Роберт Гэлбрейт - Lethal White

22

… don’t you feel called upon to undertake it, for the sake of the good cause?

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

Strike was in a thoroughly bad temper.

Why the fuck, he asked himself, as he limped towards Mile End Park the following morning, was he , the senior partner and founder of the firm, having to stake out a protest march on a hot Saturday morning, when he had three employees and a knackered leg? Because, he answered himself, he didn’t have a baby who needed watching, or a wife who’d booked plane tickets or broken her wrist, or a fucking anniversary weekend planned. He wasn’t married, so it was his downtime that had to be sacrificed, his weekend that became just two more working days.

Everything that Robin feared Strike to be thinking about her, he was, in fact, thinking: of her house on cobbled Albury Street versus his draughty two rooms in a converted attic, of the rights and status conferred by the little gold ring on her finger, set against Lorelei’s disappointment when he had explained that lunch and possibly dinner would now be impossible, of Robin’s promises of equal responsibility when he had taken her on as a partner, contrasted with the reality of her rushing home to her husband.

Yes, Robin had worked many hours of unpaid overtime in her two years at the agency. Yes, he knew that she had gone way beyond the call of duty for him. Yes, he was, in theory, fucking grateful to her. The fact remained that today, while he was limping along the street towards hours of probably fruitless surveillance, she and her arsehole of a husband were speeding off to a country hotel weekend, a thought that made his sore leg and back no easier to bear.

Unshaven, clad in an old pair of jeans, a frayed, washed-out hoodie and ancient trainers, with a carrier bag swinging from his hand, Strike entered the park. He could see the massing protestors in the distance. The risk of Jimmy recognising him had almost decided Strike to let the march go unwatched, but the most recent text from Robin (which he had, out of sheer bad temper, left unanswered) had changed his mind.

Kinvara Chiswell came into the office. She claims she saw a man with a spade in the woods near their house last night. From what she said, Chiswell’s been telling her not to call the police about these intruders, but she says she’s going to do it unless he does something about them. Kinvara didn’t know Chiswell’s called us in, btw, she thought I really was Venetia Hall. Also, there’s a chance the charity commission’s investigating the Level Playing Field. I’m trying to get more details.

This communication had served only to aggravate Strike. Nothing short of a concrete piece of evidence against Geraint Winn would have satisfied him right now, with the Sun on Chiswell’s case and their client so tetchy and stressed.

According to Barclay, Jimmy Knight owned a ten-year-old Suzuki Alto, but it had failed its MOT and was currently off the road. Barclay could not absolutely guarantee that Jimmy wasn’t sneaking out under cover of darkness to trespass in Chiswell’s gardens and woods seventy miles away, but Strike thought it unlikely.

On the other hand, he thought it just possible that Jimmy might have sent a proxy to intimidate Chiswell’s wife. He probably still had friends or acquaintances in the area where he grew up. An even more disturbing idea was that Billy had escaped from the prison, real or imaginary, in which he had told Strike he was being held, and decided to dig for proof that the child lay in a pink blanket by his father’s old cottage or, gripped by who knew what paranoid fantasy, to slash one of Kinvara’s horses.

Worried by these inexplicable features of the case, by the interest the Sun was taking in the minister, and aware that the agency was no closer to securing a ‘bargaining chip’ against either of Chiswell’s blackmailers than on the day that Strike had accepted the minister as a client, he felt he had little choice but to leave no stone unturned. In spite of his tiredness, his aching muscles and his strong suspicion that the protest march would yield nothing useful, he had dragged himself out of bed on Saturday morning, strapped his prosthesis back onto a stump that was already slightly puffy and, unable to think of much he’d like to do less than walk for two hours, set off for Mile End Park.

Once close enough to the crowd of protestors to make out individuals, Strike pulled from the carrier bag swinging from his hand a plastic Guy Fawkes mask, white with curling eyebrows and moustache and now mainly associated with the hacking organisation Anonymous, and put it on. Balling up the carrier bag, he shoved it into a handy bin, then hobbled on towards the cluster of placards and banners: ‘No missiles on homes!’ ‘No snipers on streets!’ ‘Don’t play games with our lives!’ and several ‘He’s got to go!’ posters featuring the prime minister’s face. Strike’s fake foot always found grass one of the most difficult surfaces to navigate. He was sweating by the time he finally spotted the orange CORE banners, with their logo of broken Olympic rings.

There were about a dozen of them. Lurking behind a group of chattering youths, Strike readjusted the slipping plastic mask, which had not been constructed for a man whose nose had been broken, and spotted Jimmy Knight, who was talking to two young women, both of whom had just thrown back their heads, laughing delightedly at something Knight had said. Clamping the mask to his face to make sure the slits aligned with his eyes, Strike scanned the rest of the CORE members and concluded that the absence of tomato-red hair was not because Flick had dyed it another colour, but because she wasn’t there.

Stewards now started herding the crowd into something resembling a line. Strike moved into the mass of protestors, a silent, lumbering figure, acting a little obtusely so that the youthful organisers, intimidated by his size, treated him like a rock around which the current must be channelled as he took up a position right behind CORE. A skinny boy who was also wearing an Anonymous mask gave Strike a double thumbs up as he was shunted towards the rear of the line. Strike returned it.

Now smoking a roll-up, Jimmy continued to joke with the two young girls beside him, who were vying for his attention. The darker of the two, who was particularly attractive, was holding a double-sided banner carrying a highly detailed painting of David Cameron as Hitler overlooking the 1936 Olympic Stadium. It was quite an impressive piece of art, and Strike had time to admire it as the procession finally set off at a steady pace, flanked by police and stewards in high visibility jackets, moving gradually out of the park and onto the long, straight Roman Road.

The smooth tarmac was slightly easier on Strike’s prosthesis, but his stump was still throbbing. After a few minutes a chant was got up: ‘Missiles OUT! Missiles OUT!’

A couple of press photographers were walking backwards in the road ahead, taking pictures of the front of the march.

‘Hey, Libby,’ said Jimmy, to the girl with the hand-painted Hitler banner. ‘Wanna get on my shoulders?’

Strike noted her friend’s poorly concealed envy as Jimmy crouched down so that Libby could straddle his neck and be lifted up above the crowd, her banner raised high enough for the photographers in front to see.

‘Show ’em your tits, we’ll be front page!’ Jimmy called up to her.

‘ Jimmy! ’ she squealed, in mock outrage. Her friend’s smile was forced. The cameras clicked, and Strike, grimacing with pain behind the plastic mask, tried not to limp too obviously.

‘Guy with the biggest camera was focused on you the whole time,’ said Jimmy, when he finally lowered the girl back to the ground.