Lethal White (A Cormoran Strike Novel)

“I don’t know whether Della knows what Geraint’s up to,” said Chiswell, spearing a piece of treacle tart and continuing to speak while he chewed it. “Probably, but keeping her nose clean. Plausible deniability. Can’t have the sainted Della involved in blackmail, can we?”

“Her husband’s asked you for money?” asked Strike, incredulous.

“Oh no, no. Geraint wants to force me from office.”

“Any particular reason why?” said Strike.

“There’s an enmity between us dating back many years, rooted in a wholly baseless—but that’s irrelevant,” said Chiswell, with an angry shake of the head. “Geraint approached me, ‘hoping it isn’t true,’ and ‘offering me a chance to explain.’ He’s a nasty, twisted little man who’s spent his life holding his wife’s handbag and answering her telephone calls. Naturally he’s relishing the idea of wielding some actual power.”

Chiswell took a swig of sherry.

“So, as you can see, I’m in something of a cleft stick, Mr. Strike. Even if I were minded to pay off Jimmy Knight, I still have to contend with a man who wants my disgrace, and who may well be able to lay hands on proof.”

“How could Winn get proof?”

Chiswell took another large mouthful of treacle tart and glanced over his shoulder to check that Georgina remained safely in the kitchen.

“I’ve heard,” he muttered, and a fine mist of pastry flew from the slack lips, “that there may be photographs.”

“Photographs?” repeated Strike.

“Winn can’t have them, of course. If he had, it would all be over. But he might be able to find a way of getting hold of them. Yerse.”

He shoved the last piece of tart into his mouth, then said:

“Of course, there’s a chance the photographs don’t incriminate me. There are no distinguishing marks, so far as I’m aware.”

Strike’s imagination frankly boggled. He yearned to ask, “Distinguishing marks on what, Minister?” but refrained.

“It all happened six years ago,” continued Chiswell. “I’ve been over and over the damn thing in my head. There were others involved who might have talked, but I doubt it, I doubt it very much. Too much to lose. No, it’s all going to come down to what Knight and Winn can dig up. I strongly suspect that if he gets hold of the photographs, Winn will go straight to the press. I don’t think that would be Knight’s first choice. He simply wants money.

“So here I am, Mr. Strike, a fronte praecipitium, a tergo lupi. I’ve lived with this hanging over me for weeks now. It hasn’t been enjoyable.”

He peered at Strike through his tiny eyes, and the detective was irresistibly put in mind of a mole, blinking up at a hovering spade that waited to crush it.

“When I heard you were at that meeting I assumed you were investigating Knight and had some dirt on him. I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way out of this diabolical situation is to find something that I can use against each of them, before they get their hands on those photographs. Fight fire with fire.”

“Blackmail with blackmail?” said Strike.

“I don’t want anything from them except to leave me the hell alone,” snapped Chiswell. “Bargaining chips, that’s all I want. I acted within the law,” he said firmly, “and in accordance with my conscience.”

Chiswell was not a particularly likable man, but Strike could well imagine that the ongoing suspense of waiting for public exposure would be torture, especially to a man who had already endured his fair share of scandals. Strike’s scant research on his prospective client the previous evening had unearthed gleeful accounts of the affair that had ended his first marriage, of the fact that his second wife had spent a week in a clinic for “nervous exhaustion” and of the grisly drug-induced car crash in which his younger son had killed a young mother.

“This is a very big job, Mr. Chiswell,” said Strike. “It’ll take two or three people to thoroughly investigate Knight and Winn, especially if there’s time pressure.”

“I don’t care what it costs,” said Chiswell. “I don’t care if you have to put your whole agency on it.

“I refuse to believe there isn’t anything dodgy about Winn, sneaking little toad that he is. There’s something funny about them as a couple. She, the blind angel of light,” Chiswell’s lip curled, “and he, her potbellied henchman, always scheming and backstabbing and grubbing up every freebie he can get. There must be something there. Must be.

“As for Knight, Commie rabble rouser, there’s bound to be something the police haven’t yet caught up with. He was always a tearaway, a thoroughly nasty piece of work.”

“You knew Jimmy Knight before he started trying to blackmail you?” asked Strike.

“Oh, yes,” said Chiswell. “The Knights are from my constituency. The father was an odd-job man who did a certain amount of work for our family. I never knew the mother. I believe she died before the three of them moved into Steda Cottage.”

“I see,” said Strike.