Роберт Гэлбрейт - Lethal White

‘I don’t want more trouble,’ muttered Aamir.

‘Well, I should have thought,’ said Geraint, ‘after everything Della in particular has done for you . . . ’

‘And I’m grateful,’ said Aamir swiftly. ‘You know I am . . . all right, I’ll – I’ll try.’

For the next minute there were no sounds but scuffing footsteps and papers, followed by a mechanical click. The device automatically switched off after a minute of no talking, activated again when somebody spoke. The next voice was that of a different man asking whether Della would be attending ‘the sub-committee’ this afternoon.

Strike removed the earbuds.

‘Did you catch it all?’ Robin asked.

‘I think so,’ said Strike.

She leaned back, watching Strike expectantly.

‘The Foreign Office?’ he repeated quietly. ‘What the hell can he have done that means the Foreign Office has got pictures?’

‘I thought we weren’t supposed to be interested in what he did?’ said Robin, eyebrows raised.

‘I never said I wasn’t interested. Just that I’m not being paid to find out.’

Strike’s fish and chips arrived. He thanked the barmaid and proceeded to add a generous amount of ketchup to his plate.

‘Izzy was completely matter of fact about whatever it is,’ said Robin, thinking back. ‘She couldn’t possibly have spoken about it the way she did if he’d – you know – murdered anybody.’

She deliberately avoided the word ‘strangled’. Three panic attacks in three days were quite sufficient.

‘Got to say,’ said Strike, now chewing chips, ‘that anonymous call makes you – unless,’ he said, struck by a thought, ‘Jimmy’s had the bright idea of trying to drag Chiswell into the Billy business on top of whatever else he’s genuinely done. A child-killing doesn’t have to be true to make trouble for a government minister who’s already got the press on his tail. You know the internet. Plenty of people out there think being a Tory as tantamount to being a child killer. This might be Jimmy’s idea of adding pressure.’

Strike stabbed a few chips moodily with his fork.

‘I’d be glad to know where Billy is, if we had somebody free to look for him. Barclay hasn’t seen any sign of him and says Jimmy hasn’t mentioned having a brother.’

‘Billy said he was being held captive,’ Robin said tentatively.

‘Don’t think we can set much store on anything Billy’s saying right now, to be honest. I knew a guy in the Shiners who had a psychotic episode on exercises. Thought he had cockroaches living under his skin.’

‘In the—?’

‘Shiners. Fusiliers. Want a chip?’

‘I’d better not,’ sighed Robin, though she was hungry. Matthew, whom she had warned by text that she would be late, had told her he would wait for her to get home, so they could eat dinner together. ‘Listen, I haven’t told you everything.’

‘Suki Lewis?’ asked Strike, hopefully.

‘I haven’t been able to work her into the conversation yet. No, it’s that Chiswell’s wife claims men have been lurking in the flowerbeds and fiddling with her horses.’

‘Men?’ Strike repeated. ‘In the plural?’

‘That’s what Izzy said – but she also says Kinvara’s hysterical and attention-seeking.’

‘Getting to be a bit of a theme, that, isn’t it? People who’re supposed to be too crazy to know what they’ve seen.’

‘D’you think that could have been Jimmy, as well? In the garden?’

Strike thought it over as he chewed.

‘I can’t see what he’s got to gain from lurking in the garden or fiddling with horses, unless he’s at the point where he just wants to frighten Chiswell. I’ll check with Barclay and see whether Jimmy’s got a car or mentioned going to Oxfordshire. Did Kinvara call the police?’

‘Raff asked that, when Izzy got back,’ said Robin, and once again, Strike thought he detected a trace of self-consciousness as she spoke the man’s name. ‘Kinvara claims the dogs barked, she saw the shadow of a man in the garden, but he ran away. She says there were footprints in the horses’ field next morning and that one of them had been cut with a knife.’

‘Did she call a vet?’

‘I don’t know. It’s harder to ask questions with Raff in the office. I don’t want to look too nosy, because he doesn’t know who I am.’

Strike pushed his plate away from him and felt for his cigarettes.

‘Photos,’ he mused, returning to the central point. ‘Photos at the Foreign Office. What the hell can they show that would incriminate Chiswell? He’s never worked at the Foreign Office, has he?’

‘No,’ said Robin. ‘The highest post he’s ever held is Minister for Trade. He had to resign from there because of the affair with Raff’s mother.’

The wooden clock over the fireplace was telling her it was time to leave. She didn’t move.

‘You’re liking Raff, then?’ Strike said suddenly, catching her off guard.

‘What?’

Robin was scared that she had blushed.

‘What do you mean, I’m “liking” him?’

‘Just an impression I got,’ said Strike. ‘You disapproved of him before you met him.’

‘D’you want me to be antagonistic towards him, when I’m supposed to be his father’s goddaughter?’ demanded Robin.

‘No, of course not,’ said Strike, though Robin had the sense that he was laughing at her, and resented it.

‘I’d better get going,’ she said, sweeping the headphones off the table and back into her bag. ‘I told Matt I’d be home for dinner.’

She got up, bade Strike goodbye and left the pub.

Strike watched her go, dimly sorry that he had commented on her manner when mentioning Raphael Chiswell. After a few minutes’ solitary beer consumption, he paid for his food and ambled out onto the pavement, where he lit a cigarette and called the Minister for Culture, who answered on the second ring.

‘Wait there,’ said Chiswell. Strike could hear a murmuring crowd behind him. ‘Crowded room.’

The clunk of a door closing and the noise of the crowd was muted.

‘’M at a dinner,’ said Chiswell. ‘Anything for me?’

‘It isn’t good news, I’m afraid,’ said Strike, walking away from the pub, up Queen Anne Street, between white painted buildings that gleamed in the dusk. ‘My partner succeeded in planting the listening device in Mr Winn’s office this morning. We’ve got a recording of him talking to Jimmy Knight. Winn’s assistant – Aamir, is it? – is trying to get copies of those photographs you told me about. At the Foreign Office.’

The ensuing silence lasted so long that Strike wondered whether they had been cut off.

‘Minist—?’

‘I’m here!’ snarled Chiswell. ‘That boy Mallik, is it? Dirty little bastard. Dirty little bastard. He’s already lost one job – let him try, that’s all. Let him try! Does he think I won’t – I know things about Aamir Mallik,’ he said. ‘Oh yes.’

Strike waited, in some surprise, for elucidation of these remarks, but none were forthcoming. Chiswell merely breathed heavily into the telephone. Soft, muffled thuds told Strike that Chiswell was pacing up and down on carpet.

‘Is that all you had to say to me?’ demanded the MP at last.

‘There was one other thing,’ said Strike. ‘My partner says your wife’s seen a man or men trespassing on your property at night.’

‘Oh,’ said Chiswell, ‘yerse.’ He did not sound particularly concerned. ‘My wife keeps horses and she takes their security very seriously.’

‘You don’t think this has any connection with—?’

‘Not in the slightest, not in the slightest. Kinvara’s sometimes – well, to be candid,’ said Chiswell, ‘she can be bloody hysterical. Keeps a bunch of horses, always fretting they’re going to be stolen. I don’t want you wasting time chasing shadows through the undergrowth in Oxfordshire. My problems are in London. Is that everything?’