Lethal White (A Cormoran Strike Novel)

Pretending to be interested in the conversation between the girls on the bed and Digby, Robin slid down the wall to sit on the laminate floor, sipping her lager while she covertly surveyed Flick’s bedroom. It had evidently been tidied for the party. There was no wardrobe, but a clothes rail holding coats and the occasional dress, while T-shirts and sweaters were halfheartedly folded in a dark corner. A small number of Beanie Babies sat on top of the chest of drawers, along with a clutter of makeup, while various placards stood jumbled in a corner. Jimmy and Barclay must surely have been thoroughly through this room. Robin wondered whether they had thought of searching behind all these flyers. Unfortunately, even if they hadn’t, she could hardly start unpinning them now.

“Look, this is basic stuff,” said Digby, addressing the girls on the bed. “You’ll agree that capitalism depends in part on the poorly paid labor of women, right? So feminism, if it’s to be effective, must also be Marxist, the one implies the other.”

“Patriarchy is about more than capitalism,” said Shanice.

Out of the corner of her eye, Robin saw Jimmy fighting his way through the narrow hall, his arm around Flick’s neck. The latter appeared happier than she had all evening.

“Women’s oppression is inextricably linked to their inability to enter the labor force,” announced Digby.

The drowsy-eyed Hayley disentangled herself from Shanice to extend her hand towards the black-clad teenagers in a silent request. Their joint passed over Robin’s head.

“Sorry ’bout the room,” Hayley said vaguely to Robin, after taking a long toke. “Bastard getting a place in London, innit?”

“Total bastard,” said Robin.

“—because you want to subsume feminism within the larger ideology of Marxism.”

“There’s no subsuming, the aims are identical!” said Digby, with an incredulous little laugh.

Hayley tried to give Shanice the joint, but the impassioned Shanice waved it away.

“Where are you Marxists when we’re challenging the ideal of the heteronormative family?” she demanded of Digby.

“Hear, hear,” said Hayley vaguely, snuggling closer to Shanice and shoving the teenagers’ joint at Robin, who passed it straight back to the boys. Interested though they had been in the lesbians, they promptly left the bedroom before anybody else could offer their meager supply of drugs around.

“I used to have some of them,” Robin said aloud, getting to her feet, but nobody was listening. Digby took the opportunity to peek up Robin’s short black skirt as she passed close to him on her way to the chest of drawers. Under cover of the increasingly heated conversation about feminism and Marxism, and with the appearance of vaguely nostalgic interest, Robin picked up and put down each of Flick’s Beanie Babies in turn, feeling through the thin plush to the plastic beads and stuffing within. None of them felt as though they had been opened up and re-sewn to conceal a piece of paper.

With a sense of slight hopelessness, she returned to the dark hall, where people stood pressed together, spilling out onto the landing.

A girl was hammering on the door of the bathroom.

“Stop shagging in there, I need a piss!” she said, to the amusement of various people standing around.

This is hopeless.

Robin slid into the kitchenette, which was hardly larger than two telephone boxes, where a couple was sitting on the side, the girl with her legs over the man’s, who had his hand up her skirt, while the teenagers in black were now foraging with difficulty for something to eat. Under pretense of finding another drink, Robin sifted through empty cans and bottles, watching the progress of the teenagers through the cupboards and reflecting how insecure a hiding place a cereal box would make.

Alf the anarchist appeared in the kitchen doorway as Robin made to leave the room, now far more stoned than he had been in the pub.

“There she is,” he said loudly, trying to focus on Robin. “Th’ union leader’s daughter.”

“That’s me,” said Robin, as D’banj sang “Oliver, Oliver, Oliver Twist” from the second bedroom. She tried to duck under Alf’s arm, but he lowered it, blocking her exit from the kitchen. The cheap laminate floor was vibrating with the stamping of the determined dancers in Hayley’s room.

“You’re hot,” said Alf. “’M’I allowed to say that? I mean it in a fucking feminist way.”

He laughed.

“Thanks,” said Robin, succeeding on her second pass in dodging around him and getting back into the tiny hall, where the desperate girl was still pounding on the bathroom door. Alf caught Robin’s arm, bent down and said something incomprehensible in her ear. When he straightened up again, some of her hair chalk had left a black stain on the end of his sweaty nose.

“What?” said Robin.

“I said,” he shouted, “‘wanna find somewhere quieter so we can talk more?’”

But then Alf noticed somebody standing behind her.

“All right, Jimmy?”