Lethal White (A Cormoran Strike Novel)

“You’re so predictable. I knew you’d say I came back because you’re famous.”

“Well, you do tend to resurface whenever there’s drama, Charlotte,” Strike said. “I seem to remember that the last time, I’d just got my leg blown off.”

“You bastard,” she said, with a cool smile. “That’s how you explain me taking care of you, all those months afterwards?”

His mobile rang: Robin.

“Hi,” he said, turning away from Charlotte to look out of the window. “How’s it going?”

“Hi, just telling tha I can’t meet tha tonight,” said Robin, in a much thicker Yorkshire accent than usual. “I’m going out with a friend. Party.”

“I take it Flick’s listening?” said Strike.

“Yeah, well, why don’t you try calling your wife if you’re lonely?” said Robin.

“I’ll do that,” said Strike, amused in spite of Charlotte’s cool stare from across the table. “D’you want me to yell at you? Give this some credibility?”

“No, you fook off,” said Robin loudly, and she hung up.

“Who was that?” asked Charlotte, eyes narrowed.

“I’ve got to go,” said Strike, pocketing the mobile and reaching for his walking stick, which had slipped and fallen under the table while he and Charlotte argued. Realizing what he was after, she leaned sideways and succeeded in picking it up before he could reach it.

“Where’s the cane I gave you?” she said. “The Malacca one?”

“You kept it,” he reminded her.

“Who bought you this one? Robin?”

Amidst all of Charlotte’s paranoid and frequently wild accusations, she had occasionally made uncannily accurate guesses.

“She did, as a matter of fact,” said Strike, but instantly regretted saying it. He was playing Charlotte’s game and at once, she turned into a third and rare Charlotte, neither cold nor fragile, but honest to the point of recklessness.

“All that’s kept me going through this pregnancy is the thought that once I’ve had them, I can leave.”

“You’re going to walk out on your kids, the moment they exit the womb?”

“For another three months, I’m trapped. They all want the boy so much, they hardly let me out of their sight. Once I’ve given birth, it’ll be different. I can go. We both know I’ll be a lousy mother. They’re better off with the Rosses. Jago’s mother’s already lining herself up as a surrogate.”

Strike held out his hand for the walking stick. She hesitated, then passed it over. He got up.

“Give my regards to Amelia.”

“She’s not coming. I lied. I knew you’d be at Henry’s. I was at a private viewing with him yesterday. He told me you were going to interview him.”

“Goodbye, Charlotte.”

“Wouldn’t you rather have had advance warning that I want you back?”

“But I don’t want you,” he said, looking down at her.

“Don’t kid a kidder, Bluey.”

Strike limped out of the restaurant past the staring waiters, all of whom seemed to know how rude he had been to one of their colleagues. As he slammed his way out into the street, he felt as though he was pursued, as though Charlotte had projected after him a succubus that would tail him until they met again.

51

Can you spare me an ideal or two?

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

“You’ve been brainwashed to think it’s got to be this way,” said the anarchist. “See, you need to get your head around a world without leaders. No individual invested with more power than any other individual.”

“Right,” said Robin. “So tha’ve never voted?”

The Duke of Wellington in Hackney was overflowing this Saturday evening, but the deepening darkness was still warm and a dozen or so of Flick’s friends and comrades in CORE were happy to mill around on the pavement on Balls Pond Road, drinking before heading back to Flick’s for a party. Many of the group were holding carrier bags containing cheap wine and beer.

The anarchist laughed and shook his head. He was stringy, blond and dreadlocked, with many piercings, and Robin thought she recognized him from the mêlée in the crowd on the night of the Paralympic reception. He had already shown her the squidgy lump of cannabis he had brought to contribute to the general amusement of the party. Robin, whose experience of drugs was restricted to a couple of long-ago tokes on a bong back in her interrupted university career, had feigned an intelligent interest.

“You’re so naive!” he told her now. “Voting’s part of the great democratic con! Pointless ritual designed to make the masses think they’ve got a say and influence! It’s a power-sharing deal between the Red and Blue Tories!”

“What’s th’answer, then, if it’s not voting?” asked Robin, cradling her barely touched half of lager.

“Community organization, resistance and mass protest,” said the anarchist.

“’Oo organizes it?”

“The communities themselves. You’ve been bloody brainwashed,” repeated the anarchist, mitigating the harshness of the statement with a small grin, because he liked Yorkshire socialist Bobbi Cunliffe’s plain-spokenness, “to think you need leaders, but people can do it for themselves once they’ve woken up.”

“An’ who’s gonna wake ’em up?”