Роберт Гэлбрейт - Lethal White

‘I was wrong about the agency, I know that now. You’ve done such incredible things . . . I read everything about you, all the time. Jago found it all on my search history—’

‘Should have covered your tracks, shouldn’t you? You were a damn sight more careful with me, when you were screwing him on the side.’

‘I wasn’t sleeping with Jago while I was with you—’

‘You got engaged to him two weeks after we finished.’

‘It happened fast because I made it happen fast,’ she said fiercely. ‘You said I was lying about the baby and I was hurt, furious – you and I would be married now if you hadn’t—’

‘Menus,’ said a waiter suddenly materialising beside their table, handing one to each of them. Strike waved his away.

‘I’m not staying.’

‘Take it for Amelia,’ Charlotte instructed him, and he pulled the menu out of the waiter’s hand and slapped it down on the table in front of him.

‘We have a couple of specials today,’ said the waiter.

‘Do we look like we want to hear specials?’ Strike growled. The waiter stood for a second, frozen in astonishment, then wound his way back through the crowded tables, his back view affronted.

‘All this romantic bullshit,’ Strike said, leaning in to Charlotte. ‘You wanted things I couldn’t give you. Every single fucking time, you hated the poverty.’

‘I acted like a spoiled bitch,’ she said, ‘I know I did, then I married Jago and I got all those things I thought I deserved and I want to fucking die.’

‘It goes beyond holidays and jewellery, Charlotte. You wanted to break me.’

Her expression became rigid, as it so often had before the worst outbursts, the truly horrifying scenes.

‘You wanted to stop me wanting anything that wasn’t you. That’d be the proof I loved you, if I gave up the army, the agency, Dave Polworth, every-bloody-thing that made me who I am.’

‘I never, ever wanted to break you, that’s a terrible thing to—’

‘You wanted to smash me up because that’s what you do. You have to break it, because if you don’t, it might fade away. You’ve got to be in control. If you kill it, you don’t have to watch it die.’

‘Look me in the eye and tell me you’ve loved anyone, since, like you loved me.’

‘No, I haven’t,’ he said, ‘and thank fuck for that.’

‘We had incredible times together—’

‘You’ll have to remind me what they were.’

‘That night on Benjy’s boat in Little France—’

‘—your thirtieth? Christmas in Cornwall? They were a whole lot of fucking fun.’

Her hand fell to her belly. Strike thought he saw movement through the thin black T-shirt, and it seemed to him again that there was something alien and inhuman beneath her skin.

‘Sixteen years, on and off, I gave you the best I had to give, and it was never enough,’ he said. ‘There comes a point where you stop trying to save the person who’s determined to drag you down with them.’

‘Oh, please ,’ she said, and suddenly, the vulnerable and desperate Charlotte vanished, to be replaced by somebody altogether tougher, cool-eyed and clever. ‘You didn’t want to save me, Bluey. You wanted to solve me. Big difference.’

He welcomed the reappearance of this second Charlotte, who was in every way as familiar as the fragile version, but whom he had far less compunction about hurting.

‘I’m looking good to you now because I got famous and you married an arsehole.’

She absorbed the hit without blinking, though her face became a little pinker. Charlotte had always enjoyed a fight.

‘You’re so predictable. I knew you’d say I came back because you’re famous.’

‘Well, you do tend to resurface whenever there’s drama, Charlotte,’ Strike said. ‘I seem to remember that the last time, I’d just got my leg blown off.’

‘You bastard,’ she said, with a cool smile. ‘That’s how you explain me taking care of you, all those months afterwards?’

His mobile rang: Robin.

‘Hi,’ he said, turning away from Charlotte to look out of the window. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Hi, just telling tha I can’t meet tha tonight,’ said Robin, in a much thicker Yorkshire accent than usual. ‘I’m going out with a friend. Party.’

‘I take it Flick’s listening?’ said Strike.

‘Yeah, well, why don’t you try calling your wife if you’re lonely?’ said Robin.

‘I’ll do that,’ said Strike, amused in spite of Charlotte’s cool stare from across the table. ‘D’you want me to yell at you? Give this some credibility?’

‘No, you fook off,’ said Robin loudly, and she hung up.

‘Who was that?’ asked Charlotte, eyes narrowed.

‘I’ve got to go,’ said Strike, pocketing the mobile and reaching for his walking stick, which had slipped and fallen under the table while he and Charlotte argued. Realising what he was after, she leaned sideways and succeeded in picking it up before he could reach it.

‘Where’s the cane I gave you?’ she said. ‘The Malacca one?’

‘You kept it,’ he reminded her.

‘Who bought you this one? Robin?’

Amidst all of Charlotte’s paranoid and frequently wild accusations, she had occasionally made uncannily accurate guesses.

‘She did, as a matter of fact,’ said Strike, but instantly regretted saying it. He was playing Charlotte’s game and at once, she turned into a third and rare Charlotte, neither cold nor fragile, but honest to the point of recklessness.

‘All that’s kept me going through this pregnancy is the thought that once I’ve had them, I can leave.’

‘You’re going to walk out on your kids, the moment they exit the womb?’

‘For another three months, I’m trapped. They all want the boy so much, they hardly let me out of their sight. Once I’ve given birth, it’ll be different. I can go. We both know I’ll be a lousy mother. They’re better off with the Rosses. Jago’s mother’s already lining herself up as a surrogate.’

Strike held out his hand for the walking stick. She hesitated, then passed it over. He got up.

‘Give my regards to Amelia.’

‘She’s not coming. I lied. I knew you’d be at Henry’s. I was at a private viewing with him yesterday. He told me you were going to interview him.’

‘Goodbye, Charlotte.’

‘Wouldn’t you rather have had advance warning that I want you back?’

‘But I don’t want you,’ he said, looking down at her.

‘Don’t kid a kidder, Bluey.’

Strike limped out of the restaurant past the staring waiters, all of whom seemed to know how rude he had been to one of their colleagues. As he slammed his way out into the street, he felt as though he was pursued, as though Charlotte had projected after him a succubus that would tail him until they met again.

51

Can you spare me an ideal or two?

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

‘You’ve been brainwashed to think it’s got to be this way,’ said the anarchist. ‘See, you need to get your head around a world without leaders. No individual invested with more power than any other individual.’

‘Right,’ said Robin. ‘So tha’ve nev er voted?’

The Duke of Wellington in Hackney was overflowing this Saturday evening, but the deepening darkness was still warm and a dozen or so of Flick’s friends and comrades in CORE were happy to mill around on the pavement on Balls Pond Road, drinking before heading back to Flick’s for a party. Many of the group were holding carrier bags containing cheap wine and beer.

The anarchist laughed and shook his head. He was stringy, blond and dreadlocked, with many piercings, and Robin thought she recognised him from the mêlée in the crowd on the night of the Paralympic reception. He had already shown her the squidgy lump of cannabis he had brought to contribute to the general amusement of the party. Robin, whose experience of drugs was restricted to a couple of long-ago tokes on a bong back in her interrupted university career, had feigned an intelligent interest.