Lethal White (A Cormoran Strike Novel)

“Can I have your autograph, then?”

Deciding that this was the lesser of two evils, Strike wrote his signature on a napkin.

“Thanks.”

Clutching her napkin, Tegan departed at last. Strike waited until she had disappeared into the bar before turning to Robin, who was already busy on her phone.

“Six years ago,” she said, reading from the mobile screen, “an EU directive came in banning member states from exporting torture equipment. Until then, it was perfectly legal to export British-made gallows abroad.”

64

Speak so that I can understand you.

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

“‘I acted within the law and in accordance with my conscience,’” Strike quoted Chiswell’s gnomic pronouncement back in Pratt’s. “So he did. Never hid the fact that he was pro-hanging, did he? I suppose he provided the wood from his grounds.”

“And the space for Jack o’Kent to build them—which is why Jack o’Kent warned Raff not to go into the barn, when he was a child.”

“And they probably split the profits.”

“Wait,” said Robin, remembering what Flick had shrieked after the minister’s car, the night of the Paralympic reception. “‘He put the horse on them’… Cormoran, d’you think—?”

“Yeah, I do,” said Strike, his thoughts keeping pace with hers. “The last thing Billy said to me at the hospital was ‘I hated putting the horse on them.’ Even in the middle of a psychotic episode, Billy could carve a perfect White Horse of Uffington into wood… Jack o’Kent had his boys carving it onto trinkets for tourists and onto gallows for export… nice little father-son business he had going, eh?”

Strike clinked his beer glass against her little champagne bottle and downed the last dregs of his Doom Bar.

“To our first proper breakthrough. If Jack o’Kent was putting a little bit of local branding on the gallows, they were traceable back to him, weren’t they? And not only to him: to the Vale of the White Horse, and to Chiswell. It all fits, Robin. Remember Jimmy’s placard, with the pile of dead black children on it? Chiswell and Jack o’Kent were flogging them abroad—Middle East or Africa, probably. But Chiswell can’t have known they had the horse carved into them—Christ, no, he definitely didn’t,” said Strike, remembering Chiswell’s words in Pratt’s, “because when he told me there were photographs, he said ‘there are no distinguishing marks, so far as I’m aware.’”

“You know how Jimmy said he was owed?” said Robin, following her own train of thought. “And how Raff said Kinvara thought he had a legitimate claim for money, at first? What d’you think are the chances that Jack o’Kent left some gallows ready for sale when he died—”

“—and Chiswell sold them without bothering to track down and pay off Jack’s sons? Very smart,” said Strike, nodding. “So for Jimmy, this all started as a demand for his rightful share of his father’s estate. Then, when Chiswell denied he owed them anything, it turned into blackmail.”

“Not a very strong case for blackmail, though, when you think about it, is it?” said Robin. “D’you really think Chiswell would have lost a lot of voters over this? It was legal at the time he sold them, and he was publicly pro-death penalty, so nobody could say he was a hypocrite. Half the country thinks we should bring back hanging. I’m not sure the kind of people who vote for Chiswell would have thought he did much wrong.”

“Another good point,” conceded Strike, “and Chiswell could probably have brazened it out. He’d survived worse: impregnating his mistress, divorce, an illegitimate kid, Raphael’s drugged-up car crash and imprisonment…

“But there were ‘unintended consequences,’ remember?” Strike asked thoughtfully. “What did those pictures at the Foreign Office show, that Winn was so keen to get hold of? And who’s that ‘Samuel’ Winn just mentioned on the phone?”

Strike pulled out his notebook and jotted down a few sentences in his dense, hard-to-read handwriting.

“At least,” said Robin, “we’ve got confirmation of Raff’s story. The necklace.”

Strike grunted, still writing. When he’d finished, he said, “Yeah, that was useful, as far as it went.”

“What d’you mean, ‘as far as it went’?”

“Him heading down to Oxfordshire to stop Kinvara running off with a valuable necklace is a better story than the trying-to-stop-her-topping-herself one,” said Strike, “but I still don’t think we’re being told everything.”

“Why not?”

“Same objection as before. Why would Chiswell send Raphael down there as his emissary, when his wife hated him? Can’t see why Raphael would be any more persuasive than Izzy.”

“Have you taken against Raphael, or something?”

Strike raised his eyebrows.

“I haven’t got personal feelings for him one way or the other. You?”

“Of course not,” said Robin, a little too quickly. “So, what was that theory you mentioned, before Tegan arrived?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Strike. “Well, it might be nothing, but a couple of things Raphael said to you jumped out at me. Got me thinking.”

“What things?”

Strike told her.