Роберт Гэлбрейт - Lethal White

‘—if you want me to investigate, it’ll be me who decides what matters, Izzy. Not you. So I want to know,’ he ticked off all the times she had said that information ‘didn’t matter’ on his fingers as he named them, ‘what your father called Raphael about the morning he died, what your father and Kinvara were rowing about when she hit him around the head with a hammer – and what your father was being blackmailed about.’

The sapphire cross winked darkly as Izzy’s chest rose and fell. When at last she spoke, it was jerkily.

‘It’s not up to me to tell you about what Papa and Raff said to each other, the last t-time they spoke. That’s for Raff to say.’

‘Because it’s private?’

‘Yes,’ she said, very pink in the face. He wondered whether she was telling the truth.

‘You said your father had asked Raphael over to the house in Ebury Street the day he died. Was he rearranging the time? Cancelling?’

‘Cancelling. Look, you’ll have to ask Raff,’ she reiterated.

‘All right,’ said Strike, making a note. ‘What caused your stepmother to hit your father around the head with a hammer?’

Izzy’s eyes filled with tears. Then, with a sob, she pulled a handkerchief out of her sleeve and pressed it to her face:

‘I d-didn’t want to tell you that b-because I d-didn’t want you to think badly of Papa now he’s . . . now he’s . . . you see, he d-did something that . . . ’

Her broad shoulders shook as she emitted unromantic snorts. Strike, who found this frank and noisy anguish more touching than he would have found delicate eye dabbing, sat in impotent sympathy while she tried to gasp out her apologies.

‘I’m – I’m s—’

‘Don’t be silly,’ he said gruffly. ‘Of course you’re upset.’

But she seemed deeply ashamed of this loss of control, and her hiccoughing return to calm was punctuated with further flustered ‘sorrys’. At last, she wiped her face dry as roughly as though cleaning a window, said one final ‘I’m so sorry’, she straightened her spine and said with a forcefulness Strike rather admired, given the circumstances:

‘If you take the case . . . once we’ve signed on the dotted line . . . I’ll tell you what Papa did that made Kinvara hit him.’

‘I assume,’ said Strike, ‘the same goes for the reason that Winn and Knight were blackmailing your father?’

‘Look,’ she said, tears welling again, ‘don’t you see, it’s Papa’s memory, his legacy, now. I don’t want those things to be the thing people remember about him – please help us, Corm. Please. I know it wasn’t suicide, I know it wasn’t . . . ’

He let his silence do the work for him. At last, her expression piteous, she said with a catch in her voice:

‘All right. I’ll tell you all about the blackmail, but only if Fizz and Torks agree.’

‘Who’s Torks?’ enquired Strike.

‘Torquil. Fizzy’s husband. We swore we wouldn’t ever tell anyone, but I’ll t-talk to them and if they agree, I’ll t-tell you everything.’

‘Doesn’t Raphael get consulted?’

‘He never knew anything about the blackmail business. He was in jail when Jimmy first came to see Papa and anyway, he didn’t grow up with us, so he couldn’t – Raff never knew.’

‘And what about Kinvara?’ asked Strike. ‘Did she know?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Izzy, and a look of malice hardened her usually friendly features, ‘but she definitely won’t want us to tell you. Oh, not to protect Papa,’ she said, correctly reading Strike’s expression, ‘to protect herself. Kinvara benefited, you see. She didn’t mind what Papa was up to, so long as she reaped the rewards.’

39

… naturally I talk as little about it as possible; it is better to be silent about such things.

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

Robin was having a bad Saturday, following an even worse night.

She had woken with a yelp at 4 a.m., with the sensation of being still tangled in the nightmare in which she had been carrying a whole bag full of listening devices through darkened streets, knowing that men in masks were following her. The old knife wound on her arm had been gaping open and it was the trail of her spurting blood that her pursuers were following, and she knew she would never make it to the place where Strike was waiting for the bag of bugs . . .

‘What?’ Matthew had said groggily, half asleep.

‘Nothing,’ Robin had replied, before lying sleepless until seven, when she felt entitled to get up.

A scruffy young blond man had been lurking in Albury Street for the past two days. He barely bothered to conceal the fact that he was keeping their house under observation. Robin had discussed him with Strike, who was sure that he was a journalist rather than a private detective, probably a junior one, dispatched to keep tabs on her because Mitch Patterson’s hourly rate had become an unjustifiable expense.

She and Matthew had moved to Albury Street to escape the place where the Shacklewell Ripper had lurked. It was supposed to be a place of safety, yet it, too, had become contaminated by contact with unnatural death. Mid-morning, Robin had taken refuge in the bathroom before Matthew could realise she was hyperventilating again. Sitting on the bathroom floor, she had recourse to the technique she had learned in therapy, cognitive restructuring, which sought to identify the automatic thoughts of pursuit, pain and danger that sprang into her mind given certain triggers. He’s just some idiot who works for the Sun . He wants a story, that’s all. You’re safe. He can’t get at you. You’re comple tely safe.

When Robin emerged from the bathroom and went downstairs, she found her husband slamming kitchen doors and drawers as he threw together a sandwich. He did not offer to make one for her.

‘What are we supposed to tell Tom and Sarah, with that bastard staring through the windows?’

‘Why would we tell Tom and Sarah anything?’ asked Robin blankly.

‘We’re going to theirs for dinner tonight!’

‘Oh, no,’ groaned Robin. ‘I mean, yes. Sorry. I forgot.’

‘Well, what if the bloody journalist follows us?’

‘We ignore him,’ said Robin. ‘What else can we do?’

She heard her mobile ringing upstairs and, glad of the excuse to get out of Matthew’s vicinity, went to answer it.

‘Hi,’ said Strike. ‘Good news. Izzy’s hired us to look into Chiswell’s death. Well,’ he corrected himself, ‘what she actually wants is for us to prove Kinvara did it, but I managed to broaden the remit.’

‘That’s fantastic!’ whispered Robin, carefully closing the bedroom door and sitting down on the bed.

‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ said Strike. ‘Now, what we need for starters is a line on the police investigation, especially forensics. I’ve just tried Wardle, but he’s been warned not to talk to us. They seem to have guessed I’d still be sniffing around. Then I tried Anstis, but nothing doing, he’s full time on the Olympics and doesn’t know anyone on the case. So I was going to ask, is Vanessa back off compassionate leave?’

‘Yes!’ said Robin, suddenly excited. It was the first time she had had the useful contact, rather than Strike. ‘But even better than Vanessa – she’s dating a guy in forensics, Oliver, I’ve never met him, but—’

‘If Oliver would agree to talk to us,’ said Strike, ‘that would be fantastic. Tell you what, I’ll call Shanker, see whether he’ll sell me something we can offer in exchange. Call you back.’

He hung up. Though hungry, Robin did not go back downstairs, but stretched out on the smart mahogany bed, which had been a wedding gift from Matthew’s father. It was so cumbersome and heavy that it had taken the full complement of removal men, sweating and swearing under their breath, to haul it up the stairs in pieces and reassemble it in the bedroom. Robin’s dressing table, on the other hand, was old and cheap. Light as an orange crate without its drawers in, it had required only one man to pick it up and place it between the bedroom windows.