“Because she’d had a shock, I suppose, finding Strike and me in the grounds when you were hiding upstairs. Strike said he didn’t believe the necklace story, so she panicked and made up a new version. The trouble is, this one’s checkable.”
“The stupid cunt,” said Raphael quietly, but with a venom that made the back of Robin’s neck prickle. “That stupid, stupid cunt… why didn’t she just stick to our story? And… no, wait…” he said, with the air of a man suddenly making a welcome connection, and to Robin’s mingled consternation and relief, he withdrew the gun from where it had been almost touching her, and laughed softly. “That’s why she hid the necklace on Sunday afternoon. She gave me some fucking guff about not wanting Izzy or Fizzy to sneak in and take it… well, she’s stupid, but she’s not hopeless. Unless someone checks the stones, we’re still in the clear… And they’ll have to take apart the stable block to find it. OK,” he said, as though talking to himself, “OK, I think all of that’s recoverable.
“Is that it, Venetia? Is that all you’ve got?”
“No,” said Robin. “There’s Flick Purdue.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“Yes, you do. You picked her up months ago, and fed her the truth about the gallows, knowing she’d pass the information to Jimmy.”
“What a busy boy I’ve been,” said Raphael lightly. “So what? Flick won’t admit to shagging a Tory minister’s son, especially if Jimmy might find out. She’s as besotted with him as Kinvara is with me.”
“That’s true, she didn’t want to admit it, but somebody must have spotted you creeping out of her flat next morning. She tried to pretend you were an Indian waiter.”
Robin thought she saw a minute wince of surprise and displeasure. Raphael’s amour propre was wounded at the thought that he could have been so described.
“OK,” he said, after a moment or two, “OK, let’s see… what if it was a waiter Flick shagged, but she’s maliciously claiming it was me because of her class warrior bullshit and the grudge her boyfriend’s got against my family?”
“You stole her flatmate’s credit card out of her bag in the kitchen.”
She could tell by the tightening of his mouth that he had not expected this. Doubtless he had thought that given Flick’s lifestyle, suspicion would fall on anyone passing through her tiny, overcrowded flat, and perhaps especially Jimmy.
“Proof?” he said again.
“Flick can provide the date you were at her flat and if Laura testifies her credit card went missing that night—”
“But with no firm evidence I was ever there—”
“How did Flick find out about the gallows? We know she told Jimmy about them, not the other way around.”
“Well, it can’t have been me, can it? I’m the only member of the family who never knew.”
“You knew everything. Kinvara had the full story from your father, and she passed it all to you.”
“No,” said Raphael, “I think you’ll find Flick heard about the gallows from the Butcher brothers. I’m reliably informed that one of them lives in London now. Yeah, I think I’ve heard a rumor one of them shagged their mate Jimmy’s girlfriend. And believe me, the Butcher brothers aren’t going to come over well in court, pair of shifty oiks driving gallows around under cover of darkness. I’m going to look a lot more plausible and presentable than Flick and the Butchers if this comes to court, I really am.”
“The police have got phone records,” Robin persisted. “They know about an anonymous call to Geraint Winn, which was made around the time Flick found out about the gallows. We think you tipped off Winn anonymously about Samuel Murape. You knew Winn had a grudge against the Chiswells. Kinvara told you everything.”
“I don’t know anything about that phone call, Your Honor,” said Raphael, “and I’m very sorry that my late brother was a prize cunt to Rhiannon Winn, but that’s nothing to do with me.”
“We think you made that threatening call to Izzy’s office, the first day you were there, talking about people pissing themselves as they die,” said Robin, “and we think it was your idea for Kinvara to pretend she kept hearing intruders in the grounds. Everything was designed to create as many witnesses as possible to the fact that your father had reason to be anxious and paranoid, that he might crack under extreme pressure—”
“He was under extreme pressure. He was being blackmailed by Jimmy Knight. Geraint Winn was trying to force him out of his job. Those aren’t lies, they’re facts and they’re going to be pretty sensational in a courtroom, especially once the Samuel Murape story gets out.”
“Except that you made stupid, avoidable mistakes.”
He sat up straighter and leaned forwards, his elbow sliding a few inches, so that the nozzle of the gun grew larger. His eyes, which had been smudges in the shadow, became clearly defined again, onyx black and white. Robin wondered how she had ever thought him handsome.
“What mistakes?”
As he said it, Robin saw, out of the corner of her eye, a flashing blue light glide over the bridge just visible through the window to her right, which was blocked from Raphael’s view by the side of the boat. The light vanished and the bridge was reabsorbed by the deepening darkness.
“For one thing,” said Robin carefully, “it was a mistake to keep meeting Kinvara in the lead-up to the murder. She kept pretending she’d forgotten where she was meeting your father, didn’t she? Just to get a couple of minutes with you, just to see you and check up on you—”
“That’s not proof.”
“Kinvara was followed to Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons on her birthday.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Who by?”
“Jimmy Knight. Flick’s confirmed it. Jimmy thought your father was with Kinvara and wanted to confront him publicly about not giving him his money. Obviously, your father wasn’t there, so Jimmy went home and wrote an angry blog about how High Tories spend their money, mentioning Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons by name.”
“Well, unless he saw me sneaking into Kinvara’s hotel suite,” said Raphael, “which he didn’t, because I took fucking good care to make sure nobody did, that’s all supposition, too.”
“All right,” said Robin, “what about the second time you were overheard having sex in the gallery bathroom? That wasn’t Francesca. You were with Kinvara.”
“Prove it.”
“Kinvara was in town that day, buying lachesis pills and pretending she was angry that your father was still seeing you, which was all part of the cover story that she hated you. She rang your father to check that he was having lunch elsewhere. Strike overheard that call. What you and Kinvara didn’t realize was that your father was having lunch only a hundred yards away from where you were having sex.
“When your father forced his way into the bathroom, he found a tube of lachesis pills on the floor. That’s why he nearly had a heart attack. He knew that’s what she’d come to town for. He knew who’d just been having sex with you in the bathroom.”
Raphael’s smile was more of a grimace.
“Yeah, that was a fuck-up. The day he came into our office, talking about Lachesis—‘knows when everyone’s number’s up’—I realized later, he was trying to put the frighteners on me, wasn’t he? I didn’t know what the hell he was on about at the time. But when you and your crippled boss mentioned the pills at Chiswell House, Kinvara twigged: they fell out of her pocket while we were screwing. We hadn’t known what first tipped him off… it was only after I heard he was ringing Le Manoir about Freddie’s money clip that I knew he must have realized something was going on. Then he invited me over to Ebury Street and I knew he was about to confront me about it, and we needed to get a move on, killing him.”
The entirely matter-of-fact way he discussed patricide chilled Robin. He might have been talking about wallpapering a room.