Lethal White Read online

  “All right,” said a man loudly. The audience, recognizing a voice of authority, sat a little straighter. “Thanks very much, Flick.”

  Jimmy Knight got to his feet, leading the unenthusiastic applause for Flick, who walked back around the table and sat down in the empty chair between the two men.

  In his well-worn jeans and unironed T-shirt, Jimmy Knight reminded Strike of the men his dead mother had taken as lovers. He might have been the bass player in a grime band or a good-looking roadie, with his muscled arms and tattoos. Strike noticed that the back of the nondescript blue-eyed man had tensed. He had been waiting for Jimmy.

  “Evening, everyone, and thanks very much for coming.”

  His personality filled the room like the first bar of a hit song. Strike knew him from those few words as the kind of man who, in the army, was either outstandingly useful or an insubordinate bastard. Jimmy’s accent, like Flick’s, revealed an uncertain provenance. Strike thought that Cockney might have been grafted, in his case more successfully, onto a faint, rural burr.

  “So, the Olympic threshing machine’s moved into East London!”

  His burning eyes swept the newly attentive crowd.

  “Flattening houses, knocking cyclists to their deaths, churning up land that belongs to all of us. Or it did.

  “You’ve heard from Lilian what they’re doing to animal and insect habitats. I’m here to talk about the encroachment on human communities. They’re concreting over our common land, and for what? Are they putting up the social housing or the hospitals we need? Of course not! No, we’re getting stadiums costing billions, showcases for the capitalist system, ladies and gentlemen. We’re being asked to celebrate elitism while, beyond the barriers, ordinary people’s freedoms are encroached, eroded, removed.

  “They tell us we should be celebrating the Olympics, all the glossy press releases the right-wing media gobbles up and regurgitates. Fetishize the flag, whip up the middle classes into a frenzy of jingoism! Come worship our glorious medalists—a shiny gold for everyone who passes over a big enough bribe with a pot of someone else’s piss!”

  There was a murmur of agreement. A few people clapped.

  “We’re supposed to get excited about the public schoolboys and girls who got to practice sports while the rest of us were having our playing fields sold off for cash! Sycophancy should be our national Olympic sport! We deify people who’ve had millions invested in them because they can ride a bike, when they’ve sold themselves as fig leaves for all the planet-raping, tax-dodging bastards who are queuing up to get their names on the barriers—barriers shutting working people off their own land!”

  The applause, in which Strike, the old couple beside him and the Asian man did not join, was as much for the performance as the words. Jimmy’s slightly thuggish but handsome face was alive with righteous anger.

  “See this?” he said, sweeping from the table behind him a piece of paper with the jagged “2012” that Strike disliked so much. “Welcome to the Olympics, my friends, a fascist’s wet dream. See the logo? D’you see it? It’s a broken swastika!”

  The crowd laughed and applauded some more, masking the loud rumble of Strike’s stomach. He wondered whether there might be a takeaway nearby. He had even started to calculate whether he might have time to leave, buy food and return, when the gray-haired West Indian woman whom he had seen earlier opened the door to the hall and propped it open. Her expression clearly indicated that CORE had now outstayed its welcome.

  Jimmy, however, was still in full flow.

  “This so-called celebration of the Olympic spirit, of fair play and amateurism is normalizing repression and authoritarianism! Wake up: London’s being militarized! The British state, which has honed the tactics of colonization and invasion for centuries, has seized on the Olympics as the perfect excuse to deploy police, army, helicopters and guns against ordinary citizens! One thousand extra CCTV cameras—extra laws hurried through—and you think they’ll be repealed when this carnival of capitalism moves on?”

  “Join us!” shouted Jimmy, as the community center worker edged along the wall towards the front of the hall, nervous but determined. “CORE is part of a broader global justice movement that meets repression with resistance! We’re making common cause with all leftist, anti-oppressive movements across the capital! We’re going to be staging lawful demonstrations and using every tool of peaceful protest still permitted to us in what is rapidly becoming an occupied city!”

  More applause followed, though the elderly couple beside Strike seemed thoroughly miserable.

  “All right, all right, I know,” added Jimmy to the community center worker, who had now reached the front of the audience and was gesturing timidly. “They want us out,” Jimmy told the crowd, smirking and shaking his head. “Of course they do. Of course.”

  A few people hissed at the community center worker.

  “Anyone who wants to hear more,” said Jimmy, “we’ll be in the pub down the road. Address on your leaflets!”

  Most of the crowd applauded. The plainclothes policeman got to his feet. The elderly couple was already scuttling towards the door.

  6

  I… have the reputation of being a wicked fanatic, I am told.

  Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

  Chairs clattered, bags were hoisted onto shoulders. The bulk of the audience began to head for the doors at the back, but some appeared reluctant to leave. Strike took a few steps towards Jimmy, hoping to talk to him, but was outpaced by the young Asian man, who was striding jerkily towards the activist with an air of nervous determination. Jimmy exchanged a few more words with the man from the Workers’ Alliance, then noticed the newcomer, bade Walter goodbye and moved forward with every appearance of goodwill to speak to what he clearly assumed was a convert.

  As soon as the Asian man began to speak, however, Jimmy’s expression clouded. As they talked in low voices in the middle of the rapidly emptying room, Flick and a cluster of young people loitered nearby, waiting for Jimmy. They seemed to consider themselves above manual labor. The community center worker cleared away chairs alone.

  “Let me do that,” Strike offered, taking three from her and ignoring the sharp twinge in his knee as he hoisted them onto a tall stack.

  “Thanks very much,” she panted. “I don’t think we’ll be letting this lot—”

  She allowed Walter and a few others to pass before continuing. None of them thanked her.

  “—use the center again,” she finished resentfully. “I didn’t realize what they were all about. Their leaflet’s on about civil disobedience and I don’t know what else.”

  “Pro-Olympics, are you?” Strike asked, placing a chair onto a pile.

  “My granddaughter’s in a running club,” she said. “We got tickets. She can’t wait.”

  Jimmy was still locked in conversation with the young Asian man. A minor argument seemed to have developed. Jimmy seemed tense, his eyes shifting constantly around the room, either seeking an escape or checking that nobody else was within earshot. The hall was emptying. The two men began to move towards the exit. Strike strained his ears to hear what they were saying to each other, but the clumping footsteps of Jimmy’s acolytes on the wooden floor obliterated all but a few words.

  “… for years, mate, all right?” Jimmy was saying angrily. “So do whatever the fuck you want, you’re the one who volunteered yourself…”

  They passed out of earshot. Strike helped the community center volunteer stack the last of the chairs and, as she turned off the light, asked for directions to the White Horse.

  Five minutes later, and in spite of his recent resolution to eat more healthily, Strike bought a bag of chips at a takeaway and proceeded along White Horse Road, at the end of which he had been told he would find the eponymous pub.

  As he ate, Strike pondered the best way to open conversation with Jimmy Knight. As the reaction of the elderly Che Guevara fan on the door had shown, Strike’s current attire did not tend to foster trust
with anti-capitalist protestors. Jimmy had the air of an experienced hard-left activist and was probably anticipating official interest in his activities in the highly charged atmosphere preceding the opening of the Games. Indeed, Strike could see the nondescript, blue-eyed man walking behind Jimmy, hands in his jean pockets. Strike’s first job would be to reassure Jimmy that he was not there to investigate CORE.

  The White Horse turned out to be an ugly prefabricated building, which stood on a busy junction facing a large park. A white war memorial with neatly ranged poppy wreaths at its base rose like an eternal reproach to the outside drinking area opposite, where old cigarette butts lay thickly on cracked concrete riven with weeds. Drinkers were milling around the front of the pub, all smoking. Strike spotted Jimmy, Flick and several others standing in a group in front of a window that was decorated with an enormous West Ham banner. The tall young Asian man was nowhere to be seen, but the plainclothes policeman loitered alone on the periphery of their group.

  Strike went inside to fetch a pint. The décor inside the pub consisted mostly of Cross of St. George flags and more West Ham paraphernalia. Having bought a pint of John Smith’s, Strike returned to the forecourt, lit a fresh cigarette and advanced on the group around Jimmy. He was at Flick’s shoulder before they realized that the large stranger in a suit wanted something from them. All talk ceased as suspicion flared on every face.

  “Hi,” said Strike, “my name’s Cormoran Strike. Any chance of a quick word, Jimmy? It’s about Billy.”

  “Billy?” repeated Jimmy sharply. “Why?”

  “I met him yesterday. I’m a private detect—”

  “Chizzle’s sent him!” gasped Flick, turning, frightened, to Jimmy.

  “’K’up!” he growled.

  While the rest of the group surveyed Strike with a mixture of curiosity and hostility, Jimmy beckoned to Strike to follow him to the edge of the crowd. To Strike’s surprise, Flick tagged along. Men with buzz cuts and West Ham tops nodded at the activist as he passed. Jimmy came to a halt beside two old white bollards topped by horse heads, checked that nobody else was within earshot, then addressed Strike.

  “What did you say your name was again?”

  “Cormoran, Cormoran Strike. Is Billy your brother?”

  “Younger brother, yeah,” said Jimmy. “Did you say he came to see you?”

  “Yep. Yesterday afternoon.”

  “You’re a private—?”

  “Detective. Yes.”

  Strike saw dawning recognition in Flick’s eyes. She had a plump, pale face that would have been innocent without the savage eyeliner and the uncombed tomato-red hair. She turned quickly to Jimmy again.

  “Jimmy, he’s—”

  “Shacklewell Ripper?” asked Jimmy, eyeing Strike over his lighter as he lit another cigarette. “Lula Landry?”

  “That’s me,” said Strike.

  Out of the corner of Strike’s eye, he noticed Flick’s eyes traveling down his body to his lower legs. Her mouth twisted in seeming contempt.

  “Billy came to see you?” repeated Jimmy. “Why?”

  “He told me he’d witnessed a kid being strangled,” said Strike.

  Jimmy blew out smoke in angry gusts.

  “Yeah. He’s fucked in the head. Schizoid affective disorder.”

  “He seemed ill,” agreed Strike.

  “Is that all he told you? That he saw a kid being strangled?”

  “Seemed enough to be getting on with,” said Strike.

  Jimmy’s lips curved in a humorless smile.

  “You didn’t believe him, did you?”

  “No,” said Strike truthfully, “but I don’t think he should be roaming the streets in that condition. He needs help.”

  “I don’t think he’s any worse than usual, do you?” Jimmy asked Flick, with a somewhat artificial air of dispassionate inquiry.

  “No,” she said, turning to address Strike with barely concealed animosity. “He has ups and downs. He’s all right if he takes his meds.”

  Her accent had become markedly more middle-class away from the rest of their friends. Strike noticed that she had painted eyeliner over a clump of sleep in the corner of one eye. Strike, who had spent large portions of his childhood living in squalor, found a disregard for hygiene hard to like, except in those people so unhappy or ill that cleanliness became an irrelevance.

  “Ex-army, aren’t you?” she asked, but Jimmy spoke over her.

  “How did Billy know how to find you?”

  “Directory inquiries?” suggested Strike. “I don’t live in a bat cave.”

  “Billy doesn’t know how to use directory inquiries.”

  “He managed to find my office OK.”

  “There’s no dead kid,” Jimmy said abruptly. “It’s all in his head. He goes on about it when he’s having an episode. Didn’t you see his tic?”

  Jimmy imitated, with brutal accuracy, the compulsive nose to chest movement of a twitching hand. Flick laughed.

  “Yeah, I saw that,” said Strike, unsmiling. “You don’t know where he is, then?”

  “Haven’t seen him since yesterday morning. What do you want him for?”

  “Like I say, he didn’t seem in any fit state to be wandering around on his own.”

  “Very public spirited of you,” said Jimmy. “Rich and famous detective worrying about our Bill.”

  Strike said nothing.

  “Army,” Flick repeated, “weren’t you?”

  “I was,” said Strike, looking down at her. “How’s that relevant?”

  “Just saying.” She had flushed a little in her righteous anger. “Haven’t always been this worried about people getting hurt, have you?”

  Strike, who was familiar with people who shared Flick’s views, said nothing. She would probably believe him if he told her he had joined the forces in the hope of bayoneting children.

  Jimmy, who also seemed disinclined to hear more of Flick’s opinions on the military, said:

  “Billy’ll be fine. He crashes at ours sometimes, then goes off. Does it all the time.”

  “Where does he stay when he’s not with you?”

  “Friends,” said Jimmy, shrugging. “I don’t know all their names.” Then, contradicting himself, “I’ll ring around tonight, make sure he’s OK.”

  “Right you are,” said Strike, downing his pint and handing the empty to a tattooed bar worker, who was marching through the forecourt, grabbing glasses from all who had finished with them. Strike took a last drag on his cigarette, dropped it to join the thousands of its brethren on the cracked forecourt, ground it out beneath his prosthetic foot, then pulled out his wallet.

  “Do me a favor,” he said to Jimmy, taking out a card and handing it over, “and contact me when Billy turns up, will you? I’d like to know he’s safe.”

  Flick gave a derisive snort, but Jimmy seemed caught off guard.

  “Yeah, all right. Yeah, I will.”

  “D’you know which bus would get me back to Denmark Street quickest?” Strike asked them. He could not face another long walk to the Tube. Buses were rolling past the pub with inviting frequency. Jimmy, who seemed to know the area well, directed Strike to the appropriate stop.

  “Thanks very much.” As he put his wallet back inside his jacket, Strike said casually, “Billy told me you were there when the child was strangled, Jimmy.”

  Flick’s rapid turn of the head towards Jimmy was the giveaway. The latter was better prepared. His nostrils flared, but otherwise he did a creditable job of pretending not to be alarmed.

  “Yeah, he’s got the whole sick scene worked out in his poor fucked head,” he said. “Some days he thinks our dead mum might’ve been there, too. Pope next, I expect.”

  “Sad,” said Strike. “Hope you manage to track him down.”

  He raised a hand in farewell and left them standing on the forecourt. Hungry in spite of the chips, his stump now throbbing, he was limping by the time he reached the bus stop.

  After a fifteen-minute wai
t, the bus arrived. Two drunk youths a few seats in front of Strike got into a long, repetitive argument about the merits of West Ham’s new signing, Jussi Jääskeläinen, whose name neither of them could pronounce. Strike stared unseeingly out of the grimy window, leg sore, desperate for his bed, but unable to relax.

  Irksome though it was to admit it, the trip to Charlemont Road had not rid him of the tiny niggling doubt about Billy’s story. The memory of Flick’s sudden, frightened peek at Jimmy, and above all her blurted exclamation “Chizzle’s sent him!” had turned that niggling doubt into a significant and possibly permanent impediment to the detective’s peace of mind.

  7

  Do you think you will remain here? Permanently, I mean?

  Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

  Robin would have been happy to spend the weekend relaxing after her long week unpacking and putting together furniture, but Matthew was looking forward to the house-warming party, to which he had invited a large number of colleagues. His pride was piqued by the interesting, romantic history of the street, which had been built for shipwrights and sea captains back when Deptford had been a shipbuilding center. Matthew might not yet have arrived in the postcode of his dreams, but a short cobbled street full of pretty old houses was, as he had wanted, a “step up,” even if he and Robin were only renting the neat brick box with its sash windows and the moldings of cherubs over the front door.

  Matthew had objected when Robin first suggested renting again, but she had overridden him, saying that she could not stand another year in Hastings Road while further purchases of overpriced houses fell through. Between the legacy and Matthew’s new job, they were just able to make rent on the smart little three-bedroomed house, leaving the money they had received from the sale of their Hastings Road flat untouched in the bank.

  Their landlord, a publisher who was off to New York to work at head office, had been delighted with his new tenants. A gay man in his forties, he admired Matthew’s clean-cut looks and made a point of handing over the keys personally on their moving day.