Lethal White (A Cormoran Strike Novel)

No sooner had her unwelcome guests stepped out onto the gravel path than Kinvara slammed the window behind them. While Robin put her Wellington boots back on, they heard the shriek of the brass curtain rings as Kinvara dragged the drapes shut, then called the dogs out of the room.

“Not sure I’m going to be able to make it back to the car, Robin,” said Strike, who wasn’t putting weight on his prosthesis. “In retrospect, the digging might’ve… might’ve been a mistake.”

Wordlessly, Robin took his arm and placed it over her shoulders. He didn’t resist. Together they moved slowly off across the grass.

“Did you understand what I mouthed at you back there?” asked Robin.

“That there was someone upstairs? Yeah,” he said, wincing horribly every time he put down his false foot. “I did.”

“You don’t seem—”

“I’m not surpr—wait,” he said abruptly, still leaning on her as he came to a halt. “You didn’t go up there?”

“Yes,” said Robin.

“For fuck’s sake—”

“I heard footsteps.”

“And what would’ve happened if you’d been jumped?”

“I took a weapon and I wasn’t—and if I hadn’t gone up there, I wouldn’t have seen this.”

Taking out her mobile, Robin brought up the photo of the painting on the bed, and handed it to him.

“You didn’t see Kinvara’s expression, when she saw the blank wall. Cormoran, she didn’t realize that painting had been moved until you asked about it. Whoever was upstairs tried to hide it while she was outside.”

Strike stared at the phone screen for what felt like a long time, his arm heavy on Robin’s shoulders. Finally, he said:

“Is that a piebald?”

“Seriously?” said Robin, in total disbelief. “Horse colors? Now?”

“Answer me.”

“No, piebalds are black and white, not brown and—”

“We need to go to the police,” said Strike. “The odds on another murder just went up exponentially.”

“You aren’t serious?”

“I’m completely serious. Get me back to the car and I’ll tell you everything… but don’t ask me to talk till then, because my leg’s fucking killing me.”

68

I have tasted blood now…

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

Three days later, Strike and Robin received an unprecedented invitation. As a courtesy for having chosen to aid rather than upstage the police in passing on information about Flick’s stolen note and “Mare Mourning,” the Met welcomed the detective partners into the heart of the investigation at New Scotland Yard. Used to being treated by the police as either inconveniences or showboaters, Strike and Robin were surprised but grateful for this unforeseen thawing of relations.

On arrival, the tall blonde Scot who was heading the team ducked out of an interrogation room for a minute to shake hands. Strike and Robin knew that the police had brought two suspects in for questioning, although nobody had yet been charged.

“We spent the morning on hysterics and flat denial,” DCI Judy McMurran told them, “but I think we’ll have cracked her by the end of the day.”

“Any chance we could give them a little look, Judy?” asked her subordinate, DI George Layborn, who had met Strike and Robin at the door and brought them upstairs. He was a pudgy man who reminded Robin of the traffic policeman who had thought he was such a card, back on the hard shoulder where she’d had her panic attack.

“Go on, then,” said DCI McMurran, with a smile.

Layborn led Strike and Robin around a corner and through the first door on their right into a dark and cramped area, of which half one wall was a two-way mirror into an interrogation room.

Robin, who had only ever seen such spaces in films and on TV, was mesmerized. Kinvara Chiswell was sitting on one side of a desk, beside a thin-lipped solicitor in a pinstriped suit. White-faced, devoid of makeup, wearing a pale gray silk blouse so creased she might have slept in it, Kinvara was weeping into a tissue. Opposite her sat another detective inspector in a far cheaper suit than the solicitor’s. His expression was impassive.

As they watched, DCI McMurran re-entered the room and took the vacant chair beside her colleague. After what felt like a very long time, but was probably only a minute, DCI McMurran spoke.

“Still nothing to say about your night at the hotel, Mrs. Chiswell?”

“This is like a nightmare,” whispered Kinvara. “I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe I’m here.”

Her eyes were pink, swollen and apparently lashless now that she had wept her mascara away.

“Jasper killed himself,” she said tremulously. “He was depressed! Everyone will tell you so! The blackmail was eating away at him… have you talked to the Foreign Office yet? Even the idea that there might be photographs of that boy who was hanged—can’t you see how scared Jasper was? If that had come out—”

Her voice cracked.

“Where’s your evidence against me?” she demanded. “Where is it? Where?”

Her solicitor gave a dry little cough.

“To return,” said DCI McMurran, “to the subject of the hotel. Why do you think your husband called them, trying to ascertain—”