“Why not?”
“The client doesn’t get to tell me what I can and can’t investigate. Unless you want the whole truth, I’m not your man.”
“You are, I know you’re the best, that’s why Papa hired you, and that’s why I want you.”
“Then you’ll need to answer questions when I ask them, instead of telling me what does and doesn’t matter.”
She glared at him over the rim of her teacup, then, to his surprise, gave a brittle laugh.
“I don’t know why I’m surprised. I knew you were like this. Remember when you argued with Jamie Maugham in Nam Long Le Shaker? Oh, you must remember. You wouldn’t back down—the whole table was at you at one point—what was the argument about, d’you—?”
“The death penalty,” said Strike, caught off guard. “Yeah. I remember.”
For the space of a blink, he seemed to see, not Izzy’s clean, bright sitting room, with its relics of a wealthy English past, but the louche, dimly lit interior of a Vietnamese restaurant in Chelsea where, twelve years previously, he and one of Charlotte’s friends had got into an argument over dinner. Jamie Maugham’s face was smoothly porcine in his memory. He had wanted to show up the oik whom Charlotte had insisted on bringing to dinner instead of Jamie’s old friend, Jago Ross.
“… and Jamie got rilly, rilly angry with you,” Izzy said. “He’s quite a successful QC now, you know.”
“Must’ve learned to keep his temper in an argument, then,” said Strike, and Izzy gave another little giggle. “Izzy,” he said, returning to the main issue, “if you mean what you say—”
“—I do—”
“—then you’ll answer my questions,” said Strike, drawing a notebook out of his pocket.
Irresolute, she watched him take out a pen.
“I’m discreet,” said Strike. “In the past couple of years, I’ve been told the secrets of a hundred families and not shared one of them. Nothing irrelevant to your father’s death will ever be mentioned again outside my agency. But if you don’t trust me—”
“I do,” said Izzy desperately, and to his slight surprise, she leaned forward and touched him on the knee. “I do, Cormoran, honestly, but it’s… it’s hard… talking about Papa…”
“I understand that,” he said, readying his pen. “So let’s start with why the police questioned Raphael so much more than the rest of you.”
He could tell that she didn’t want to answer, but after a moment’s hesitation she said:
“Well, I think it was partly because Papa phoned Raff early on the morning he died. It was the last call he made.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing that mattered. It can’t have had anything to do with Papa dying. But,” she rushed on, as though wanting to extinguish any impression her last words might have made, “I think the main reason Raff isn’t keen on me hiring you is that he rather fell for your Venetia while she was in the office and now, well, obviously, he feels a bit of an idiot that he poured his heart out to her.”
“Fell for her, did he?” said Strike.
“Yes, so it’s hardly surprising he feels everyone’s made a fool of him.”
“The fact remains—”
“I know what you’re going to say, but—”
“—if you want me to investigate, it’ll be me who decides what matters, Izzy. Not you. So I want to know,” he ticked off all the times she had said that information “didn’t matter” on his fingers as he named them, “what your father called Raphael about the morning he died, what your father and Kinvara were rowing about when she hit him around the head with a hammer—and what your father was being blackmailed about.”
The sapphire cross winked darkly as Izzy’s chest rose and fell. When at last she spoke, it was jerkily.
“It’s not up to me to tell you about what Papa and Raff said to each other, the last t-time they spoke. That’s for Raff to say.”
“Because it’s private?”
“Yes,” she said, very pink in the face. He wondered whether she was telling the truth.
“You said your father had asked Raphael over to the house in Ebury Street the day he died. Was he rearranging the time? Canceling?”
“Canceling. Look, you’ll have to ask Raff,” she reiterated.
“All right,” said Strike, making a note. “What caused your stepmother to hit your father around the head with a hammer?”
Izzy’s eyes filled with tears. Then, with a sob, she pulled a handkerchief out of her sleeve and pressed it to her face:
“I d-didn’t want to tell you that b-because I d-didn’t want you to think badly of Papa now he’s… now he’s… you see, he d-did something that…”
Her broad shoulders shook as she emitted unromantic snorts. Strike, who found this frank and noisy anguish more touching than he would have found delicate eye dabbing, sat in impotent sympathy while she tried to gasp out her apologies.
“I’m—I’m s—”
“Don’t be silly,” he said gruffly. “Of course you’re upset.”
But she seemed deeply ashamed of this loss of control, and her hiccuping return to calm was punctuated with further flustered “sorrys.” At last, she wiped her face dry as roughly as though cleaning a window, said one final “I’m so sorry,” straightened her spine and said with a forcefulness Strike rather admired, given the circumstances:
“If you take the case… once we’ve signed on the dotted line… I’ll tell you what Papa did that made Kinvara hit him.”
“I assume,” said Strike, “the same goes for the reason that Winn and Knight were blackmailing your father?”
“Look,” she said, tears welling again, “don’t you see, it’s Papa’s memory, his legacy, now. I don’t want those things to be the thing people remember about him—please help us, Corm. Please. I know it wasn’t suicide, I know it wasn’t…”
He let his silence do the work for him. At last, her expression piteous, she said with a catch in her voice:
“All right. I’ll tell you all about the blackmail, but only if Fizz and Torks agree.”
“Who’s Torks?” inquired Strike.
“Torquil. Fizzy’s husband. We swore we wouldn’t ever tell anyone, but I’ll t-talk to them and if they agree, I’ll t-tell you everything.”
“Doesn’t Raphael get consulted?”
“He never knew anything about the blackmail business. He was in jail when Jimmy first came to see Papa and anyway, he didn’t grow up with us, so he couldn’t—Raff never knew.”
“And what about Kinvara?” asked Strike. “Did she know?”
“Oh, yes,” said Izzy, and a look of malice hardened her usually friendly features, “but she definitely won’t want us to tell you. Oh, not to protect Papa,” she said, correctly reading Strike’s expression, “to protect herself. Kinvara benefited, you see. She didn’t mind what Papa was up to, so long as she reaped the rewards.”
39
… naturally I talk as little about it as possible; it is better to be silent about such things.
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
Robin was having a bad Saturday, following an even worse night.
She had woken with a yelp at 4 a.m., with the sensation of being still tangled in the nightmare in which she had been carrying a whole bag full of listening devices through darkened streets, knowing that men in masks were following her. The old knife wound on her arm had been gaping open and it was the trail of her spurting blood that her pursuers were following, and she knew she would never make it to the place where Strike was waiting for the bag of bugs…
“What?” Matthew had said groggily, half asleep.
“Nothing,” Robin had replied, before lying sleepless until seven, when she felt entitled to get up.