Lethal White (A Cormoran Strike Novel)

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. Fetishize the flag, whip up the middle classes into a frenzy of jingoism! Come worship our glorious medalists—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 practice 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 gray-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 normalizing repression and authoritarianism! Wake up: London’s being militarized! The British state, which has honed the tactics of colonization 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 center 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 center 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 center 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