Lethal White (A Cormoran Strike Novel)

Robin left the house at a quarter to six the next morning. The sky was a faint blush pink and the morning already warm, justifying her lack of jacket. Her eyes flickered towards the single carved swan as she passed their local pub, but she forced her thoughts back onto the day ahead and not the man she had left behind.

On arrival in Izzy’s corridor an hour later, Robin saw that Geraint’s office door was already open. A swift peek inside showed her an empty room, but Aamir’s jacket hanging on the back of his chair.

Running to Izzy’s office, Robin unlocked it, dashed to her desk, pulled one of the listening devices from the box of Tampax, scooped up a pile of out-of-date agendas as an alibi, then ran back out into the corridor.

As she approached Geraint’s office, she slid off the gold bangle that she had worn for this purpose, and threw it lightly so that it rolled into Geraint’s office.

“Oh damn,” she said out loud.

Nobody responded from inside the office. Robin knocked on the open door, said “hello?” and put her head inside. The room was still empty.

Robin dashed across the room to the double power point just above the skirting board beside Geraint’s desk. Kneeling, she took the listening device out of her bag, unplugged the fan on his desk, pressed the device into place over the dual socket, reinserted the fan’s plug, checked that it worked, then, panting as though she had just sprinted a hundred yards, looked around for her bangle.

“What are you doing?”

Aamir was standing in the doorway in his shirtsleeves, a fresh tea in his hand.

“I did knock,” Robin said, sure that she was bright pink. “I dropped my bangle and it rolled—oh, there it is.”

It was lying just beneath Aamir’s computer chair. Robin scrambled to pick it up.

“It’s my mother’s,” she lied. “I wouldn’t be popular if that went missing.”

She slid the bangle back over her wrist, picked up the papers she had left on Geraint’s desk, smiled as casually as she could manage, then walked out of the office past Aamir, whose eyes, she saw out of the corner of her own, were narrowed in suspicion.

Jubilant, Robin re-entered Izzy’s office. At least she would have some good news for Strike when they met in the pub that evening. Barclay was no longer the only one doing good work. So absorbed was she in her thoughts that Robin didn’t realize that there was somebody else in the room until a man said, right behind her: “Who are you?”

The present dissolved. Both of her attackers had lunged at her from behind. With a scream, Robin spun around, ready to fight for her life: the papers flew into the air and her handbag slipped off her shoulder, fell to the floor and burst open, scattering its contents everywhere.

“Sorry!” said the man. “Christ, I’m sorry!”

But Robin was finding it hard to draw breath. There was a thundering in her ears and sweat had broken out all over her body. She bent down to scoop everything back up, trembling so much that she kept dropping things.

Not now. Not now.

He was talking to her, but she couldn’t understand a word. The world was fragmenting again, full of terror and danger, and he was a blur as he handed her eyeliner and a bottle of drops to moisten her contact lenses.

“Oh,” Robin gasped at random. “Great. Excuse me. Bathroom.”

She stumbled to the door. Two people were coming towards her down the corridor, their voices fuzzy and indistinct as they greeted her. Hardly knowing what she responded, she half-ran past them towards the Ladies.

A woman from the Secretary for Health’s office greeted her from the sink where she was applying lipstick. Robin blundered blindly past, locking the cubicle door with fumbling fingers.

It was no use trying to suppress the panic: that only made it fight back, trying to bend her to its will. She must ride it out, as though the fear was a bolting horse, easing it onto a more manageable course. So she stood motionless, palms pressed against the partition walls, speaking to herself inside her head as though she were an animal handler, and her body, in its irrational terror, a frantic prey creature.

You’re safe, you’re safe, you’re safe…

Slowly, the panic began to ebb, though her heart was still leaping erratically. At last, Robin removed her numb hands from the walls of the cubicle and opened her eyes, blinking in the harsh lights. The bathroom was quiet.

Robin peered out of the cubicle. The woman had left. There was nobody there except her own pale reflection in the mirror. After splashing cold water on her face and patting it dry with paper towels, she readjusted her clear-lensed glasses and left the bathroom.

An argument seemed to be in progress in the office she had just left. Taking a deep breath, she re-entered the room.