Lethal White

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

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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

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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

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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.”

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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 wait, 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.

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7