Lethal White (A Cormoran Strike Novel)

The three of them set off along the track, Robin and Barclay matching their pace to Strike’s, who progressed carefully, focusing the beam of his torch on the ground and making regular use of the stick, both to lean on and push obstacles out of his way. Their footsteps were deadened by the soft ground, but the quiet night amplified the chink and clatter of the tools carried by Barclay, the rustling of tiny, unseen creatures fleeing the giants who had invaded their wilderness and, from the direction of Chiswell House, the barking of a dog. Robin remembered the Norfolk terrier, and hoped he wasn’t loose.

When they reached the clearing, Robin saw that night had turned the derelict cottage into a witch’s lair. It was easy to imagine figures lurking behind the cracked windows and, telling herself firmly that the situation was quite creepy enough without imagining fresh horrors, she turned away from it. With a soft “ooft,” Barclay let the kit bags fall onto the ground at the lip of the dell and unzipped both. By the light of the torch, Robin saw a wide array of tools: a pick, a mattock, two pinchbars, a fork, a small ax and three spades, one of them with a pointed head. There were also several pairs of thick gardening gloves.

“Aye, that should do us,” said Barclay, squinting into the dark basin below them. “We’ll want to clear that before we’ve got any chance o’ breakin’ the ground.”

“Right,” said Robin, reaching for a pair of gloves.

“Ye sure about this, big man?” Barclay asked Strike, who had done the same.

“I can pull up nettles, for Christ’s sake,” said Strike irritably.

“Bring the ax, Robin,” said Barclay, grabbing the mattock and a pinchbar. “Some o’ those bushes’ll need hacked down.”

The three of them slid and stumbled down the steep side of the dell and set to work. For nearly an hour they hacked at sinewy branches and tugged up nettles, occasionally swapping tools or returning to the upper ground to fetch different ones.

In spite of the gathering cool of the night, Robin was soon sweating, peeling off layers as she worked. Strike, on the other hand, was devoting a considerable amount of energy to pretending that the constant bending and twisting on slippery, uneven ground wasn’t hurting the end of his stump. The darkness concealed his winces, and he was careful to rearrange his features whenever Barclay or Robin turned on the torch to check on their progress.

Physical activity was helping dispel Robin’s fear of what could be hidden beneath their feet. Perhaps, she thought, this was what it was like in the army: hard manual work and the camaraderie of your colleagues helping you focus on something other than the grisly reality of what might lie ahead. The two ex-soldiers had bent to their task methodically and without complaint except for occasional curses as stubborn roots and branches tore at fabric and flesh.

“Time tae dig,” said Barclay at last, when the bottom of the basin was as clear as they could reasonably make it. “Ye’ll need to get out of it, Strike.”

“I’ll start, Robin can take over,” said Strike. “Go on,” he said to her, “take a break, hold the torch steady for us and pass me down the fork.”

Growing up with three brothers had taught Robin valuable lessons about the male ego, and about picking her fights. Convinced that Strike’s order was dictated more by pride than by sense, she nevertheless complied, clambering up the steep side of the dell, there to sit and hold the beam of the torch steady while they worked, occasionally passing down different tools to help them remove rocks and tackle particularly hard stretches of ground.

It was a slow job. Barclay dug three times as fast as Strike, who Robin could see was immediately struggling, especially with pressing the pointed head spade down into the earth with a foot, his prosthesis being unreliable if asked to support his entire weight on the uneven ground, and excruciating when pressed down against resistant metal. Minute by minute she held off intervening, until a muttered “fuck” escaped Strike, and he bent over, grimacing in pain.

“Shall I take over?” she suggested.

“Think you’re going to have to,” he muttered ungraciously.

He dragged himself back out of the dell, trying not to put any more weight on his stump, taking the torch from a descending Robin and holding it steady for the other two as they worked, the end of his stump throbbing and, he suspected, rubbed raw.

Barclay had created a short channel a couple of feet deep before he took his first break, clambering out of the hole to fetch a bottle of water from his kit bag. While he drank and Robin took a rest, leaning on the handle of her spade, the sound of barking reached them again. Barclay squinted towards the unseen Chiswell House.

“What kind of dogs has she got in there?” he asked.

“Old Lab and a yappy bastard of a terrier,” said Strike.