Lethal White (A Cormoran Strike Novel)

“Yesterday afternoon. He collapsed doing cross-country at school. Some friend of Greg and Lucy’s who lives right by the school came with him in the ambulance and I met them here.”

Neither spoke for a while, their eyes on Jack.

Then Strike said, “I’ve been a bloody terrible uncle. I don’t know any of their birthdays. I couldn’t have told you how old he was. The dad of his mate’s who brought him in knew more than me. Jack wants to be a soldier, Luce says he talks about me and he draws me pictures and I never even bloody thank him.”

“Well,” said Robin, pretending not to see that Strike was dabbing roughly at his eyes with his sleeve, “you’re here for him right now when he needs you and you’ve got plenty of time to make it up to him.”

“Yeah,” said Strike, blinking rapidly. “You know what I’ll do if he—? I’ll take him to the Imperial War Museum. Day trip.”

“Good idea,” said Robin kindly.

“Have you ever been?”

“No,” said Robin.

“Good museum.”

Two nurses, one male, one the woman whom Strike had earlier snubbed, now approached.

“We need to X-ray him,” said the girl, addressing Robin rather than Strike. “Would you mind waiting outside the ward?”

“How long will you be?” asked Strike.

“Half an hour. Forty minutes-ish.”

So Robin fetched Strike’s crutches and they went to the canteen.

“This is really good of you, Robin,” Strike said over two more pallid teas and some ginger biscuits, “but if you’ve got things to do—”

“I’ll stay until Greg and Lucy come,” said Robin. “It’ll be awful for them, being so far away. Matt’s twenty-seven and his dad was still worried sick when Matt was so ill in the Maldives.”

“Was he?”

“Yeah, you know, when he—oh, of course. I never told you, did I?”

“Told me what?”

“He got a nasty infection on our honeymoon. Scratched himself on some coral. They were talking about airlifting him off to hospital at one point, but it was OK. Wasn’t as bad as they first thought.”

As she said it, she remembered pushing open the wooden door still hot from the daylong sun, her throat constricted with fear as she prepared to tell Matthew she wanted an annulment, little knowing what she was about to face.

“You know, Matt’s mum died not that long ago, so Geoffrey was really scared about Matt… but it was all OK,” Robin repeated, taking a sip of her tepid tea, her eyes on the woman behind the counter, who was ladling baked beans onto a skinny teenager’s plate.

Strike watched her. He had sensed omissions in her story. Blame sea-borne bacteria.

“Must’ve been scary,” he said.

“Well, it wasn’t fun,” said Robin, examining her short, clean fingernails, then checking her watch. “If you want a cigarette we should go now, he’ll be back soon.”

One of the smokers they joined outside was wearing pajamas. He had brought his drip with him, and held it tightly like a shepherd’s crook to keep himself steady. Strike lit up and exhaled towards a clear blue sky.

“I haven’t asked about your anniversary weekend.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t work,” said Robin quickly. “It had been booked and—”

“That’s not why I was asking.”

She hesitated.

“It wasn’t great, to be honest.”

“Ah, well. Sometimes when there’s pressure to have a good time—”

“Yes, exactly,” said Robin.

After another short pause she asked:

“Lorelei’s working today, I suppose?”

“Probably,” said Strike. “What is this, Saturday? Yeah, I suppose so.”

They stood in silence while Strike’s cigarette shrank, millimeter by millimeter, watching visitors and arriving ambulances. There was no awkwardness between them, but the air seemed charged, somehow, with things wondered and unspoken. Finally Strike pressed out the stub of his cigarette in a large open ashtray that most smokers had ignored and checked his phone.

“They boarded twenty minutes ago,” he said, reading Lucy’s last text. “They should be here by three.”

“What happened to your mobile?” asked Robin, looking at the heavily sellotaped screen.

“Fell on it,” said Strike. “I’ll get a new one when Chiswell pays us.”

They passed the X-ray machine being rolled out of the ward as they walked back inside.

“Chest looks fine!” said the radiographer pushing it.

They sat by Jack’s side talking quietly for another hour, until Robin went to buy more tea and chocolate bars from nearby vending machines, which they consumed in the waiting room while Robin filled Strike in about everything she had discovered about Winn’s charity.

“You’ve outdone yourself,” said Strike, halfway down his second Mars bar. “That was excellent work, Robin.”

“You don’t mind that I told Chiswell?”

“No, you had to. We’re up against it time-wise with Mitch Patterson sniffing round. Has this Curtis-Lacey woman accepted the invitation to the reception?”

“I’ll find out on Monday. What about Barclay? How’s he getting on with Jimmy Knight?”

“Still nothing we can use,” Strike sighed, running a hand over the stubble that was rapidly becoming a beard, “but I’m hopeful. He’s good, Barclay. He’s like you. Got an instinct for this stuff.”