The Cuckoo's Calling Read online

  He could still feel the missing foot, ripped from his leg two and a half years before. It was there, under the sleeping bag; he could flex the vanished toes if he wanted to. Exhausted as Strike was, it took a while for him to fall asleep, and when he did, Charlotte wove in and out of every dream, gorgeous, vituperative and haunted.

  Part Two

  Non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco.

  No stranger to trouble myself, I am learning to care for the unhappy.

  Virgil, Aeneid, Book 1

  1

  “ ‘WITH ALL THE GALLONS OF NEWSPRINT and hours of televised talk that have been poured forth on the subject of Lula Landry’s death, rarely has the question been asked: why do we care?

  “ ‘She was beautiful, of course, and beautiful girls have been helping to shift newspapers ever since Dana Gibson cross-hatched lazy-lidded sirens for the New Yorker.

  “ ‘She was black, too, or rather, a delicious shade of café au lait, and this, we were constantly told, represented progression within an industry concerned merely with surfaces. (I am dubious: could it not be that, this season, café au lait was the “in” shade? Have we seen a sudden influx of black women into the industry in Landry’s wake? Have our notions of female beauty been revolutionized by her success? Are black Barbies now outselling white?)

  “ ‘The family and friends of the flesh-and-blood Landry will be distraught, of course, and have my profound sympathy. We, however, the reading, watching public, have no personal grief to justify our excesses. Young women die, every day, in “tragic” (which is to say, unnatural) circumstances: in car crashes, from overdoses, and, occasionally, because they attempted to starve themselves into conformity with the body shape sported by Landry and her ilk. Do we spare any of these dead girls more than a passing thought, as we turn the page, and obscure their ordinary faces?’ ”

  Robin paused to take a sip of coffee and clear her throat.

  “So far, so sanctimonious,” muttered Strike.

  He was sitting at the end of Robin’s desk, pasting photographs into an open folder, numbering each one, and writing a description of the subject of each in an index at the back. Robin continued where she had left off, reading from her computer monitor.

  “ ‘Our disproportionate interest, even grief, bears examination. Right up until the moment that Landry took her fatal dive, it is a fair bet that tens of thousands of women would have changed places with her. Sobbing young girls laid flowers beneath the balcony of Landry’s £4.5 million penthouse flat after her crushed body was cleared away. Has even one aspiring model been deterred in her pursuit of tabloid fame by the rise and brutal fall of Lula Landry?’ ”

  “Get on with it,” said Strike. “Her, not you,” he added hastily. “It’s a woman writing, right?”

  “Yes, a Melanie Telford,” said Robin, scrolling back to the top of the screen to reveal the head shot of a jowly middle-aged blonde. “Do you want me to skip the rest?”

  “No, no, keep going.”

  Robin cleared her throat once more and continued.

  “ ‘The answer, surely, is no.’ That’s the bit about aspiring models being deterred.”

  “Yeah, got that.”

  “Right, well…‘A hundred years after Emmeline Pankhurst, a generation of pubescent females seeks nothing better than to be reduced to the status of a cut-out paper doll, a flat avatar whose fictionalized adventures mask such disturbance and distress that she threw herself from a third-story window. Appearance is all: the designer Guy Somé was quick to inform the press that she jumped wearing one of his dresses, which sold out in the twenty-four hours after her death. What better advert could there be than that Lula Landry chose to meet her maker in Somé?

  “ ‘No, it is not the young woman whose loss we bemoan, for she was no more real to most of us than the Gibson girls who dripped from Dana’s pen. What we mourn is the physical image flickering across a multitude of red-tops and celeb mags; an image that sold us clothes and handbags and a notion of celebrity that, in her demise, proved to be empty and transient as a soap bubble. What we actually miss, were we honest enough to admit it, are the entertaining antics of that paper-thin good-time girl, whose strip-cartoon existence of drug abuse, riotous living, fancy clothes and dangerous on-off boyfriend we can no longer enjoy.

  “ ‘Landry’s funeral was covered as lavishly as any celebrity wedding in the tawdry magazines who feed on the famous, and whose publishers will surely mourn her demise longer than most. We were permitted glimpses of various celebrities in tears, but her family were given the tiniest picture of all; they were a surprisingly unphotogenic lot, you see.

  “ ‘Yet the account of one mourner genuinely touched me. In response to the inquiry of a man who she may not have realized was a reporter, she revealed that she had met Landry at a treatment facility, and that they had become friends. She had taken her place in a rear pew to say farewell, and slipped as quietly away again. She has not sold her story, unlike so many others who consorted with Landry in life. It may tell us something touching about the real Lula Landry, that she inspired genuine affection in an ordinary girl. As for the rest of us—’ ”

  “Doesn’t she give this ordinary girl from the treatment facility a name?” interrupted Strike.

  Robin scanned the story silently.

  “No.”

  Strike scratched his imperfectly shaven chin.

  “Bristow didn’t mention any friend from a treatment facility.”

  “D’you think she could be important?” asked Robin eagerly, turning in her swivel chair to look at him.

  “It could be interesting to talk to someone who knew Landry from therapy, instead of nightclubs.”

  Strike had only asked Robin to look up Landry’s connections on the internet because he had nothing else for her to do. She had already telephoned Derrick Wilson, the security guard, and arranged a meeting with Strike on Friday morning at the Phoenix Café in Brixton. The day’s post had comprised two circulars and a final demand; there had been no calls, and she had already organized everything in the office that could be alphabetized, stacked or arranged according to type and color.

  Inspired by her Google proficiency of the previous day, therefore, he had set her this fairly pointless task. For the past hour or so she had been reading out odd snippets and articles about Landry and her associates, while Strike put into order a stack of receipts, telephone bills and photographs relating to his only other current case.

  “Shall I see whether I can find out more about that girl, then?” asked Robin.

  “Yeah,” said Strike absently, examining a photograph of a stocky, balding man in a suit and a very ripe-looking redhead in tight jeans. The besuited man was Mr. Geoffrey Hook; the redhead, however, bore no resemblance to Mrs. Hook, who, prior to Bristow’s arrival in his office, had been Strike’s only client. Strike stuck the photograph into Mrs. Hook’s file and labeled it No. 12, while Robin turned back to the computer.

  For a few moments there was silence, except for the flick of photographs and the tapping of Robin’s short nails against the keys. The door into the inner office behind Strike was closed to conceal the camp bed and other signs of habitation, and the air was heavy with the scent of artificial limes, due to Strike’s liberal use of cheap air-freshener before Robin had arrived. Lest she perceive any tinge of sexual interest in his decision to sit at the other end of her desk, he had pretended to notice her engagement ring for the first time before sitting down, then made polite, studiously impersonal conversation about her fiancé for five minutes. He learned that he was a newly qualified accountant called Matthew; that it was to live with Matthew that Robin had moved to London from Yorkshire the previous month, and that the temping was a stopgap measure before finding a permanent job.

  “D’you think she could be in one of these pictures?” Robin asked, after a while. “The girl from the treatment center?”

  She had brought up a screen full of identically sized photographs, each showing one or more pe
ople dressed in dark clothes, all heading from left to right, making for the funeral. Crash barriers and the blurred faces of a crowd formed the backdrop to each picture.

  Most striking of all was the picture of a very tall, pale girl with golden hair drawn back into a ponytail, on whose head was perched a confection of black net and feathers. Strike recognized her, because everyone knew who she was: Ciara Porter, the model with whom Lula had spent much of her last day on earth; the friend with whom Landry had been photographed for one of the most famous shots of her career. Porter looked beautiful and somber as she walked towards Lula’s funeral service. She seemed to have attended alone, because there was no disembodied hand supporting her thin arm or resting on her long back.

  Next to Porter’s picture was that of a couple captioned Film producer Freddie Bestigui and wife Tansy. Bestigui was built like a bull, with short legs, a broad barrel chest and a thick neck. His hair was gray and brush-cut; his face a crumpled mass of folds, bags and moles, out of which his fleshy nose protruded like a tumor. Nevertheless, he cut an imposing figure in his expensive black overcoat, with his skeletal young wife on his arm. Almost nothing could be discerned of Tansy’s true appearance, behind the upturned fur of her coat collar and the enormous round sunglasses.

  Last in this top row of photographs was Guy Somé, fashion designer. He was a thin black man who was wearing a midnight-blue frock coat of exaggerated cut. His face was bowed and his expression indiscernible, due to the way the light fell on his dark head, though three large diamond earrings in the lobe facing the camera had caught the flashes and glittered like stars. Like Porter, he appeared to have arrived unaccompanied, although a small group of mourners, unworthy of their own legends, had been captured within the frame of his picture.

  Strike drew his chair nearer to the screen, though still keeping more than an arm’s length between himself and Robin. One of the unidentified faces, half severed by the edge of the picture, was John Bristow, recognizable by the short upper lip and the hamsterish teeth. He had his arm around a stricken-looking older woman with white hair; her face was gaunt and ghastly, the nakedness of her grief touching. Behind this pair was a tall, haughty-looking man who gave the impression of deploring the surroundings in which he found himself.

  “I can’t see anyone who might be this ordinary girl,” said Robin, moving the screen down to scrutinize more pictures of famous and beautiful people looking sad and serious. “Oh, look…Evan Duffield.”

  He was dressed in a black T-shirt, black jeans and a military-style black overcoat. His hair, too, was black; his face all sharp planes and hollows; icy blue eyes stared directly into the camera lens. Though taller than both of them, he looked fragile compared to the companions flanking him: a large man in a suit and an anxious-looking older woman, whose mouth was open and who was making a gesture as though to clear a path ahead of them. The threesome reminded Strike of parents steering a sick child away from a party. Strike noticed that, in spite of Duffield’s air of disorientation and distress, he had made a good job of applying his eyeliner.

  “Look at those flowers!”

  Duffield slid up into the top of the screen and vanished: Robin had paused on the photograph of an enormous wreath in the shape of what Strike took, initially, to be a heart, before realizing it represented two curved angel wings, composed of white roses. An inset photograph showed a close-up of the attached card.

  “ ‘Rest in peace, Angel Lula. Deeby Macc,’ ” Robin read aloud.

  “Deeby Macc? The rapper? So they knew each other, did they?”

  “No, I don’t think so; but there was that whole thing about him renting a flat in her building; she’d been mentioned in a couple of his songs, hadn’t she? The press were all excited about him staying there…”

  “You’re well informed on the subject.”

  “Oh, you know, just magazines,” said Robin vaguely, scrolling back through the funeral photographs.

  “What kind of name is ‘Deeby’?” Strike wondered aloud.

  “It comes from his initials. It’s ‘D. B.’ really,” she enunciated clearly. “His real name’s Daryl Brandon Macdonald.”

  “A rap fan, are you?”

  “No,” said Robin, still intent on the screen. “I just remember things like that.”

  She clicked off the images she was perusing and began tapping away on the keyboard again. Strike returned to his photographs. The next showed Mr. Geoffrey Hook kissing his ginger-haired companion, hand palpating one large, canvas-covered buttock, outside Ealing Broadway Tube station.

  “Here’s a bit of film on YouTube, look,” said Robin. “Deeby Macc talking about Lula after she died.”

  “Let’s see it,” said Strike, rolling his chair forwards a couple of feet and then, on second thought, back one.

  The grainy little video, three inches by four, jerked into life. A large black man wearing some kind of hooded top with a fist picked out in studs on the chest sat in a black leather chair, facing an unseen interviewer. His hair was closely shaven and he wore sunglasses.

  “…Lula Landry’s suicide?” said the interviewer, who was English.

  “That was fucked-up, man, that was fucked-up,” replied Deeby, running his hand over his smooth head. His voice was soft, deep and hoarse, with the very faintest trace of a lisp. “That’s what they do to success: they hunt you down, they tear you down. That’s what envy does, my friend. The motherfuckin’ press chased her out that window. Let her rest in peace, I say. She’s getting peace right now.”

  “Pretty shocking welcome to London for you,” said the interviewer, “with her, y’know, like, falling past your window?”

  Deeby Macc did not answer at once. He sat very still, staring at the interviewer through his opaque lenses. Then he said:

  “I wasn’t there, or you got someone who says I was?”

  The interviewer’s yelp of nervous, hastily stifled laughter jarred.

  “God, no, not at all—not…”

  Deeby turned his head and addressed someone standing off-camera.

  “Think I oughta’ve brought my lawyers?”

  The interviewer brayed with sycophantic laughter. Deeby looked back at him, still unsmiling.

  “Deeby Macc,” said the breathless interviewer, “thank you very much for your time.”

  An outstretched white hand slid forwards on to the screen; Deeby raised his own in a fist. The white hand reconstituted itself, and they bumped knuckles. Somebody off-screen laughed derisively. The video ended.

  “ ‘The motherfuckin’ press chased her out that window,’ ” Strike repeated, rolling his chair back to its original position. “Interesting point of view.”

  He felt his mobile phone vibrate in his trouser pocket, and drew it out. The sight of Charlotte’s name attached to a new text caused a surge of adrenalin through his body, as though he had just sighted a crouching beast of prey.

  I will be out on Friday morning between 9 and 12 if you want to collect your things.

  “What?” He had the impression that Robin had just spoken.

  “I said, there’s a horrible piece here about her birth mother.”

  “OK. Read it out.”

  He slid his mobile back into his pocket. As he bent his large head again over Mrs. Hook’s file, his thoughts seemed to reverberate as though a gong had been struck inside his skull.

  Charlotte was behaving with sinister reasonableness; feigning adult calm. She had taken their endlessly elaborate duel to a new level, never before reached or tested: “Now let’s do it like grown-ups.” Perhaps a knife would plunge between his shoulder blades as he walked through the front door of her flat; perhaps he would walk into the bedroom to discover her corpse, wrists slit, lying in a puddle of congealing blood in front of the fireplace.

  Robin’s voice was like the background drone of a vacuum cleaner. With an effort, he refocused his attention.

  “ ‘…sold the romantic story of her liaison with a young black man to as many tabloid journalists as we
re prepared to pay. There is nothing romantic, however, about Marlene Higson’s story as it is remembered by her old neighbors.

  “ ‘ “She was turning tricks,” says Vivian Cranfield, who lived in the flat above Higson’s at the time she fell pregnant with Landry. “There were men coming in and out of her place every hour of the day and night. She never knew who that baby’s father was, it could have been any of them. She never wanted the baby. I can still remember her out in the hall, crying, on her own, while her mum was busy with a punter. Tiny little thing in her nappy, hardly walking…someone must have called Social Services, and not before time. Best thing that ever happened to that girl, getting adopted.”

  “ ‘The truth will, no doubt, shock Landry, who has talked at length in the press about her reunion with her long-lost birth mother…’—this was written,” explained Robin, “before Lula died.”

  “Yeah,” said Strike, closing the folder abruptly. “D’ you fancy a walk?”

  2

  THE CAMERAS LOOKED LIKE MALEVOLENT shoeboxes atop their pole, each with a single blank, black eye. They pointed in opposite directions, staring the length of Alderbrook Road, which bustled with pedestrians and traffic. Both pavements were crammed with shops, bars and cafés. Double-deckers rumbled up and down bus lanes.

  “This is where Bristow’s Runner was caught on film,” observed Strike, turning his back on Alderbrook Road to look up the much quieter Bellamy Road, which led, lined with tall and palatial houses, into the residential heart of Mayfair. “He passed here twelve minutes after she fell…this’d be the quickest route from Kentigern Gardens. Night buses run here. Best bet to pick up a taxi. Not that that’d be a smart move if you’d just murdered a woman.”

  He buried himself again in an extremely battered A–Z. Strike did not seem worried that anyone might mistake him for a tourist. No doubt, thought Robin, it would not matter if they did, given his size.