Almost against his will, he pulled out his wallet and extracted the piece of crumpled paper on which he had managed to reveal Billy’s street name.
All day, at the back of his mind, he had thought he might go and seek out Billy in Charlemont Road if Dodgy Doc left work early, but he was tired and his leg sore. If Lorelei knew that he had the evening off, she would expect Strike to call. On the other hand, they were going to Robin’s house-warming together tomorrow night and if he spent tonight at Lorelei’s, it would be hard to extricate himself tomorrow, after the party. He never spent two nights in a row at Lorelei’s flat, even when the opportunity had occurred. He liked to set limits on her rights to his time.
As though hoping to be dissuaded by the weather, he glanced up at the clear June sky and sighed. The evening was clear and perfect, the agency so busy that he did not know when he would next have a few hours to spare. If he wanted to visit Charlemont Road, it would have to be tonight.
5
I can quite understand your having a horror of public meetings and… of the rabble that frequents them.
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
His journey coinciding with rush hour, it took Strike over an hour to travel from Harley Street to East Ham. By the time he had located Charlemont Road his stump was aching and the sight of the long residential street made him regret that he was not the kind of man who could simply write off Billy as a mental case.
The terraced houses had a motley appearance: some were bare brick, others painted or pebble-dashed. Union Jacks hung at windows: further evidence of Olympics fever or relics of the Royal Jubilee. The small plots in front of the houses had been made into pocket gardens or dumps for debris, according to preference. Halfway along the road lay a dirty old mattress, abandoned to whoever wanted to deal with it.
His first glimpse of James Farraday’s residence did not encourage Strike to hope that he had reached journey’s end, because it was one of the best-maintained houses in the street. A tiny porch with colored glass had been added around the front door, ruched net curtains hung at each window and the brass letterbox gleamed in the sunshine. Strike pressed the plastic doorbell and waited.
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 odor 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 anytime soon. He walked on, frustrated and increasingly sore, glancing in through windows and scrutinizing passersby 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 center right in front of him, “The Well” spelled out boldly in shining Perspex letters.
An elderly man wearing a Mau cap and a wispy, graying 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 center 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 Mau 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 capitalized 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 center.
There was nobody in sight except for a gray-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.