Роберт Гэлбрейт - Lethal White

‘Fizzy’s so amazed at the idea that her sister could have slept with the estate carpenter’s son that she thinks he must have some sort of supernatural, demonic sex appeal. That’s why she thinks Kinvara was slightly on his side, when he turned up asking for money.’

‘What?’ said Robin sharply, reaching for her notebook again, which had fallen closed.

‘Don’t get too excited,’ said Raphael, ‘I still don’t know what he was blackmailing Dad about, I never did. Not a full member of the family, you see, so not to be fully trusted.

‘Kinvara told you this at Chiswell House, don’t you remember? She was alone at home, the first time Jimmy turned up. Dad was in London again. From what I’ve pieced together, when she and Dad first talked it over, she argued Jimmy’s case. Fizzy thinks that’s down to Jimmy’s sex appeal. Would you say he’s got any?’

‘I suppose some people might think he has,’ said Robin indifferently, who was making notes. ‘Kinvara thought your father should pay Jimmy his money, did she?’

‘From what I understand,’ said Raphael, ‘Jimmy didn’t frame it as blackmail on the first approach. She thought Jimmy had a legitimate claim and argued for giving him something.’

‘When was this, d’you know?’

‘Search me,’ said Raphael, shaking his head. ‘I think I was in jail at the time. Bigger things to worry about . . .

‘Guess,’ he said, for the second time, ‘how often any of them have asked me what it was like in jail?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Robin cautiously.

‘Fizzy, never. Dad, never—’

‘You said Izzy visited.’

‘Yeah,’ he acknowledged, with a tip of the bottle to his sister. ‘Yeah, she did, bless her. Good old Torks has made a couple of jokes about not wanting to bend over in the shower. I suggested,’ said Raphael, with a hard smile, ‘that he’d know all about that kind of thing, what with his old pal Christopher sliding his hand between young men’s legs at the office. Turns out it’s serious stuff when some hairy old convict tries it, but harmless frolics for public schoolboys.’

He glanced at Robin.

‘I suppose you know now why Dad was taunting that poor bloke Aamir?’

She nodded.

‘Which Kinvara thought was a motive for murder,’ said Raphael, rolling his eyes. ‘Projection, pure projection – they’re all at it.

‘Kinvara thinks Aamir killed Dad, because Dad had been cruel to him in front of a room full of people. Well, you should have heard some of the things Dad was saying to Kinvara by the end.

‘Fizzy thinks Jimmy Knight might’ve done it because he was angry about money. She’s bloody angry about all the family money that’s vanished, but she can’t say that in so many words, not when her husband’s half the reason it’s gone.

‘Izzy thinks Kinvara must have killed Dad because Kinvara felt unloved and sidelined and disposable. Dad never thanked Izzy for a damn thing she did for him, and didn’t give a toss when she said she was leaving. You get the picture?

‘None of them have got the guts to say that they all felt like killing Dad at times, not now he’s dead, so they project it all onto someone else. And that ,’ said Raphael, ‘is why none of them are talking about Geraint Winn. He gets double protection, because Saint Freddie was involved in Winn’s big grudge. It’s staring them in the face that he had a real motive, but we’re not supposed to mention that.’

‘Go on,’ said Robin, her pen at the ready. ‘Mention.’

‘No, forget it,’ said Raphael, ‘I shouldn’t have—’

‘I don’t think you say much accidentally, Raff. Out with it.’

He laughed.

‘I’m trying to stop fucking over people who don’t deserve it. It’s all part of the great redemption project.’

‘Who doesn’t deserve it?’

‘Francesca, the little girl I – you know – at the gallery. She’s the one who told me. She got it from her older sister, Verity.’

‘Verity,’ repeated Robin.

Sleep-deprived, she struggled to remember where she had heard that name. It was very like ‘Venetia’, of course . . . and then she remembered.

‘Wait,’ she said, frowning in her effort to concentrate. ‘There was a Verity on the fencing team with Freddie and Rhiannon Winn.’

‘Right in one,’ said Raphael.

‘You all know each other,’ said Robin wearily, unknowingly echoing Strike’s thought as she started writing again.

‘Well, that’s the joy of the public school system,’ said Raphael. ‘In London, if you’ve got the money, you meet the same three hundred people everywhere you go . . . Yeah, when I first arrived at Drummond’s gallery, Francesca couldn’t wait to tell me that her big sister had once dated Freddie. I think she thought that made the pair of us predestined, or something.

‘When she realised I thought Freddie was a bit of a shit,’ said Raphael, ‘she changed tack and told me a nasty story.

‘Apparently, at his eighteenth, Freddie, Verity and a couple of others decided to mete out some punishment to Rhiannon for having dared to replace Verity on the fencing team. In their view she was – I don’t know – a bit common, a bit Welsh? – so they spiked her drink. All good fun. Sort of stuff that goes on the dorm, you know.

‘But she didn’t react too well to neat vodka – or maybe, from their point of view, she reacted really well. Anyway, they managed to take some nice pictures of her, to pass around among themselves . . . this was in the early days of the internet. These days I suppose half a million people would have viewed them in the first twenty-four hours, but Rhiannon only had to endure the whole fencing team and most of Freddie’s mates having a good gloat.

‘Anyway,’ said Raphael, ‘about a month later, Rhiannon killed herself.’

‘Oh my God,’ said Robin quietly.

‘Yeah,’ said Raphael. ‘After little Franny told me the story, I asked Izzy about it. She got very upset, told me not to repeat it, ever – but she didn’t deny it. I got lots of “nobody kills themselves because of a silly joke at a party” bluster and she told me I mustn’t talk about Freddie like that, it would break Dad’s heart . . .

‘Well, the dead don’t have hearts to break, do they? And personally, I think it’s about time somebody pissed on Freddie’s eternal flame. If he hadn’t been born a Chiswell, the bastard would’ve been in borstal. But I suppose you’ll say I can talk, after what I did.’

‘No,’ said Robin gently. ‘That isn’t what I was going to say.’

The pugnacious expression faded from his face. He checked his watch.

‘I’m going to have to go. I’ve got to be somewhere at nine.’

Robin raised her hand to signal for the bill. When she turned back to Raphael, she saw his eyes moving in routine fashion over both the other women in the restaurant, and in the mirror she saw how the blonde tried to hold his gaze.

‘You can go,’ she said, handing over her credit card to the waitress. ‘I don’t want to make you late.’

‘No, I’ll walk you out.’

While she was still putting her credit card back into her handbag, he picked up her coat and held it up for her.

‘Thank you.’

‘No problem.’

Out on the pavement, he hailed a taxi.

‘You take this one,’ he said. ‘I fancy a walk. Clear my head. I feel as though I’ve had a bad therapy session.’

‘No, it’s all right,’ said Robin. She didn’t want to charge a taxi all the way back to Wembley to Strike. ‘I’m going to get the Tube. Goodnight.’

‘’Night, Venetia,’ he said.

Raphael got into the taxi, which glided away, and Robin pulled her coat more tightly around herself as she walked off in the opposite direction. It had been a chaotic interview, but she had managed to get much more than she had expected out of Raphael. Taking out her mobile again, she phoned Strike.