Lethal White

“OK,” said Raphael, “well, worst comes to the worst, and they can prove she wasn’t with me, I might have to come clean about the fact that it was another young lady I was with in the bathroom that day, whose reputation I’ve been chivalrously trying to defend.”

“Will you really be able to find a woman to lie for you, in court, on a murder charge?” asked Robin, in disbelief.

“The woman who owns this houseboat is mad for me,” said Raphael softly. “We had a thing going before I went inside. She visited me in jail and everything. She’s in rehab right now. Crazy bitch, loves drama. Thinks she’s an artist. She drinks too much, she’s a real pain in the arse, actually, but she fucks like a rabbit. She never bothered taking the spare key to this place off me, and she keeps a key to her mummy’s house in that drawer over there—”

“It wouldn’t happen to be her mother’s house where you had the helium, tubing and gloves delivered, would it?” asked Robin.

Raphael blinked. He hadn’t expected that.

“You needed an address that didn’t seem connected to you. You made sure it was delivered while the owners were away, or at work, then you could let yourself in, collect the failed delivery card…”

“Pick it up, disguised and get it couriered it off to dear old Dad’s house, yeah.”

“And Flick took delivery and Kinvara made sure she hid it from your father until it was time to kill him?”

“That’s right,” said Raphael. “You pick up a lot of tips in jail. Fake IDs, vacant buildings, empty addresses, you can do a hell of a lot with them. Once you’re dead—” Robin’s scalp prickled—“nobody’s going to connect me with any of the addresses.”

“The owner of this barge—”

“Is going to be telling everyone she was having sex with me in Drummond’s bathroom, remember? She’s on my team, Venetia,” he said quietly, “so it’s not looking good for you, is it?”

“There were other mistakes,” said Robin, her mouth dry.

“Like?”

“You told Flick your father needed a cleaner.”

“Yeah, because it makes her and Jimmy look fishy as hell, that she wheedled her way into my father’s house. The jury’ll be focused on that, not how she found out he wanted a cleaner. I’ve already told you, she’s going to look like a grubby little tart with a grudge in the dock. That’s just one more lie.”

“But she stole a note from your father, a note he wrote while he was trying to check Kinvara’s story with Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. I found it in her bathroom. She’d lied, told him her mother was going to the hotel with her. They’d never normally give out information about guests, but he was a government minister and he’d previously been there, so we think he managed to trick them into agreeing that they could remember the family vehicle there and that it was a shame her mother hadn’t made it. He made a note of the suite Kinvara was in, probably pretending he’d forgotten it, and he was trying to get hold of the bill, to see whether there was any sign of two lots of breakfast or dinner, I suppose. When the prosecution produce the note and the bill in court—”

“You found that note, did you?” said Raphael.

Robin’s stomach turned over. She had not meant to give Raphael another reason to shoot her.

“I knew I’d underestimated you after that dinner we had, at Nam Long Le Shaker,” said Raphael. It wasn’t a compliment. His eyes were narrowed, his nostrils flared in dislike. “You were a mess, but you were still asking fucking inconvenient questions. You and your boss were cozier with the police than I expected, too. And even after I tipped off the Mail—”

“That was you,” said Robin, wondering how she had never realized. “You put the press and Mitch Patterson back on us…”

“I told them you’d left your husband for Strike, but that he was still shagging his ex. Izzy had given me that bit of gossip. I thought you needed slowing down, you two, because you kept poking away at my alibi… but after I’ve shot you,”—an icy chill ran the length of Robin’s body—“your boss’ll be busy answering the press’s questions about how your body ended up in a canal, won’t he? I think that’s called killing two birds with one stone.”

“Even if I’m dead,” said Robin, her voice as steady as she could make it, “there’ll still be your father’s note and the hotel’s testimony—”

“OK, so he was worried about what Kinvara was doing at Le Manoir,” said Raphael roughly. “I’ve just told you, nobody saw me on the premises. The stupid cow did ask for two glasses with the champagne, but she could’ve been with someone else.”

“You aren’t going to have any opportunity to cook up a new story with her,” said Robin, her mouth drier than ever, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth as she tried to sound calm and confident. “She’s in custody now, she isn’t as clever as you—and you made other mistakes,” Robin rushed on, “stupid ones, because you had to enact the plan in a hurry once you realized your father was onto you.”

“Like?”

“Like Kinvara taking away the packaging on the amitriptyline, after she’d doctored the orange juice. Kinvara forgetting to tell you the trick to closing the front door properly. And,” said Robin, aware that she was playing her very last card, “her throwing the front door key to you, at Paddington.”

In the wordless space that now stretched between them, Robin thought she heard footsteps close at hand. She didn’t dare look out of the window in case she alerted Raphael, who appeared too appalled by what she had just said to take in anything else.

“‘Throwing the front door key to me?’” repeated Raphael, with fragile bravado. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“The keys to Ebury Street are restricted, almost impossible to copy. The pair of you only had access to one: hers, because your father was suspicious of you both by the time he died, and he’d made sure the spare was out of your reach.

“She needed the key to get into the house and doctor the orange juice and you needed it to go in early next morning and suffocate him. So you cobbled together a plan at the last minute: she’d pass you the key at a prearranged spot at Paddington, where you’d be disguised as a homeless person.

“You were caught on camera. The police have got people enlarging and clarifying the image right now. They think you must have bought things from a charity shop in haste, which might produce another useful witness. The police are now combing CCTV footage for your movements from Paddington onwards.”

Raphael said nothing at all for nearly a minute. His eyes were moving fractionally from left to right, as he tried to find a loophole, an escape.

“That’s… inconvenient,” he said finally. “I didn’t think I was on camera, sitting there.”

Robin thought she could see hope slipping away from him now. Quietly, she continued, “As per your plan, Kinvara arrived home in Oxfordshire, called Drummond and left a message that she wanted the necklace valued, to set up that whole back-up story.

“Early next morning, another burner phone was used to call both Geraint Winn and Jimmy Knight. Both were lured out of their houses, presumably with a promise of information on Chiswell. That was you, making sure they were in the frame if murder was suspected.”

“No proof,” muttered Raphael automatically, but still his eyes darted this way and that, searching for invisible lifelines.

“You let yourself into the house very early in the morning, expecting to find your father almost comatose after his early morning orange juice, but—”

“He was out of it, at first,” said Raphael. His eyes had become glazed, and Robin knew that he was remembering what had happened, watching it, inside his head. “He was slumped on the sofa, very groggy. I walked straight past him into the kitchen, opened my box of toys—”

For a sliver of a second, Robin saw again the shrink-wrapped head, the gray hair pressed around the face so that only the gaping black hole of the mouth was visible. Raphael had done that; Raphael, who currently had a gun pointing at her face.

/>   “—but while I’m arranging everything, the old bastard wakes up, sees me fixing the tubing onto the helium canister and comes back to fucking life. He staggers up, grabs Freddie’s sword off the wall and tries to fight, but I got it off him. Bent the blade doing it. Forced him down into the chair—he was still struggling—and—”

Raphael mimed putting the bag over his father’s head.

“Caput.”

“And then,” said Robin, her mouth still dry, “you made those phone calls from his phone that were supposed to establish your alibi. Kinvara had told you his passcode, of course. And you left, without closing the door properly.”

Robin didn’t know whether she was imagining movement out of the porthole to her left. She kept her eyes fixed on Raphael, and the slightly wavering gun.

“Loads of this is circumstantial,” he muttered, eyes still glazed. “Flick and Francesca have both got motives for lying about me… I didn’t end it well with Francesca… I might still have a chance… I might…”

“There’s no chance, Raff,” said Robin. “Kinvara isn’t going to lie for you much longer. When they tell her the truth about ‘Mare Mourning,’ she’s going to put everything together for the first time. I think you insisted she move it into to the drawing room, to protect it from the damp in the spare room. How did you manage that? Did you make up some rubbish about it reminding you of her dead mare? Then she’s going to realize you started up the affair again once you knew its true value, and that all the dreadful things you said to her when you ended it were true. And worst of all,” said Robin, “she’s going to realize that when the two of you heard intruders in the grounds—real ones, this time—you let the woman you were supposedly madly in love with walk out into the grounds in the dark, in her nightdress, while you stayed behind to protect—”

“All right!” he shouted suddenly and he advanced the gun nozzle until it pressed into her forehead again. “Stop fucking talking, will you?”

Robin sat quite still. She imagined how it would feel when he pressed the trigger. He had said he would shoot her through a cushion to muffle the sound, but perhaps he had forgotten, perhaps he was about to lose control.

“D’you know what it’s like in jail?” he asked.

She tried to say “no,” but the sound wouldn’t come.

“The noise,” he whispered. “The smell. The ugly, dumb people—like animals, some of them. Worse than animals. I never knew there were people like it. The places they make you eat and shit. Watching your back all the time, waiting for violence. The clanging, the yelling and the fucking squalor. I’d rather be buried alive. I won’t do it again…

“I was going to have a dream life. I was going to be free, totally free. I’d never have to kowtow to the likes of fucking Drummond again. There’s a villa on Capri I’ve had my eye on for a long time. View out over the Gulf of Naples. Then I’d have a nice pad in London… new car, once my fucking ban’s lifted… imagine walking along and knowing you could buy anything, do anything. A dream life…

“Couple of little problems to get out of the way before I was completely sorted… Flick, easy: late night, dark road, knife in the ribs, victim of street crime.

“And Kinvara… once she’d made a will in my favor, after a few years, she’d have broken her neck riding an unsuitable horse or drowned out in Italy… she’s a terrible swimmer…

“And then all of them could fuck themselves, couldn’t they? The Chiswells, my whore of a mother. I’d need nothing from anyone. I’d have everything…

“But that’s all gone,” he said. Dark-skinned though he was, she saw that he had turned ashen, the dark shadows beneath his eyes hollow in the half-light. “It’s all gone. You know what, Venetia? I’m going to blow your fucking brains out, because I’ve decided I don’t like you. I think I’d like to see your fucking head explode before mine comes off—”

“Raff—”

“Raff… Raff… ” he bleated, imitating her, “why do women all think they’re different? You’re not different, none of you.”

He was reaching for the limp cushion beside him.

“We’ll go together. I’d like to arrive in hell with a sexy girl on my ar—”

With a great splintering of wood, the door crashed open. Raphael spun around, pointing a gun at the large figure that had just fallen inside. Robin launched herself over the table to grab his arm, but Raphael knocked her backwards with his elbow and she felt blood spurt as her lip split.

“Raff, no, don’t—don’t!”

He had stood up, stooped in the cramped space, the barrel of the gun in his mouth. Strike, who had shouldered in the door, stood panting feet away from him, and behind Strike was Wardle.

“Go on and do it, then, you cowardly little fuck,” said Strike.

Robin wanted to protest, but couldn’t make a noise.

There was a small, metallic click.

“Took out the bullets at Chiswell House, you stupid bastard,” said Strike, hobbling forwards and smacking the revolver out of Raphael’s mouth. “Not half as clever as you thought you were, eh?”

There was a great ringing in Robin’s ears. Raphael was spitting oaths in English and Italian, screaming threats, thrashing and twisting as Strike helped bend him over the table for Wardle to cuff him, but she stumbled away from the group as though in a dream, backwards towards the kitchen area of the galley, where pots and pans were hanging and white kitchen roll sat, ludicrously ordinary, beside a tiny sink. She could feel her lip swelling where Raphael had hit her. She tore off some kitchen roll, ran it under the cold tap and pressed it to her bleeding mouth, while through the porthole she watched uniformed officers hurrying through the black gates, taking possession of the gun and of the struggling Raphael, whom Wardle had just dragged onto the bank.

She had just been held at gunpoint. Nothing seemed real. Now the police were stomping in and out of the barge, but it was all noise and echo, and now she realized that Strike was standing beside her, and he seemed the only person with any reality.

“How did you know?” she asked thickly, through the cold wodge of tissue.

“Twigged five minutes after you left. The last three digits on that number you showed me on those supposed texts from Matthew were the same as one of the burner phone numbers. Went after you but you were already gone. Layborn sent panda cars out and I’ve been calling you nonstop ever since. Why didn’t you pick up?”

“My phone was on silent in my bag. Now it’s in the canal.”

She craved a stiff drink. Maybe, she thought vaguely, there really was a bar somewhere nearby… but of course, she wouldn’t be allowed to go to a bar. She was facing hours back at New Scotland Yard. They would need a long statement. She would have to relive the last hour in detail. She felt exhausted.

“How did you know I was here?”

“Called Izzy and asked if Raphael knew anyone in the vicinity of that fake address he was trying to get you to. She told me he’d had some posh druggie girlfriend who owned a barge. He was running out of places to go. The police have been watching his flat for the last two days.”

“And you knew the gun was empty?”

“I hoped it was empty,” he corrected her. “For all I knew, he’d checked it and reloaded.”

He groped in his pocket. His fingers shook slightly as he lit a cigarette. He inhaled, then said:

“You did bloody well to keep him talking that long, Robin, but next time you get a call from an unknown number, you bloody well call it back and check who’s on the other end. And don’t you ever—ever—tell a suspect anything about your personal life again.”

“Would it be OK if I have two minutes,” she asked, pressing the cold kitchen roll against her swollen and bleeding lip, “to enjoy not being dead, before you start?”

Strike blew out a jet of smoke.

“Yeah, fair enough,” he said, and pulled her clumsily into a one-armed hug.

ONE MONTH LATER

EPILOGUE

Your past is de

ad, Rebecca. It has no longer any hold on you—has nothing to do with you—as you are now.

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

The Paralympics had been and gone, and September was doing its best to wash away the memory of the long, Union-Jacked summer days, when London had basked for weeks in the world’s attention. Rain was pattering against the Cheyne Walk Brasserie’s high windows, competing with Serge Gainsbourg as he crooned “Black Trombone” from hidden speakers.

Strike and Robin, who had arrived together, had only just sat down when Izzy, who had chosen the restaurant for its proximity to her flat, arrived in a slightly disheveled flapping of Burberry trench coat and sodden umbrella, the latter taking some time to collapse at the door.

Strike had only spoken to their client once since the case had been solved, and then briefly, because Izzy had been too shocked and distressed to say much. They were meeting today at Strike’s request, because there was one last piece of unfinished business in the Chiswell case. Izzy had told Strike by phone, when they arranged lunch, that she had not been out much since Raphael’s arrest. “I can’t face people. It’s all so dreadful.”

“How are you?” she said anxiously, as Strike maneuvered himself out from behind the white-clothed table to accept a damp embrace. “And oh, poor Robin, I’m so sorry,” she added, hurrying around the other side of the table to hug Robin, before saying distractedly, “Oh yes, please, thank you,” to the unsmiling waitress, who took her wet raincoat and umbrella.

Sitting down, Izzy said, “I promised myself I wouldn’t cry,” then grabbed a napkin from the table and pressed it firmly to her tear ducts. “Sorry… keep doing this. Trying not to be embarrassing…”

She cleared her throat and straightened her back.

“It’s just been such a shock,” she whispered.

“Of course it has,” said Robin, and Izzy gave her a watery smile.

“C’est l’automne de ma vie,” sang Gainsbourg. “Plus personne ne m’étonne… ”