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 mustache and now mainly associated with the hacking organization 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 just 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 color, 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 organizers, intimidated by his size, treated him like a rock around which the current must be channeled 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.
“Fuck, if I’m in the papers my mum’ll go apeshit,” said the girl excitedly, and she fell into step on Jimmy’s other side, taking any opportunity to nudge or slap him as he teased her about being scared of what her parents would say. She was, Strike judged, at least fifteen years younger than he was.
“Enjoying yourself, Jimmy?”
The mask restricted Strike’s peripheral vision, so that it was only when the uncombed, tomato-red hair appeared immediately in front of him that Strike realized Flick had joined the march. Her sudden appearance had taken Jimmy by surprise, too.
“There you are!” he said, with a feeble show of pleasure.
Flick glared at the girl called Libby, who sped up, intimidated. Jimmy tried to put his arm around Flick, but she shrugged it off.
“Oi,” he said, feigning innocent indignation. “What’s up?”
“Three fucking guesses,” snarled Flick.
Strike could tell that Jimmy was debating which tack to take with her. His thuggishly handsome face showed irritation but also, Strike thought, a certain wariness. For a second time, he tried to put his arm around her. This time, she slapped it away.
“Oi,” he said again, this time aggressively. “The fuck was that for?”
“I’m off doing your dirty work and you’re fucking around with her? What kind of fucking idiot do you think I am, Jimmy?”
“Missiles OUT!” bellowed a steward with a megaphone, and the crowd took up the chant once more. The cries made by the Mohicaned woman beside Strike were as shrill and raucous as a peacock’s. The one bonus of the renewed shouting was that it left Strike at liberty to grunt with pain every time he set his prosthetic foot on the road, which was a kind of release and made the plastic mask reverberate in a ticklish fashion against his sweating face. Squinting through the eyeholes he watched Jimmy and Flick argue, but he couldn’t hear a word over the din of the crowd. Only when the chant subsided at last could he make out a little of what they were saying to each other.
“I’m fucking sick of this,” Jimmy was saying. “I’m not the one who picks up students in bars when—”
“You’d ditched me!” said Flick, in a kind of whispered scream. “You’d fucking ditched me! You told me you didn’t want anything exclusive—”
“Heat of the moment, wasn’t it?” said Jimmy roughly. “I was stressed. Billy was doing my fucking head in. I didn’t expect you to go straight to a bar and pick up some fucking—”
“You told me you were sick of—”
“Fuck’s sake, I lost my temper and said a bunch of shit I didn’t mean. If I went and shagged another woman every time you give me grief—”
“Yeah, well I sometimes think the only reason you even keep me around is Chis—”
“Keep your fucking voice down!”
“—and today, you think it was fun at that creep’s house—”
“I said I was grateful, fuck’s sake, we discussed this, didn’t we? I had to get those leaflets printed or I’d’ve come with you—”
“And I do that cleaning,” she said, with a sudden sob, “and it’s disgusting and then today you send me—it was horrible, Jimmy, he should be in hospital, he’s in a right state—”
Jimmy glanced around. Coming briefly within Jimmy’s eye-line, Strike attempted to walk naturally, though every time he asked his stump to bear his full weight, he felt as though he was pressing it down on a thousand fire ants.
“We’ll get him to hospital after,” said Jimmy. “We will, but he’ll screw it all up if we let him loose now, you know what he’s like… once Winn’s got those photos… hey,” said Jimmy gently, putting his arm around her for a third time. “Listen. I’m so fucking grateful to you.”