Lethal White by Robert Galbraith
“What?” he said at last, with a forced laugh.
“Please don’t,” she said. “There’s no point. It’s over.”
He continued to stand in the doorway of the sitting room and she thought he looked tired, even haggard.
“I was going to go and leave a note,” said Robin, “but that felt too melodramatic. Anyway, there are practical things we need to talk about.”
She thought she could see him thinking, How did I give it away? Who have you told?
“Listen,” he said urgently, dropping his sports bag beside him (full, no doubt, of clean, pressed kit), “I know things haven’t been good between us, you and me, but it’s you I want, Robin. Don’t throw us away. Please.”
He walked forwards, dropped into a crouch beside her chair and tried to take her hand. She pulled it away, genuinely astonished.
“You’re sleeping with Sarah,” she repeated.
He got up, crossed to the sofa and sat down, dropped his face into his hands and said weakly:
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s been so shit between you and me—”
“—that you had to sleep with your friend’s fiancée?”
He looked up at that, in sudden panic.
“Have you spoken to Tom? Does he know?”
Suddenly unable to bear his proximity, she walked away towards the window, full of a contempt she had never felt before.
“Even now, worried about your promotion prospects, Matt?”
“No—fuck—you don’t understand,” he said. “It’s over between me and Sarah.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes! Fuck—this is so fucking ironic—we talked all day. We agreed it couldn’t go on, not after—you and Tom—we’ve just ended it. An hour ago.”
“Wow,” said Robin, with a little laugh, feeling disembodied, “isn’t that ironic?”
Her mobile rang. Dreamlike, she answered it.
“Robin?” said Strike. “Update. I’ve just seen Della Winn.”
“How did it go?” she asked, trying to sound steady and bright, determined not to cut the call short. Her working life was now her entire life and Matthew would no longer impinge upon it. Turning her back on her fuming husband, she looked out onto the dark cobbled street.
“Very interesting on two counts,” said Strike. “Firstly, she slipped up. I don’t think Geraint was with Aamir the morning Chiswell died.”
“That is interesting,” said Robin, forcing herself to concentrate, aware of Matthew watching her.
“I’ve got a number for him and I tried it, but he’s not picking up. I thought I’d see if he’s still at the B&B down the road as I’m in the vicinity, but the owner says he’s moved on.”
“Shame. What was the other interesting thing?” asked Robin.
“Is that Strike?” asked Matthew loudly, from behind her. She ignored him.
“What was that?” asked Strike.
“Nothing,” said Robin. “Go on.”
“Well, the second interesting thing is that Della met Kinvara last year, who was hysterical because she thought Chiswell—”
Robin’s mobile was pulled roughly out of her hand. She wheeled around. Matthew ended the call with a stab of his finger.
“How dare you?” shouted Robin, holding out her hand. “Give that back!”
“We’re trying to save our fucking marriage and you’re taking calls from him?”
“I’m not trying to save this marriage! Give me back my phone!”
He hesitated, then thrust it back at her, only to look outraged when she coolly phoned Strike back again.
“Sorry about that, Cormoran, we got cut off,” she said, with Matthew’s wild eyes on her.
“Everything all right there, Robin?”
“It’s fine. What were you saying about Chiswell?”
“That he was having an affair.”
“An affair!” said Robin, her eyes on Matthew’s. “Who with?”
“Christ knows. Have you had any luck getting hold of Raphael? We know he’s not that bothered about protecting his father’s memory. He might tell us.”
“I left a message for him, and for Tegan. Neither of them have called back.”
“OK, well, keep me posted. This all sheds an interesting light on the hammer round the head, though, doesn’t it?”
“Certainly does,” said Robin.
“That’s me at the Tube. Sure you’re all right?”
“Yes, of course,” said Robin, with what she hoped sounded like workaday impatience. “Speak soon.”
She hung up.
“‘Speak soon,’” Matthew imitated her, in the high-pitched, wispy voice he always used when impersonating women. “‘Speak later, Cormoran. I’m running out on my marriage so I can be at your beck and call forever, Cormoran. I don’t mind working for minimum wage, Cormoran, not if I can be your skivvy.’”
“Fuck off, Matt,” said Robin calmly. “Fuck off back to Sarah. The earring she left in our bed is upstairs on my bedside table, by the way.”
“Robin,” he said, suddenly earnest, “we can get through this. If we love each other, we can.”
“Well, the problem with that, Matt,” said Robin, “is that I don’t love you anymore.”
She had always thought the idea of eyes darkening was literary license, but she saw his light eyes turn black as his pupils dilated in shock.
“You bitch,” he said quietly.
She felt a cowardly impulse to lie, to back away from the absolute statement, to protect herself, but something stronger in her held on: the need to tell the unvarnished truth, when she had been lying to him and herself for so long.
“No,” she said. “I don’t. We should have split up on the honeymoon. I stayed because you were ill. I felt sorry for you. No,” she corrected herself, determined to do the thing properly, “actually, we should never have gone on the honeymoon. I ought to have walked out of the wedding once I knew you’d deleted those calls from Strike.”
She wanted to check her watch to see when her cab would arrive, but she was scared to take her eyes off her husband. There was something in his expression that recalled a snake peering out from under a rock.
“How do you think your life looks to other people?” he asked quietly.
“What d’you mean?”
“You bailed out on uni. Now you’re bailing out on us. You even bailed on your therapist. You’re a fucking flake. The only thing you haven’t run out on is this stupid job that’s half-killed you, and you got sacked from that. He only took you back because he wants to get into your pants. And he probably can’t get anyone else so cheap.”
She felt as though he had punched her. Winded, her voice sounded weak.
“Thanks, Matt,” she said, moving towards the door. “Thanks for making this so easy.”
But he moved quickly to block her exit.
“It was a temping job. He paid you attention, so you kidded yourself that was the career for you, even though it’s the last fucking thing you should’ve been doing, with your history—”
She was fighting tears now, but determined not to succumb.
“I wanted to do police work for years and years—”
“No, you fucking didn’t!” jeered Matthew, “when did you ever—?”
“I had a life before you!” Robin shouted. “I had a home life where I said things you never heard! I never told you, Matthew, because I knew you’d laugh, like my dickhead brothers! I did psychology hoping it would take me to some kind of forensic—”
“You never said this, you’re trying to justify—”
“I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d sneer—”
“Bullshit—”
“It isn’t bullshit!” she shouted. “I’m telling you the truth, this is the whole truth, and you’re proving my point, you don’t believe me! You liked it when I dropped out of uni—”
“The hell d’you mean?”
“‘There’s no hurry to go back,’ ‘you don’t have t
“Oh, so now I’m being fucking blamed for being sensitive!”
“You liked it, you liked me being stuck at home, why can’t you admit it? Sarah Shadlock at uni and me underachieving back in Masham—it made up for me getting better A-levels than you, getting into my first choice of—”
“Oh!” he laughed humorlessly, “oh, you got better fucking A-levels than me? Yeah, that keeps me up at night—”
“If I hadn’t been raped, we’d have split up years ago!”
“Is this what you learned in therapy? To tell lies about the past, to justify all your bullshit?”
“I learned to tell the truth!” shouted Robin, driven to the point of brutality. “And here’s some more: I was falling out of love with you before the rape! You weren’t interested in anything I was doing—my course, my new friends. All you wanted to know was whether any other blokes were making moves on me. But afterwards, you were so sweet, so kind… you seemed like the safest man in the world, the only one I could trust. That’s why I stayed. We wouldn’t be here, now, but for that rape.”
They both heard the car pull up outside. Robin tried to slide past him into the hall, but he moved to block her again.
“No, you don’t. You’re not getting out of it that bloody easily. You stayed because I was safe? Fuck off. You loved me.”
“I thought I did,” said Robin, “but not anymore. Get out of the way. I’m leaving.”
She tried to sidestep him, but he moved to block her again.
“No,” he said again, and now he moved forwards, jostling her back into the sitting room. “You’re staying here. We’re having this out.”
The minicab driver rang the doorbell.
“Coming!” Robin shouted, but Matthew snarled:
“You’re not running away this time, you’re going to stay and sort out your mess—”
“No!” shouted Robin, as though to a dog. She came to a halt, refusing to be backed further into the room, even though he was so close she could feel his breath on her face, and she was suddenly reminded of Geraint Winn, and was overwhelmed with revulsion. “Get away from me. Now!”
And like a dog Matthew took a step backwards, responding not to the order, but to something in her voice. He was angry, but scared, too.
“Right,” said Robin. She knew she was on the edge of a panic attack, but she held on, and every second she did not dissolve was giving her strength, and she stood her ground. “I’m leaving. You try and stop me, I’ll retaliate. I’ve fought off far bigger, meaner men than you, Matthew. You haven’t even got a bloody knife.”
She saw his eyes turn blacker than ever, and suddenly she remembered how her brother, Martin, had punched Matthew in the face, at the wedding. No matter what was coming, she vowed, in a kind of dark exhilaration, she’d do better than Martin. She’d break his damn nose if she had to.
“Please,” he said, his shoulders suddenly sagging, “Robin—”
“You’re going to have to hurt me if you want to stop me leaving, but I warn you, I’ll prosecute you for assault if you do. That won’t go down too well at the office, will it?”
She held his gaze for a few more seconds then walked back towards him, her fists already curling, waiting for him to block or grab her, but he moved aside.
“Robin,” he said hoarsely. “Wait. Seriously, wait, you said there were things we had to discuss—”
“The lawyers can do it,” she said, reaching the front door and pulling it open.
The cool night air touched her like a blessing.
A stocky woman was sitting at the wheel of a Vauxhall Corsa. Seeing Robin’s cases, she got out to help her hoist them into the boot. Matthew had followed and was now standing in the doorway. As Robin made to get into the car, he called to her and her tears began to fall at last, but without looking at him, she slammed the door.
“Please, let’s go,” she said thickly, to the driver, as Matthew came down the steps and bent to speak to her through the glass.
“I still fucking love you!”
The car moved away over the cobbles of Albury Street, past the molded frontages of the pretty sea merchants’ houses where she had never felt she belonged. At the top of the street she knew that if she looked back, she would see Matthew standing watching the vanishing car. Her eyes met those of the driver in the rearview mirror.
“Sorry,” said Robin nonsensically, and then, bewildered by her own apology, she said, “I’ve—I’ve just left my husband.”
“Yeah?” said the driver, switching on her indicator. “I’ve left two. It gets easier with practice.”
Robin tried to laugh, but the noise turned into a loud wet hiccup, and as the car approached the lonely stone swan high on the corner pub, she began to cry in earnest.
“Here,” said the driver gently, and she passed back a plastic-wrapped pack of tissues.
“Thanks,” sobbed Robin, extracting one and pressing it to her tired, stinging eyes until the white tissue was sodden and streaked with the last traces of thick black eye makeup that she had worn to impersonate Bobbi Cunliffe. Avoiding the sympathetic gaze of the driver in the rearview mirror, she looked down into her lap. The wrapper on the tissues was that of an unfamiliar American brand: “Dr. Blanc.”
At once, Robin’s elusive memory dropped into view, as though it had been waiting for this tiny prod. Now she remembered exactly where she had seen the phrase “Blanc de Blanc,” but it had nothing to do with the case, and everything to do with her imploding marriage, with a lavender walk and a Japanese water garden, and the last time she had ever said “I love you,” and the first time she’d known she didn’t mean it.
56
I cannot—I will not—go through life with a dead body on my back.
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
As Strike approached Henlys Corner on the North Circular Road the following afternoon, he saw, with a muttered oath, that traffic ahead had come to a halt. The junction, which was a notorious hotspot for congestion, had supposedly been improved earlier that year. As he joined the stationary queue, Strike wound down his window, lit a cigarette and glanced at his dashboard clock, with the familiar sensation of angry impotence that driving in London so often engendered. He had wondered whether it might be wiser to take the Tube north, but the psychiatric hospital lay a good mile from the nearest station, and the BMW was marginally easier on his still sore leg. Now he feared that he was going to be late for an interview that he was determined not to miss, firstly because he had no wish to disoblige the psychiatric team who were letting him see Billy Knight, and secondly because Strike didn’t know when there would next be an opportunity to speak to the younger brother without fear of running into the older. Barclay had assured him that morning that Jimmy’s plans for the day comprised writing a polemic on Rothschild’s global influence for the Real Socialist website and sampling some of Barclay’s new stash.
Scowling and tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, Strike fell back to ruminating on a question that had been nagging at him since the previous evening: whether or not the cut connection halfway through his call to Robin had really been due to Matthew snatching the phone out of her hand. He had not found Robin’s subsequent assurances that all was well particularly convincing.
While heating himself baked beans on his one-ringed hob, because he was still attempting to lose weight, Strike had debated calling Robin back. Eating his meatless dinner unenthusiastically in front of the television, supposedly watching highlights of the Olympics closing ceremony, his attention was barely held by the sight of the Spice Girls zooming around on top of London cabs. I think marriage is nearly always an unfathomable entity, even to the people inside it, Della Winn had said. Perhaps Robin and Matthew were even now in bed together. Was pulling a phone out of her hand any worse than deleting her call history? She had stayed with Matthew after that. Where was her red line?
And Matthew was surely too careful of his own reputation and prospects to abandon all civilized
The detective was perfectly aware that the state of his junior partner’s marriage ought to be the least of his worries, given that he so far had no concrete information for the client who was currently paying three full-time investigators to find out the facts about her father’s death. Nevertheless, as the traffic finally moved on, Strike’s thoughts continued to eddy around Robin and Matthew until at last he saw a signpost to the psychiatric clinic and, with an effort, focused his mind on the forthcoming interview.
Unlike the gigantic rectangular prism of concrete and black glass where Jack had been admitted a few weeks earlier, the hospital outside which Strike parked twenty minutes later boasted crocketed spires and byzantine windows covered with iron bars. In Strike’s opinion it looked like the bastard offspring of a gingerbread palace and a gothic prison. A Victorian stonemason had carved the word “Sanatorium” into the dirty redbrick arch over the double doorway.
Already five minutes late, Strike flung open the driver’s door and, not bothering to change his trainers for smarter footwear, locked the BMW and hurried, limping, up the grubby front steps.
Inside he found a chilly hallway with high, off-white ceilings, churchlike windows and a general suspicion of decay barely kept at bay by the fug of disinfectant. Spotting the ward number he had been given by phone, he set off along a corridor to the left.
Sunlight falling through the barred windows cast striped patches onto the off-white walls, which were hung crookedly with art, some of which had been done by former patients. As Strike passed a series of collages depicting detailed farmyard scenes in felt, tinsel and yarn, a skeletal teenage girl emerged from a bathroom alongside a nurse. Neither of them seemed to notice Strike. Indeed, the girl’s dull eyes were focused, it seemed to him, inward upon a battle she was waging far from the real world.