Роберт Гэлбрейт - Lethal White

‘This is a very big job, Mr Chiswell,’ said Strike. ‘It’ll take two or three people to thoroughly investigate Knight and Winn, especially if there’s time pressure.’

‘I don’t care what it costs,’ said Chiswell. ‘I don’t care if you have to put your whole agency on it.

‘I refuse to believe there isn’t anything dodgy about Winn, sneaking little toad that he is. There’s something funny about them as a couple. She, the blind angel of light,’ Chiswell’s lip curled, ‘and he, her potbellied henchman, always scheming and backstabbing and grubbing up every freebie he can get. There must be something there. Must be.

‘As for Knight, Commie rabble rouser, there’s bound to be something the police haven’t yet caught up with. He was always a tearaway, a thoroughly nasty piece of work.’

‘You knew Jimmy Knight before he started trying to blackmail you?’ asked Strike.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Chiswell. ‘The Knights are from my constituency. The father was an odd-job man who did a certain amount of work for our family. I never knew the mother. I believe she died before the three of them moved into Steda Cottage.’

‘I see,’ said Strike.

He was recalling Billy’s anguished words, ‘ I seen a child strangled and nobody believes me ’, the nervous movement from nose to chest as he made his slipshod half-cross, and the prosaic, precise detail of the pink blanket in which the dead child had been buried.

‘There’s something I think I should tell you before we discuss terms, Mr Chiswell,’ said Strike. ‘I was at the CORE meeting because I was trying to find Knight’s younger brother. His name’s Billy.’

The crease between Chiswell’s myopic eyes deepened a fraction.

‘Yerse, I remember that there were two of them, but Jimmy was the elder by a considerable amount – a decade or more, I would guess. I haven’t seen – Billy, is it? – in many years.’

‘Well, he’s seriously mentally ill,’ said Strike. ‘He came to me last Monday with a peculiar story, then bolted.’

Chiswell waited, and Strike was sure he detected tension.

‘Billy claims,’ said Strike, ‘that he witnessed the strangling of a small child when he was very young.’

Chiswell did not recoil, horrified; he did not bluster or storm. He did not demand whether he was being accused, or ask what on earth that had to do with him. He responded with none of the flamboyant defences of the guilty man, and yet Strike could have sworn that to Chiswell, this was not a new story.

‘And who does he claim strangled the child?’ he asked, fingering the stem of his wine glass.

‘He didn’t tell me – or wouldn’t.’

‘You think this is what Knight is blackmailing me over? Infanticide?’ asked Chiswell roughly.

‘I thought you ought to know why I went looking for Jimmy,’ said Strike.

‘I have no deaths on my conscience,’ said Jasper Chiswell forcefully. He swallowed the last of his water. ‘One cannot,’ he added, replacing the empty glass on the table, ‘be held accountable for unintended consequences.’

10

I have believed that we two together would be equal to it.

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

The detective and the minister emerged from 14 Park Place an hour later and walked the few yards that took them back to St James’s Street. Chiswell had become less curmudgeonly and gnomic over coffee, relieved, Strike suspected, to have put in train some action that might lift from him what had clearly become an almost intolerable burden of dread and suspense. They had agreed terms and Strike was pleased with the deal, because this promised to be a better-paid and more challenging job than the agency had been given in a while.

‘Well, thank you, Mr Strike,’ said Chiswell, staring off down St James’s as they both paused on the corner. ‘I must leave you here. I have an appointment with my son.’

Yet he did not move.

‘You investigated Freddie’s death,’ he said abruptly, glancing at Strike out of the corner of his eyes.

Strike had not expected Chiswell to raise the subject, and especially not here, as an afterthought, after the intensity of their basement discussion.

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I’m sorry.’

Chiswell’s eyes remained fixed on a distant art gallery.

‘I remembered your name on the report,’ said Chiswell. ‘It’s an unusual one.’

He swallowed, still squinting at the gallery. He seemed strangely unwilling to depart for his appointment.

‘Wonderful boy, Freddie,’ he said. ‘Wonderful. Went into my old regiment – well, as good as. Queen’s Own Hussars amalgamated with the Queen’s Royal Irish back in ninety-three, as you’ll know. So it was the Queen’s Royal Hussars he joined.

‘Full of promise. Full of life. But of course, you never knew him.’

‘No,’ said Strike.

Some polite comment seemed necessary.

‘He was your eldest, wasn’t he?’

‘Of four,’ said Chiswell, nodding. ‘Two girls,’ and by his inflection he waved them away, mere females, chaff to wheat, ‘and this other boy,’ he added darkly. ‘He went to jail. Perhaps you saw the newspapers?’

‘No,’ lied Strike, because he knew what it felt like to have your personal details strewn across the newspapers. It was kindest, if at all credible, to pretend you hadn’t read it all, politest to let people tell their own story.

‘Been trouble all his life, Raff,’ said Chiswell. ‘I got him a job in there.’

He pointed a thick finger at the distant gallery window.

‘Dropped out of his History of Art degree,’ said Chiswell. ‘Friend of mine owns the place, agreed to take him on. M’wife thinks he’s a lost cause. He killed a young mother in a car. He was high.’

Strike said nothing.

‘Well, goodbye,’ said Chiswell, appearing to come out of a melancholy trance. He offered his sweaty hand once more, which Strike shook, then strode away, bundled up in the thick coat that was so inappropriate on this fine June day.

Strike proceeded up St James’s Street in the opposite direction, pulling out his mobile as he went. Robin picked up on the third ring.

‘Need to meet you,’ said Strike without preamble. ‘We’ve got a new job, a big one.’

‘Damn!’ she said. ‘I’m in Harley Street. I didn’t want to bother you, knowing you were with Chiswell, but Andy’s wife broke her wrist falling off a stepladder. I said I’d cover Dodgy while Andy takes her to hospital.’

‘Shit. Where’s Barclay?’

‘Still on Webster.’

‘Is Dodgy in his consulting room?’

‘Yes.’

‘We’ll risk it,’ said Strike. ‘He usually goes straight home on Fridays. This is urgent. I need to tell you about it face to face. Can you meet me in the Red Lion in Duke of York Street?’

Having refused all alcohol during his meal with Chiswell, Strike fancied a pint rather than returning to the office. If he had stuck out in his suit at the White Horse in East Ham, he was perfectly dressed for Mayfair, and two minutes later he entered the Red Lion in Duke of York Street, a snug Victorian pub whose brass fittings and etched glass reminded him of the Tottenham. Taking a pint of London Pride off to a corner table, he looked up Della Winn and her husband on his phone and began reading an article about the forthcoming Paralympics, in which Della was extensively quoted.

‘Hi,’ said Robin, twenty-five minutes later, dropping her bag onto the seat opposite him.

‘Want a drink?’ he asked.

‘I’ll get it,’ said Robin. ‘Well?’ she said, rejoining him a couple of minutes later, holding an orange juice. Strike smiled at her barely contained impatience. ‘What was it all about? What did Chiswell want?’