Robin whirled around to see the cart trundling towards her, pushed by a genial grey-haired man.
‘I’ll take anything for Chiswell and Winn. We’re having a meeting,’ Robin heard herself say. The postman handed over a stack of letters, along with a box with a clear cellophane window, through which Robin saw a life-size and very realistic plastic foetus. The legend across the top read: It Is Legal To Murder Me.
‘Oh God, that’s horrible,’ said Robin.
The postman chortled.
‘That’s nothing compared to some of what they get,’ he said comfortably. ‘Remember the white powder that was on the news? Anthrax, they claimed. Proper hoo-hah, that was. Oh, and I delivered a turd in a box once. Couldn’t smell it through all the wrapping. The baby’s for Winn, not Chiswell. She’s the pro-choice one. Enjoying it here, are you?’ he said, showing a disposition for chat.
‘Loving it,’ Robin said, whose attention had been caught by one of the envelopes she had so rashly taken. ‘Excuse me.’
Turning her back on Izzy’s office, she hurried past the postman, and five minutes later emerged onto the Terrace Café, which sat on the bank of the Thames. It was separated from the river by a low stone wall, which was punctuated with black iron lamps. To the left and right stood Westminster and Lambeth bridges respectively, the former painted the green of the seats in the House of Commons, the latter, scarlet like those in the House of Lords. On the opposite bank rose the white façade of County Hall, while between palace and hall rolled the broad Thames, its oily surface lucent grey over muddy depths.
Sitting down out of earshot of the few early morning coffee drinkers, Robin turned her attention to one of the letters addressed to Geraint Winn that she had so recklessly taken from the postman. The sender’s name and address had been carefully inscribed on the reverse of the envelope in a shaky cursive: Sir Kevin Rodgers, 16 The Elms, Fleetwood, Kent and she happened to know, due to her extensive background reading on the Winns’ charity, that the elderly Sir Kevin, who had won a silver at the hurdles in the 1956 Olympics, was one of the Level Playing Field’s trustees.
What things, Robin asked herself, did people feel the need to put in writing these days, when phone calls and emails were so much easier and faster?
Using her mobile, she found a number for Sir Kevin and Lady Rodgers at the correct address. They were old enough, she thought, to still use a landline. Taking a fortifying gulp of coffee, she texted Strike back:
Following a lead, will call asap.
She then turned off caller ID on her mobile, took out a pen and the notebook in which she had written Sir Kevin’s number and punched in the digits.
An elderly woman answered within three rings. Robin affected what she was afraid was a poor Welsh accent.
‘Could I speak to Sir Kevin, please?’
‘Is that Della?’
‘Is Sir Kevin there?’ asked Robin again, a little louder. She had been hoping to avoid actually claiming to be a government minister.
‘Kevin!’ called the woman. ‘Kevin! It’s Della!’
There was a noise of shuffling that made Robin think of tartan bedroom slippers.
‘Hello?’
‘Kevin, Geraint’s just got your letter,’ said Robin, wincing as her accent wobbled somewhere between Cardiff and Lahore.
‘Sorry, Della, what?’ said the man feebly.
He seemed to be deaf, which was both help and hindrance. Robin spoke more loudly, enunciating as clearly as she could. Sir Kevin grasped what she was saying on her third attempt.
‘I told Geraint I’d have to resign unless he took urgent steps,’ he said miserably. ‘You’re an old friend, Della, and it was – it is – a worthy cause, but I have to think of my own position. I did warn him.’
‘But why, Kevin?’ said Robin, picking up her pen.
‘Hasn’t he shown you my letter?’
‘No,’ said Robin truthfully, pen poised.
‘Oh dear,’ said Sir Kevin weakly. ‘Well, for one thing . . . twenty-five thousand pounds unaccounted for is a serious matter.’
‘What else?’ asked Robin, making rapid notes.
‘What’s that?’
‘You said “for one thing”. What else are you worried about?’
Robin could hear the woman who’d answered the phone talking in the background. Her voice sounded irate.
‘Della, I’d rather not go into it all on the phone,’ said Sir Kevin, sounding embarrassed.
‘Well, this is disappointing,’ said Robin, with what she hoped was a touch of Della’s mellifluous grandeur. ‘I hoped you’d at least tell me why, Kevin.’
‘Well, there’s the Mo Farah business—’
‘Mo Farah?’ repeated Robin, in unaffected surprise.
‘What was that?’
‘Mo – Farah?’
‘You didn’t know?’ said Sir Kevin. ‘Oh dear. Oh dear . . . ’
Robin heard footsteps and then the woman came back on the line, first muffled, then clear.
‘Let me speak to her – Kevin, let go – look, Della, Kevin’s very upset about all this. He suspected you didn’t know what’s been going on and, well, here we are, he was right. Nobody ever wants to worry you, Della,’ she said, sounding as though she thought this a mistaken protectiveness, ‘but the fact of the matter is – no, she’s got to know, Kevin – Geraint’s been promising people things he can’t deliver. Disabled children and their families have been told they’re getting visits from David Beckham and Mo Farah and I don’t know who else. It’s all going to come out, Della, now the Charity Commission’s involved, and I’m not having Kevin’s name dragged through the mud. He’s a conscientious man and he’s done his best. He’s been urging Geraint to sort out the accounts for months now, and then there’s what Elspeth . . . no, Kevin, I’m not, I’m just telling her . . . well, it could get very nasty, Della. It might yet come to the police as well as the press, and I’m sorry, but I’m thinking of Kevin’s health.’
‘What’s Elspeth’s story?’ said Robin, still writing fast.
Sir Kevin said something plaintive in the background.
‘I’m not going into that on the phone,’ said Lady Rodgers repressively. ‘You’ll have to ask Elspeth.’
There was more shuffling and Sir Kevin took the receiver again. He sounded almost tearful.
‘Della, you know how much I admire you. I wish it could have been otherwise.’
‘Yes,’ said Robin, ‘well, I’ll have to call Elspeth, then.’
‘What was that?’
‘I’ll – call – Elspeth.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Sir Kevin. ‘But you know, there might be nothing in it.’
Robin wondered whether she dared ask for Elspeth’s number, but decided not. Della would surely have it.
‘I wish you’d tell me what Elspeth’s story is,’ she said, her pen poised over her notebook.
‘I don’t like to,’ said Sir Kevin wheezily. ‘The damage these kinds of rumours do to a man’s reputation—’
Lady Rodgers came back on the line.
‘That’s all we’ve got to say. This whole business has been very hard on Kevin, very stressful. I’m sorry, but that’s our final word on the matter, Della. Goodbye.’
Robin set her mobile down on the table beside her and checked that nobody was looking her way. She picked up her mobile again and scrolled down the list of The Level Playing Field’s trustees. One of them was called Dr Elspeth Curtis-Lacey, but her personal number was not listed on the charity’s website and appeared, from a search of directory enquiries, to be unlisted.
Robin phoned Strike. The call went straight to voicemail. She waited a couple of minutes and tried again, with the same result. After her third failed attempt to reach him, she texted:
Got some stuff on GW. Call me.
The dank shadow that had lain on the terrace when she had first arrived was moving incrementally backwards. The warm sun slid over Robin’s table as she eked out her coffee, waiting for Strike
to call back. At last her phone vibrated to show that she had a text: heart leaping, she picked it up, but it was only Matthew.
Fancy a drink with Tom and Sarah tonight after work?
Robin contemplated the message with a mixture of lassitude and dread. Tomorrow was the charity cricket match about which Matthew was so excited. After-work drinks with Tom and Sarah would doubtless mean plenty of banter on the subject. She could already picture the four of them at the bar: Sarah, with her perennially flirtatious attitude towards Matthew, Tom fending off Matthew’s jokes about his lousy bowling with increasingly clumsy, angry ripostes, and Robin, as was increasingly the case these days, pretending to be amused and interested, because that was the cost of not being harangued by Matthew for seeming bored, or feeling superior to her company or (as happened during their worst rows) wishing that she were drinking with Strike instead. At least, she consoled herself, it couldn’t be a late or drunken night, because Matthew, who took all sporting fixtures seriously, would want a decent sleep before the match. So she texted back:
OK, where?
and continued to wait for Strike to ring her.
After forty minutes, Robin began to wonder whether Strike was somewhere he couldn’t call, which left open the question of whether she ought to inform Chiswell of what she had just found out. Would Strike consider that a liberty, or would he be more annoyed if she failed to give Chiswell his bargaining chip, given the time pressure?
After debating the matter inwardly for a while longer, she called Izzy, the upper half of whose office window she could see from where she sat.
‘Izzy, it’s me. Venetia. I’m calling because I can’t say this in front of Raphael. I think I’ve got some information on Winn for your father—’
‘Oh, fabulous!’ said Izzy loudly, and Robin heard Raphael in the background saying, ‘Is that Venetia? Where is she?’ and the clicking of computer keys.
‘Checking the diary, Venetia . . . He’ll be at DCMS until eleven, but then he’s in meetings all afternoon. Do you want me to call him? He could probably see you straight away if you hurry.’
So Robin replaced her mobile, notebook and pen in her bag, gulped down the last of her coffee and hurried off to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Chiswell was pacing up and down his office, speaking on the phone, when Robin arrived outside the glass partition. He beckoned her inside, pointed to a low leather sofa at a short distance from his desk, and continued to talk to somebody who appeared to have displeased him.
‘It was a gift,’ he was saying distinctly into the receiver, ‘from my eldest son. Twenty-four-carat gold, inscribed Nec Aspera Terrent. Bloody hell’s bells!’ he roared suddenly, and Robin saw the heads of the bright young people just outside the office turning towards Chiswell. ‘It’s Latin! Pass me to somebody who can speak English! Jasper Chiswell. I’m the Minister for Culture. I’ve given you the date . . . no, you can’t . . . I haven’t got all bloody day—’
Robin gathered, from the side of the conversation that she could hear, that Chiswell had lost a money clip of sentimental value, which he thought he might have left at a hotel where he and Kinvara had spent the night of her birthday. As far as she could hear, the hotel staff had not only failed to find the clip, they were showing insufficient deference to Chiswell for having deigned to stay at one of their hotels.
‘I want somebody to call me back. Bloody useless,’ muttered Chiswell, hanging up and peering at Robin as though he had forgotten who she was. Still breathing heavily, he dropped down on the sofa opposite her. ‘I’ve got ten minutes, so this had better be worthwhile.’
‘I’ve got some information on Mr Winn,’ said Robin, taking out her notebook. Without waiting for his response, she gave him a succinct summary of the information she had gleaned from Sir Kevin.
‘ . . . and,’ she concluded, barely a minute and a half later, ‘there may be further impropriety on Mr Winn’s part, but that information is allegedly held by Dr Elspeth Curtis-Lacey, whose number is unlisted. It shouldn’t take us long to find a way of contacting her, but I thought,’ Robin said apprehensively, because Chiswell’s tiny eyes were screwed up in what might have been displeasure, ‘I should bring you this immediately.’
For a few seconds he simply stared at her, his expression petulant as ever, but then he slapped his thigh in what was clearly pleasure.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘He told me you were his best. Yerse. Said so.’
Pulling a crumpled handkerchief out of his pocket he wiped his face, which had become sweaty during his phone call with the unfortunate hotel.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said again, ‘this is turning out to be a rather good day. One by one, they trip themselves up . . . so Winn’s a thief and a liar and maybe more?’
‘Well,’ said Robin cautiously, ‘he can’t account for the twenty-five thousand pounds, and he’s certainly promised things he can’t deliver . . . ’
‘Dr Elspeth Curtis-Lacey,’ said Chiswell, following his own train of thought. ‘Name’s familiar . . . ’
‘She used to be a Liberal Democrat councillor from Northumberland,’ said Robin, who had just read this on the Level Playing Field’s website.
‘Child abuse,’ said Chiswell suddenly. ‘That’s how I know her. Child abuse. She was on some committee. She’s a bloody crank about it, sees it everywhere. Course, it’s full of cranks, the Lib Dems. It’s where they congregate. Stuffed to the gunnels with oddballs.’
He stood up, leaving a smattering of dandruff behind him on the black leather, and paced up and down, frowning.
‘All this charity stuff’s bound to come out sooner or later,’ he said, echoing Sir Kevin’s wife. ‘But, my Christ, they wouldn’t want it to break right now, not with Della up to her neck in the Paralympics. Winn’s going to panic when he finds out I know. Yerse. I think this might well neutralise him . . . in the short term, anyway. If he’s been fiddling with children, though—’
‘There’s no proof of that,’ said Robin.
‘—that would stymie him for good,’ said Chiswell, pacing again. ‘Well, well, well. This explains why Winn wanted to bring his trustees to our Paralympian reception next Thursday, doesn’t it? He’s clearly trying to keep them sweet, stop anyone else deserting the sinking ship. Prince Harry’s going to be there. These charity people love a royal. Only reason half of them are in it.’
He scratched his thick mop of grey hair, revealing large patches of underarm sweat.
‘Here’s what we’ll do,’ he said. ‘We’ll add his trustees to the guest list and you can come too. Then you can corner this Curtis-Lacey, find out what she’s got. All right? Night of the twelfth?’
‘Yes,’ said Robin, making a note, ‘Fine.’
‘In the meantime, I’ll let Winn know I know he’s had his fingers in the till.’
Robin was almost at the door when Chiswell said abruptly:
‘You don’t want a PA’s job, I suppose?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Take over from Izzy? What does that detective pay you? I could probably match it. I need somebody with brains and a bit of backbone.’
‘I’m . . . happy where I am,’ said Robin.
Chiswell grunted.
‘Hmm. Well, perhaps it’s better this way. I might well have a bit more work for you, once we’ve got rid of Winn and Knight. Off you go, then.’
He turned his back to her, his hand already on the phone.
Out in the sunshine, Robin took out her mobile again. Strike still hadn’t called, but Matthew had texted the name of a pub in Mayfair, conveniently close to Sarah’s work. Nevertheless, Robin was now able to contemplate the evening with slightly more cheerfulness than she had felt prior to her meeting with Chiswell. She even started humming Bob Marley as she walked back towards the Houses of Parliament.
He told me you were his best. Yerse. Said so.
26
I am not so entirely alone, even now. There are two of us to bear the solitude
together here.
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
It was four in the morning, the hopeless hour when shivering insomniacs inhabit a world of hollow shadow, and existence seems frail and strange. Strike, who had fallen into a doze, woke abruptly in the hospital chair. For a second, all he felt was his aching body and the hunger that tore at his stomach. Then he saw his nine-year-old nephew, Jack, who lay motionless in the bed beside him, jelly pads over his eyes, a tube running down his throat, lines coming out of neck and wrist. A bag of urine hung from the side of the bed, while three separate drips fed their contents into a body that appeared tiny and vulnerable amid the softly humming machines, in the hushed, cavernous space of the intensive care ward.
He could hear the padding of a nurse’s soft shoes somewhere beyond the curtain surrounding Jack’s bed. They hadn’t wanted Strike to spend the night in the chair, but he had dug in and his celebrity, minor though it was, combined with his disability, had worked in his favour. His crutches stood propped against the bedside cabinet. The ward was overwarm, as hospitals always were. Strike had spent many weeks in a series of iron beds after his leg had been blown off. The smell transported him back to a time of pain and brutal readjustment, when he had been forced to recalibrate his life against a backdrop of endless obstacles, indignities and privations.
Lethal White Page 25