Lethal White Read online

  No, the shock of what she had discovered in the receiving line had not rendered her surroundings blurred. It had instead affected her perception of both sound and time. At one point, she knew that Matthew had urged her to eat, but it did not register with her until after her full plate had been removed by a solicitous waiter, because everything said to her had to permeate the thick walls that had closed in on her in the aftermath of Matthew’s admission of perfidy. Within the invisible cell that separated her entirely from everyone else in the room, adrenaline thundered through her, urging her again and again to stand up and walk out.

  If Strike had not arrived today, she might never have known that he wanted her back, and that she might be spared the shame, the anger, the humiliation, the hurt with which she had been racked since that awful night when he had sacked her. Matthew had sought to deny her the thing that might save her, the thing for which she had cried in the small hours of the night when everybody else was asleep: the restoration of her self-respect, of the job that had meant everything to her, of the friendship she had not known was one of the prizes of her life until it was torn away from her. Matthew had lied and kept lying. He had smiled and laughed as she dragged herself through the days before the wedding trying to pretend that she was happy that she had lost a life she had loved. Had she fooled him? Did he believe that she was truly glad her life with Strike was over? If he did, she had married a man who did not know her at all, and if he didn’t . . .

  The puddings were cleared away and Robin had to fake a smile for the concerned waiter who this time asked whether he could bring her something else, as this was the third course that she had left uneaten.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a loaded gun?’ Robin asked him.

  Fooled by her serious manner, he smiled, then looked confused.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Never mind.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Robin,’ Matthew said, and she knew, with a throb of fury and pleasure, that he was panicking, scared of what she would do, scared of what was going to happen next.

  Coffee was arriving in sleek silver pots. Robin watched the waiters pouring, saw the little trays of petits fours placed upon the tables. She saw Sarah Shadlock in a tight turquoise sleeveless dress, hurrying across the room to the bathroom ahead of the speeches, watched heavily pregnant Katie following her in her flat shoes, swollen and tired, her enormous belly to the fore, and, again, Robin’s eyes returned to Strike’s back. He was scoffing petits fours and talking to Stephen. She was glad she had put him beside Stephen. She had always thought they would get on.

  Then came the call for quiet, followed by rustling, fidgeting and a mass scraping of chairs as all those who had their backs to the top table dragged themselves around to watch the speakers. Robin’s eyes met Strike’s. She could not read his expression. He didn’t look away from her until her father stood up, straightened his glasses and began to speak.

  Strike was longing to lie down or, failing that, to get back into the car with Shanker, where he could at least recline the seat. He had had barely two hours’ slumber in the past forty-eight, and a mixture of heavy-duty painkillers and what was now four pints was rendering him so sleepy that he kept dozing off against the hand supporting his head, jerking back awake as his temple slid off his knuckles.

  He had never asked Robin what either of her parents did for a living. If Michael Ellacott alluded to his profession at any point during his speech, Strike missed it. He was a mild-looking man, almost professorial, with his horn-rimmed glasses. The children had all got his height, but only Martin had inherited his dark hair and hazel eyes.

  The speech had been written, or perhaps rewritten, when Robin was jobless. Michael dwelled with patent love and appreciation on Robin’s personal qualities, on her intelligence, her resilience, her generosity and her kindness. He had to stop and clear his throat when he started to speak of his pride in his only daughter, but there was a blank where her achievements ought to have been, an empty space for what she had actually done, or lived through. Of course, some of the things that Robin had survived were unfit to be spoken in this giant humidor of a room, or heard by these feathered and buttonholed guests, but the fact of her survival was, for Strike, the highest proof of those qualities and to him it seemed, sleep-befuddled though he was, that an acknowledgement ought to have been made.

  Nobody else seemed to think so. He even detected a faint relief in the crowd as Michael drew to a conclusion without alluding to knives or scars, gorilla masks or balaclavas.

  The time had come for the bridegroom to speak. Matthew got to his feet amid enthusiastic applause, but Robin’s hands remained in her lap as she stared at the window opposite, where the sun now hung low in the cloudless sky, casting long dark shadows over the lawn.

  Somewhere in the room, a bee was buzzing. Far less concerned about offending Matthew than he had been about Michael, Strike adjusted his position in his chair, folding his arms and closing his eyes. For a minute or so, he listened as Matthew told how he and Robin had known each other since childhood, but only in their sixth form had he noticed how very good-looking the little girl who had once beaten him in the egg-and-spoon race had become . . .

  ‘Cormoran!’

  He jerked awake suddenly and, judging by the wet patch on his chest, knew that he had been drooling. Blearily he looked around at Stephen, who had elbowed him.

  ‘You were snoring,’ Stephen muttered.

  Before he could reply the room broke into applause again. Matthew was sitting down, unsmiling.

  Surely it had to be nearly over . . . but no, Matthew’s best man was getting to his feet. Now that he was awake again, Strike had become aware just how full his bladder was. He hoped to Christ this bloke would speak fast.

  ‘Matt and I first met on the rugby pitch,’ he said and a table towards the rear of the room broke into drunken cheers.

  ‘Upstairs,’ said Robin. ‘Now.’

  They were the first words she had spoken to her husband since they had sat down at the top table. The applause for the best man’s speech had barely died away. Strike was standing, but she could tell that he was only heading for the bathroom because she saw him stop a waiter and ask directions. In any case, she knew, now, that he wanted her back, and was convinced that he would stay long enough to hear her agreement. The look they had exchanged during the starters had told her as much.

  ‘They’ll be bringing in the band in half an hour,’ said Matthew. ‘We’re s’posed to—’

  But Robin walked off towards the door, taking with her the invisible isolation cell that had kept her cold and tearless through her father’s speech, through Matthew’s nervous utterings, through the tedium of the familiar old anecdotes from the rugby club regurgitated by the best man. She had the vague impression that her mother tried to waylay her as she ploughed through the guests, but paid no attention. She had sat obediently through the meal and the speeches. The universe owed her an interlude of privacy and freedom.

  Up the staircase she marched, her skirt held out of the way of her cheap shoes, and off along a plush carpeted corridor, unsure where she was going, with Matthew’s footsteps hurrying behind her.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said to a waistcoated teenager who was wheeling a linen basket out of a cupboard, ‘where’s the bridal suite?’

  He looked from her to Matthew and smirked, actually smirked.

  ‘Don’t be a jerk,’ said Robin coldly.

  ‘Robin!’ said Matthew, as the teenager blushed.

  ‘That way,’ said the youth hoarsely, pointing.

  Robin marched on. Matthew, she knew, had the key. He had stayed at the hotel with his best man the previous evening, though not in the bridal suite.

  When Matthew opened the door, she strode inside, registering the rose petals on the bed, the champagne standing in its cooler, the large envelope inscribed to Mr and Mrs Cunliffe. With relief, she saw the holdall that she had intended to take as hand luggage to their mystery honeymoon. Unzip
ping it, she thrust her uninjured arm inside and found the brace that she had removed for the photographs. When she had pulled it back over her aching forearm, with its barely healed wound, she wrenched the new wedding ring off her finger and slammed it down on the bedside table beside the champagne bucket.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Matthew, sounding both scared and aggressive. ‘What – you want to call it off? You don’t want to be married?’

  Robin stared at him. She had expected to feel release once they were alone and she could speak freely, but the enormity of what he had done mocked her attempts to express it. She read his fear of her silence in his darting eyes, his squared shoulders. Whether he was aware of it or not, he had placed himself precisely between her and the door.

  ‘All right,’ he said loudly, ‘I know I should’ve—’

  ‘You knew what that job meant to me. You knew.’

  ‘I didn’t want you to go back, all right?’ Matthew shouted. ‘You got attacked and stabbed, Robin!’

  ‘That was my own fault!’

  ‘He fucking sacked you!’

  ‘Because I did something he’d told me not to do—’

  ‘I knew you’d fucking defend him!’ Matthew bellowed, all control gone. ‘I knew if you spoke to him you’d go scurrying back like some fucking lapdog!’

  ‘You don’t get to make those decisions for me!’ she yelled. ‘Nobody’s got the right to intercept my fucking calls and delete my messages, Matthew!’

  Restraint and pretence were gone. They heard each other only by accident, in brief pauses for breath, each of them howling their resentment and pain across the room like flaming spears that burned into dust before touching their target. Robin gesticulated wildly, then screeched with pain as her arm protested sharply, and Matthew pointed with self-righteous rage at the scar she would carry for ever because of her reckless stupidity in working with Strike. Nothing was achieved, nothing was excused, nothing was apologised for: the arguments that had defaced their last twelve months had all led to this conflagration, the border skirmishes that presage war. Beyond the window, afternoon dissolved rapidly into evening. Robin’s head throbbed, her stomach churned, her sense of being stifled threatened to overcome her.

  ‘You hated me working those hours – you didn’t give a damn that I was happy in my job for the first time in my life, so you lied! You knew what it meant to me, and you lied! How could you delete my call history, how could you delete my voicemail—?’

  She sat down suddenly in a deep, fringed chair, her head in her hands, dizzy with the force of her anger and shock on an empty stomach.

  Somewhere, distantly in the carpeted hush of the hotel corridors, a door closed, a woman giggled.

  ‘Robin,’ said Matthew hoarsely.

  She heard him approaching her, but she put out a hand, holding him away.

  ‘Don’t touch me.’

  ‘Robin, I shouldn’t have done it, I know that. I didn’t want you hurt again.’

  She barely heard him. Her anger was not only for Matthew, but also for Strike. He should have called back. He should have tried and kept trying. If he had, I might not be here now.

  The thought scared her.

  If I’d known Strike wanted me back, would I have married Matthew?

  She heard the rustle of Matthew’s jacket and guessed that he was checking his watch. Perhaps the guests waiting downstairs would think that they had disappeared to consummate the marriage. She could imagine Geoffrey making ribald jokes in their absence. The band must have been in place for an hour. Again she remembered how much this was all costing her parents. Again, she remembered that they had lost deposits on the wedding that had been postponed.

  ‘All right,’ she said, in a colourless voice. ‘Let’s go back down and dance.’

  She stood up, automatically smoothing her skirt. Matthew looked suspicious.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘We’ve got to get through today,’ she said. ‘People have come a long way. Mum and Dad have paid a lot of money.’

  Hoisting her skirt up again, she set off for the suite door.

  ‘Robin!’

  She turned back, expecting him to say ‘I love you’, expecting him to smile, to beg, to urge a truer reconciliation.

  ‘You’d better wear this,’ he said, holding out the wedding ring she had removed, his expression as cold as hers.

  Strike had not been able to think of a better course of action, given that he intended to stay until he had spoken to Robin again, than continuing to drink. He had removed himself from Stephen and Jenny’s willing protection, feeling that they ought to be free to enjoy the company of friends and family, and fallen back on the methods by which he usually repelled strangers’ curiosity: his own intimidating size and habitually surly expression. For a while he lurked at the end of the bar, nursing a pint on his own, and then repaired to the terrace, where he had stood apart from the other smokers and contemplated the dappled evening, breathing in the sweet meadow smell beneath a coral sky. Even Martin and his friends, now full of drink themselves and smoking in a circle like teenagers, failed to muster sufficient nerve to badger him.

  After a while, the guests were skilfully rounded up and ushered en masse back into the wood-panelled room, which had been transformed in their absence into a dance floor. Half the tables had been removed, the others shifted to the sides. A band stood ready behind amplifiers, but the bride and groom remained absent. A man whom Strike understood to be Matthew’s father, sweaty, rotund and red-faced, had already made several jokes about what they might be getting up to when Strike found himself addressed by a woman in a tight turquoise dress whose feathery hair adornment tickled his nose as she closed in for a handshake.

  ‘It’s Cormoran Strike, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘What an honour! Sarah Shadlock.’

  Strike knew all about Sarah Shadlock. She had slept with Matthew at university, while he was in a long-distance relationship with Robin. Once again, Strike indicated his bandage to show why he could not shake her hand.

  ‘Oh, you poor thing!’

  A drunk, balding man who was probably younger than he looked loomed up behind Sarah.

  ‘Tom Turvey,’ he said, fixing Strike with unfocused eyes. ‘Bloody good job. Well done, mate. Bloody good job.’

  ‘We’ve wanted to meet you for ages,’ said Sarah. ‘We’re old friends of Matt and Robin’s.’

  ‘Shacklewell Rip – Ripper,’ said Tom, on a slight hiccough. ‘Bloody good job.’

  ‘Look at you, you poor thing,’ said Sarah again, touching Strike on the bicep as she smiled up into his bruised face. ‘He didn’t do that to you, did he?’

  ‘Ev’ryone wants to know,’ said Tom, grinning blearily. ‘Can hardly contain their bloody selves. You should’ve made a speech instead of Henry.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ said Sarah. ‘Last thing you’d want to do, I expect. You must have come here straight from catching – well, I don’t know – did you?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Strike, unsmiling, ‘police have asked me not to talk about it.’

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said the harried MC, who had been caught unawares by Matthew and Robin’s unobtrusive entrance into the room, ‘please welcome Mr and Mrs Cunliffe!’

  As the newlyweds moved unsmilingly into the middle of the dance floor, everybody but Strike began to applaud. The lead singer of the band took the microphone from the MC.

  ‘This is a song from their past that means a lot to Matthew and Robin,’ the singer announced, as Matthew slid his hand around Robin’s waist and grasped her other hand.

  The wedding photographer moved out of the shadows and began clicking away again, frowning a little at the reappearance of the ugly rubber brace on the bride’s arm.

  The first acoustic bars of ‘Wherever You Will Go’ by The Calling struck up. Robin and Matthew began to revolve on the spot, their faces averted from each other.

  So lately, been wondering,

  Who will be there to take my place
<
br />   When I’m gone, you’ll need love

  To light the shadows on your face . . .

  Strange choice for an ‘our song’, Strike thought . . . but as he watched he saw Matthew move closer to Robin, saw his hand tighten on her narrow waist as he bent his handsome face to whisper something in her ear.

  A jolt somewhere around the solar plexus pierced the fug of exhaustion, relief and alcohol that had cushioned Strike all day long from the reality of what this wedding meant. Now, as Strike watched the newlyweds turn on the dance floor, Robin in her long white dress, with a circlet of roses in her hair, Matthew in his dark suit, his face close to his bride’s cheek, Strike was forced to recognise how long, and how deeply, he had hoped that Robin would not marry. He had wanted her free, free to be what they had been together. Free, so that if circumstances changed . . . so the possibility was there . . . free, so that one day, they might find out what else they could be to each other.