Роберт Гэлбрейт - Lethal White

Reaching a decision, she opened the French window and the moth fluttered merrily inside.

‘What did Vanessa want?’ asked Matthew, his eyes on the news as Robin sat down again. Sarah Shadlock’s stargazer lilies were sitting on a table beside her, still in bloom ten days after they had arrived in the house, and Robin could smell their heady scent even over the curry.

‘I picked up her sunglasses by mistake last time we went out,’ said Robin, feigning exasperation. ‘She wants them back, they’re Chanel. I said I’ll meet her before work.’

‘Chanel, eh?’ said Matthew, with a smile that Robin found patronising. She knew that he thought he had discovered a weakness in Vanessa, but perhaps he liked her better to think that she valued designer labels and wanted to make sure she got them back.

‘I’ll have to leave at six,’ said Robin.

‘Six?’ he said, annoyed. ‘Christ, I’m knackered, I don’t want to wake up at—’

‘I was going to suggest I sleep in the spare room,’ Robin said.

‘Oh,’ said Matthew, mollified. ‘Yeah, OK. Thanks.’

19

I do not do it willingly – but, enfin – when needs must –

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

Robin left the house at a quarter to six the next morning. The sky was a faint blush pink and the morning already warm, justifying her lack of jacket. Her eyes flickered towards the single carved swan as she passed their local pub, but she forced her thoughts back onto the day ahead and not the man she had left behind.

On arrival in Izzy’s corridor an hour later, Robin saw that Geraint’s office door was already open. A swift peek inside showed her an empty room, but Aamir’s jacket hanging on the back of his chair.

Running to Izzy’s office, Robin unlocked it, dashed to her desk, pulled one of the listening devices from the box of Tampax, scooped up a pile of out-of-date agendas as an alibi, then ran back out into the corridor.

As she approached Geraint’s office, she slid off the gold bangle that she had worn for this purpose, and threw it lightly so that it rolled into Geraint’s office.

‘Oh damn,’ she said out loud.

Nobody responded from inside the office. Robin knocked on the open door, said ‘hello?’ and put her head inside. The room was still empty.

Robin dashed across the room to the double power point just above the skirting board beside Geraint’s desk. Kneeling, she took the listening device out of her bag, unplugged the fan on his desk, pressed the device into place over the dual socket, reinserted the fan’s plug, checked that it worked, then, panting as though she had just sprinted a hundred yards, looked around for her bangle.

‘What are you doing?’

Aamir was standing in the doorway in his shirtsleeves, a fresh tea in his hand.

‘I did knock,’ Robin said, sure that she was bright pink. ‘I dropped my bangle and it rolled – oh, there it is.’

It was lying just beneath Aamir’s computer chair. Robin scrambled to pick it up.

‘It’s my mother’s,’ she lied. ‘I wouldn’t be popular if that went missing.’

She slid the bangle back over her wrist, picked up the papers she had left on Geraint’s desk, smiled as casually as she could manage, then walked out of the office past Aamir, whose eyes, she saw out of the corner of her own, were narrowed in suspicion.

Jubilant, Robin re-entered Izzy’s office. At least she would have some good news for Strike when they met in the pub that evening. Barclay was no longer the only one doing good work. So absorbed was she in her thoughts that Robin didn’t realise that there was somebody else in the room until a man said, right behind her: ‘Who are you?’

The present dissolved. Both of her attackers had lunged at her from behind. With a scream, Robin spun around, ready to fight for her life: the papers flew into the air and her handbag slipped off her shoulder, fell to the floor and burst open, scattering its contents everywhere.

‘Sorry!’ said the man. ‘Christ, I’m sorry!’

But Robin was finding it hard to draw breath. There was a thundering in her ears and sweat had broken out all over her body. She bent down to scoop everything back up, trembling so much that she kept dropping things.

Not now . Not now.

He was talking to her, but she couldn’t understand a word. The world was fragmenting again, full of terror and danger, and he was a blur as he handed her eyeliner and a bottle of drops to moisten her contact lenses.

‘Oh,’ Robin gasped at random. ‘Great. Excuse me. Bathroom.’

She stumbled to the door. Two people were coming towards her down the corridor, their voices fuzzy and indistinct as they greeted her. Hardly knowing what she responded, she half-ran past them towards the Ladies.

A woman from the Secretary for Health’s office greeted her from the sink where she was applying lipstick. Robin blundered blindly past, locking the cubicle door with fumbling fingers.

It was no use trying to suppress the panic: that only made it fight back, trying to bend her to its will. She must ride it out, as though the fear was a bolting horse, easing it onto a more manageable course. So she stood motionless, palms pressed against the partition walls, speaking to herself inside her head as though she were an animal handler, and her body, in its irrational terror, a frantic prey creature.

You’re safe, you’re safe, you’re safe . . .

Slowly, the panic began to ebb, though her heart was still leaping erratically. At last, Robin removed her numb hands from the walls of the cubicle and opened her eyes, blinking in the harsh lights. The bathroom was quiet.

Robin peered out of the cubicle. The woman had left. There was nobody there except her own pale reflection in the mirror. After splashing cold water on her face and patting it dry with paper towels, she readjusted her clear-lensed glasses and left the bathroom.

An argument seemed to be in progress in the office she had just left. Taking a deep breath, she re-entered the room.

Jasper Chiswell turned to glare at her, his wiry mass of grey hair sticking out around his pink face. Izzy was standing behind her desk. The stranger was still there. In her shaken state, Robin would have preferred not to be the focus of three pairs of curious eyes.

‘What just happened?’ Chiswell demanded of Robin.

‘Nothing,’ said Robin, feeling cold sweat erupting again under her dress.

‘You ran out of the room. Did he—’ Chiswell pointed at the dark man, ‘—do something to you? Make a pass?’

‘Wha—? No! I didn’t realise he was in here, that’s all – he spoke and I jumped. And,’ she could feel herself blushing harder than ever, ‘then I needed the loo.’

Chiswell rounded on the dark man.

‘So why are you here so early, eh?’

Now, at last, Robin realised that this was Raphael. She had known from the pictures she had found online that this half-Italian was an exotic in a family that was otherwise uniformly blond and very English in appearance, but had been wholly unprepared for how handsome he was in the flesh. His charcoal-grey suit, white shirt and a conventional dark blue spotted tie were worn with an air that none of the other men along the corridor could muster. So dark-skinned as to appear swarthy, he had high cheekbones, almost black eyes, dark hair worn long and floppy, and a wide mouth that, unlike his father’s, had a full upper lip that added vulnerability to his face.

‘I thought you liked punctuality, Dad,’ he said, raising his arms and letting them fall in a slightly hopeless gesture.

His father turned to Izzy. ‘Give him something to do.’

Chiswell marched out. Mortified, Robin headed for her desk. Nobody spoke until Chiswell’s footsteps had died away, then Izzy spoke.