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 realized 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 traveling 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 humorless 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 inquiry.
“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 inquiries?” suggested Strike. “I don’t live in a bat cave.”
“Billy doesn’t know how to use directory inquiries.”
“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 favor,” 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.”
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 J??skel?inen, 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