Lethal White (A Cormoran Strike Novel)

“I’ll try and tap the family,” said Strike, rubbing his eyes, “but it feels tasteless asking for money before the funeral.”

“I’ve been looking through the photos again,” said Robin. In daily contact since finding the body, every one of their conversations wound its way back to the pictures of Chiswell’s corpse and the room in which they had found him.

“Me too. Notice anything new?”

“Yes, two little brass hooks on the wall. I think the sword was usually—”

“—displayed beneath the missing painting?”

“Exactly. D’you think it was Chiswell’s, from the army?”

“Very possibly. Or some ancestor’s.”

“I wonder why it was taken down? And how it got bent?”

“You think Chiswell grabbed it off the wall to try and defend himself against his murderer?”

“That’s the first time,” said Robin quietly, “you’ve said it. ‘Murderer.’”

A wasp swooped low over Strike but, repelled by his cigarette smoke, buzzed away again.

“I was joking.”

“Were you?”

Strike stretched out his legs in front of him, contemplating his feet. Stuck in the house, which was warm, he had not bothered with shoes and socks. His bare foot, which rarely saw sunlight, was pale and hairy. The prosthetic foot, a single piece of carbon fiber with no individual toes, had a dull gleam in the sunshine.

“There are odd features,” Strike said, as he waggled his remaining toes, “but it’s been a week and no arrest. The police will have noticed everything we did.”

“Hasn’t Wardle heard anything? Vanessa’s dad’s ill. She’s on compassionate leave, or I’d’ve asked her.”

“Wardle’s deep in anti-terrorist stuff for the Olympics. Considerately spared the time to call my voicemail and piss himself laughing at my client dying on me, though.”

“Cormoran, did you notice the name on those homeopathic pills I trod on?”

“No,” said Strike. This wasn’t one of the photographs he had isolated. “What was it?”

“Lachesis. I saw it when I enlarged the picture.”

“Why’s that significant?”

“When Chiswell came into our office and quoted that Latin poem at Aamir, and said something about a man of your habits, he mentioned Lachesis. He said she was—”

“One of the Fates.”

“—exactly. The one who ‘knew when everyone’s number was up.’”

Strike smoked in silence for a few seconds.

“Sounds like a threat.”

“I know.”

“You definitely can’t remember which poem it was? Author, perhaps?”

“I’ve been trying, but no—wait—” said Robin suddenly. “He gave it a number.”

“Catullus,” said Strike, sitting up straighter on the iron garden chair.

“How d’you know?”

“Because Catullus’s poems are numbered, not titled, there was an old copy on Chiswell’s coffee table. Catullus described plenty of interesting habits: incest, sodomy, child rape… he might’ve missed out bestiality. There’s a famous one about a sparrow, but nobody buggers it.”

“Funny coincidence, isn’t it?” said Robin, ignoring the witticism.

“Maybe Chiswell was prescribed the pills and that put him in mind of the Fate?”

“Did he seem to you like the kind of man who’d trust homeopathy?”

“No,” admitted Strike, “but if you’re suggesting the killer dropped a tube of lachesis as an artistic flourish—”

He heard a distant trill of bells.

“There’s someone at the door,” said Robin, “I’d better—”

“Check who it is, before you answer,” said Strike. He had had a sudden presentiment.

Her footsteps were muffled by what he knew was carpet.

“Oh, God.”

“Who is it?”

“Mitch Patterson.”

“Has he seen you?”

“No, I’m upstairs.”

“Then don’t answer.”

“I won’t.”

But her breathing had become noisy and ragged.

“You all right?”

“Fine,” she said, her voice constricted.

“What’s he—?”

“I’m going to go. I’ll call you later.”

The line went dead.

Strike lowered the mobile. Feeling a sudden heat in the fingers of the hand not holding his phone, he realized his cigarette had burned to the filter. Stubbing it out on the hot paving stone, he flicked it over the wall into the garden of a neighbor whom Nick and Ilsa disliked, and immediately lit another, thinking about Robin.

He was concerned about her. It was to be expected, of course, that she was experiencing anxiety and stress after finding a body and being interviewed by the security services, but he had noticed lapses in concentration over the phone, where she asked him the same thing two or three times. There was also what he considered her unhealthy eagerness to get back to the office, or out on the street.

Convinced that she ought to be taking some time out, Strike hadn’t told Robin about a line of investigation he was currently pursuing, because he was sure she would insist on being allowed to help.

The fact was that, for Strike, the Chiswell case had begun, not with the dead man’s story of blackmail, but with Billy Knight’s tale of a strangled child wrapped in a pink blanket in the ground. Ever since Billy’s last plea for help, Strike had been phoning the telephone number from which it had been made. Finally, on the previous morning, he had got an answer from a curious passerby, who had confirmed the phone box’s position on the edge of Trafalgar Square.