Lethal White

7.30 Meeting moved from pub to Well Community Centre in Vicarage
Lane—end of street turn left Jimmy Knight
Strike lifted the sheet of paper with a finger, saw a house number ending in
5, let the note fall again and moved to peer through the dusty downstairs
window.
An old bed sheet had been pinned up to block out sunlight, but a corner had
fallen down. Tall enough to squint through the uncovered portion of glass, Strike
saw a slice of empty room containing an open sofa bed with a stained duvet on
it, a pile of clothes in the corner and a portable TV standing on a cardboard box.
The carpet was obscured by a multitude of empty beer cans and overflowing
ashtrays. This seemed promising. He returned to the peeling front door, raised a
large fist and knocked.
Nobody answered, nor did he hear any sign of movement within.
Strike checked the note on the door again, then set off. Turning left into
Vicarage Lane, he saw the community center right in front of him, “The Well”
spelled out boldly in shining Perspex letters.

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An elderly man wearing a Mau cap and a wispy, graying beard was standing
just outside the glass doors with a pile of leaflets in his hand. As Strike
approached, the man, whose T-shirt bore the washed-out face of Che Guevara,
eyed him askance. Though tieless, Strike’s Italian suit struck an inappropriately
formal note. When it became clear that the community center was Strike’s
destination, the leaflet-holder shuffled sideways to bar the entrance.
“I know I’m late,” said Strike, with well-feigned annoyance, “but I’ve only
just found out the bloody venue’s been changed.”
His assurance and his size both seemed to disconcert the man in the Mau
cap, who nevertheless appeared to feel that instant capitulation to a man in a suit
would be unworthy of him.
“Who are you representing?”
Strike had already taken a swift inventory of the capitalized words visible on
the leaflets clutched against the other man’s chest: DISSENT—
DISOBEDIENCE—DISRUPTION and, rather incongruously, ALLOTMENTS.
There was also a crude cartoon of five obese businessmen blowing cigar smoke
to form the Olympic rings.
“My dad,” Strike said. “He’s worried they’re going to concrete over his
allotment.”
“Ah,” said the bearded man. He moved aside. Strike tugged a leaflet out of
his hand and entered the community center.
There was nobody in sight except for a gray-haired woman of West Indian
origin, who was peering through an inner door that she had opened an inch.
Strike could just hear a female voice in the room beyond. Her words were hard
to distinguish, but her cadences suggested a tirade. Becoming aware that
somebody was standing immediately behind her, the woman turned. The sight of
Strike’s suit seemed to affect her in opposite fashion to the bearded man at the
door.
“Are you from the Olympics?” she whispered.
“No,” said Strike. “Just interested.”
She eased the door open to admit him.
Around forty people were sitting on plastic chairs. Strike took the nearest
vacant seat and scanned the backs of the heads in front of him for the matted,
shoulder-length hair of Billy.
A table for speakers had been set up at the front. A young woman was
currently pacing up and down in front of it as she addressed the audience. Her
hair was dyed the same bright red shade as Coco’s, Strike’s hard-to-shake one-
night stand, and she was speaking in a series of unfinished sentences,
occasionally losing herself in secondary clauses and forgetting to drop her “h”s.

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Strike had the impression that she had been talking for a long time.
“… think of the squatters and artists who’re all being—’cause this is a proper
community, right, and then in they come wiv like clipboards and it’s, like, get
out if you know what’s good for you, thin end of the, innit, oppressive laws, it’s
the Trojan ’orse—it’s a coordinated campaign of, like…”
Half the audience looked like students. Among the older members, Strike
saw men and women who he marked down as committed protestors, some
wearing T-shirts with leftist slogans like his friend on the door. Here and there he
saw unlikely figures who he guessed were ordinary members of the community
who had not taken kindly to the Olympics’ arrival in East London: arty types
who had perhaps been squatting, and an elderly couple, who were currently
whispering to each other and who Strike thought might be genuinely worried
about their allotment. Watching them resume the attitudes of meek endurance
appropriate to those sitting in church, Strike guessed that they had agreed that
they could not easily leave without drawing too much attention to themselves. A
much-pierced boy covered in anarchist tattoos audibly picked his teeth.
Behind the girl who was speaking sat three others: an older woman and two
men, who were talking quietly to each other. One of them was at least sixty,
barrel-chested and lantern-jawed, with the pugnacious air of a man who had
served his time on picket lines and in successful showdowns with recalcitrant
management. Something about the dark, deep-set eyes of the other made Strike
scan the leaflet in his hand, seeking confirmation of an immediate suspicion.
COMMUNITY OLYMPIC RESISTANCE (CORE)
15 June 2012
7.30 p.m. White Horse Pub East Ham E6 6EJ
Speakers: Lilian Sweeting Wilderness Preservation, E. London Walter
Frett Workers’ Alliance/CORE activist Flick Purdue Anti-poverty
campaigner/CORE activist Jimmy Knight Real Socialist Party/CORE
organizer
Heavy stubble and a general air of scruffiness notwithstanding, the man with
the sunken eyes was nowhere near as filthy as Billy and his hair had certainly
been cut within the last couple of months. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties,
and while squarer of face and more muscular, he had the same dark hair and pale
skin as Strike’s visitor. On the available evidence, Strike would have put a
sizable bet on Jimmy Knight being Billy’s older brother.
Jimmy finished his muttered conversation with his Workers’ Alliance
colleague, then leaned back in his seat, thick arms folded, wearing an expression
of abstraction that showed he was not listening to the young woman any more

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than her increasingly fidgety audience.
Strike now became aware that he was under observation from a nondescript
man sitting in the row in front of him. When Strike met the man’s pale blue gaze,
he redirected his attention hastily towards Flick, who was still talking. Taking
note of the blue-eyed man’s clean jeans, plain T-shirt and the short, neat hair,
Strike thought that he would have done better to have forgone the morning’s
close shave, but perhaps, for a ramshackle operation like CORE, the Met had not
considered it worthwhile to send their best. The presence of a plainclothes
officer was to be expected, of course. Any group currently planning to disrupt or
resist the arrangements for the Olympics was likely to be under surveillance.
A short distance from the plainclothes policeman sat a professional-looking
young Asian man in shirtsleeves. Tall and thin, he was watching the speaker
fixedly, chewing the fingernails of his left hand. As Strike watched, the man
gave a little start and took his finger away from his mouth. He had made it bleed.
“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

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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

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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.

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