Lethal White (A Cormoran Strike Novel)

“I can’t see what’s significant about any of that.”

“Maybe not in isolation, but try putting it together with what Della told me.”

“Which bit?”

But even when Strike reminded her what Della had said, Robin remained confused.

“I don’t see the connection.”

Strike got up, grinning.

“Mull it over for a while. I’m going to ring Izzy and tell her Tegan’s let the cat out of the bag about the gallows.”

He walked away and disappeared into the crowds in search of a quiet spot from which to make his call, leaving Robin to swill the now-tepid champagne around in the miniature bottle and ponder what Strike had just said. Nothing coherent emerged from her exhausted attempts to connect the disparate pieces of information, and after a few minutes she gave up and simply sat there, enjoying the warm breeze that lifted the hair from her shoulders.

In spite of her tiredness, the shattered state of her marriage and her very real apprehension about going digging in the dell later that night, it was pleasant to sit here, breathing in the smells of the racecourse, of soft air redolent of turf, leather and horse, catching trails of perfume from the women now moving away from the bar towards the stands, and the smoky whiff of venison burgers cooking in a van nearby. For the first time in a week, Robin realized that she was actually hungry.

She picked up the cork of the champagne bottle and turned it over in her fingers, remembering another cork, the one she had saved from her twenty-first birthday party, for which Matthew had come home from university with a bunch of new friends, Sarah among them. Looking back, she knew that her parents had wanted to throw a big party for her twenty-first in compensation for her not having the graduation party they had all been expecting.

Strike was taking a long time. Perhaps Izzy was spilling all the details, now that they knew what the substance of the blackmail had been about, or perhaps, Robin thought, she simply wanted to keep him on the phone.

Izzy isn’t his type, though.

The thought startled her a little. She felt slightly guilty for giving it headspace and even more uncomfortable when it was jostled out of the way by another.

All his girlfriends have been beautiful. Izzy isn’t.

Strike attracted remarkably good-looking women, when you considered his generally bearlike appearance and what he himself had referred to in her hearing as “pube-like” hair.

I bet I look gross, was Robin’s next, inconsequential thought. Puffy-faced and pale when she had got in the Land Rover that morning, she had cried a lot since. She was half-deliberating whether she had time to find a bathroom and at least brush her hair, when she spotted Strike walking back towards her holding a venison burger in each hand and a betting slip in his mouth.

“Izzy isn’t picking up,” he informed her through clenched teeth. “Left a message. Grab one of these and come on. I’ve just put a tenner each way on Brown Panther.”

“I didn’t realize you’re a betting man,” said Robin.

“I’m not,” said Strike, removing the betting slip from his teeth and pocketing it, “but I’m feeling lucky today. Come on, we’ll watch the race.”

As Strike turned away, Robin slid the champagne cork discreetly into her pocket.

“Brown Panther,” Strike said through a mouthful of burger, as they approached the track. “Except he isn’t, is he? Black mane, so he’s—”

“—a bay, yes,” said Robin. “Are you upset he isn’t a panther, either?”

“Just trying to follow the logic. That stallion I found online—Blanc de Blancs—was chestnut, not white.”

“Not gray, you mean.”

“Fuck’s sake,” muttered Strike, half-amused, half-exasperated.

65

I wonder how many there are who would do as much—who dare do it?

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

Brown Panther came in second. They spent Strike’s winnings among the food and coffee tents, killing the hours of daylight until it was time to head for Woolstone and the dell. While panic fluttered in Robin’s chest every time she thought of the tools in the back of the Land Rover and the dark basin full of nettles, Strike distracted her, whether intentionally or not, by a persistent refusal to explain how the testimony of Della Winn and Raphael Chiswell fitted together, or what conclusions he had drawn from it.

“Think,” he kept saying, “just think.”

But Robin was exhausted, and it was easier to simply push him to explain over successive coffees and sandwiches, all the while savoring this unusual interlude in their working lives, for she and Strike had never before spent hours together unless at some time of crisis.

But as the sun sank ever closer to the horizon, Robin’s thoughts darted more insistently towards the dell, and each time they did so her stomach did a small backflip. Noticing her increasingly preoccupied silences, Strike suggested for the second time that she stay in the Land Rover while he and Barclay dug.