The Cuckoo's Calling

“Tansy Bestigui definitely witnessed Landry falling past the window, though, didn’t she? Because Wilson reckons he heard the body fall right before Mrs. Bestigui started screaming.”

“Maybe she saw it, but she wasn’t having a pee. She was doing a couple of lines of charlie in the bathroom. We found it there, cut and ready for her.”

“Left some, had she?”

“Yeah. Presumably the body falling past the window put her off.”

“The window’s visible from the bathroom?”

“Yeah. Well, just.”

“You got there pretty quickly, didn’t you?”

“Uniformed lot were there in about eight minutes, and Carver and I were there in about twenty.” Wardle lifted his glass, as though to toast the force’s efficiency.

“I’ve spoken to Wilson, the security guard,” said Strike.

“Yeah? He didn’t do bad,” said Wardle, with a trace of condescension. “It wasn’t his fault he had the runs. But he didn’t touch anything, and he did a proper search right after she’d jumped. Yeah, he did all right.”

“He and his colleagues were a bit lazy on the door codes.”

“People always are. Too many pin numbers and passwords to remember. Know the feeling.”

“Bristow’s interested in the possibilities of the quarter of an hour when Wilson was in the bog.”

“We were, too, for about five minutes, before we’d satisfied ourselves that Mrs. Bestigui was a publicity-mad cokehead.”

“Wilson mentioned that the pool was unlocked.”

“Can he explain how a murderer got into the pool area, or back to it, without walking right past him? A fucking pool,” said Wardle, “nearly as big as the one I’ve got at my gym, and all for the use of three fucking people. A gym on the ground floor behind the security desk. Underground fucking parking. Flats done up with marble and shit like…like a fucking five-star hotel.”

The policeman sat shaking his head very slowly over the unequal distribution of wealth.

“Different world,” he said.

“I’m interested in the middle flat,” said Strike.

“Deeby Macc’s?” said Wardle, and Strike was surprised to see a grin of genuine warmth spread across the policeman’s face. “What about it?”

“Did you go in there?”

“I had a look, but Bryant had already searched it. Empty. Windows bolted, alarm set and working properly.”

“Is Bryant the one who knocked into the table and smashed a big floral arrangement?”

Wardle snorted.

“Heard about that, did you? Mr. Bestigui wasn’t too chuffed about it. Oh yeah. Two hundred white roses in a crystal vase the size of a dustbin. Apparently he’d read that Macc asks for white roses in his rider. His rider,” Wardle said, as though Strike’s silence implied an ignorance of what the term meant. “Stuff they ask for in their dressing rooms. I’d’ve thought you’d know about this stuff.”

Strike ignored the insinuation. He had hoped for better from Anstis.

“Ever find out why Bestigui wanted Macc to have roses?”

“Just schmoozing, isn’t it? Probably wanted to put Macc in a film. He was fucked off to the back teeth when he heard Bryant had ruined them. Yelling the place down when he found out.”

“Anyone find it strange that he was upset about a bunch of flowers, when his neighbor’s lying in the street with her head smashed in?”

“He’s one obnoxious fucker, Bestigui,” said Wardle, with feeling. “Used to people jumping to attention when he speaks. He tried treating all of us like staff, till he realized that wasn’t clever.

“But the shouting wasn’t really about the flowers. He was trying to drown out his wife, give her a chance to pull herself together. He kept forcing his way in between her and anyone who wanted to question her. Big guy as well, old Freddie.”

“What was he worried about?”

“That the longer she bawled and shook like a frozen whippet, the more bloody obvious it became that she’d been doing coke. He must’ve known it was lying around somewhere in the flat. He can’t have been delighted to have the Met come bursting in. So he tried to distract everyone with a tantrum about his five-hundred-quid floral arrangement.

“I read somewhere that he’s divorcing her. I’m not surprised. He’s used to the press tiptoeing around him, because he’s such a litigious bastard; he can’t have enjoyed all the attention he got after Tansy shot her mouth off. The press made hay while they could. Rehashed old stories about him throwing plates at underlings. Punches in meetings. They say he paid his last wife a massive lump sum to stop her talking about his sex life in court. He’s pretty well known as a prize shit.”

“You didn’t fancy him as a suspect?”

“Oh, we fancied him a lot; he was on the spot and he’s got a rep for violence. It never looked likely, though. If his wife knew that he’d done it, or that he’d been out of the flat at the moment Landry fell, I’m betting she’d have told us so: she was out of control when we got there. But she said he’d been in bed, and the bedclothes were disarranged and looked slept in.

“Plus, if he’d managed to sneak out of the flat without her realizing it, and gone up to Landry’s place, we’re left with the problem of how he got past Wilson. He can’t have taken the lift, so he’d have passed Wilson in the stairwell, coming down.”

“So the timings rule him out?”

Wardle hesitated.

“Well, it’s just possible. Just, assuming Bestigui can move a damn sight faster than most men of his age and weight, and that he started running the moment he pushed her over. But there’s still the fact that we didn’t find his DNA anywhere in the flat, the question of how he got out of the flat without his wife knowing he’d gone, and the small matter of why Landry would have let him in. All her friends agreed she didn’t like him. Anyway,” Wardle finished the dregs of his pint, “Bestigui’s the kind of man who’d hire a killer if he wanted someone taken care of. He wouldn’t sully his own hands.”

“Another one?”

Wardle checked his watch.

“My shout,” he said, and he ambled up to the bar. The three young women standing around the high table fell silent, watching him greedily. Wardle threw them a smirk as he walked back past with his drinks, and they glanced over at him as he resumed the bar stool beside Strike.

“How d’you think Wilson shapes up as a possible killer?” Strike asked the policeman.

“Badly,” said Wardle. “He couldn’t have got up and down quickly enough to meet Tansy Bestigui on the ground floor. Mind you, his CV’s a crock of shit. He was employed on the basis of being ex-police, and he was never in the force.”

“Interesting. Where was he?”

“He’s been knocking around the security world for years. He admitted he’d lied to get his first job, about ten years ago, and he’d just kept it on his CV.”

“He seems to have liked Landry.”

“Yeah. He’s older than he looks,” said Wardle, inconsequentially. “He’s a grandfather. They don’t show age like us, do they, Afro-Caribbeans? I wouldn’t’ve put him as any older than you.” Strike wondered idly how old Wardle thought he was.

“You got forensics to check out her flat?”

“Oh yeah,” said Wardle, “but that was purely because the higher-ups wanted to put the thing beyond reasonable doubt. We knew within the first twenty-four hours it had to be suicide. We went the extra mile, though, with the whole fucking world watching.”

He spoke with poorly disguised pride.

“The cleaner had been through the whole place that morning—sexy Polish girl, crap English, but bloody thorough with a duster—so the day’s prints stood out good and clear. Nothing unusual.”

“Wilson’s prints were in there, presumably, because he searched the place after she fell?”

“Yeah, but nowhere suspicious.”

“So as far as you’re concerned, there were only three people in the whole building when sh

e fell. Deeby Macc should have been there, but…”

“…he went straight from the airport to a nightclub, yeah,” said Wardle. Again, a broad and apparently involuntary grin illuminated his face. “I interviewed Deeby at Claridges the day after she died. Massive bloke. Like you,” he said, with a glance at Strike’s bulky torso, “only fit.” Strike took the hit without demur. “Proper ex-gangster. He’s been in and out of the nick in LA. He nearly didn’t get a visa to get into the UK.

“He had an entourage with him,” said Wardle. “All hanging around the room, rings on every finger, tattoos on their necks. He was the biggest, though. One scary fucker Deeby’d be, if you met him down an alleyway. Politer than Bestigui by ten fucking miles. Asked me how the hell I could do my job without a gun.”

The policeman was beaming. Strike could not help drawing the conclusion that Eric Wardle, CID, was, in this case, as starstruck as Kieran Kolovas-Jones.

“Wasn’t a long interview, seeing as he’d only just got off a plane and never set foot inside Kentigern Gardens. Routine. I got him to sign his latest CD for me at the end,” Wardle added, as though he could not help himself. “That brought the house down, he loved it. The missus wanted to put it on eBay, but I’m keeping…”

Wardle stopped talking with an air of having given away a little more than he had intended. Amused, Strike helped himself to a handful of pork scratchings.

“What about Evan Duffield?”

“Him,” said Wardle. The stardust that had sparkled over the policeman’s account of Deeby Macc was gone; the policeman was scowling. “Little junkie shit. He pissed us around from start to finish. He went straight into rehab the day after she died.”

“I saw. Where?”

“Priory, where else? Fucking rest cure.”

“So when did you interview him?”

“Next day, but we had to find him first; his people were being as obstructive as possible. Same story as Bestigui, wasn’t it? They didn’t want us to know what he’d really been doing. My missus,” said Wardle, scowling even harder, “thinks he’s sexy. You married?”

“No,” said Strike.

“Anstis told me you left the army to get married to some woman who looks like a supermodel.”

“What was Duffield’s story, once you got to him?”

“They’d had a big bust-up in the club, Uzi. Plenty of witnesses to that. She left, and his story was that he followed her, about five minutes later, wearing this fucking wolf mask. It covers the whole head. Lifelike, hairy thing. He told us he’d got it from a fashion shoot.”

Wardle’s expression was eloquent of contempt.

“He liked putting this thing on to get in and out of places, to piss off the paparazzi. So, after Landry left Uzi, he got in his car—he had a driver outside, waiting for him—and went to Kentigern Gardens. Driver confirmed all that. Yeah, all right,” Wardle corrected himself impatiently, “he confirmed that he drove a man in a wolf’s head, who he assumed was Duffield as he was of Duffield’s height and build, and wearing what looked like Duffield’s clothes, and speaking in Duffield’s voice, to Kentigern Gardens.”

“But he didn’t take the wolf head off on the journey?”

“It’s only about fifteen minutes to her flat from Uzi. No, he didn’t take it off. He’s a childish little prick.

“So then, by Duffield’s own account, he saw the paps outside her flat and decided not to go in after all. He told the driver to take him off to Soho, where he let him out. Duffield walked round the corner to his dealer’s flat in d’Arblay Street, where he shot up.”

“Still wearing the wolf’s head?”

“No, he took it off there,” said Wardle. “The dealer, name of Whycliff, is an ex-public schoolboy with a habit way worse than Duffield’s. He gave a full statement agreeing that Duffield had come round at about half past two. It was only the pair of them there, and yeah, I’d take long odds that Whycliff would lie for Duffield, but a woman on the ground floor heard the doorbell ring and says she saw Duffield on the stair.

“Anyway, Duffield left Whycliff’s around four, with the bloody wolf’s head back on, and rambled off towards the place where he thought his car and driver were waiting; except that the driver was gone. The driver claimed a misunderstanding. He thought Duffield was an arsehole; he made that clear when we took his statement. Duffield wasn’t paying him; the car was on Landry’s account.

“So then Duffield, who’s got no money on him, walks all the way to Ciara Porter’s place in Notting Hill. We found a few people who’d seen a man wearing a wolf’s head strolling along relevant streets, and there’s footage of him cadging a free box of matches from a woman in an all-night garage.”

“Can you make out his face?”

“No, because he only shoved the wolf head up to speak to her, and all you can see is its snout. She said it was Duffield, though.

“He got to Porter’s around half four. She let him sleep on the sofa, and about an hour later she got the news about Landry being dead, and woke him up to tell him. Cue histrionics and rehab.”

“You checked for a suicide note?” asked Strike.

“Yeah. There was nothing in the flat, nothing on her laptop, but that wasn’t a surprise. She did it on the spur of the moment, didn’t she? She was bipolar, she’d just argued with that little tosser and it pushed her over—well, you know what I mean.”

Wardle checked his watch, and drained the last of his pint.

“I’m gonna have to go. The wife’ll be pissed off, I told her I’d only be half an hour.”

The over-tanned girls had left without either man noticing. Out on the pavement, both lit up cigarettes.

“I hate this fucking smoking ban,” said Wardle, zipping his leather jacket up to the neck.

“Have we got a deal, then?” asked Strike.

Cigarette between his lips, Wardle pulled on a pair of gloves.

“I dunno about that.”

“C’mon, Wardle,” said Strike, handing the policeman a card, which Wardle accepted as though it were a joke item. “I’ve given you Brett Fearney.”

Wardle laughed outright.

“Not yet you haven’t.”

He slipped Strike’s card into a pocket, inhaled, blew smoke skywards, then shot the larger man a look compounded of curiosity and appraisal.

“Yeah, all right. If we get Fearney, you can have the file.”

11

“EVAN DUFFIELD’S AGENT SAYS HIS client isn’t taking any further calls or giving any interviews about Lula Landry,” said Robin next morning. “I did make it clear that you’re not a journalist, but he was adamant. And the people in Guy Somé’s office are ruder than Freddie Bestigui’s. You’d think I was trying to get an audience with the Pope.”

“OK,” said Strike. “I’ll see whether I can get at him through Bristow.”

It was the first time that Robin had seen Strike in a suit. He looked, she thought, like a rugby player en route to an international: large, conventionally smart in his dark jacket and subdued tie. He was on his knees, searching through one of the cardboard boxes he had brought from Charlotte’s flat. Robin was averting her gaze from his boxed-up possessions. They were still avoiding any mention of the fact that Strike was living in his office.

“Aha,” he said, finally locating, from amid a pile of his mail, a bright blue envelope: the invitation to his nephew’s party. “Bollocks,” he added, on opening it.

“What’s the matter?”

“It doesn’t say how old he is,” said Strike. “My nephew.”

Robin was curious about Strike’s relations with his family. As she had never been officially informed, however, that Strike had numerous half-brothers and -sisters, a famous father and a mildly infamous mother, she bit back all questions and continued to open the day’s paltry mail.

Strike got up off the floor, replaced the cardboard box in a corner of the inner office and returned to Robin.

“What’s that?” he asked, seeing a sheet of photocop

ied newsprint on the desk.

“I kept it for you,” she said diffidently. “You said you were glad you’d seen that story about Evan Duffield…I thought you might be interested in this, if you haven’t already seen it.”

It was a neatly clipped article about film producer Freddie Bestigui, taken from the previous day’s Evening Standard.

“Excellent; I’ll read that on the way to lunch with his wife.”

“Soon to be ex,” said Robin. “It’s all in that article. He’s not very lucky in love, Mr. Bestigui.”

“From what Wardle told me, he’s not a very lovable man,” said Strike.

“How did you get that policeman to talk to you?” Robin said, unable to hold back her curiosity on this point. She was desperate to learn more about the process and progress of the investigation.

“We’ve got a mutual friend,” said Strike. “Bloke I knew in Afghanistan; Met officer in the TA.”

“You were in Afghanistan?”

“Yeah.” Strike was pulling on his overcoat, the folded article on Freddie Bestigui and the invitation to Jack’s party between his teeth.

“What were you doing in Afghanistan?”

“Investigating a Killed In Action,” said Strike. “Military police.”

“Oh,” said Robin.

Military police did not tally with Matthew’s impression of a charlatan, or a waster.

“Why did you leave?”

“Injured,” said Strike.

He had described that injury to Wilson in the starkest of terms, but he was wary of being equally frank with Robin. He could imagine her shocked expression, and he stood in no need of her sympathy.

“Don’t forget to call Peter Gillespie,” Robin reminded him, as he headed out of the door.

Strike read the photocopied article as he rode the Tube to Bond Street. Freddie Bestigui had inherited his first fortune from a father who had made a great deal of money in haulage; he had made his second by producing highly commercial films that serious critics treated with derision. The producer was currently going to court to refute claims, by two newspapers, that he had behaved with gross impropriety towards a young female employee, whose silence he had subsequently bought. The accusations, carefully hedged around with many “alleged”s and “reported”s, included aggressive sexual advances and a degree of physical bullying. They had been made “by a source close to the alleged victim,” the girl herself having refused either to press charges or to speak to the press. The fact that Freddie was currently divorcing his latest wife, Tansy, was mentioned in the concluding paragraph, which ended with a reminder that the unhappy couple had been in the building on the night that Lula Landry took her own life. The reader was left with the odd impression that the Bestiguis’ mutual unhappiness might have influenced Landry in her decision to jump.