Lethal White (A Cormoran Strike Novel)

“Men?” Strike repeated. “In the plural?”

“That’s what Izzy said—but she also says Kinvara’s hysterical and attention-seeking.”

“Getting to be a bit of a theme, that, isn’t it? People who’re supposed to be too crazy to know what they’ve seen.”

“D’you think that could have been Jimmy, as well? In the garden?”

Strike thought it over as he chewed.

“I can’t see what he’s got to gain from lurking in the garden or fiddling with horses, unless he’s at the point where he just wants to frighten Chiswell. I’ll check with Barclay and see whether Jimmy’s got a car or mentioned going to Oxfordshire. Did Kinvara call the police?”

“Raff asked that, when Izzy got back,” said Robin, and once again, Strike thought he detected a trace of self-consciousness as she spoke the man’s name. “Kinvara claims the dogs barked, she saw the shadow of a man in the garden, but he ran away. She says there were footprints in the horses’ field next morning and that one of them had been cut with a knife.”

“Did she call a vet?”

“I don’t know. It’s harder to ask questions with Raff in the office. I don’t want to look too nosy, because he doesn’t know who I am.”

Strike pushed his plate away from him and felt for his cigarettes.

“Photos,” he mused, returning to the central point. “Photos at the Foreign Office. What the hell can they show that would incriminate Chiswell? He’s never worked at the Foreign Office, has he?”

“No,” said Robin. “The highest post he’s ever held is Minister for Trade. He had to resign from there because of the affair with Raff’s mother.”

The wooden clock over the fireplace was telling her it was time to leave. She didn’t move.

“You’re liking Raff, then?” Strike said suddenly, catching her off guard.

“What?”

Robin was scared that she had blushed.

“What do you mean, I’m ‘liking’ him?”

“Just an impression I got,” said Strike. “You disapproved of him before you met him.”

“D’you want me to be antagonistic towards him, when I’m supposed to be his father’s goddaughter?” demanded Robin.

“No, of course not,” said Strike, though Robin had the sense that he was laughing at her, and resented it.

“I’d better get going,” she said, sweeping the headphones off the table and back into her bag. “I told Matt I’d be home for dinner.”

She got up, bade Strike goodbye and left the pub.

Strike watched her go, dimly sorry that he had commented on her manner when mentioning Raphael Chiswell. After a few minutes’ solitary beer consumption, he paid for his food and ambled out onto the pavement, where he lit a cigarette and called the Minister for Culture, who answered on the second ring.

“Wait there,” said Chiswell. Strike could hear a murmuring crowd behind him. “Crowded room.”

The clunk of a door closing and the noise of the crowd was muted.

“’M at a dinner,” said Chiswell. “Anything for me?”

“It isn’t good news, I’m afraid,” said Strike, walking away from the pub, up Queen Anne Street, between white painted buildings that gleamed in the dusk. “My partner succeeded in planting the listening device in Mr. Winn’s office this morning. We’ve got a recording of him talking to Jimmy Knight. Winn’s assistant—Aamir, is it?—is trying to get copies of those photographs you told me about. At the Foreign Office.”

The ensuring silence lasted so long that Strike wondered whether they had been cut off.

“Minist—?”

“I’m here!” snarled Chiswell. “That boy Mallik, is it? Dirty little bastard. Dirty little bastard. He’s already lost one job—let him try, that’s all. Let him try! Does he think I won’t—I know things about Aamir Mallik,” he said. “Oh yes.”

Strike waited, in some surprise, for elucidation of these remarks, but none were forthcoming. Chiswell merely breathed heavily into the telephone. Soft, muffled thuds told Strike that Chiswell was pacing up and down on carpet.

“Is that all you had to say to me?” demanded the MP at last.

“There was one other thing,” said Strike. “My partner says your wife’s seen a man or men trespassing on your property at night.”

“Oh,” said Chiswell, “yerse.” He did not sound particularly concerned. “My wife keeps horses and she takes their security very seriously.”

“You don’t think this has any connection with—?”

“Not in the slightest, not in the slightest. Kinvara’s sometimes—well, to be candid,” said Chiswell, “she can be bloody hysterical. Keeps a bunch of horses, always fretting they’re going to be stolen. I don’t want you wasting time chasing shadows through the undergrowth in Oxfordshire. My problems are in London. Is that everything?”

Strike said that it was and, after a curt farewell, Chiswell hung up, leaving Strike to limp towards St. James’s Park station.

Settled in a corner seat of the Tube ten minutes later, Strike folded his arms, stretched out his legs and stared unseeingly at the window opposite.