“‘I acted within the law and in accordance with my conscience,’” Strike quoted Chiswell’s gnomic pronouncement back in Pratt’s. “So he did. Never hid the fact that he was pro-hanging, did he? I suppose he provided the wood from his grounds.”
“And the space for Jack o’Kent to build them—which is why Jack o’Kent warned Raff not to go into the barn, when he was a child.”
“And they probably split the profits.”
“Wait,” said Robin, remembering what Flick had shrieked after the minister’s car, the night of the Paralympic reception. “‘He put the horse on them’… Cormoran, d’you think—?”
“Yeah, I do,” said Strike, his thoughts keeping pace with hers. “The last thing Billy said to me at the hospital was ‘I hated putting the horse on them.’ Even in the middle of a psychotic episode, Billy could carve a perfect White Horse of Uffington into wood… Jack o’Kent had his boys carving it onto trinkets for tourists and onto gallows for export… nice little father-son business he had going, eh?”
Strike clinked his beer glass against her little champagne bottle and downed the last dregs of his Doom Bar.
“To our first proper breakthrough. If Jack o’Kent was putting a little bit of local branding on the gallows, they were traceable back to him, weren’t they? And not only to him: to the Vale of the White Horse, and to Chiswell. It all fits, Robin. Remember Jimmy’s placard, with the pile of dead black children on it? Chiswell and Jack o’Kent were flogging them abroad—Middle East or Africa, probably. But Chiswell can’t have known they had the horse carved into them—Christ, no, he definitely didn’t,” said Strike, remembering Chiswell’s words in Pratt’s, “because when he told me there were photographs, he said ‘there are no distinguishing marks, so far as I’m aware.’”
“You know how Jimmy said he was owed?” said Robin, following her own train of thought. “And how Raff said Kinvara thought he had a legitimate claim for money, at first? What d’you think are the chances that Jack o’Kent left some gallows ready for sale when he died—”
“—and Chiswell sold them without bothering to track down and pay off Jack’s sons? Very smart,” said Strike, nodding. “So for Jimmy, this all started as a demand for his rightful share of his father’s estate. Then, when Chiswell denied he owed them anything, it turned into blackmail.”
“Not a very strong case for blackmail, though, when you think about it, is it?” said Robin. “D’you really think Chiswell would have lost a lot of voters over this? It was legal at the time he sold them, and he was publicly pro-death penalty, so nobody could say he was a hypocrite. Half the country thinks we should bring back hanging. I’m not sure the kind of people who vote for Chiswell would have thought he did much wrong.”
“Another good point,” conceded Strike, “and Chiswell could probably have brazened it out. He’d survived worse: impregnating his mistress, divorce, an illegitimate kid, Raphael’s drugged-up car crash and imprisonment…
“But there were ‘unintended consequences,’ remember?” Strike asked thoughtfully. “What did those pictures at the Foreign Office show, that Winn was so keen to get hold of? And who’s that ‘Samuel’ Winn just mentioned on the phone?”
Strike pulled out his notebook and jotted down a few sentences in his dense, hard-to-read handwriting.
“At least,” said Robin, “we’ve got confirmation of Raff’s story. The necklace.”
Strike grunted, still writing. When he’d finished, he said, “Yeah, that was useful, as far as it went.”
“What d’you mean, ‘as far as it went’?”
“Him heading down to Oxfordshire to stop Kinvara running off with a valuable necklace is a better story than the trying-to-stop-her-topping-herself one,” said Strike, “but I still don’t think we’re being told everything.”
“Why not?”
“Same objection as before. Why would Chiswell send Raphael down there as his emissary, when his wife hated him? Can’t see why Raphael would be any more persuasive than Izzy.”
“Have you taken against Raphael, or something?”
Strike raised his eyebrows.
“I haven’t got personal feelings for him one way or the other. You?”
“Of course not,” said Robin, a little too quickly. “So, what was that theory you mentioned, before Tegan arrived?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Strike. “Well, it might be nothing, but a couple of things Raphael said to you jumped out at me. Got me thinking.”
“What things?”
Strike told her.
“I can’t see what’s significant about any of that.”
“Maybe not in isolation, but try putting it together with what Della told me.”
“Which bit?”
But even when Strike reminded her what Della had said, Robin remained confused.
“I don’t see the connection.”
Strike got up, grinning.
“Mull it over for a while. I’m going to ring Izzy and tell her Tegan’s let the cat out of the bag about the gallows.”
He walked away and disappeared into the crowds in search of a quiet spot from which to make his call, leaving Robin to swill the now-tepid champagne around in the miniature bottle and ponder what Strike had just said. Nothing coherent emerged from her exhausted attempts to connect the disparate pieces of information, and after a few minutes she gave up and simply sat there, enjoying the warm breeze that lifted the hair from her shoulders.
In spite of her tiredness, the shattered state of her marriage and her very real apprehension about going digging in the dell later that night, it was pleasant to sit here, breathing in the smells of the racecourse, of soft air redolent of turf, leather and horse, catching trails of perfume from the women now moving away from the bar towards the stands, and the smoky whiff of venison burgers cooking in a van nearby. For the first time in a week, Robin realized that she was actually hungry.
She picked up the cork of the champagne bottle and turned it over in her fingers, remembering another cork, the one she had saved from her twenty-first birthday party, for which Matthew had come home from university with a bunch of new friends, Sarah among them. Looking back, she knew that her parents had wanted to throw a big party for her twenty-first in compensation for her not having the graduation party they had all been expecting.
Strike was taking a long time. Perhaps Izzy was spilling all the details, now that they knew what the substance of the blackmail had been about, or perhaps, Robin thought, she simply wanted to keep him on the phone.
Izzy isn’t his type, though.
The thought startled her a little. She felt slightly guilty for giving it headspace and even more uncomfortable when it was jostled out of the way by another.
All his girlfriends have been beautiful. Izzy isn’t.
Strike attracted remarkably good-looking women, when you considered his generally bearlike appearance and what he himself had referred to in her hearing as “pube-like” hair.
I bet I look gross, was Robin’s next, inconsequential thought. Puffy-faced and pale when she had got in the Land Rover that morning, she had cried a lot since. She was half-deliberating whether she had time to find a bathroom and at least brush her hair, when she spotted Strike walking back towards her holding a venison burger in each hand and a betting slip in his mouth.
“Izzy isn’t picking up,” he informed her through clenched teeth. “Left a message. Grab one of these and come on. I’ve just put a tenner each way on Brown Panther.”
“I didn’t realize you’re a betting man,” said Robin.
“I’m not,” said Strike, removing the betting slip from his teeth and pocketing it, “but I’m feeling lucky today. Come on, we’ll watch the race.”
As Strike turned away, Robin slid the champagne cork discreetly into her pocket.
“Brown Panther,” Strike said through a mouthful of burger, as they approached the track. “Except he isn’t, is he? Black mane, so he’s—”
“—a bay, yes,” said Robin. “Are you upset he isn’t a panther, either?”
“Just trying to follow the logic. That stallion I found online—Blanc de Blancs—was chestnut, not white.”
“Not gray, you mean.”
“Fuck’s sake,” muttered Strike, half-amused, half-exasperated.
65
I wonder how many there are who would do as much—who dare do it?
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm