Роберт Гэлбрейт - Lethal White

‘She isn’t very bright, you know. She’d have tidied away all the amitriptyline packaging, thinking it would incriminate her if she left it. I know the police think the absence of packaging is odd, but I can tell they’re all leaning towards suicide and that’s why I wanted to speak to you, Cormoran,’ Izzy finished, edging a little forward in her armchair. ‘I want to hire you. I want you to investigate Papa’s death.’

Strike had known the request was coming almost from the moment the tea had arrived. The prospect of being paid to investigate what was, in any case, preoccupying Strike to the point of obsession, was naturally inviting. However, clients who sought nothing but confirmation of their own theories were always troublesome. He could not accept the case on Izzy’s terms, but compassion for her grief led him to seek a gentler mode of refusal.

‘The police won’t want me under their feet, Izzy.’

‘They don’t have to know it’s Papa’s death you’re investigating,’ said Izzy eagerly. ‘We could pretend we want you to investigate all those stupid trespasses into the garden that Kinvara claims have been going on. It would serve her bloody well right if we took her seriously now.’

‘Do the rest of the family know you’re meeting me?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Izzy eagerly. ‘Fizzy’s all for it.’

‘Is she? Does she suspect Kinvara, too?’

‘Well, no,’ said Izzy, sounding faintly frustrated, ‘but she agrees a hundred per cent that Papa couldn’t have killed himself.’

‘Who does she think did it, if not Kinvara?’

‘Well,’ said Izzy, who seemed uneasy at this line of questioning, ‘actually, Fizz has got this crazy idea that Jimmy Knight was involved somehow, but obviously, that’s ridiculous. Jimmy was in custody when Papa died, wasn’t he? You and I saw him being led away by the police the evening before, but Fizz doesn’t want to hear that, she’s fixated on Jimmy! I’ve said to her, “how did Jimmy Knight know where the amitriptyline and the helium were?” but she won’t listen, she keeps going on about how Knight was after revenge—’

‘Revenge for what?’

‘What?’ said Izzy restlessly, though Strike knew she had heard him. ‘Oh – that doesn’t matter now. That’s all over.’

Snatching up the teapot, Izzy marched away into the kitchen area, where she added more hot water from the kettle.

‘Fizz is irrational about Jimmy,’ she said, returning with her teapot refilled and setting it down with a bang on the table. ‘She’s never been able to stand him since we were teenagers.’

She poured herself a second cup of tea, her colour heightened. When Strike said nothing, she repeated nervously:

‘The blackmail business can’t have anything to do with Papa dying. That’s all over.’

‘You didn’t tell the police about it, did you?’ asked Strike quietly.

There was a pause. Izzy turned steadily pinker. She sipped her tea, then said:

‘No.’

Then she said, in a rush, ‘I’m sorry, I can imagine how you and Venetia feel about that, but we’re more concerned about Papa’s legacy now. We can’t face it all getting into the press, Cormoran. The only way the blackmail can have any bearing on his death is if it drove him to suicide, and I just don’t believe he’d have killed himself over that, or anything else.’

‘Della must have found it easy to get her super-injunction,’ said Strike, ‘if Chiswell’s own family were backing her up, saying nobody was blackmailing him.’

‘We care more about how Papa’s remembered. The blackmail . . . that’s all over and done with.’

‘But Fizzy still thinks Jimmy might’ve had something to do with your father’s death.’

‘That’s not – that would be a separate matter, from what he was blackmailing about,’ said Izzy incoherently. ‘Jimmy had a grudge . . . it’s hard to explain . . . Fizz is just silly about Jimmy.’

‘How does the rest of the family feel about bringing me in again?’

‘Well . . . Raff isn’t awfully keen, but it’s nothing to do with him. I’d be paying you.’

‘Why isn’t he keen?’

‘Because,’ said Izzy, ‘well, because the police questioned Raff more than any of the rest of us, because – look, Raff doesn’t matter,’ she repeated. ‘I’ll be the client, I’m the one who wants you. Just break Kinvara’s alibis, I know you can do it.’

‘I’m afraid,’ said Strike, ‘I can’t take the job on those terms, Izzy.’

‘Why not?’

‘The client doesn’t get to tell me what I can and can’t investigate. Unless you want the whole truth, I’m not your man.’

‘You are , I know you’re the best, that’s why Papa hired you, and that’s why I want you.’

‘Then you’ll need to answer questions when I ask them, instead of telling me what does and doesn’t matter.’

She glared at him over the rim of her teacup, then, to his surprise, gave a brittle laugh.

‘I don’t know why I’m surprised. I knew you were like this. Remember when you argued with Jamie Maugham in Nam Long Le Shaker? Oh, you must remember. You wouldn’t back down – the whole table was at you at one point – what was the argument about, d’you—?’

‘The death penalty,’ said Strike, caught off guard. ‘Yeah. I remember.’

For the space of a blink, he seemed to see, not Izzy’s clean, bright sitting room, with its relics of a wealthy English past, but the louche, dimly lit interior of a Vietnamese restaurant in Chelsea where, twelve years previously, he and one of Charlotte’s friends had got into an argument over dinner. Jamie Maugham’s face was smoothly porcine in his memory. He had wanted to show up the oik whom Charlotte had insisted on bringing to dinner instead of Jamie’s old friend, Jago Ross.

‘ . . . and Jamie got rilly, rilly angry with you,’ Izzy said. ‘He’s quite a successful QC now, you know.’

‘Must’ve learned to keep his temper in an argument, then,’ said Strike, and Izzy gave another little giggle. ‘Izzy,’ he said, returning to the main issue, ‘if you mean what you say—’

‘—I do—’

‘—then you’ll answer my questions,’ said Strike, drawing a notebook out of his pocket.

Irresolute, she watched him take out a pen.

‘I’m discreet,’ said Strike. ‘In the past couple of years, I’ve been told the secrets of a hundred families and not shared one of them. Nothing irrelevant to your father’s death will ever be mentioned again outside my agency. But if you don’t trust me—’

‘I do,’ said Izzy desperately, and to his slight surprise, she leaned forward and touched him on the knee. ‘I do, Cormoran, honestly, but it’s . . . it’s hard . . . talking about Papa . . . ’

‘I understand that,’ he said, readying his pen. ‘So let’s start with why the police questioned Raphael so much more than the rest of you.’

He could tell that she didn’t want to answer, but after a moment’s hesitation she said:

‘Well, I think it was partly because Papa phoned Raff early on the morning he died. It was the last call he made.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Nothing that mattered. It can’t have had anything to do with Papa dying. But,’ she rushed on, as though wanting to extinguish any impression her last words might have made, ‘I think the main reason Raff isn’t keen on me hiring you is that he rather fell for your Venetia while she was in the office and now, well, obviously, he feels a bit of an idiot that he poured his heart out to her.’

‘Fell for her, did he?’ said Strike.

‘Yes, so it’s hardly surprising he feels everyone’s made a fool of him.’

‘The fact remains—’

‘I know what you’re going to say, but—’