Lethal White (A Cormoran Strike Novel)

While Kinvara sloshed another measure into a glass, Strike started to remove the prosthesis. Turning to give him his drink, Kinvara watched in queasy fascination as Strike worked on the false leg, averting her eyes at the point it left the inflamed stump. Panting as he propped the prosthesis against the ottoman, Strike allowed his trouser leg to fall back over his amputated leg.

“Thanks very much,” he said, accepting the whisky from her and taking a swig.

Trapped with a man who couldn’t walk, to whom she ought in theory to be grateful, and to whom she had just given a drink, Kinvara sat down, too, her expression stony.

“Actually, Mrs. Chiswell, I was going to phone you to confirm a couple of things we heard from Tegan earlier,” said Strike. “We could go through them now if you like. Get them out of the way.”

With a slight shiver, Kinvara glanced at the empty fireplace, and Robin said helpfully, “Would you like me to—?”

“No,” snapped Kinvara. “I can do it.”

She went to the deep basket standing beside the fireplace, from which she grabbed an old newspaper. While Kinvara built a structure of small bits of wood over a mound of newspaper and a firelighter, Robin succeeded in catching Strike’s eye.

“There’s somebody upstairs,” she mouthed, but she wasn’t sure he had understood. He merely raised his eyebrows quizzically, and turned back to Kinvara.

A match flared. Flames erupted around the little pile of paper and sticks in the fireplace. Kinvara picked up her glass and returned to the drinks table, where she topped it up with more neat Scotch, then, coat wrapped more tightly around herself, she returned to the log basket, selected a large piece of wood, dropped it on top of the burgeoning fire, then fell back onto the sofa.

“Go on, then,” she said sullenly to Strike. “What do you want to know?”

“As I say, we spoke to Tegan Butcher today.”

“And?”

“And we now know what Jimmy Knight and Geraint Winn were blackmailing your husband about.”

Kinvara evinced no surprise.

“I told those stupid girls you’d find out,” she said with a shrug. “Izzy and Fizzy. Everyone round here knew what Jack o’Kent was doing in the barn. Of course somebody was going to talk.”

She took a gulp of whisky.

“I suppose you know all of it, do you? The gallows? The boy in Zimbabwe?”

“You mean Samuel?” asked Strike, taking a punt.

“Exactly, Samuel Mu—Mudrap or something.”

The fire caught suddenly, flames leaping up past the log, which shifted in a shower of sparks.

“Jasper was worried they were his gallows the moment we heard the boy had been hanged. You know all of it, do you? That there were two sets? But only one made it to the government. The other lot went astray, the lorry was hijacked or something. That’s how they ended up in the middle of nowhere.

“The photographs are pretty grisly, apparently. The Foreign Office thinks it was probably a case of mistaken identity. Jasper didn’t see how they could be traced to him, but Jimmy said he could prove they were.

“I knew you’d find out,” said Kinvara, with an air of bitter satisfaction. “Tegan’s a horrible gossip.”

“So, to be clear,” said Strike, “when Jimmy Knight first came here to see you, he was asking for his and Billy’s share for two sets of gallows his father had left completed when he died?”

“Exactly,” said Kinvara, sipping her whisky. “They were worth eighty thousand for the pair. He wanted forty.”

“But presumably,” said Strike, who remembered that Chiswell had talked of Jimmy returning a week after his first attempt to get money, and asking for a reduced amount, “your husband told him he’d only ever received payment for one of them, as one set got stolen en route?”

“Yes,” said Kinvara, with a shrug. “So then Jimmy asked for twenty, but we’d spent it.”

“How did you feel about Jimmy’s request, when he first came asking for money?” Strike asked.

Robin wasn’t sure whether Kinvara had turned a little pinker in the face, or whether it was the effects of the whisky.

“Well, I saw his point, if you want the truth. I could see why he felt he had a claim. Half the proceeds of the gallows belonged to the Knight boys. That had been the arrangement while Jack o’Kent was alive, but Jasper took the view that Jimmy couldn’t expect money for the stolen set, and given that he’d been storing them in his barn, and bearing all the costs of transportation and so on… and he said that Jimmy couldn’t sue him even if he wanted to. He didn’t like Jimmy.”

“No, well, I suppose their politics were very different,” said Strike.

Kinvara almost smirked.

“It was a bit more personal than that. Haven’t you heard about Jimmy and Izzy? No… I suppose Tegan’s too young to have heard that story. Oh, it was only once,” she said, apparently under the impression that Strike was shocked, “but that was quite enough for Jasper. A man like Jimmy Knight, deflowering his darling daughter, you know…