Lethal White

“The blackmail,” said Robin, “and the murder.”

He advanced the gun so that it was pressing against her forehead. Robin felt the small, cold ring of metal pressing into her skin.

“Sounds like a crock of shit to me. How’re we supposed to have had an affair? She hated me. We were never alone together for two minutes.”

“Yes, you were,” said Robin. “Your father invited you down to Chiswell House, right after you got out of jail. The night he was detained in London. You and she were alone together, then. That’s when we think it started.”

“Proof?”

“None,” said Robin, “but I think you could seduce anyone if you really put your—”

“Don’t try flattery, it won’t work. Seriously, ‘that’s when we think it started’? Is that all you’ve got?”

“No. There were other signs of something going on.”

“Tell me the signs. All of them.”

“I’d be able to remember better,” said Robin steadily, “without you pressing a gun into my forehead.”

He withdrew it, but still pointing the revolver at her face, he said:

“Go on. Quickly.”

Part of Robin wanted to succumb to her body’s desire to dissolve, to carry her off into blissful unconsciousness. Her hands were numb, her muscles felt like soft wax. The place where Raphael had pressed the gun into her skin felt cold, a ring of white fire for a third eye. He hadn’t turned on the lights in the boat. They were facing each other in the deepening darkness and perhaps, by the time he shot her, she would no longer be able to see him clearly…

Focus, said a small, clear voice through the panic. Focus. The longer you keep him talking, the more time they’ll have to find you. Strike knows you were tricked.

She suddenly remembered the police car speeding across the top of Blomfield Road and wondered whether it had been circling, looking for her, whether the police, knowing that Raphael had lured her to the area, had already dispatched officers to search for them. The fake address had been some distance away along the canal bank, reached, so Raphael’s texts had said, through the black gates. Would Strike guess that Raphael was armed?

She took a deep breath.

“Kinvara broke down in Della Winn’s office last summer and said that someone had told her she’d never been loved, that she was used as part of a game.”

She must speak slowly. Don’t rush it. Every second might count, every second that she could keep Raphael hanging on her words, was another second in which somebody might come to her aid.

“Della assumed she was talking about your father, but we checked and Della can’t remember Kinvara actually saying his name. We think you seduced Kinvara as an act of revenge towards your father, kept the affair going for a couple of months, but when she got clingy and possessive, you ditched her.”

“All supposition,” said Raphael harshly, “and therefore bullshit. What else?”

“Why did Kinvara go up to town on the day her beloved mare was likely to be put down?”

“Maybe she couldn’t face seeing the horse shot. Maybe she was in denial about how sick it was.”

“Or,” said Robin, “maybe she was suspicious about what you and Francesca were up to in Drummond’s gallery.”

“No proof. Next.”

“She had a kind of breakdown when she got back to Oxfordshire. She attacked your father and was hospitalized.”

“Still grieving her stillborn, excessively attached to her horses, generally depressed,” Raphael rattled off. “Izzy and Fizzy will fight to take the stand and explain how unstable she is. What else?”

“Tegan told us that one day Kinvara was manically happy again, and she lied when asked why. She said your father had agreed to put her other mare in foal to Totilas. We think the real reason was that you’d resumed the affair with her, and we don’t think the timing was coincidental. You’d just driven the latest batch of paintings up to Drummond’s gallery for valuation.”

Raphael’s face became suddenly slack, as though his essential self had temporarily vacated it. The gun twitched in his hand and the fine hairs on Robin’s arms lifted gently as though a breeze had rippled over them. She waited for Raphael to speak, but he didn’t. After a minute, she continued:

“We think that when you loaded up the paintings for valuation, you saw ‘Mare Mourning’ close up for the first time and realized that it might be a Stubbs. You decided to substitute a different painting of a mare and foal for valuation.”

“Evidence?”

“Henry Drummond’s now seen the photograph I took of ‘Mare Mourning’ on the spare bed at Chiswell House. He’s ready to testify that it wasn’t among the pictures he valued for your father. The painting he valued at five to eight thousand pounds was by John Frederick Herring, and it showed a black and white mare and foal. Drummond’s also ready to testify that you’re sufficiently knowledgable about art to have spotted that ‘Mare Mourning’ might be a Stubbs.”

Raphael’s face had lost its mask-like cast. Now his near-black irises swiveled fractionally from side to side, as though he were reading something only he could see.

“I must’ve accidentally taken the Frederick Herring inste—”

A police siren sounded a few streets away. Raphael’s head turned: the siren wailed for a few seconds, then, as abruptly as it had started, was shut off.

He turned back to face Robin. He didn’t seem overly worried by the siren now it had stopped. Of course, he thought that it had been Matthew on the phone when he grabbed her.

“Yeah,” he said, regaining the thread of his thought. “That’s what I’ll say. I took the painting of the piebald to be valued by mistake, never saw ‘Mare Mourning,’ had no idea it might be a Stubbs.”

“You can’t have taken the piebald picture by mistake,” said Robin quietly. “It didn’t come from Chiswell House and the family’s prepared to say so.”

“The family,” said Raphael, “don’t notice what’s under their fucking noses. A Stubbs has been hanging in a damp spare bedroom for nigh on twenty years and nobody noticed, and you know why? Because they’re such fucking arrogant snobs… ‘Mare Mourning’ was old Tinky’s. She inherited it from the broken-down, alcoholic, gaga old Irish baronet she married before my grandfather. She had no idea what it was worth. She kept it because it was horsey and she loved horses.

“When her first husband died, she hopped over to England and pulled the same trick, became my grandfather’s expensive private nurse and then his even more expensive wife. She died intestate and all her crap—it was mostly crap—got absorbed into the Chiswell estate. The Frederick Herring could easily have been one of hers and nobody noticed it, stuck away in some filthy corner of that bloody house.”

“What if the police trace the piebald picture?”

“They won’t. It’s my mother’s. I’ll destroy it. When the police ask me, I’ll say my father told me he was going to flog it now he knew it was worth eight grand. ‘He must’ve sold it privately, officer.’”

“Kinvara doesn’t know the new story. She won’t be able to back you up.”

“This is where her well-known instability and unhappiness with my father works in my favor. Izzy and Fizzy will line up to tell the world that she never paid much attention to what he was up to, because she didn’t love him and was only in it for the money. Reasonable doubt is all I need.”

“What’s going to happen when the police put it to Kinvara that you only restarted the affair because you realized she might be about to become fantastically wealthy?”

Raphael let out a long, slow hiss.

“Well,” he said quietly, “if they can make Kinvara believe that, I’m fucked, aren’t I? But right now, Kinvara believes her Raffy loves her more than anything in the world, and she’s going to take a lot of convincing that’s not true, because her whole life’s going to fall apart otherwise. I drilled it into her: if they don’t know about the affair, they can’t touch us. I virtually had her reciting it whi

le I fucked her. And I warned her they’d try and turn us against each other if either one of us was suspected. I’ve got her very well-schooled and I said, when in doubt, cry your eyes out, tell them nobody ever tells you anything and act bloody confused.”

“She’s already told one silly lie to try and protect you, and the police know about it,” said Robin.

“What lie?”

“About the necklace, in the early hours of Sunday morning. Didn’t she tell you? Maybe she realized you’d be angry.”

“What did she say?”

“Strike told her he didn’t buy the new explanation for you going down to Chiswell House the morning your father died—”

“What d’you mean, he didn’t buy it?” said Raphael, and Robin saw outraged vanity mingled with his panic.

“I thought it was convincing,” she assured him. “Clever, to tell a story that you’d appear to give up only unwillingly. Everyone’s always more disposed to believe something they believe they’ve uncovered for themsel—”

Raphael raised the gun so that it was close to her forehead again and even though the cold ring of metal had not yet touched her skin again, she felt it there.

“What lie did Kinvara tell?”

“She claimed you came to tell her that your mother removed diamonds from the necklace and replaced them with fakes.”

Raphael appeared horrified.

“What the fuck did she say that for?”

“Because she’d had a shock, I suppose, finding Strike and me in the grounds when you were hiding upstairs. Strike said he didn’t believe the necklace story, so she panicked and made up a new version. The trouble is, this one’s checkable.”

“The stupid cunt,” said Raphael quietly, but with a venom that made the back of Robin’s neck prickle. “That stupid, stupid cunt… why didn’t she just stick to our story? And… no, wait…” he said, with the air of a man suddenly making a welcome connection, and to Robin’s mingled consternation and relief, he withdrew the gun from where it had been almost touching her, and laughed softly. “That’s why she hid the necklace on Sunday afternoon. She gave me some fucking guff about not wanting Izzy or Fizzy to sneak in and take it… well, she’s stupid, but she’s not hopeless. Unless someone checks the stones, we’re still in the clear… And they’ll have to take apart the stable block to find it. OK,” he said, as though talking to himself, “OK, I think all of that’s recoverable.

“Is that it, Venetia? Is that all you’ve got?”

“No,” said Robin. “There’s Flick Purdue.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“Yes, you do. You picked her up months ago, and fed her the truth about the gallows, knowing she’d pass the information to Jimmy.”

“What a busy boy I’ve been,” said Raphael lightly. “So what? Flick won’t admit to shagging a Tory minister’s son, especially if Jimmy might find out. She’s as besotted with him as Kinvara is with me.”

“That’s true, she didn’t want to admit it, but somebody must have spotted you creeping out of her flat next morning. She tried to pretend you were an Indian waiter.”

Robin thought she saw a minute wince of surprise and displeasure. Raphael’s amour propre was wounded at the thought that he could have been so described.

“OK,” he said, after a moment or two, “OK, let’s see… what if it was a waiter Flick shagged, but she’s maliciously claiming it was me because of her class warrior bullshit and the grudge her boyfriend’s got against my family?”

“You stole her flatmate’s credit card out of her bag in the kitchen.”

She could tell by the tightening of his mouth that he had not expected this. Doubtless he had thought that given Flick’s lifestyle, suspicion would fall on anyone passing through her tiny, overcrowded flat, and perhaps especially Jimmy.

“Proof?” he said again.

“Flick can provide the date you were at her flat and if Laura testifies her credit card went missing that night—”

“But with no firm evidence I was ever there—”

“How did Flick find out about the gallows? We know she told Jimmy about them, not the other way around.”

“Well, it can’t have been me, can it? I’m the only member of the family who never knew.”

“You knew everything. Kinvara had the full story from your father, and she passed it all to you.”

“No,” said Raphael, “I think you’ll find Flick heard about the gallows from the Butcher brothers. I’m reliably informed that one of them lives in London now. Yeah, I think I’ve heard a rumor one of them shagged their mate Jimmy’s girlfriend. And believe me, the Butcher brothers aren’t going to come over well in court, pair of shifty oiks driving gallows around under cover of darkness. I’m going to look a lot more plausible and presentable than Flick and the Butchers if this comes to court, I really am.”

“The police have got phone records,” Robin persisted. “They know about an anonymous call to Geraint Winn, which was made around the time Flick found out about the gallows. We think you tipped off Winn anonymously about Samuel Murape. You knew Winn had a grudge against the Chiswells. Kinvara told you everything.”

“I don’t know anything about that phone call, Your Honor,” said Raphael, “and I’m very sorry that my late brother was a prize cunt to Rhiannon Winn, but that’s nothing to do with me.”

“We think you made that threatening call to Izzy’s office, the first day you were there, talking about people pissing themselves as they die,” said Robin, “and we think it was your idea for Kinvara to pretend she kept hearing intruders in the grounds. Everything was designed to create as many witnesses as possible to the fact that your father had reason to be anxious and paranoid, that he might crack under extreme pressure—”

“He was under extreme pressure. He was being blackmailed by Jimmy Knight. Geraint Winn was trying to force him out of his job. Those aren’t lies, they’re facts and they’re going to be pretty sensational in a courtroom, especially once the Samuel Murape story gets out.”

“Except that you made stupid, avoidable mistakes.”

He sat up straighter and leaned forwards, his elbow sliding a few inches, so that the nozzle of the gun grew larger. His eyes, which had been smudges in the shadow, became clearly defined again, onyx black and white. Robin wondered how she had ever thought him handsome.

“What mistakes?”

As he said it, Robin saw, out of the corner of her eye, a flashing blue light glide over the bridge just visible through the window to her right, which was blocked from Raphael’s view by the side of the boat. The light vanished and the bridge was reabsorbed by the deepening darkness.

“For one thing,” said Robin carefully, “it was a mistake to keep meeting Kinvara in the lead-up to the murder. She kept pretending she’d forgotten where she was meeting your father, didn’t she? Just to get a couple of minutes with you, just to see you and check up on you—”

“That’s not proof.”

“Kinvara was followed to Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons on her birthday.”

His eyes narrowed.

“Who by?”

“Jimmy Knight. Flick’s confirmed it. Jimmy thought your father was with Kinvara and wanted to confront him publicly about not giving him his money. Obviously, your father wasn’t there, so Jimmy went home and wrote an angry blog about how High Tories spend their money, mentioning Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons by name.”

“Well, unless he saw me sneaking into Kinvara’s hotel suite,” said Raphael, “which he didn’t, because I took fucking good care to make sure nobody did, that’s all supposition, too.”

“All right,” said Robin, “what about the second time you were overheard having sex in the gallery bathroom? That wasn’t Francesca. You were with Kinvara.”

“Prove it.”

“Kinvara was in town that day, buying lachesis pills and pretending she was angry that your father was still seeing you, which was all part of the cover story that she hated you. She rang y

our father to check that he was having lunch elsewhere. Strike overheard that call. What you and Kinvara didn’t realize was that your father was having lunch only a hundred yards away from where you were having sex.

“When your father forced his way into the bathroom, he found a tube of lachesis pills on the floor. That’s why he nearly had a heart attack. He knew that’s what she’d come to town for. He knew who’d just been having sex with you in the bathroom.”

Raphael’s smile was more of a grimace.

“Yeah, that was a fuck-up. The day he came into our office, talking about Lachesis—‘knows when everyone’s number’s up’—I realized later, he was trying to put the frighteners on me, wasn’t he? I didn’t know what the hell he was on about at the time. But when you and your crippled boss mentioned the pills at Chiswell House, Kinvara twigged: they fell out of her pocket while we were screwing. We hadn’t known what first tipped him off… it was only after I heard he was ringing Le Manoir about Freddie’s money clip that I knew he must have realized something was going on. Then he invited me over to Ebury Street and I knew he was about to confront me about it, and we needed to get a move on, killing him.”

The entirely matter-of-fact way he discussed patricide chilled Robin. He might have been talking about wallpapering a room.

“He must’ve been planning to produce those pills during his big ‘I know you’re fucking my wife’ speech… why didn’t I spot them on the floor? I tried to put the room straight afterwards, but they must’ve rolled out of his pocket or something… it’s harder than you’d think,” said Raphael, “tidying up around a corpse you’ve just dispatched. I was surprised, actually, how much it affected me.”

She had never heard his narcissism so clearly. His interest and sympathy was entirely for himself. His dead father was nothing.

“The police have taken statements from Francesca and her parents, now,” Robin said. “She absolutely denies being in the bathroom with you that second time. Her parents never believed her, but—”

“They didn’t believe her because she’s even fucking dumber than Kinvara.”

“The police are combing through security camera footage from the shops she says she was in, while you and Kinvara were in the bathroom.”