Lethal White (A Cormoran Strike Novel)

“For Christ’s sake,” muttered Matthew.

“Sorry,” said Martin, registering Matthew’s irritation. “Holding up the queue.”

He slouched off. Robin turned to look at Matthew and saw, as though in thermal image, the guilt glowing through him.

“You knew,” she said, shaking hands absently with a great aunt who had leaned in, expecting to be kissed.

“Knew what?” he snapped.

“That Strike had caught—”

But her attention was now demanded by Matthew’s old university friend and workmate, Tom, and his fiancée, Sarah. She barely heard a word that Tom said, because she was constantly watching the door, where she hoped to see Strike.

“You knew,” Robin repeated, once Tom and Sarah had walked away. There was another hiatus. Geoffrey had met a cousin from Canada. “Didn’t you?”

“I heard the tail end of it on the news this morning,” muttered Matthew. His expression hardened as he looked over Robin’s head towards the doorway. “Well, here he is. You’ve got your wish.”

Robin turned. Strike had just ducked into the room, one eye gray and purple above his heavy stubble, one ear swollen and stitched. He raised a bandaged hand when their eyes met and attempted a rueful smile, which ended in a wince.

“Robin,” said Matthew. “Listen, I need—”

“In a minute,” she said, with a joyfulness that had been conspicuously absent all day.

“Before you talk to him, I need to tell—”

“Matt, please, can’t it wait?”

Nobody in the family wanted to detain Strike, whose injury meant that he could not shake hands. He held the bandaged one in front of him and shuffled sideways down the line. Geoffrey glared at him and even Robin’s mother, who had liked him on their only previous encounter, was unable to muster a smile as he greeted her by name. Every guest in the dining room seemed to be watching.

“You didn’t have to be so dramatic,” Robin said, smiling up into his swollen face when at last he was standing in front of her. He grinned back, painful though it was: the two-hundred-mile journey he had undertaken so recklessly had been worth it, after all, to see her smile at him like that. “Bursting into church. You could have just called.”

“Yeah, sorry about knocking over the flowers,” said Strike, including the sullen Matthew in his apology. “I did call, but—”

“I haven’t had my phone on this morning,” said Robin, aware that she was holding up the queue, but past caring. “Go round us,” she said gaily to Matthew’s boss, a tall redheaded woman.

“No, I called—two days ago, was it?” said Strike.

“What?” said Robin, while Matthew had a stilted conversation with Jemima.

“A couple of times,” said Strike. “I left a message.”

“I didn’t get any calls,” said Robin, “or a message.”

The chattering, chinking, tinkling sounds of a hundred guests and the gentle melody of the string quartet seemed suddenly muffled, as though a thick bubble of shock had pressed in upon her.

“When did—what did you—two days ago?”

Since arriving at her parents’ house she had been occupied nonstop with tedious wedding chores, yet she had still managed to check her phone frequently and surreptitiously, hoping that Strike had called or texted. Alone in bed at one that morning she had checked her entire call history in the vain hope that she would find a missed communication, but had found the history deleted. Having barely slept in the last couple of weeks, she had concluded that she had made an exhausted blunder, pressed the wrong button, erased it accidentally…

“I don’t want to stay,” Strike mumbled. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry, and ask you to come—”

“You’ve got to stay,” she said, reaching out and seizing his arm as though he might escape.

Her heart was thudding so fast that she felt breathless. She knew that she had lost color as the buzzing room seemed to wobble around her.

“Please stay,” she said, still holding tight to his arm, ignoring Matthew as he bristled beside her. “I need—I want to talk to you. Mum?” she called.

Linda stepped out of the receiving line. She seemed to have been waiting for the summons, and she didn’t look happy.

“Please could you add Cormoran to a table?” said Robin. “Maybe put him with Stephen and Jenny?”

Unsmiling, Linda led Strike away. There were a few last guests waiting to offer their congratulations. Robin could no longer muster smiles and small talk.

“Why didn’t I get Cormoran’s calls?” she asked Matthew, as an elderly man shuffled away towards the tables, neither welcomed nor greeted.

“I’ve been trying to tell you—”

“Why didn’t I get the calls, Matthew?”

“Robin, can we talk about this later?”

The truth burst upon her so suddenly that she gasped.

“You deleted my call history,” she said, her mind leaping rapidly from deduction to deduction. “You asked for my passcode number when I came back from the bathroom at the service station.” The last two guests took one look at the bride and groom’s expressions and hurried past without demanding their greeting. “You took my phone away. You said it was about the honeymoon. Did you listen to his message?”

“Yes,” said Matthew. “I deleted it.”