Lethal White (A Cormoran Strike Novel)

“Dziękuję ci,” Flick said, as one of them handed over her money, and the girls laughed and complimented her on her accent.

“What did you just say?” asked Robin, as the party left. “Was that Russian?”

“Polish. Learned a bit from my parents’ cleaner.” Flick hurried on, as though she had given something away, “Yeah, I always got on better with the cleaners than I did with my parents, actually, you can’t call yourself a socialist and have a cleaner, can you? Nobody should be allowed to live in a house too big for them, we should have forcible repossessions, redistribution of land and housing to the people who need it.”

“Too right,” said Robin enthusiastically, and Flick seemed reassured to be forgiven her professional parents by Bobbi Cunliffe, daughter of a dead ex-miner and Yorkshire trade unionist.

“Want a tea?” she offered.

“Aye, that’d be great,” said Robin.

“Have you heard of the Real Socialist Party?” asked Flick, once she had come back into the shop with two mugs.

“No,” said Robin.

“It’s not your normal political party,” Flick assured her. “We’re more like a proper community-based campaign, like, back to the Jarrow marchers, that kind of thing, the real spirit of Labor movement, not an imperialist Tory-lite shower of shite like fucking ‘New Labor.’ We don’t want to play the same old politics game, we want to change the rules of the game in favor of ordinary working—”

Billy Bragg’s version of the “Internationale” rang out. As Flick reached into her bag, Robin realized that this was Flick’s ringtone. Reading the caller’s name, Flick became tense.

“You be all right on your own for a bit?”

“Course,” said Robin.

Flick slid into the back room. As the door swung shut Robin heard her say:

“What’s going on? Have you seen him?”

As soon as the door was securely shut, Robin hurried to where Flick had been standing, crouched down and slid her hand under the leather flap of the messenger bag. The interior resembled the depths of a bin. Her fingers groped through sundry bits of crumpled paper, sweet wrappers, a sticky lump of something Robin thought might be chewed gum, various lid-less pens and tubes of makeup, a tin with a picture of Che Guevara on it, a pack of rolling tobacco that had leaked over the rest of the contents, some Rizlas, some spare tampons and a small, twisted ball of fabric that Robin was afraid might be a pair of worn pants. Trying to flatten out, read and then re-crumple each piece of paper was time-consuming. Most seemed to be abandoned drafts of articles. Then, through the door behind her, she heard Flick say loudly:

“Strike? What the hell…”

Robin froze, listening.

“… paranoid… it alone now… tell them he’s…”

“Excuse me,” said a woman peering over the counter. Robin jumped up. The portly, gray-haired customer in a tie-dyed T-shirt pointed up at the shelf on the wall, “could I see that rather special athame?”

“Which?” asked Robin, confused.

“The athame. The ceremonial dagger,” said the elderly woman, pointing.

Flick’s voice rose and fell in the room behind Robin.

“… it, didn’t you?… member you… pay me back… Chiswell’s money…”

“Mmm,” said the customer, weighing the knife carefully in her hand, “have you anything larger?”

“You had it, not me!” said Flick loudly, from behind the door.

“Um,” said Robin, squinting up at the shelf, “I think this is all we’ve got. That one might be a bit bigger…”

She stood on tiptoe to reach the longer knife, as Flick said:

“Fuck off, Jimmy!”

“There you are,” said Robin, handing over the seven-inch dagger.

With a clatter of falling necklaces, the door behind Robin flew open, hitting her in the back.

“Sorry,” said Flick, seizing her bag and shoving the phone back inside it, breathing hard, her eyes bright.

“Yes, you see, I like the triple moon marking on the smaller one,” said the elderly witch, pointing at the decoration on the hilt of the first dagger, unfazed by Flick’s dramatic reappearance, “but I prefer the longer blade.”

Flick was in that febrile state between fury and tears that Robin knew was one of the most amenable to indiscretion and confession. Desperate to get rid of her tiresome customer, she said bluntly in Bobbi’s thick Yorkshire:

“Well, that’s all we’ve got.”

The customer chuntered a little more, weighing the two knives in her hands, and at last took herself off without buying either.

“Y’all right?” Robin asked Flick at once.

“No,” said Flick. “I need a smoke.”

She checked her watch.

“Tell her I’m taking lunch if she comes back, all right?”

Damn, thought Robin, as Flick disappeared, taking her bag and her promising mood with her.

For over an hour, Robin minded the shop alone, becoming increasingly hungry. Once or twice, Eddie at the record stall peered vaguely into the shop at Robin, but showed no other interest in her activities. In a brief lull between more customers, Robin nipped into the back room to make sure that there wasn’t any food there that she had overlooked. There wasn’t.