Lethal White (A Cormoran Strike Novel)

“He’s in land management up in—”

“Oh, was it the Northumberland property?” interrupted Kinvara, whose interest had not seemed particularly profound. “That was before my time.”

Thank God, thought Robin.

Kinvara crossed her legs and folded her arms across her large chest. Her foot bounced up and down. She shot Raphael a hard, almost spiteful look.

“Aren’t you going to say hello, Raphael?”

“Hello,” he said.

“Jasper told me to meet him here, but if you’d rather I waited in the corridor I can,” Kinvara said in her high, tight voice.

“Of course not,” muttered Raphael, frowning determinedly at his monitor.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to interrupt anything,” said Kinvara, turning from Raphael to Robin. The story of the blonde in the art gallery bathroom swam back into Robin’s mind. For a second time she pretended to be searching for something in a drawer and it was with relief that she heard the sounds of Chiswell and Izzy coming along the corridor.

“… and by ten o’clock, no later, or I won’t have time to read the whole bloody thing. And tell Haines he’ll have to talk to the BBC, I haven’t got time for a bunch of idiots talking about inclu—Kinvara.”

Chiswell stopped dead in the office door and said, without any trace of affection, “I told you to meet me at DCMS, not here.”

“And it’s lovely to see you, too, Jasper, after three days apart,” said Kinvara, getting to her feet and smoothing her crumpled dress.

“Hi, Kinvara,” said Izzy.

“I forgot you said DCMS,” Kinvara told Chiswell, ignoring her stepdaughter. “I’ve been trying to call you all morning—”

“I told you,” growled Chiswell, “I’d be in meetings till one, and if it’s about those bloody stud fees again—”

“No, it isn’t about the stud fees, Jasper, actually, and I’d have preferred to tell you in private, but if you want me to say it in front of your children, I will!”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Chiswell blustered. “Come away, then, come on, we’ll find a private room—”

“There was a man last night,” said Kinvara, “who—don’t look at me like that, Isabella!”

Izzy’s expression was indeed conveying naked skepticism. She raised her eyebrows and walked into the room, acting as though Kinvara had become invisible to her.

“I said you can tell me in a private room!” snarled Chiswell, but Kinvara refused to be deflected.

“I saw a man in the woods by the house last night, Jasper!” she said, in a loud, high-pitched voice that Robin knew would be echoing all the way along the narrow corridor. “I’m not imagining things—there was a man with a spade in the woods, I saw him, and he ran when the dogs chased him! You keep telling me not to make a fuss, but I’m alone in that house at night and if you’re not going to do anything about this, Jasper, I’m going to call the police!”

22

… don’t you feel called upon to undertake it, for the sake of the good cause?

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

Strike was in a thoroughly bad temper.

Why the fuck, he asked himself, as he limped towards Mile End Park the following morning, was he, the senior partner and founder of the firm, having to stake out a protest march on a hot Saturday morning, when he had three employees and a knackered leg? Because, he answered himself, he didn’t have a baby who needed watching, or a wife who’d booked plane tickets or broken her wrist, or a fucking anniversary weekend planned. He wasn’t married, so it was his downtime that had to be sacrificed, his weekend that became just two more working days.

Everything that Robin feared Strike to be thinking about her, he was, in fact, thinking: of her house on cobbled Albury Street versus his drafty two rooms in a converted attic, of the rights and status conferred by the little gold ring on her finger, set against Lorelei’s disappointment when he had explained that lunch and possibly dinner would now be impossible, of Robin’s promises of equal responsibility when he had taken her on as a partner, contrasted with the reality of her rushing home to her husband.

Yes, Robin had worked many hours of unpaid overtime in her two years at the agency. Yes, he knew that she had gone way beyond the call of duty for him. Yes, he was, in theory, fucking grateful to her. The fact remained that today, while he was limping along the street towards hours of probably fruitless surveillance, she and her arsehole of a husband were speeding off to a country hotel weekend, a thought that made his sore leg and back no easier to bear.

Unshaven, clad in an old pair of jeans, a frayed, washed-out hoodie and ancient trainers, with a carrier bag swinging from his hand, Strike entered the park. He could see the massing protestors in the distance. The risk of Jimmy recognizing him had almost decided Strike to let the march go unwatched, but the most recent text from Robin (which he had, out of sheer bad temper, left unanswered) had changed his mind.