Lethal White

Six and a half miles away, Strike set his mobile down on his desk and lit a cigarette. Robin’s interest in his story had been soothing after the interview he had endured half an hour after Billy had fled. The two policemen who had answered Denise’s call had seemed to relish their opportunity to make the famous Cormoran Strike admit his fallibility, taking their time as they ascertained that he had succeeded in finding out neither full name nor address of the probably psychotic Billy.

The late afternoon sun hit the notebook on his desk at an angle, revealing faint indentations. Strike dropped his cigarette into an ashtray he had stolen long ago from a German bar, picked up the notepad and tilted it this way and that, trying to make out the letters formed by the impressions, then reached for a pencil and lightly shaded over them. Untidy capital letters were soon revealed, clearly spelling the words “Charlemont Road.” Billy had pressed less hard on the house or flat number than the street name. One of the faint indents looked like either a 5 or an incomplete 8, but the spacing suggested more than one figure, or possibly a letter.

Strike’s incurable predilection for getting to the root of puzzling incidents tended to inconvenience him quite as much as other people. Hungry and tired though he was, and despite the fact that he had sent his temp away so he could shut up the office, he tore the paper carrying the revealed street name off the pad and headed into the outer room, where he switched the computer back on.

There were several Charlemont Roads in the UK, but on the assumption that Billy was unlikely to have the means to travel very far, he suspected that the one in East Ham had to be the right one. Online records showed two Williams living there, but both were over sixty. Remembering that Billy had been scared that Strike might turn up at “Jimmy’s place,” he had searched for Jimmy and then James, which turned up the details of James Farraday, 49.

Strike made a note of Farraday’s address beneath Billy’s indented scribbles, though not at all confident that Farraday was the man he sought. For one thing, his house number contained no fives or eights and, for another, Billy’s extreme unkemptness suggested that whomever he lived with must take a fairly relaxed attitude to his personal hygiene. Farraday lived with a wife and what appeared to be two daughters.

Strike turned off the computer, but continued to stare abstractedly at the dark screen, thinking about Billy’s story. It was the detail of the pink blanket that kept nagging at him. It seemed such a specific, unglamorous detail for a psychotic delusion.

Remembering that he needed to be up early in the morning for a paying job, he pulled himself to his feet. Before leaving the office, he inserted the piece of paper bearing both the impressions of Billy’s handwriting and Farraday’s address into his wallet.

London, which had recently been at the epicenter of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, was preparing to host the Olympics. Union Jacks and the London 2012 logo were everywhere—on signs, banners, bunting, keyrings, mugs and umbrellas—while jumbles of Olympic merchandise cluttered virtually every shop window. In Strike’s opinion, the logo resembled shards of fluorescent glass randomly thrown together and he was equally unenamored of the official mascots, which looked to him like a pair of cycloptic molars.

There was a tinge of excitement and nervousness about the capital, born, no doubt, of the perennially British dread that the nation might make a fool of itself. Complaints about non-availability of Olympics tickets were a dominant theme in conversation, unsuccessful applicants decrying the lottery that was supposed to have given everybody a fair and equal chance of watching events live. Strike, who had hoped to see some boxing, had not managed to get tickets, but laughed out loud at his old school friend Nick’s offer to take his place at the dressage, which Nick’s wife Ilsa was overjoyed to have bagged.

Harley Street, where Strike was due to spend Friday running surveillance on a cosmetic surgeon, remained untouched by Olympic fever. The grand Victorian façades presented their usual implacable faces to the world, unsullied by garish logos or flags.

Strike, who was wearing his best Italian suit for the job, took up a position near the doorway of a building opposite and pretended to be talking on his mobile, actually keeping watch over the entrance of the expensive consulting rooms of two partners, one of whom was Strike’s client.

“Dodgy Doc,” as Strike had nicknamed his quarry, was taking his time living up to his name. Possibly he had been scared out of his unethical behavior by his partner, who had confronted him after realizing that Dodgy had recently performed two breast augmentations that had not been run through the business’s books. Suspecting the worst, the senior partner had come to Strike for help.

“His justification was feeble, full of holes. He is,” said the white-haired surgeon, stiff-lipped but full of foreboding, “and always has been a… ah… womanizer. I checked his internet history before confronting him and found a website where young women solicit cash contributions for their cosmetic enhancements, in return for explicit pictures. I fear… I hardly know what… but it might be that he has made an arrangement with these women that is not… monetary. Two of the younger women had been asked to call a number I did not recognize, but which suggested surgery might be arranged free in return for an ‘exclusive arrangement.’”

Strike had not so far witnessed Dodgy meeting any women outside his regular hours. He spent Mondays and Fridays in his Harley Street consulting rooms and the mid-week at the private hospital where he operated. Whenever Strike had tailed him outside his places of work, he had merely taken short walks to purchase chocolate, to which he seemed addicted. Every night, he drove his Bentley home to his wife and children in Gerrards Cross, tailed by Strike in his old blue BMW.

Tonight, both surgeons would be attending a Royal College of Surgeons dinner with their wives, so Strike had left his BMW in its expensive garage. The hours rolled by in tedium, Strike mostly concerned with shifting the weight off his prosthesis at regular intervals as he leaned up against railings, parking meters and doorways. A steady trickle of clients pressed the bell at Dodgy’s door and were admitted, one by one. All were female and most were sleek and well-groomed. At five o’clock, Strike’s mobile vibrated in his breast pocket and he saw a text from his client.

Safe to clock off, about to leave with him for the Dorchester.

Perversely, Strike hung around, watching as the partners left the building some fifteen minutes later. His client was tall and white-haired; Dodgy, a sleek, dapper olive-skinned man with shiny black hair, who wore three-piece suits. Strike watched them get into a taxi and leave, then yawned, stretched and contemplated heading home, possibly with a takeaway.

Almost against his will, he pulled out his wallet and extracted the piece of crumpled paper on which he had managed to reveal Billy’s street name.

All day, at the back of his mind, he had thought he might go and seek out Billy in Charlemont Road if Dodgy Doc left work early, but he was tired and his leg sore. If Lorelei knew that he had the evening off, she would expect Strike to call. On the other hand, they were going to Robin’s house-warming together tomorrow night and if he spent tonight at Lorelei’s, it would be hard to extricate himself tomorrow, after the party. He never spent two nights in a row at Lorelei’s flat, even when the opportunity had occurred. He liked to set limits on her rights to his time.

As though hoping to be dissuaded by the weather, he glanced up at the clear June sky and sighed. The evening was clear and perfect, the agency so busy that he did not know when he would next have a few hours to spare. If he wanted to visit Charlemont Road, it would have to be tonight.

5

I can quite understand your having a horror of public meetings and… of the rabble that frequents them.

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

His journey coinciding with rush hour, it took Strike over an hour to travel from Harley Street to East Ham. By the time he had located Charlemont Road his stump was aching and the sight of the long residential street made him regret that he was not the kind

of man who could simply write off Billy as a mental case.

The terraced houses had a motley appearance: some were bare brick, others painted or pebble-dashed. Union Jacks hung at windows: further evidence of Olympics fever or relics of the Royal Jubilee. The small plots in front of the houses had been made into pocket gardens or dumps for debris, according to preference. Halfway along the road lay a dirty old mattress, abandoned to whoever wanted to deal with it.

His first glimpse of James Farraday’s residence did not encourage Strike to hope that he had reached journey’s end, because it was one of the best-maintained houses in the street. A tiny porch with colored glass had been added around the front door, ruched net curtains hung at each window and the brass letterbox gleamed in the sunshine. Strike pressed the plastic doorbell and waited.

After a short wait, a harried woman opened the door, releasing a silver tabby, which appeared to have been waiting, coiled behind the door, for the first chance to escape. The woman’s cross expression sat awkwardly above an apron printed with a “Love Is…” cartoon. A strong odor of cooking meat wafted out of the house.

“Hi,” said Strike, salivating at the smell. “Don’t know whether you can help me. I’m trying to find Billy.”

“You’ve got the wrong address. There’s no Billy here.”

She made to close the door.

“He said he was staying with Jimmy,” said Strike, as the gap narrowed.

“There’s no Jimmy here, either.”

“Sorry, I thought somebody called James—”

“Nobody calls him Jimmy. You’ve got the wrong house.”

She closed the door.

Strike and the silver tabby eyed each other; in the cat’s case, superciliously, before it sat down on the mat and began to groom itself with an air of dismissing Strike from its thoughts.

Strike returned to the pavement, where he lit a cigarette and looked up and down the street. By his estimate there were two hundred houses on Charlemont Road. How long would it take to knock on every household’s door? More time than he had this evening, was the unfortunate answer, and more time than he was likely to have anytime soon. He walked on, frustrated and increasingly sore, glancing in through windows and scrutinizing passersby for a resemblance to the man he had met the previous day. Twice, he asked people entering or leaving their houses whether they knew “Jimmy and Billy,” whose address he claimed to have lost. Both said no.

Strike trudged on, trying not to limp.

At last he reached a section of houses that had been bought up and converted into flats. Pairs of front doors stood crammed side by side and the front plots had been concreted over.

Strike slowed down. A torn sheet of A4 had been pinned to one of the shabbiest doors, from which the white paint was peeling. A faint but familiar prickle of interest that he would never have dignified with the name “hunch” led Strike to the door.

The scribbled message read:

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.

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. 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)

&nb

sp; 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 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.