Роберт Гэлбрейт - Lethal White

‘When did – what did you – two days ago?’

Since arriving at her parents’ house she had been occupied non-stop with tedious wedding chores, yet she had still managed to check her phone frequently and surreptitiously, hoping that Strike had called or texted. Alone in bed at one that morning she had checked her entire call history in the vain hope that she would find a missed communication, but had found the history deleted. Having barely slept in the last couple of weeks, she had concluded that she had made an exhausted blunder, pressed the wrong button, erased it accidentally . . .

‘I don’t want to stay,’ Strike mumbled. ‘I just wanted to say I’m sorry, and ask you to come—’

‘You’ve got to stay,’ she said, reaching out and seizing his arm as though he might escape.

Her heart was thudding so fast that she felt breathless. She knew that she had lost colour as the buzzing room seemed to wobble around her.

‘Please stay,’ she said, still holding tight to his arm, ignoring Matthew as he bristled beside her. ‘I need – I want to talk to you. Mum?’ she called.

Linda stepped out of the receiving line. She seemed to have been waiting for the summons, and she didn’t look happy.

‘Please could you add Cormoran to a table?’ said Robin. ‘Maybe put him with Stephen and Jenny?’

Unsmiling, Linda led Strike away. There were a few last guests waiting to offer their congratulations. Robin could no longer muster smiles and small talk.

‘Why didn’t I get Cormoran’s calls?’ she asked Matthew, as an elderly man shuffled away towards the tables, neither welcomed nor greeted.

‘I’ve been trying to tell you—’

‘Why didn’t I get the calls, Matthew?’

‘Robin, can we talk about this later?’

The truth burst upon her so suddenly that she gasped.

‘ You deleted my call history,’ she said, her mind leaping rapidly from deduction to deduction. ‘You asked for my passcode number when I came back from the bathroom at the service station.’ The last two guests took one look at the bride and groom’s expressions and hurried past without demanding their greeting. ‘You took my phone away. You said it was about the honeymoon. Did you listen to his message?’

‘Yes,’ said Matthew. ‘I deleted it.’

The silence that seemed to have pressed in on her had become a high-pitched whine. She felt light-headed. Here she stood in the big white lace dress she didn’t like, the dress she had had altered because the wedding had been delayed once, pinned to the spot by ceremonial obligations. On the periphery of her vision, a hundred blurred faces swayed. The guests were hungry and expectant.

Her eyes found Strike, who was standing with his back to her, waiting beside Linda while an extra place was laid at her elder brother Stephen’s table. Robin imagined striding over to him and saying: ‘Let’s get out of here.’ What would he say if she did?

Her parents had spent thousands on the day. The packed room was waiting for the bride and groom to take their seats at the top table. Paler than her wedding dress, Robin followed her new husband to their seats as the room burst into applause.

The finicky waiter seemed determined to prolong Strike’s discomfort. He had no choice but to stand in full view of every table while he waited for his extra place to be laid. Linda, who was almost a foot shorter than the detective, remained at Strike’s elbow while the youth made imperceptible adjustments to the dessert fork and turned the plate so that the design aligned with its neighbours’. The little Strike could see of Linda’s face below the silvery hat looked angry.

‘Thanks very much,’ he said at long last, as the waiter stepped out of the way, but as he took hold of the back of his chair, Linda laid a light hand on his sleeve. Her gentle touch might as well have been a shackle, accompanied as it was by an aura of outraged motherhood and offended hospitality. She greatly resembled her daughter. Linda’s fading hair was red-gold, too, the clear grey-blue of her eyes enhanced by her silvery hat.

‘Why are you here?’ she asked through clenched teeth, while waiters bustled around them, delivering starters. At least the arrival of food had distracted the other guests. Conversation broke out as people’s attention turned to their long-awaited meal.

‘To ask Robin to come back to work with me.’

‘You sacked her. It broke her heart.’

There was much he could have said to that, but he chose not to say it out of respect for what Linda must have suffered when she had seen that eight-inch knife wound.

‘Three times she’s been attacked, working for you,’ said Linda, her colour rising. ‘Three times.’

Strike could, with truth, have told Linda that he accepted liability only for the first of those attacks. The second had happened after Robin disregarded his explicit instructions and the third as a consequence of her not only disobeying him, but endangering a murder investigation and his entire business.

‘She hasn’t been sleeping. I’ve heard her at night . . . ’

Linda’s eyes were over-bright. She let go of him, but whispered, ‘You haven’t got a daughter. You can’t understand what we’ve been through.’

Before Strike could muster his exhausted faculties, she had marched away to the top table. He caught Robin’s eye over her untouched starter. She pulled an anguished expression, as though afraid that he might walk out. He raised his eyebrows slightly and dropped, at last, into his seat.

A large shape to his left shifted ominously. Strike turned to see more eyes like Robin’s, set over a pugnacious jaw and surmounted by bristling brows.

‘You must be Stephen,’ said Strike.

Robin’s elder brother grunted, still glaring. They were both large men; packed together, Stephen’s elbow grazed Strike’s as he reached for his pint. The rest of the table was staring at Strike. He raised his right hand in a kind of half-hearted salute, remembered that it was bandaged only when he saw it, and felt that he was drawing even more attention to himself.

‘Hi, I’m Jenny, Stephen’s wife,’ said the broad-shouldered brunette on Stephen’s other side. ‘You look as though you could use this.’

She passed an untouched pint across Stephen’s plate. Strike was so grateful he could have kissed her. In deference to Stephen’s scowl, he confined himself to a heartfelt ‘thanks’ and downed half of it in one go. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jenny mutter something in Stephen’s ear. The latter watched Strike set the pint glass down again, cleared his throat and said gruffly:

‘Congratulations in order, I s’pose.’

‘Why?’ said Strike blankly.

Stephen’s expression became a degree less fierce.

‘You caught that killer.’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Strike, picking up his fork in his left hand and stabbing the salmon starter. Only after he had swallowed it in its entirety and noticed Jenny laughing did he realise he ought to have treated it with more respect. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘Very hungry.’

Stephen was now contemplating him with a glimmer of approval.

‘No point in it, is there?’ he said, looking down at his own mousse. ‘Mostly air.’

‘Cormoran,’ said Jenny, ‘would you mind just waving at Jonathan? Robin’s other brother – over there.’

Strike looked in the direction indicated. A slender youth with the same colouring as Robin waved enthusiastically from the next table. Strike gave a brief, sheepish salute.

‘Want her back, then, do you?’ Stephen fired at him.

‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘I do.’

He half-expected an angry response, but instead Stephen heaved a long sigh.

‘S’pose I’ve got to be glad. Never seen her happier than when she was working for you. I took the piss out of her when we were kids for saying she wanted to be a policewoman,’ he added. ‘Wish I hadn’t,’ he said, accepting a fresh pint from the waiter and managing to down an impressive amount before continuing. ‘We were dicks to her, looking back, and then she . . . well, she stands up for herself a bit better these days.’