A table for speakers had been set up at the front. A young woman was currently pacing up and down in front of it as she addressed the audience. Her hair was dyed the same bright red shade as Coco’s, Strike’s hard-to-shake one-night stand, and she was speaking in a series of unfinished sentences, occasionally losing herself in secondary clauses and forgetting to drop her “h”s. Strike had the impression that she had been talking for a long time.
“… think of the squatters and artists who’re all being—’cause this is a proper community, right, and then in they come wiv like clipboards and it’s, like, get out if you know what’s good for you, thin end of the, innit, oppressive laws, it’s the Trojan ’orse—it’s a coordinated campaign of, like…”
Half the audience looked like students. Among the older members, Strike saw men and women who he marked down as committed protestors, some wearing T-shirts with leftist slogans like his friend on the door. Here and there he saw unlikely figures who he guessed were ordinary members of the community who had not taken kindly to the Olympics’ arrival in East London: arty types who had perhaps been squatting, and an elderly couple, who were currently whispering to each other and who Strike thought might be genuinely worried about their allotment. Watching them resume the attitudes of meek endurance appropriate to those sitting in church, Strike guessed that they had agreed that they could not easily leave without drawing too much attention to themselves. A much-pierced boy covered in anarchist tattoos audibly picked his teeth.
Behind the girl who was speaking sat three others: an older woman and two men, who were talking quietly to each other. One of them was at least sixty, barrel-chested and lantern-jawed, with the pugnacious air of a man who had served his time on picket lines and in successful showdowns with recalcitrant management. Something about the dark, deep-set eyes of the other made Strike scan the leaflet in his hand, seeking confirmation of an immediate suspicion.
COMMUNITY OLYMPIC RESISTANCE (CORE)
15 June 2012
7.30 p.m. White Horse Pub East Ham E6 6EJ
Speakers:
Lilian Sweeting Wilderness Preservation, E. London
Walter Frett Workers’ Alliance/CORE activist
Flick Purdue Anti-poverty campaigner/CORE activist
Jimmy Knight Real Socialist Party/CORE organizer
Heavy stubble and a general air of scruffiness notwithstanding, the man with the sunken eyes was nowhere near as filthy as Billy and his hair had certainly been cut within the last couple of months. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties, and while squarer of face and more muscular, he had the same dark hair and pale skin as Strike’s visitor. On the available evidence, Strike would have put a sizable bet on Jimmy Knight being Billy’s older brother.
Jimmy finished his muttered conversation with his Workers’ Alliance colleague, then leaned back in his seat, thick arms folded, wearing an expression of abstraction that showed he was not listening to the young woman any more than her increasingly fidgety audience.
Strike now became aware that he was under observation from a nondescript man sitting in the row in front of him. When Strike met the man’s pale blue gaze, he redirected his attention hastily towards Flick, who was still talking. Taking note of the blue-eyed man’s clean jeans, plain T-shirt and the short, neat hair, Strike thought that he would have done better to have forgone the morning’s close shave, but perhaps, for a ramshackle operation like CORE, the Met had not considered it worthwhile to send their best. The presence of a plainclothes officer was to be expected, of course. Any group currently planning to disrupt or resist the arrangements for the Olympics was likely to be under surveillance.
A short distance from the plainclothes policeman sat a professional-looking young Asian man in shirtsleeves. Tall and thin, he was watching the speaker fixedly, chewing the fingernails of his left hand. As Strike watched, the man gave a little start and took his finger away from his mouth. He had made it bleed.
“All right,” said a man loudly. The audience, recognizing a voice of authority, sat a little straighter. “Thanks very much, Flick.”
Jimmy Knight got to his feet, leading the unenthusiastic applause for Flick, who walked back around the table and sat down in the empty chair between the two men.
In his well-worn jeans and unironed T-shirt, Jimmy Knight reminded Strike of the men his dead mother had taken as lovers. He might have been the bass player in a grime band or a good-looking roadie, with his muscled arms and tattoos. Strike noticed that the back of the nondescript blue-eyed man had tensed. He had been waiting for Jimmy.
“Evening, everyone, and thanks very much for coming.”
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.