The Cuckoo's Calling

  “I’ve seen YouTube footage of him wearing a hoodie with studs on it, like that,” said Strike, pointing at Somé’s chest. “Making a fist.”

  “Yeah, that was one of them. Someone must’ve sent the stuff on to him. One had a fist, one had a handgun, and some of his lyrics on the backs.”

  “Did Lula talk to you about Deeby Macc coming to stay in the flat downstairs?”

  “Oh yeah. She wasn’t nearly excited enough. I kept saying to her, babes, if he’d written three tracks about me I’d be waiting behind the front door naked when he got in.” Somé blew smoke in two long streams from his nostrils, looking sideways at Strike. “I like ’em big and rough,” he said. “But Cuckoo didn’t. Well, look what she hooked up with. I kept telling her, you’re the one making all this fucking song-and-dance about your roots; find yourself a nice black boy and settle down. Deeby would’ve been fucking perfect; why not?

  “Last season’s show, I had her walking down the catwalk to Deeby’s ‘Butterface Girl.’ ‘Bitch you ain’t all that, get a mirror that don’ fool ya, Give it up an’ tone it down, girl, ’cause you ain’t no fuckin’ Lula.’ Duffield hated it.”

  Somé smoked for a moment in silence, his eyes on the wall of photographs. Strike asked:

  “Where do you live? Around here?” though he knew the answer.

  “No, I’m in Charles Street, in Kensington,” said Somé. “Moved there last year. It’s a long fucking way from Hackney, I can tell you, but it was getting silly, I had to leave. Too much hassle. I grew up in Hackney,” he explained, “back when I was plain old Kevin Owusu. I changed my name when I left home. Like you.”

  “I was never Rokeby,” said Strike, flicking over a page in his notebook. “My parents weren’t married.”

  “We all know that, dear,” said Somé, with another flash of malice. “I dressed your old man for a Rolling Stone shoot last year: skinny suit and broken bowler. D’you see him much?”

  “No,” said Strike.

  “No, well, you’d make him look fucking old, wouldn’t you?” said Somé, with a cackle. He fidgeted in his seat, lit yet another cigarette, clamped it between his lips and squinted at Strike through billows of menthol smoke.

  “Why are we talking about me, anyway? Do people usually start telling you their life stories when you get out that notebook?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Don’t you want your tea? I don’t blame you. I don’t know why I drink this shit. My old dad would have a coronary if he asked for a cup of tea and got this.”

  “Is your family still in Hackney?”

  “I haven’t checked,” said Somé. “We don’t talk. I practice what I preach, see?”

  “Why do you think Lula changed her name?”

  “Because she hated her fucking family, same as me. She didn’t want to be associated with them anymore.”

  “Why choose the same name as her Uncle Tony, then?”

  “He’s not famous. It made a good name. Deeby couldn’t have written ‘Double L U B Mine’ if she’d been Lula Bristow, could he?”

  “Charles Street isn’t too far from Kentigern Gardens, is it?”

  “About a twenty-minute walk. I wanted Cuckoo to move in with me when she said she couldn’t stand her old place anymore, but she wouldn’t; she chose that fucking five-star prison instead, just to get away from the press. They drove her into that place. They bear responsibility.”

  Strike remembered Deeby Macc: The motherfuckin’ press chased her out that window.

  “She took me to see it. Mayfair, full of rich Russians and Arabs and bastards like Freddie Bestigui. I said to her, sweetie, you can’t live here; marble everywhere, marble isn’t chic in our climate…it’s like living in your own tomb…”

  He faltered, then went on:

  “She’d been through this head-fuck for a few months. There’d been a stalker who was hand-delivering letters through her front door at three in the morning; she kept getting woken up by the letter box going. The things he said he wanted to do to her, it scared her. Then she split up with Duffield, and she had the paps round the front of her house all the bloody time. Then she finds out they’re hacking all her calls. And then she had to go and find that bitch of a mother. It was all getting too much. She wanted to be away from it all, to feel secure. I told her to move in with me, but instead she went and bought that fucking mausoleum.

  “She took it because it felt like a fortress with the round-the-clock security. She thought she’d be safe from everyone, that nobody would be able to get at her.

  “But she hated it from the word go. I knew she would. She was cut off from everything she liked. Cuckoo loved color and noise. She liked being on the street, she liked walking, being free.

  “One of the reasons the police said it wasn’t murder was the open windows. She’d opened them herself; it was only her prints on the handles. But I know why she opened them. She always opened the windows, even when it was freezing cold, because she couldn’t stand the silence. She liked being able to hear London.”

  Somé’s voice had lost all its slyness and sarcasm. He cleared his throat and went on:

  “She was trying to connect with something real; we used to talk about it all the time. It was our big thing. That’s what made her get involved with bloody Rochelle. It was a case of ‘there but for the grace of God.’ Cuckoo thought that’s what she’d have been, if she hadn’t been beautiful; if the Bristows hadn’t taken her in as a little plaything for Yvette.”

  “Tell me about this stalker.”

  “Mental case. He thought they were married or something. He was given a restraining order and compulsory psychiatric treatment.”

  “Any idea where he is now?”

  “I think he was deported back to Liverpool,” said Somé. “But the police checked him out; they told me he was in a secure ward up there the night she died.”

  “Do you know the Bestiguis?”

  “Only what Lula told me, that he was sleazy and she’s a walking waxwork. I don’t need to know her. I know her type. Rich girls spending their ugly husbands’ money. They come to my shows. They want to be my friend. Gimme an honest hooker any day.”

  “Freddie Bestigui was at the same country-house weekend as Lula, a week before she died.”

  “Yeah, I heard. He had a hard-on for her,” said Somé dismissively. “She knew it, as well; it wasn’t exactly a unique experience in her life, you know. He never got further than trying to get in the same lift, though, from what she told me.”

  “You never spoke to her after their weekend at Dickie Carbury’s, did you?”

  “No. Did he do something then? You don’t suspect Bestigui, do you?”

  Somé sat up in his seat, staring.

  “Fuck…Freddie Bestigui? Well, he’s a shit, I know that. This little girl I know…well, friend of a friend…she was working for his production company, and he tried to fucking rape her. No, I am not exaggerating,” said Somé. “Literally. Rape. Got her a bit drunk after work and had her on the floor; some assistant had forgotten his mobile and came back for it, and walked in on them. Bestigui paid them both off. Everyone was telling her to press charges, but she took the money and ran. They say he used to discipline his second wife in some pretty fucking kinky ways; that’s why she walked away with three mill; she threatened him with the press. But Cuckoo would never have let Freddie Bestigui into her flat at two in the morning. Like I say, she wasn’t a stupid girl.”

  “What do you know about Derrick Wilson?”

  “Who’s he?”

  “The security guard who was on duty the night she died.”

  “Nothing.”

  “He’s a big guy, with a Jamaican accent.”

  “This might shock you, but not all the black people in London know each other.”

  “I wondered whether you’d ever spoken to him, or heard Lula talk about him.”

  “No, we had more interesting things to talk about than the security guard.”

  “Does the sa
me apply to her driver, Kieran Kolovas-Jones?”

  “Oh, I know who Kolovas-Jones is,” said Somé, with a slight smirk. “Striking little poses whenever he thought I might be looking out of the window. He’s about five fucking feet too short to model.”

  “Did Lula ever talk about him?”

  “No, why would she?” asked Somé restlessly. “He was her driver.”

  “He’s told me they were quite close. He mentioned that she’d given him a jacket you designed. Worth nine hundred quid.”

  “Big fucking deal,” said Somé, with easy contempt. “My proper stuff goes for upwards of three grand a coat. I slap the logo on shell suits and they sell like crazy, so it’d be silly not to.”

  “Yeah, I was going to ask you about that,” said Strike. “Your—ready-to-wear line, is it?”

  Somé looked amused.

  “That’s right. That’s the stuff that isn’t made-to-measure, see? You buy it straight off the rack.”

  “Right. How widely is that stuff sold?”

  “It’s everywhere. When were you last in a clothes shop?” asked Somé, his wicked bulging eyes roving over Strike’s dark blue jacket. “What is that, anyway, your demob suit?”

  “When you say ‘everywhere’…”

  “Smart department stores, boutiques, online,” rattled off Somé. “Why?”

  “One of two men caught on CCTV running away from Lula’s area that night was wearing a jacket with your logo on it.”

  Somé twitched his head very slightly, a gesture of repudiation and irritation.

  “Him and a million other people.”

  “Didn’t you see—?”

  “I didn’t look at any of that shit,” said Somé fiercely. “All the—all the coverage. I didn’t want to read about it, I didn’t want to think about it. I told them to keep it away from me,” he said, gesturing towards the stairs and his staff. “All I knew was that she was dead and Duffield was behaving like someone with something to hide. That’s all I knew. That was enough.”

  “OK. Still on the subject of clothes, in the last picture of Lula, the one where she was walking into the building, she seemed to be wearing a dress and a coat…”

  “Yeah, she was wearing Maribelle and Faye,” said Somé. “The dress was called Maribelle—”

  “Yeah, got it,” said Strike. “But when she died, she was wearing something different.”

  This seemed to surprise Somé.

  “Was she?”

  “Yeah. In the police pictures of the body—”

  But Somé threw up his arm in an involuntary gesture of refutation, of self-protection, then got to his feet, breathing hard, and walked to the photograph wall, where Lula stared out of several pictures, smiling, wistful or serene. When the designer turned to face Strike again, the strange bulging eyes were wet.

  “Fucking hell,” he said, in a low voice. “Don’t talk about her like that. ‘The body.’ Fucking hell. You’re a cold-blooded bastard, aren’t you? No fucking wonder old Jonny’s not keen on you.”

  “I wasn’t trying to upset you,” said Strike calmly. “I only want to know whether you can think of any reason she’d have changed her clothes when she got home. When she fell, she was wearing trousers and a sequined top.”

  “How the fuck should I know why she changed?” asked Somé, wildly. “Maybe she was cold. Maybe she was—This is fucking ridiculous. How could I know that?”

  “I’m only asking,” said Strike. “I read somewhere that you’d told the press she died in one of your dresses.”

  “That wasn’t me, I never announced it. Some tabloid bitch rang the office and asked for the name of that dress. One of the seamstresses told her, and they called her my spokesman. Making out I’d tried to get publicity out of it, the cunts. Fucking hell.”

  “D’you think you could put me in touch with Ciara Porter and Bryony Radford?”

  Somé seemed off-balance, confused.

  “What? Yeah…”

  But he had begun to cry in earnest; not like Bristow, with wild gulps and sobs, but silently, with tears sliding down his smooth dark cheeks and on to his T-shirt. He swallowed and closed his eyes, turned his back on Strike, rested his forehead against the wall and trembled.

  Strike waited in silence until Somé had wiped his face several times and turned again towards him. He made no mention of his tears, but walked back to his chair, sat down and lit a cigarette. After two or three deep drags, he said in a practical and unemotional voice:

  “If she changed her clothes, it was because she was expecting someone. Cuckoo always dressed the part. She must’ve been waiting for someone.”

  “Well that’s what I thought,” said Strike. “But I’m no expert on women and their clothes.”

  “No,” said Somé, with a ghost of his malicious smile, “you don’t look it. You want to speak to Ciara and Bryony?”

  “It’d help.”

  “They’re both doing a shoot for me on Wednesday: 1 Arlington Terrace in Islington. If you come along fivish, they’d be free to talk to you.”

  “That’s good of you, thanks.”

  “It isn’t good of me,” said Somé quietly. “I want to know what happened. When are you speaking to Duffield?”

  “As soon as I can get hold of him.”

  “He thinks he’s got away with it, the little shit. She must’ve changed because she knew he was coming, mustn’t she? Even though they’d rowed, she knew he’d follow her. But he’ll never talk to you.”

  “He’ll talk to me,” said Strike easily, as he put away his notebook and checked his watch. “I’ve taken up a lot of your time. Thanks again.”

  As Somé led Strike back down the spiral stairs and along the white-walled corridor, some of his swagger returned to him. By the time they shook hands in the cool tiled lobby, no trace of distress remained on show.

  “Lose some weight,” he told Strike, as a parting shot, “and I’ll send you something XXL.”

  As the warehouse door swung closed behind Strike, he heard Somé call to the tomato-haired girl at the desk: “I know what you’re thinking, Trudie. You’re imagining him taking you roughly from behind, aren’t you? Aren’t you, darling? Big rough soldier boy,” and Trudie’s squeal of shocked laughter.

  2

  CHARLOTTE’S ACCEPTANCE OF STRIKE’S SILENCE was unprecedented. There had been no further calls or texts; she was maintaining the pretense that their last, filthy, volcanic row had changed her irrevocably, stripped away her love and purged her of fury. Strike, however, knew Charlotte as intimately as a germ that had lingered in his blood for fifteen years; knew that her only response to pain was to wound the offender as deeply as possible, no matter what the cost to herself. What would happen if he refused her an audience, and kept refusing? It was the only strategy he had never tried, and all he had left.

  Every now and then, when Strike’s resistance was low (late at night, alone on his camp bed) the infection would erupt again: regret and longing would spike, and he saw her at close quarters, beautiful, naked, breathing words of love; or weeping quietly, telling him that she knew she was rotten, ruined, impossible, but that he was the best and truest thing she had ever known. Then, the fact that he was a few pressed buttons away from speaking to her seemed too fragile a barricade against temptation, and he sometimes pulled himself back out of his sleeping bag and hopped in the darkness to Robin’s abandoned desk, switching on the lamp and poring, even for hours, over the case report. Once or twice he placed early-morning calls to Rochelle Onifade’s mobile, but she never answered.

  On Thursday morning, Strike returned to the wall outside St. Thomas’s, and waited for three hours in the hope of seeing Rochelle again, but she did not turn up. He had Robin call the hospital, but this time they refused to comment on Rochelle’s non-attendance, and resisted all attempts at getting an address for her.

  On Friday morning, Strike returned from an outing to Starbucks to find Spanner sitting not on the sofa beside Robin’s desk, but on the desk itself.
He had an unlit roll-up in his mouth, and was leaning over her, apparently being more amusing than Strike had ever found him, because Robin was laughing in the slightly grudging manner of a woman who is entertained, but who wishes, nevertheless, to make it clear that the goal is well defended.

  “Morning, Spanner,” said Strike, but the faintly repressive quality of his greeting did nothing to moderate either the computer specialist’s ardent body language or his broad smile.

  “All right, Fed? Brought your Dell back for you.”

  “Great. Double decaff latte,” Strike told Robin, setting the drink down beside her. “No charge,” he added, as she reached for her purse.

  She was touchingly averse to charging minor luxuries to petty cash. Robin made no objection in front of their guest, but thanked Strike, and turned again to her work, which involved a small clockwise swivel of her desk chair, away from the two men.

  The flare of a match turned Strike’s attention from his own double espresso to his guest.

  “This is a non-smoking office, Spanner.”

  “What? You smoke like a fucking chimney.”

  “Not in here I don’t. Follow me.”

  Strike led Spanner into his own office and closed the door firmly behind him.

  “She’s engaged,” he said, taking his usual seat.

  “Wasting my powder, am I? Ah well. Put in a word for me if the engagement goes down the pan; she’s just my type.”

  “I don’t think you’re hers.”

  Spanner grinned knowingly.

  “Already queuing, are you?”

  “No,” said Strike. “I just know her fiancé’s a rugby-playing accountant. Clean-cut, square-jawed Yorkshireman.”

  He had formed a surprisingly clear mental image of Matthew, though he had never seen a photograph.

  “You never know; she might fancy rebounding on to something a bit edgier,” said Spanner, swinging Lula Landry’s laptop on to the desk and sitting down opposite Strike. He was wearing a slightly tatty sweatshirt and Jesus sandals on bare feet; it was the warmest day of the year so far. “I’ve had a good look at this piece of crap. How much technical detail do you want?”