Lethal White

“She says she saw ‘Bill’ and thought it meant her boyfriend’s brother. Ironic, really,” said Layborn. “If she hadn’t stolen it, we wouldn’t have cottoned on nearly so fast, would we?”

The “we,” thought Robin, was daring, because it had been Strike who had “cottoned on,” Strike who had finally cracked the significance of Chiswell’s note, as they drove back to London from Chiswell House.

“Robin deserves the bulk of the credit there, too,” said Strike. “She found the thing, she noticed ‘Blanc de Blanc’ and the Grand Vitara. I just pieced it together once it was staring me in the face.”

“Well, we were just behind you,” said Layborn, absentmindedly scratching his belly. “I’m sure we’d have got there.”

Robin’s mobile vibrated in her pocket again: somebody was calling, this time.

“I need to take this. Is there anywhere I can—?”

“Through here,” said Layborn helpfully, opening a side door.

It was a photocopier room, with a small window covered in a Venetian blind. Robin closed the door on the others’ conversation and answered.

“Hi, Sarah.”

“Hi,” said Sarah Shadlock.

She sounded totally unlike the Sarah whom Robin had known for nearly nine years, the confident and bombastic blonde whom Robin had sensed, even in their teens, was hoping that some mischance might befall Matthew’s long-distance relationship with his girlfriend. Always there through the years, giggling at Matthew’s jokes, touching his arm, asking loaded questions about Robin’s relationship with Strike, Sarah had dated other men, settling at last for poor tedious Tom, with his well-paid job and his bald patch, who had put diamonds on Sarah’s finger and in her ears, but never quelled her yen for Matthew Cunliffe.

All her swagger had gone today.

“Well, I’ve asked two experts, but,” she said, sounding fragile and fearful, “and they can’t say for sure, not from a photograph taken on a phone—”

“Well, obviously not,” said Robin coolly. “I said in my text, didn’t I, that I wasn’t expecting a definitive answer? We’re not asking for a firm identification or valuation. All we want to know is whether somebody might have credibly believed—”

“Well, then, yes,” said Sarah. “One of our experts is quite excited about it, actually. One of the old notebooks lists a painting done of a mare with a dead foal, but it’s never been found.”

“What notebooks?”

“Oh, sorry,” said Sarah. She had never sounded so meek, so frightened, in Robin’s vicinity. “Stubbs.”

“And if it is a Stubbs?” asked Robin, turning to look out of the window at the Feathers, a pub where she and Strike had sometimes drunk.

“Well, this is entirely speculative, obviously… but if it’s genuine, if it’s the one he listed in 1760, it could be a lot.”

“Give me a rough estimate.”

“Well, his ‘Gimcrack’ went for—”

“—twenty-two million,” said Robin, feeling suddenly light-headed. “Yes. You said so at our house-warming party.”

Sarah made no answer. Perhaps the mention of the party, where she had brought lilies to her lover’s wife’s house, had scared her.

“So if ‘Mare Mourning’ is a genuine Stubbs—”

“It’d probably make more than ‘Gimcrack’ at auction. It’s a unique subject. Stubbs was an anatomist, as much scientist as artist. If this is a depiction of a lethal white foal, it might be the first recorded instance. It could set records.”

Robin’s mobile buzzed in her hand. Another text had arrived.

“This has been very helpful, Sarah, thanks. You’ll keep this confidential?”

“Yes, of course,” said Sarah. And then, in a rush:

“Robin, listen—”

“No,” said Robin, trying to stay calm. “I’m working a case.”

“—it’s over, it’s finished, Matt’s in pieces—”

“Goodbye, Sarah.”

Robin hung up, then read the text that had just arrived.

Meet me after work or I’m giving a statement to the press.

Eager as she was to return to the group next door and relay the sensational information she had just received, Robin remained where she stood, temporarily flummoxed by the threat, and texted back:

Statement to the press about what?

His response came within seconds, littered with angry typos.

The mail called the office this morning g and left a message asking how I feel about my dive shacking up with Cornish Strike. The sun’s been one this afternoon. You probably know he’s two timing you but maybe you don’t give a shit. I’m not having the papers calling me at work. Either meet me or I’m go give a statement to get them off my back.

Robin was rereading the message when yet another text arrived, this time with an attachment.

In case you haven’t seen it

Robin enlarged the attachment, which was a screenshot of a diary item in the Evening Standard.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF CHARLOTTE CAMPBELL AND CORMORAN STRIKE

A staple of the gossip columns ever since she ran away from her first private school, Charlotte Campbell has lived out her life in a glare of publicity. Most people would choose a discreet spot for their consultation with a private detective, but the pregnant Ms. Campbell—now Mrs. Jago Ross—chose the window table of one of the West End’s busiest restaurants.

Were detective services under discussion during the intense heart-to-heart, or something more personal? The colorful Mr. Strike, illegitimate son of rock star Jonny Rokeby, war hero and modern-day Sherlock Holmes, also happens to be Campbell’s ex-lover.

Campbell’s businessman husband will doubtless be keen to solve the mystery—business or pleasure?—upon his return from New York.

A mass of uncomfortable feelings jostled inside Robin, of which the dominant ones were panic, anger and mortification at the thought of Matthew speaking to the press in such a way as to leave open, spitefully, the possibility that she and Strike were indeed sleeping together.

She tried to call the number, but it went straight to voicemail. Two seconds later, another angry text appeared.

I’M WITH A CLIENT I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT THIS

IN FRONT OF HIM JUST MEET ME

Angry now, Robin texted:

And I’m at New Scotland Yard. Find a quiet corner.

She could imagine Matthew’s polite smile as the client watched, his smooth “just the office, excuse me,” while he hammered out his furious replies.

We’ve got stuff to sort out and you’re acting like a child refusing to meet me. Either you come talk to me or I’m ringing the papers at eight. I notice you’re not denying your sleeping with him, by the way

Furious, but feeling cornered, Robin typed back:

Fine, let’s discuss it face to face, where?

He texted her directions to a bar in Little Venice. Still shaken, Robin pushed open the door to the incident room. The group was now huddled around a monitor showing a page of Jimmy Knight’s blog, from which Strike was reading aloud:

“… ‘in other words, a single bottle of wine at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons can cost more than a single, out-of-work mother receives per week to feed, clothe and house her entire family.’ Now that,” said Strike, “struck me as a weirdly specific choice of restaurant, if he wanted to rant about Tories and their spending. That’s what made me think he’d been there recently. Then Robin tells me ‘Blanc de Blanc’ is the name of one of their suites, but I didn’t put that together as quickly as I should’ve done. It hit me a few hours later.”

“He’s a hell of a bloody hypocrite on top of everything else, isn’t he?” said Wardle, who was standing, arms folded, behind Strike.

“You’ve looked in Woolstone?” Strike asked.

“The shithole in Charlemont Road, Woolstone, everywhere,” said Layborn, “but don’t worry. We’ve got a line on one of his girlfriends down in Dulwich. Checking there right now. With luck, w

e’ll have him in custody tonight.”

Layborn now noticed Robin, standing with her phone in her hand.

“I know you’ve already got people looking at it,” she told Layborn, “but I’ve got a contact at Christie’s. I sent her the picture of ‘Mare Mourning’ and she’s just called me back. According to one of their experts, it might be a Stubbs.”

“Even I’ve heard of Stubbs,” Layborn said.

“What would it be worth, if it is?” Wardle asked.

“My contact thinks upwards of twenty-two million.”

Wardle whistled. Layborn said, “Fuck me.”

“Doesn’t matter to us what it’s worth,” Strike reminded them all. “What matters is whether somebody might’ve spotted its potential value.”

“Twenty-two fucking million,” said Wardle, “is a hell of a motive.”

“Cormoran,” said Robin, picking her jacket off the back of the chair where she’d left it, “could I have a quick word outside? I’m going to have to leave, sorry,” she said to the others.

“Everything OK?” Strike asked, as they re-entered the corridor together and Robin had closed the door on the group of police.

“Yes,” said Robin, and then, “Well—not really. Maybe,” she said, handing him her phone, “you’d better just read this.”

Frowning, Strike scrolled slowly through the interchange between Robin and Matthew, including the Evening Standard clip.

“You’re going to meet him?”

“I’ve got to. This must be why Mitch Patterson’s sniffing around. If Matthew fans the flames with the press, which he’s more than capable of doing… They’re already excited about you and—”

“Forget me and Charlotte,” he said roughly, “that was twenty minutes that she coerced me into. He’s trying to coerce you—”

“I know he is,” said Robin, “but I have got to talk to him sooner or later. Most of my stuff’s still in Albury Street. We’ve still got a joint bank account.”

“D’you want me to come?”

Touched, Robin said:

“Thanks, but I don’t think that would help.”

“Then ring me later, will you? Let me know what happened.”

“I will,” she promised.

She headed off alone towards the lifts. She didn’t even notice who had just walked past her in the opposite direction until somebody said, “Bobbi?”

Robin turned. There stood Flick Purdue, returning from the bathroom with a policewoman, who seemed to have escorted her there. Like Kinvara, Flick had cried away her makeup. She appeared small and shrunken in a white shirt that Robin suspected her parents had insisted she wear, rather than her Hezbollah T-shirt.

“It’s Robin. How are you, Flick?”

Flick seemed to be struggling with ideas too monstrous to utter.

“I hope you’re cooperating,” said Robin. “Tell them everything, won’t you?”

She thought she saw a tiny shake of the head, an instinctive defiance, the last embers of loyalty not yet extinguished, even in the trouble Flick found herself.

“You must,” said Robin quietly. “He’d have killed you next, Flick. You knew too much.”

69

I have foreseen all contingencies—long ago.

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

A twenty-minute Tube ride later, Robin emerged at Warwick Avenue underground station in a part of London she barely knew. She had always felt a vague curiosity about Little Venice, as her extravagant middle name, “Venetia,” had been given to her because she had been conceived in the real Venice. Doubtless she would henceforth associate this area with Matthew and the bitter, tense meeting she was sure awaited her, down by the canal.

She walked down a street named Clifton Villas, where plane trees spread leaves of translucent jade against square cream-colored houses, the walls of which glowed gold in the evening sun. The quiet beauty of this soft summer evening made Robin feel suddenly, overwhelmingly melancholy, because it recalled just such a night in Yorkshire, a decade previously, when she had hurried up the road from her parents’ house, barely seventeen years old and wobbling on her high heels, desperately excited about her first date with Matthew Cunliffe, who had just passed his driving test and would be taking her into Harrogate for the evening.

And here she was walking towards him again, to arrange the permanent disentanglement of their lives. Robin despised herself for feeling sad, for remembering, when it was preferable to concentrate on his unfaithfulness and unkindness, the joyful shared experiences that had led to love.

She turned left, crossed the street and walked on, now in the chilly shadow of the brick that bordered the right-hand side of Blomfield Road, parallel to the canal, and saw a police car speeding across the top of the street. The sight of it gave her strength. It felt like a friendly wave from what she knew now was her real life, sent to remind her what she was meant to be, and how incompatible that was with being the wife of Matthew Cunliffe.

A pair of high black wooden gates was set into the wall, gates that Matthew’s text had told her led to the canal-side bar, but when Robin pushed at them, they were locked. She glanced up and down the road, but there was no sign of Matthew, so she reached into her bag for her mobile, which, though muted was already vibrating with a call. As she took it out, the electric gates opened and she walked through them, raising the mobile to her ear as she did so.

“Hi, I’m just—”

Strike yelled in her ear.

“Get out of there, it isn’t Matthew—”

Several things happened at once.

The phone was torn out of her hand. In one frozen second, Robin registered that there was no bar in sight, only an untidy patch of canal bank beneath a bridge, hemmed by overgrown shrubs, and a dark barge, Odile, sitting squat and shabby in the water below her. Then a fist hit her hard in the solar plexus, and she jack-knifed, winded. Doubled over, she heard a splash as her phone was lobbed into the canal, then somebody grabbed a fistful of her hair and the waistband of her trousers and dragged her, while she still had no air in her lungs to scream, towards the barge. Thrown through the open doorway of the boat, she hit a narrow wooden table and fell to the floor.

The door slammed shut. She heard the scrape of a lock.

“Sit down,” said a male voice.

Still winded, Robin pulled herself up onto a wooden bench at the table, which was covered in a thin cushioned pad, then turned, to find herself looking into the barrel of a revolver.

Raphael lowered himself into the chair opposite her.

“Who just rang you?” he demanded and she deduced that in the physical effort to get her on the boat, and his terror that she might make a noise that the caller could hear, he had not had time or opportunity to check the screen on her mobile.

“My husband,” lied Robin in a whisper.

Her scalp was burning where he had pulled her hair. The pain in her midriff was such that she wondered whether he had cracked one of her ribs. Still fighting to draw air into her lungs, Robin seemed for a few disoriented seconds to see her predicament in miniature, from far away, encased in a trembling bead of time. She foresaw Raphael tipping her weighted corpse into the dark water by night, and Matthew, who had apparently lured her to the canal, being questioned and maybe accused. She saw the distraught faces of her parents and her brothers at her funeral in Masham, and she saw Strike standing at the back of the church, as he had at her wedding, furious because the thing he had feared had come to pass, and she was dead due to her own failings.

But as each gasp re-inflated Robin’s lungs, the illusion that she was watching from afar dissolved. She was here, now, on this dingy boat, breathing in its fusty smell, trapped within its wooden walls, with the dilated pupil of the revolver staring at her, and Raphael’s eyes above it.

Her fear was a real, solid presence in the galley, but it must stand apart from her, because it couldn’t help, and would only hinder. She must stay calm, and concentrate. She chose not to speak. It would give

her back some of the power he had just taken from her if she refused to fill the silence. This was the trick of the therapist: let the pause unspool; let the more vulnerable person fill it.

“You’re very cool,” Raphael said finally. “I thought you might get hysterical and scream. That’s why I had to punch you. I wouldn’t have done that otherwise. For what it’s worth, I like you, Venetia.”

She knew that he was trying to re-impersonate the man who had charmed her against her will at the Commons. Clearly, he thought the old mixture of ruefulness and remorse would make her forgive, and soften, even with her burning scalp, and her bruised ribs, and the gun in her face. She said nothing. His faint, imploring smile disappeared and he said bluntly:

“I need to know how much the police know. If I can still blag my way out of what they’ve got, then I’m afraid you,” he raised the gun a fraction to point directly at Robin’s forehead (and she thought of vets and the one clean shot that the horse in the dell had been denied) “are done for. I’ll muffle the shot in a cushion and put you overboard once it’s dark. But if they already know everything, then I’ll end it, here, tonight, because I’m never going back to prison. So you can see how it’s in your best interests to be honest, can’t you? Only one of us is getting off this boat.”

And when she didn’t speak, he said fiercely:

“Answer me!”

“Yes,” she said. “I understand.”

“So,” he said quietly, “were you really just at Scotland Yard?”

“Yes.”

“Is Kinvara there?”

“Yes.”

“Under arrest?”

“I think so. She’s in an interrogation room with her solicitor.”

“Why have they arrested her?”

“They think the two of you are having an affair. That you were behind everything.”

“What’s ‘everything’?”