Lethal White (A Cormoran Strike Novel)

“C’est l’automne de ma vie,” sang Gainsbourg. “Plus personne ne m’étonne… ”

“You found this place OK, then?” Izzy said, scrabbling to find conventional conversational ground. “Quite pretty, isn’t it?” she said, inviting them to admire the Provençal restaurant which Strike had thought, as he entered, had a feeling of Izzy’s flat about it, translated into French. Here was the same conservative mix of traditional and modern: black and white photographs hung on stark white walls, chairs and benches covered in scarlet and turquoise leather, and old-fashioned bronze and glass chandeliers with rose-colored lampshades.

The waitress returned with menus and offered to take their drink order.

“Should we wait?” Izzy asked, gesturing at the empty seat.

“He’s running late,” said Strike, who was craving beer. “Might as well order drinks.”

After all, there was nothing more to find out. Today was about explanations. An awkward silence fell again as the waitress walked away.

“Oh, gosh, I don’t know whether you’ve heard,” Izzy said suddenly to Strike, with an air of being relieved to have found what to her was standard gossip. “Charlie’s been admitted to hospital.”

“Really?” he said, with no sign of particular interest.

“Yah, bed rest. She had something—leak of amniotic fluid, I think—anyway, they want her under observation.”

Strike nodded, expressionless. Ashamed of herself for wishing to know more, Robin kept quiet. The drinks arrived. Izzy, who seemed too keyed up to have noticed Strike’s unenthusiastic response to what was, for her, a safe subject of mutual interest, said:

“I heard Jago hit the roof when he saw that story about the two of you in the press. Probably delighted to have her where he can keep an eye—”

But Izzy caught something in Strike’s expression that made her desist. She took a slug of wine, checked to see whether anyone at the few occupied tables was listening, and said:

“I suppose the police are keeping you informed? You know Kinvara’s admitted everything?”

“Yeah,” said Strike, “we heard.”

Izzy shook her head, her eyes filling with tears again.

“It’s been so awful. One’s friends don’t know what to say… I still can’t believe it. It’s just so incredible. Raff… I wanted to go and see him, you know. I really needed to see him… but he refused. He won’t see anyone.”

She gulped more wine.

“He must have gone mad or something. He must be ill, mustn’t he? To have done it? Must be mentally ill.”

Robin remembered the dark barge, where Raphael had spoken in holy accents of the life he wanted, of the villa in Capri, the bachelor pad in London, and the new car, once the ban imposed for running over a young mother had been lifted. She thought how meticulously he had planned his father’s death, the errors made only because of the haste with which the murder was to be enacted. She pictured his expression over the gun, as he had asked her why women thought there was any difference between them: the mother whom he called a whore, the stepmother he had seduced, Robin, whom he was about to kill so that he didn’t have to enter hell alone. Was he ill in any sense that would put him in a psychiatric institution rather than the prison that so terrified him? Or had his dream of patricide been spawned in the shadowy wasteland between sickness and irreducible malevolence?

“… he had an awful childhood,” Izzy was saying, and then, though neither Strike nor Robin had responded, “he did, you know, he really did. I don’t want to speak ill of Papa, but Freddie was everything. Papa wasn’t kind to Raff and the Orca—I mean, Ornella, his mother—well, Torks always says she’s more like a high-class hooker than anything else. When Raff wasn’t at boarding school she dragged him around with her, always chasing some new man.”

“There are worse childhoods,” said Strike.

Robin, who had just been thinking that Raphael’s life with his mother sounded not unlike the little she knew about Strike’s early years, was nevertheless surprised to hear him express this view so bluntly.

“Plenty of people go through worse than having a party girl for a mother,” he said, “and they don’t end up committing murder. Look at Billy Knight. No mother at all for most of his life. Violent, alcoholic father, beaten and neglected, ends up with serious mental illness and he’s never hurt anyone. He came to my office in the throes of psychosis, trying to get justice for someone else.”

“Yes,” said Izzy hastily, “yes, that’s true, of course.”

But Robin had the impression that even now, Izzy could not equate the pain of Raphael and Billy. The former’s suffering would always evoke more pity in her than the latter’s, because a Chiswell was innately different to the kind of motherless boy whose beatings were hidden in the woods, where estate workers lived according to the laws of their kind.

“And here he is,” said Strike.