We first meet Stewart Nutley at the beginning of Lethal White (although he is at that point unnamed) as a subcontractor who Strike fires for driving his moped into the back of a taxi he was meant to be tailing (Lethal White, ch 1).

Due to the addition of the surveillance on Jago Ross, the agency is extremely understaffed so Strike resorts in desperation to rehiring Nutley on a weekly contract (ch 41). He is an ex-Red Cap, described as a ‘gap-toothed, mouse-haired married man in his early thirties’ with a ‘resting expression [that] was unattractively self-satisfied’ (ch 41).

He is not popular at the agency, as he is smug, self-congratulatory and self-satisfied. Nor is he particularly good at the job, annoying Robin by failing to make handovers look natural (ch 65).

He leaves the agency seriously short-staffed when he resigns after the agency’s office is targeted (ch 76). He then has the nerve to offer to come back, but is given short shrift by Barclay (ch 107).