Lethal White

by Galbraith, Robert

  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 odour 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 any time soon. He walked on, frustrated and increasingly sore, glancing in through windows and scrutinising passers-by 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 centre right in front of him, ‘The Well’ spelled out boldly in shining Perspex letters.

  An elderly man wearing a Mao cap and a wispy, greying 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 centre 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 Mao 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 capitalised 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 centre.

  There was nobody in sight except for a grey-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)

  15 June 2012

  7.30pm 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 sizeable 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.

  ‘All right,’ said a man loudly. The audience, recognising 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. Fetishise the flag, whip up the middle classes into a frenzy of jingoism! Come worship our glorious medallists – 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 practise 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 grey-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 normalising repression and authoritarianism! Wake up: London’s being militarised! The British state, which has honed the tactics of colonisation 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 centre 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 centre 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 centre 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 labour. The community centre 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 centre again,’ she finished resentfully. ‘I didn’t realise 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 centre 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.