The Cuckoo's Calling

  “He got sent a customized hoodie by Somé. Handgun in studs on the front and a couple of lines of Deeby’s own lyrics on the back.”

  “Just the one?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What else?” asked Strike.

  “He remembers a belt, a beanie hat and a pair of cufflinks.”

  “No gloves?”

  Wardle paused, perhaps checking his notes.

  “No, he didn’t mention gloves.”

  “Well, that clears that up,” said Strike.

  Wardle said nothing at all. Strike waited for the policeman to either hang up or impart more information.

  “The inquest is on Thursday,” said Wardle abruptly. “On Rochelle Onifade.”

  “Right,” said Strike.

  “You don’t sound that interested.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I thought you were sure it was murder?”

  “I am, but the inquest won’t prove that one way or the other. Any idea when her funeral’s going to be?”

  “No,” said Wardle irritably. “What does that matter?”

  “I thought I might go.”

  “What for?”

  “She had an aunt, remember?” said Strike.

  Wardle rang off in what Strike suspected was disgust.

  Bristow called Strike later that morning with the time and place of Rochelle’s funeral.

  “Alison managed to find out all the details,” he told the detective on the telephone. “She’s super-efficient.”

  “Clearly,” said Strike.

  “I’m going to come. To represent Lula. I ought to have helped Rochelle.”

  “I think it was always going to end this way, John. Are you bringing Alison?”

  “She says she wants to come,” said Bristow, though he sounded less than enamored of the idea.

  “I’ll see you there, then. I’m hoping to speak to Rochelle’s aunt, if she turns up.”

  When Strike told Robin that Bristow’s girlfriend had discovered the time and place of the funeral, she appeared put out. She herself had been trying to find out the details at Strike’s request, and seemed to feel that Alison had put one over on her.

  “I didn’t realize you were this competitive,” said Strike, amused. “Not to worry. Maybe she had some kind of head start on you.”

  “Like what?”

  But Strike was looking at her speculatively.

  “What?” repeated Robin, a little defensively.

  “I want you to come with me to the funeral.”

  “Oh,” said Robin. “OK. Why?”

  She expected Strike to reply that it would look more natural for them to turn up as a couple, just as it had seemed more natural for him to visit Vashti with a woman in tow. Instead he said:

  “There’s something I want you to do for me there.”

  Once he had explained, clearly and concisely, what it was that he wanted her to do, Robin looked utterly bewildered.

  “But why?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’d rather not say that, either.”

  Robin no longer saw Strike through Matthew’s eyes; no longer wondered whether he was faking, or showing off, or pretending to be cleverer than he was. She did him the credit, now, of discounting the possibility that he was being deliberately mysterious. All the same, she repeated, as though she must have heard him wrongly:

  “Brian Mathers.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The Death Threat Man.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But,” said Robin, “what on earth can he have to do with Lula Landry’s death?”

  “Nothing,” said Strike, honestly enough. “Yet.”

  The north London crematorium where Rochelle’s funeral was held three days later was chilly, anonymous and depressing. Everything was smoothly nondenominational; from the dark-wood pews and blank walls, carefully devoid of any religious device; to the abstract-stained glass window, a mosaic of little jewel-bright squares. Sitting on hard wood, while a whiny-voiced minister called Rochelle “Roselle” and the fine rain speckled the gaudy patchwork window above him, Strike understood the appeal of gilded cherubs and plaster saints, of gargoyles and Old Testament angels, of gem-set golden crucifixes; anything that might give an aura of majesty and grandeur, a firm promise of an afterlife, or retrospective worth to a life like Rochelle’s. The dead girl had had her glimpse of earthly paradise: littered with designer goods, and celebrities to sneer at, and handsome drivers to joke with, and the yearning for it had brought her to this: seven mourners, and a minister who did not know her name.

  There was a tawdry impersonality about the whole affair; a feeling of faint embarrassment; a painful avoidance of the facts of Rochelle’s life. Nobody seemed to feel that they had the right to sit in the front row. Even the obese black woman wearing thick-lensed glasses and a knitted hat, who Strike assumed was Rochelle’s aunt, had chosen to sit three benches from the front of the crematorium, keeping her distance from the cheap coffin. The balding worker whom Strike had met at the homeless hostel had come, in an open shirt and a leather jacket; behind him was a fresh-faced, neatly suited young Asian man who Strike thought might turn out to be the psychiatrist who had run Rochelle’s outpatient group.

  Strike, in his old navy suit, and Robin, in the black skirt and jacket she wore to interviews, sat at the very back. Across the aisle were Bristow, miserable and pale, and Alison, whose damp double-breasted black raincoat glistened a little in the cold light.

  Cheap red curtains opened, the coffin slid out of sight, and the drowned girl was consumed by fire. The silent mourners exchanged pained, awkward smiles at the back of the crematorium; hovering, trying not to add unseemly haste of departure to the other inadequacies of the service. Rochelle’s aunt, who projected an aura of eccentricity that bordered on instability, introduced herself as Winifred, then announced loudly, with an accusatory undertone:

  “Dere’s sandwiches in the pub. I thought dere would be more people.”

  She led the way outside, as if brooking no opposition, up the street to the Red Lion, the six other mourners following in her wake, heads bowed slightly against the rain.

  The promised sandwiches sat, dry and unappetizing, on a metal foil tray covered in cling film, on a small table in the corner of the dingy pub. At some point on the walk to the Red Lion Aunt Winifred had realized who John Bristow was, and she now took overpowering possession of him, pinning him up against the bar, gabbling at him without pause. Bristow responded whenever she allowed him to get a word in edgewise, but the looks he cast towards Strike, who was talking to Rochelle’s psychiatrist, became more frequent and desperate as the minutes passed.

  The psychiatrist parried all Strike’s attempts to engage him in conversation about the outpatients’ group he had run, finally countering a question about disclosures Rochelle might have made with a polite but firm reminder about patient confidentiality.

  “Were you surprised that she killed herself?”

  “No, not really. She was a very troubled girl, you know, and Lula Landry’s death was a great shock to her.”

  Shortly afterwards he issued a general farewell and left.

  Robin, who had been trying to make conversation with a monosyllabic Alison at a small table beside the window, gave up and headed for the Ladies.

  Strike ambled across the small lounge and sat down in Robin’s abandoned seat. Alison threw him an unfriendly look, then resumed her contemplation of Bristow, who was still being harangued by Rochelle’s aunt. Alison had not unbuttoned her rain-flecked coat. A small glass of what looked like port stood on the table in front of her, and a slightly scornful smile played around her mouth, as though she found her surroundings ramshackle and inadequate. Strike was still trying to think of a good opener when she said unexpectedly:

  “John was supposed to be at a meeting with Conway Oates’s executors this morning. He’s left Tony to meet them on his own. Tony’s absolutely furious.”

>   Her tone implied that Strike was in some way responsible for this, and that he deserved to know what trouble he had caused. She took a sip of port. Her hair hung limply to her shoulders and her big hands dwarfed the glass. In spite of a plainness that would have made wallflowers of other women, she radiated a great sense of self-importance.

  “You don’t think it was a nice gesture for John to come to the funeral?” asked Strike.

  Alison gave a scathing little “huh,” a token laugh.

  “It’s not as though he knew this girl.”

  “Why did you come along, then?”

  “Tony wanted me to.”

  Strike noted the pleasurable self-consciousness with which she pronounced her boss’s name.

  “Why?”

  “To keep an eye on John.”

  “Tony thinks John needs watching, does he?”

  She did not answer.

  “They share you, John and Tony, don’t they?”

  “What?” she said sharply.

  He was glad to have discomposed her.

  “They share your services? As a secretary?”

  “Oh—oh, no. I work for Tony and Cyprian; I’m the senior partners’ secretary.”

  “Ah. I wonder why I thought you were John’s too?”

  “I work on a completely different level,” said Alison. “John uses the typing pool. I have nothing to do with him at work.”

  “Yet romance blossomed across secretarial rank and floors?”

  She met his facetiousness with more disdainful silence. She seemed to see Strike as intrinsically offensive, somebody undeserving of manners, beyond the pale.

  The hostel worker stood alone in a corner, helping himself to sandwiches, palpably killing time until he could decently leave. Robin emerged from the Ladies, and was instantly suborned by Bristow, who seemed eager for assistance in coping with Aunt Winifred.

  “So, how long have you and John been together?” asked Strike.

  “A few months.”

  “You got together before Lula died, did you?”

  “He asked me out not long afterwards,” she said.

  “He must have been in a pretty bad way, was he?”

  “He was a complete mess.”

  She did not sound sympathetic, but slightly contemptuous.

  “Had he been flirting for a while?”

  He expected her to refuse to answer; but he was wrong. Though she tried to pretend otherwise, there was unmistakable self-satisfaction and pride in her answer.

  “He came upstairs to see Tony. Tony was busy, so John came to wait in my office. He started talking about his sister, and he got emotional. I gave him tissues, and he ended up asking me out to dinner.”

  In spite of what seemed to be lukewarm feelings for Bristow, he thought that she was proud of his overtures; they were a kind of trophy. Strike wondered whether Alison had ever, before desperate John Bristow came along, been asked out to dinner. It had been the collision of two people with an unhealthy need: I gave him tissues, and he asked me out to dinner.

  The hostel worker was buttoning up his jacket. Catching Strike’s eye, he gave a farewell wave, and departed without speaking to anyone.

  “So how does the big boss feel about his secretary dating his nephew?”

  “It’s not up to Tony what I do in my private life,” she said.

  “True enough,” said Strike. “Anyway, he can’t talk about mixing business with pleasure, can he? Sleeping with Cyprian May’s wife as he is.”

  Momentarily fooled by his casual tone, Alison opened her mouth to respond; then the meaning of his words hit her, and her self-assurance shattered.

  “That’s not true!” she said fiercely, her face burning. “Who said that to you? It’s a lie. It’s a complete lie. It’s not true. It isn’t.”

  He heard a terrified child behind the woman’s protest.

  “Really? Why did Cyprian May send you to Oxford to find Tony on the seventh of January then?”

  “That—it was only—he’d forgotten to get Tony to sign some documents, that’s all.”

  “And he didn’t use a fax machine or a courier because…?”

  “They were sensitive documents.”

  “Alison,” said Strike, enjoying her agitation, “we both know that’s balls. Cyprian thought Tony had sloped off somewhere with Ursula for the day, didn’t he?”

  “He didn’t! He hadn’t!”

  Up at the bar, Aunt Winifred was waving her arms, windmill-like, at Bristow and Robin, who were wearing frozen smiles.

  “You found him in Oxford, did you?”

  “No, because—”

  “What time did you get there?”

  “About eleven, but he’d—”

  “Cyprian must’ve sent you out the moment you got to work, did he?”

  “The documents were urgent.”

  “But you didn’t find Tony at his hotel or in the conference center?”

  “I missed him,” she said, in furious desperation, “because he’d gone back to London to visit Lady Bristow.”

  “Ah,” said Strike. “Right. Bit odd that he didn’t let you or Cyprian know that he was going back to London, isn’t it?”

  “No,” she said, with a valiant attempt at regaining her vanished superiority. “He was contactable. He was still on his mobile. It didn’t matter.”

  “Did you call his mobile?”

  She did not answer.

  “Did you call it, and not get an answer?”

  She sipped her port in simmering silence.

  “In fairness, it would break the mood, taking a call from your secretary while you’re on the job.”

  He thought that she would find this offensive, and was not disappointed.

  “You’re disgusting. You’re really disgusting,” she said thickly, her cheeks a dull dark red with the prudishness she tried to disguise under a show of superiority.

  “Do you live alone?” he asked her.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” she asked, completely off-balance now.

  “Just wondered. So you don’t see anything odd in Tony booking into an Oxford hotel for the night, driving back to London the following morning, then returning to Oxford again, in time to check out of his hotel the next day?”

  “He went back to Oxford so that he could attend the conference in the afternoon,” she said doggedly.

  “Oh, really? Did you hang around and meet him there?”

  “He was there,” she said evasively.

  “You’ve got proof, have you?”

  She said nothing.

  “Tell me,” said Strike, “would you rather think that Tony was in bed with Ursula May all day, or having some kind of confrontation with his niece?”

  Over at the bar, Aunt Winifred was straightening her knitted hat and retying her belt. She seemed to be preparing to leave.

  For several seconds Alison fought herself, and then, with an air of unleashing something long suppressed, she said in a ferocious whisper:

  “They aren’t having an affair. I know they aren’t. It wouldn’t happen. Ursula only cares about money; it’s all that matters to her, and Tony’s got less than Cyprian. Ursula wouldn’t want Tony. She wouldn’t.”

  “Oh, you never know. Physical passion might have overpowered her mercenary tendencies,” said Strike, watching Alison closely. “It can happen. It’s hard for another man to judge, but he’s not bad-looking, Tony, is he?”

  He saw the rawness of her pain, her fury, and her voice was choked as she said:

  “Tony’s right—you’re taking advantage—in it for all you can get—John’s gone funny—Lula jumped. She jumped. She was always unbalanced. John’s like his mother, he’s hysterical, he imagines things. Lula took drugs, she was one of those sort of people, out of control, always causing trouble and trying to get attention. Spoiled. Throwing money around. She could have anything she liked, anyone she wanted, but nothing was enough for her.”

  “I didn’t realize you knew her.”


  “I—Tony’s told me about her.”

  “He really didn’t like her, did he?”

  “He just saw her for what she was. She was no good. Some women,” she said, her chest heaving beneath the shapeless raincoat, “aren’t.”

  A chill breeze cut through the musty air of the lounge as the door swung shut behind Rochelle’s aunt. Bristow and Robin kept smiling weakly until the door had closed completely, then exchanged looks of relief.

  The barman had disappeared. Only four of them were left in the little lounge now. Strike became aware, for the first time, of the eighties ballad playing in the background: Jennifer Rush, “The Power of Love.” Bristow and Robin approached their table.

  “I thought you wanted to speak to Rochelle’s aunt?” asked Bristow, looking aggrieved, as though he had been through an ordeal for nothing.

  “Not enough to chase after her,” replied Strike cheerfully. “You can fill me in.”

  Strike could tell, by the expressions on Robin’s and Bristow’s faces, that both thought this attitude strangely lackadaisical. Alison was fumbling for something in her bag, her own face hidden.

  The rain had stopped, the pavements were slippery and the sky was gloomy, threatening a fresh downpour. The two women walked ahead in silence, while Bristow earnestly related to Strike all that he could remember of Aunt Winifred’s conversation. Strike, however, was not listening. He was watching the backs of the two women, both in black—almost, to the careless observer, alike, interchangeable. He remembered the sculptures on either side of the Queen’s Gate; not identical at all, in spite of the assumptions made by lazy eyes; one male, one female, the same species, yes, but profoundly different.

  When he saw Robin and Alison come to a halt beside a BMW he assumed must be Bristow’s, he too slowed up, and cut across Bristow’s rambling recital of Rochelle’s stormy relations with her family.

  “John, I need to check something with you.”

  “Fire away.”

  “You say you heard your uncle come into your mother’s flat on the morning before Lula died?”

  “Yep, that’s right.”