Lethal White

by Galbraith, Robert

  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 realised 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 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 travelling 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 humourless 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 enquiry.

  ‘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 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 enquiries?’ suggested Strike. ‘I don’t live in a bat cave.’

  ‘Billy doesn’t know how to use directory enquiries.’

  ‘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 favour,’ 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.’

  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.’

&nb
sp; 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.

  7

  Do you think you will remain here? Permanently, I mean?

  Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

  Robin would have been happy to spend the weekend relaxing after her long week unpacking and putting together furniture, but Matthew was looking forward to the house-warming party, to which he had invited a large number of colleagues. His pride was piqued by the interesting, romantic history of the street, which had been built for shipwrights and sea captains back when Deptford had been a shipbuilding centre. Matthew might not yet have arrived in the postcode of his dreams, but a short cobbled street full of pretty old houses was, as he had wanted, a ‘step up’, even if he and Robin were only renting the neat brick box with its sash windows and the mouldings of cherubs over the front door.

  Matthew had objected when Robin first suggested renting again, but she had overridden him, saying that she could not stand another year in Hastings Road while further purchases of overpriced houses fell through. Between the legacy and Matthew’s new job, they were just able to make rent on the smart little three-bedroomed house, leaving the money they had received from the sale of their Hastings Road flat untouched in the bank.

  Their landlord, a publisher who was off to New York to work at head office, had been delighted with his new tenants. A gay man in his forties, he admired Matthew’s clean-cut looks and made a point of handing over the keys personally on their moving day.

  ‘I agree with Jane Austen on the ideal tenant,’ he told Matthew, standing in the cobbled street. ‘“A married man, and without children; the very state to be wished for.” A house is never well cared for without a lady! Or do you two share the hoovering?’

  ‘Of course,’ Matthew had said, smiling. Robin, who was carrying a box of plants over the threshold behind the two men, had bitten back a caustic retort.

  She had a suspicion that Matthew was not disclosing to friends and workmates that they were tenants rather than owners. She deplored her own increasing tendency to watch Matthew for shabby or duplicitous behaviour, even in small matters, and imposed private penances on herself for thinking the worst of him all the time. It was in this spirit of self-castigation that she had agreed to the party, bought alcohol and plastic tumblers, made food and set everything up in the kitchen. Matthew had rearranged the furniture and, over several evenings, organised a playlist now blaring out of his iPod in its dock. The first few bars of ‘Cutt Off’ by Kasabian started as Robin hurried upstairs to change.

  Robin’s hair was in foam rollers, because she had decided to wear it as she had on their wedding day. Running out of time before guests were due, she pulled out the rollers one-handed as she yanked open the wardrobe door. She had a new dress, a form-fitting pale grey affair, but she was afraid that it drained her of colour. She hesitated, then took out the emerald-green Roberto Cavalli that she had never worn in public. It was the most expensive item of clothing she owned, and the most beautiful: the ‘leaving’ present that Strike had bought her after she had gone to him as a temp and helped him catch their first killer. The expression on Matthew’s face when she had excitedly shown him the gift had prevented her ever wearing it.

  For some reason her mind drifted to Strike’s girlfriend, Lorelei, as she held the dress up against herself. Lorelei, who always wore jewel-bright colours, affected the style of a 1940s pin-up. As tall as Robin, she had glossy brunette hair that she wore over one eye like Veronica Lake. Robin knew that Lorelei was thirty-three, and that she co-owned and ran a vintage and theatrical clothing store on Chalk Farm Road. Strike had let slip this information one day and Robin, making a mental note of the name, had gone home and looked it up online. The shop appeared to be glamorous and successful.

  ‘It’s a quarter to,’ said Matthew, hurrying into the bedroom, stripping off his T-shirt as he came. ‘I might shower quickly.’

  He caught sight of her, holding the green dress against herself.

  ‘I thought you were wearing the grey one?’

  Their eyes met in the mirror. Bare-chested, tanned and handsome, Matthew’s features were so symmetrical that his reflection was almost identical to his real appearance.

  ‘I think it makes me look pale,’ said Robin.

  ‘I prefer the grey one,’ he said. ‘I like you pale.’

  She forced a smile.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll wear the grey.’

  Once changed, she ran fingers through her curls to loosen them, pulled on a pair of strappy silver sandals and hurried back downstairs. She had barely reached the hall when the doorbell rang.

  If she had been asked to guess who would arrive first, she would have said Sarah Shadlock and Tom Turvey, who had recently got engaged. It would be like Sarah to try and catch Robin on the hop, to make sure she had an opportunity to nose around the house before anybody else, and to stake out a spot where she could look over all the arrivals. Sure enough, when Robin opened up, there stood Sarah in shocking pink, a big bunch of flowers in her arms, Tom carrying beer and wine.

  ‘Oh, it’s gorgeous, Robin,’ crooned Sarah, the moment she got over the doorstep, staring around the hall. She hugged Robin absent-mindedly, her eyes on the stairs as Matthew descended, doing up his shirt. ‘Lovely. These are for you.’

  Robin found herself encumbered by an armful of stargazer lilies.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ll just go and put them in water.’

  They didn’t have a vase big enough for the flowers, but Robin could hardly leave them in the sink. She could hear Sarah’s laugh from the kitchen, even over Coldplay and Rihanna, who were now belting out ‘Princess of China’ from Matthew’s iPod. Robin dragged a bucket out of the cupboard and began to fill it, splattering herself with water in the process.

  The idea had once been mooted, she remembered, that Matthew would refrain from taking Sarah out for lunches during their office lunch hours. There had even been talk of stopping socialising with her, after Robin had found out that Matthew had been cheating with Sarah in their early twenties. However, Tom had helped Matthew get the higher-paid position he now enjoyed at Tom’s firm, and now that Sarah was the proud owner of a large solitaire diamond, Matthew did not seem to think that there should be the slightest awkwardness attached to social events including the future Mr and Mrs Turvey.

  Robin could hear the three of them moving around upstairs. Matthew was giving a tour of the bedrooms. She heaved the lily-filled bucket out of the sink and shoved it into a corner beside the kettle, wondering whether it was mean-spirited to suspect that Sarah had brought flowers just to get Robin out of the way for a bit. Sarah had never lost the flirtatious manner towards Matthew she had had since their shared years at university.

  Robin poured herself a glass of wine and emerged from the kitchen as Matthew led Tom and Sarah into the sitting room.

  ‘ . . . and Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton are supposed to have stayed in number 19, but it was called Union Street then,’ he said. ‘Right, who wants a drink? It’s all set up in the kitchen.’

  ‘Gorgeous place, Robin,’ said Sarah. ‘Houses like this don’t come up that often. You must’ve got really lucky.’

  ‘We’re only rent
ing,’ said Robin.

  ‘Really?’ said Sarah beadily, and Robin knew that Sarah was drawing her own conclusions, not about the housing market, but about Robin and Matthew’s marriage.

  ‘Nice earrings,’ said Robin, keen to change the subject.

  ‘Aren’t they?’ said Sarah, pulling back her hair to give Robin a better view. ‘Tom’s birthday present.’

  The doorbell rang again. Robin went to answer it, hoping that it would be one of the few people she had invited. She had no hope of Strike, of course. He was bound to be late, as he had been to every other personal event to which she had invited him.