life’s screwed up. I’ve been there. I know.”

Relieved to have been understood, Robin drank more champagne then said in a rush:

“I think it’s made me worse, having to hide what’s going on, having to do the exercises in secret, because any sign I wasn’t a hundred percent and Matthew would be yelling at me again for doing this job. I thought it was him trying to reach me on the phone this morning, that’s why I didn’t want to take the call. And when Winn started calling me those names, it—well, it felt as though I had taken the call. I don’t need Winn to tell me I’m basically a pair of walking tits, a stupid, deluded girl who doesn’t realize that’s my only useful attribute.”

Matthew’s been telling you that, has he? thought Strike, imagining a few corrective measures from which he thought Matthew might benefit. Slowly and carefully he said:

“The fact that you’re a woman… I do worry about you more when you’re out alone on a job than I would if you were a bloke. Hear me out,” he said firmly, as she opened her mouth in panic. “We’ve got to be honest with each other, or we’re screwed. Just listen, will you?