Lethal White

… a man with as dirty a record as his!… This is
the sort of man that poses as a leader of the people!
And successfully, too!
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
After four and a half hours in the driving seat, Strike’s exit from the BMW in
Manchester was far from graceful. He stood for a while in Burton Road, a broad,
pleasant street with its mixture of shops and houses, leaning on the car,
stretching his back and leg, grateful that he had managed to find a parking space
only a short way from “Stylz.” The bright pink shopfront stood out between a
café and a Tesco Express, pictures of moody models with unnaturally tinted hair
in the window.
With its black and white tiled floor and pink walls that reminded Strike of
Lorelei’s bedroom, the interior of the small shop was determinedly trendy, but it
did not appear to cater to a particularly youthful or adventurous clientele. There
were currently only two clients, one of whom was a large woman of at least
sixty, who was reading Good Housekeeping in front of a mirror, her hair a mass
of foil. Strike made a bet with himself as he entered that Dawn would prove to
be the slim peroxide blonde with her back to him, chatting animatedly to an
elderly lady whose blue hair she was perming.
“I’ve got an appointment with Dawn,” Strike told the young receptionist,
who looked slightly startled to see anything so large and male in this fug of
perfumed ammonia. The peroxided blonde turned at the sound of her name. She
had the leathery, age-spotted skin of a committed sunbed user.
“With you in a moment, cock,” she said, smiling. He settled to wait on a
bench in the window.
Five minutes later, she was leading him to an upholstered pink chair at the
back of the shop.
“What are you after, then?” she asked him, inviting him with a gesture to sit
down.
“I’m not here for a haircut,” said Strike, still standing. “I’ll happily pay for
one, I don’t want to waste your time, but,” he pulled a card and his driver’s
license from his pocket, “my name’s Cormoran Strike. I’m a private detective

---

and I was hoping to talk to you about your ex-husband, Jimmy Knight.”
She looked stunned, as well she might, but then fascinated.
“Strike?” she repeated, gaping. “You aren’t him that caught that Ripper
guy?”
“That’s me.”
“Jesus, what’s Jimmy done?”
“Nothing much,” said Strike easily. “I’m just after background.”
She didn’t believe him, of course. Her face, he suspected, was full of filler,
her forehead suspiciously smooth and shiny above the carefully penciled
eyebrows. Only her stringy neck betrayed her age.
“That’s over. It was over ages ago. I never talk about Jimmy. Least said,
soonest mended, don’t they say?”
But he could feel the curiosity and excitement radiating from her like heat.
Radio 2 jangled in the background. She glanced towards the two women sitting
at the mirrors.
“Sian!” she said loudly, and the receptionist jumped and turned. “Take out
her foils and keep an eye on the perm for me, love.” She hesitated, still holding
Strike’s card. “I’m not sure I should,” she said, wanting to be talked into it.
“It’s only background,” he said. “No strings.”
Five minutes later she was handing him a milky coffee in a tiny staffroom at
the rear of the shop, talking merrily, a little haggard in the fluorescent overhead
light, but still good-looking enough to explain why Jimmy had first shown
interest in a woman thirteen years his senior.
“… yeah, a demonstration against nuclear weapons. I went with this friend of
mine, Wendy, she was big into all that. Vegetarian,” she added, nudging the door
into the shop closed with her foot and taking out a pack of Silk Cut. “You know
the type.”
“Got my own,” said Strike, when she offered the pack. He lit her cigarette for
her, then one of his Benson & Hedges. They blew out simultaneous streams of
smoke. She crossed her legs towards him and rattled on.
“… yeah, so Jimmy gave a speech. Weapons and how much we could save,
give to the NHS and everything, what was the point… he talks well, you know,”
said Dawn.
“He does,” agreed Strike, “I’ve heard him.”
“Yeah, and I fell for it, hook, line and sinker. Thought he was some kind of
Robin Hood.”
Strike heard the joke coming before she made it. He knew it was not the first
time.
“Robbing Hood, more like,” she said.

---

She was already divorced when she had met Jimmy. Her first husband had
left her for another girl at the London salon they had owned together. Dawn had
done well out of the divorce, managing to retain the business. Jimmy had
seemed a romantic figure after her wide-boy first husband and, on the rebound,
she had fallen for him hard.
“But there were always girls,” she said. “Lefties, you know. Some of them
were really young. He was like a pop star to them or something. I only found out
how many of them there were later, after he’d set up cards on all my accounts.”
Dawn told Strike at length how Jimmy had persuaded her to bankroll a
lawsuit against his ex-employer, Zanet Industries, who had failed to follow due
process in firing him.
“Very keen on his rights, Jimmy. He’s not stupid, though, you know. Ten
grand payout he got from Zanet. I never saw a penny of it. He pissed it all away,
trying to sue other people. He tried to take me to court, after we split up. Loss of
earnings, don’t make me laugh. I’d kept him for five years and he claimed he’d
been working with me, building up the business for no pay and left with
occupational asthma from the chemicals—so much shit he talked—they chucked
it out of court, thank God. And then he tried to get me on a harassment charge.
Said I’d keyed his car.”
She ground out her cigarette and reached for another one.
“I had, too,” she said, with a sudden, wicked smile. “You know he’s been put
on a list, now? Can’t sue anyone without permission.”
“I did know, yeah,” said Strike. “Was he ever involved in any criminal
activity while you were together, Dawn?”
She lit up again, watching Strike over her fingers, still hoping to hear what
Jimmy was supposed to have done to have Strike after him. Finally she said:
“I’m not sure he was too careful about checking all the girls he was playing
around with were sixteen. I heard, after, one of them… but we’d split up by then.
It wasn’t my problem anymore,” said Dawn, as Strike made a note.
“And I wouldn’t trust him if it was anything to do with Jews. He doesn’t like
them. Israel’s the root of all evil, according to Jimmy. Zionism: I got sick of the
bloody sound of the word. You’d think they’d suffered enough,” said Dawn
vaguely. “Yeah, his manager at Zanet was Jewish and they hated each other.”
“What was his name?”
“What was it?” Dawn drew heavily on her cigarette, frowning. “Paul
something… Lobstein, that’s it. Paul Lobstein. He’s probably still at Zanet.”
“D’you still have any contact with Jimmy, or any of his family?”
“Christ, no. Good riddance. The only one of his family I ever met was little
Billy, his brother.”

---

She softened a little as she said the name.
“He wasn’t right. He stayed with us for a bit at one point. He was a
sweetheart, really, but not right. Jimmy said it was their father. Violent alkie.
Raised them on his own and knocked the shit out of them, from what the boys
said, used the belt and everything. Jimmy got away to London, and poor little
Billy was left alone with him. No surprise he was how he was.”
“What d’you mean?”
“He ’ad a—a tic, do they call it?”
She mimicked with perfect accuracy the nose to chest tapping Strike had
witnessed in his office.
“He was put on drugs, I know that. Then he left us, went to share a flat with
some other lads for a bit. I never saw him again after Jimmy and I split. He was a
sweet boy, yeah, but he annoyed Jimmy.”
“In what way?” Strike asked.
“Jimmy didn’t like him talking about their childhood. I dunno, I think Jimmy
felt guilty he’d left Billy in the house alone. There was something funny about
that whole business…”
Strike could tell she hadn’t thought about these things for a while.
“Funny?” he prompted.
“A couple of times, when he’d had a few, Jimmy went on about how his dad
would burn for how he made his living.”
“I thought he was an odd-job man?”
“Was he? They told me he was a joiner. He worked for that politician’s
family, what’s his name? The one with the hair.”
She mimed stiff bristles coming out of her head.
“Jasper Chiswell?” Strike suggested, pronouncing the name the way it was
spelled.
“Him, yeah. Old Mr. Knight had a rent-free cottage in the family grounds.
The boys grew up there.”
“And he said his father would go to hell for what he did for a living?”
repeated Strike.
“Yeah. It’s probably just because he was working for Tories. It was all about
politics with Jimmy. I don’t get it,” said Dawn restlessly. “You’ve got to live.
Imagine me asking my clients how they vote before I’ll—
“Bloody hell,” she gasped suddenly, grinding out her cigarette and jumping
to her feet, “Sian had better’ve taken out Mrs. Horridge’s rollers or she’ll be
bald.”

---

17