The Cuckoo's Calling

“None; but I need to know that you could explain it clearly in court.”

Spanner looked, for the first time, truly intrigued.

“You serious?”

“Very. Would you be able to prove to a defending counsel that you know your stuff?”

“ ’Course I could.”

“Then just give me the important bits.”

Spanner hesitated for a moment, trying to read Strike’s expression. Finally he began:

“Password’s Agyeman, and it was reset five days before she died.”

“Spell it?”

Spanner did so, adding, to Strike’s surprise: “It’s a surname. Ghanaian. She bookmarked the homepage of SOAS—School of Oriental and African Studies—and it was on there. Look here.”

As he spoke, Spanner’s nimble fingers were clacking keyboard keys; he had brought up the home page he described, bordered with bright green, with sections on the school, news, staff, students, library and so on.

“When she died, though, it looked like this.”

And with another outburst of clicking, he retrieved an almost identical page, featuring, as the rapidly darting cursor soon revealed, a link to the obituary of one Professor J. P. Agyeman, Emeritus Professor of African Politics.

“She saved this version of the page,” said Spanner. “And her internet history shows she’d browsed Amazon for his books in the month before she died. She was looking at a lot of books on African history and politics round then.”

“Any evidence she applied to SOAS?”

“Not on here.”

“Anything else of interest?”

“Well, the only other thing I noticed was that a big photo file was deleted off it on the seventeenth of March.”

“How d’you know that?”

“There’s software that’ll help you recover even stuff people think’s gone from the hard drive,” said Spanner. “How d’you think they keep catching all those pedos?”

“Did you get it back?”

“Yeah. I’ve put it on here.” He handed Strike a memory stick. “I didn’t think you’d want me to put it back on.”

“No—so the photographs were…?”

“Nothing fancy. Just deleted. Like I say, your average punter doesn’t realize you’ve got to work a damn sight harder than pressing ‘delete’ if you really want to hide something.”

“Seventeenth of March,” said Strike.

“Yeah. St. Patrick’s Day.”

“Ten weeks after she died.”

“Could’ve been the police,” suggested Spanner.

“It wasn’t the police,” said Strike.

After Spanner had left, he hurried into the outer office and displaced Robin, so that he could view the photographs that had been removed from the laptop. He could feel Robin’s anticipation as he explained to her what Spanner had done and opened up the file on the memory stick.

Robin was afraid, for a fraction of a second, as the first photograph bloomed onscreen, that they were about to see something horrible; evidence of criminality or perversion. She had only heard about the concealment of pictures online in the context of dreadful abuse cases. After several minutes, however, Strike voiced her own feelings.

“Just social snaps.”

He did not sound as disappointed as Robin felt, and she was a little ashamed of herself; had she wanted to see something awful? Strike scrolled down, through pictures of groups of giggling girls, fellow models, the occasional celebrity. There were several pictures of Lula with Evan Duffield, a few of them clearly taken by one or other of the pair themselves, holding the camera at arm’s length, both of them apparently stoned or drunk. Somé made several appearances; Lula looked more formal, more subdued, by his side. There were many of Ciara Porter and Lula hugging in bars, dancing in clubs and giggling on a sofa in somebody’s crowded flat.

“That’s Rochelle,” said Strike suddenly, pointing to a sullen little face glimpsed under Ciara’s armpit in a group shot. Kieran Kolovas-Jones had been roped into this picture; he stood at the end, beaming.

“Do me a favor,” said Strike, when he had finished trawling through all two hundred and twelve pictures. “Go through these for me, and try and at least identify the famous people, so we can make a start on finding out who might have wanted the photos off her laptop.”

“But there’s nothing incriminating here at all,” said Robin.

“There must be,” said Strike.

He returned to his inner office, where he placed calls to John Bristow (in a meeting, and not to be disturbed; “Please get him to call me as soon as you can”), to Eric Wardle (voicemail: “I’ve got a question about Lula Landry’s laptop”) and to Rochelle Onifade (on the off-chance; no answer; no chance of leaving a message: “Voicemail full.”)

“I’m still having no luck with Mr. Bestigui,” Robin told Strike, when he emerged from his inner office to find her performing searches related to an unidentified brunette posing with Lula on a beach. “I phoned again this morning, but he just won’t call me back. I’ve tried everything; I’ve pretended to be all sorts of people, I’ve said it’s urgent—what’s funny?”

“I was just wondering why none of these people who keep interviewing you have offered you a job,” said Strike.

“Oh,” said Robin, blushing faintly. “They have. All of them. I’ve accepted the human resources one.”

“Oh. Right,” said Strike. “You didn’t say. Congratulations.”

“Sorry, I thought I’d told you,” lied Robin.

“So you’ll be leaving…when?”

“Two weeks.”

“Ah. I expect Matthew’s pleased, is he?”

“Yes,” she said, slightly taken aback, “he is.”

It was almost as if Strike knew how little Matthew liked her working for him; but that was impossible; she had been careful not to give the slightest hint of the tensions at home.

The telephone rang, and Robin answered it.

“Cormoran Strike’s office?…Yes, who’s speaking, please?…It’s Derrick Wilson,” she told him, passing over the receiver.

“Derrick, hi.”

“Mister Bestigui’s gone away for a coupla days,” said Wilson’s voice. “If you wanna come an’ look at the building…”

“I’ll be there in half an hour,” said Strike.

He was on his feet, checking his pockets for wallet and keys, when he became aware of Robin’s slight air of dejection, though she was continuing to pore over the unincriminating photographs.

“D’you want to come?”

“Yes!” she said gleefully, seizing her handbag and closing down her computer.

3

THE HEAVY BLACK-PAINTED FRONT door of number 18, Kentigern Gardens, opened on to a marbled lobby. Directly opposite the entrance was a handsome built-in mahogany desk, to the right of which was the staircase, which turned immediately out of sight (marble steps, with a brass and wood handrail); the entrance to the lift, with its burnished gold doors, and a solid dark-wood door set into the white-painted wall. On a white cubic display unit in the corner between this and the front doors was a vast display of deep pink oriental lilies in tall tubular vases, their scent heavy on the warm air. The left-hand wall was mirrored, doubling the apparent size of the space, reflecting the staring Strike and Robin, the lift doors and the modern chandelier hung in cubes of crystal overhead, and lengthening the security desk to a vast stretch of polished wood.

Strike remembered Wardle: “Flats done up with marble and shit like…like a fucking five-star hotel.” Beside him, Robin was trying not to look impressed. This, then, was how multimillionaires lived. She and Matthew occupied the lower floor of a semidetached house in Clapham; its sitting room was the same size as that designated for the off-duty guards, which Wilson showed them first. There was just enough room for a table and two chairs; a wall-mounted box contained all the master keys, and another door led into a tiny toilet cubicle.

Wilson was wearing a black uniform that was co

nstabular in design, with its brass buttons, black tie and white shirt.

“Monitors,” he pointed out to Strike as they emerged from the back room and paused behind the desk, where a row of four small black-and-white screens was hidden from guests. One showed footage from the camera over the front door, affording a circumscribed view of the street; another displayed a similarly deserted view of an underground car park; a third the empty back garden of number 18, which comprised lawn, some fancy planting and the high back wall Strike had hoisted himself up on; and the fourth the interior of the stationary lift. In addition to the monitors, there were two control panels for the communal alarms and those for the doors into the pool and car park, and two telephones, one attached to an outside line, the other connected only to the three flats.

“That,” said Wilson, indicating the solid wooden door, “goes to the gym, the pool an’ the car park,” and at Strike’s request he led them through it.

The gym was small, but mirrored like the lobby, so that it appeared twice as big. It had one window, facing the street, and contained a treadmill, rowing and step machines and a set of weights.

A second mahogany door led to a narrow marble stair, lit by cubic wall lights, which took them on to a small lower landing, where a plain painted door led to the underground car park. Wilson opened it with two keys, a Chubb and a Yale, then flicked a switch. The floodlit area was almost as long as the street itself, full of millions of pounds’ worth of Ferrari, Audi, Bentley, Jaguar and BMW. At twenty-foot intervals along the back wall were doors like the one through which they had just come: inner entrances to each of the houses of Kentigern Gardens. The electric garage doors leading from Serf’s Way were close by number 18, outlined by silvery daylight.

Robin wondered what the silent men beside her were thinking. Was Wilson used to the extraordinary lives of the people who lived here; used to underground car parks and swimming pools and Ferraris? And was Strike thinking (as she was) that this long row of doors represented possibilities she had not once considered: chances of secret, hidden scurrying between neighbors, and of hiding and departing in as many ways as there were houses in the street? But then she noticed the numerous black snouts pointing from regular spots on the shadowy upper walls, feeding footage back to countless monitors. Was it possible that none of them had been watched that night?

“OK,” said Strike, and Wilson led them back onto the marble staircase, and locked up the car park door behind them.

Down another short flight of stairs, the smell of chlorine became stronger with every step, until Wilson opened a door at the bottom and they were assailed by a wave of warm, damp, chemically laden air.

“This is the door that wasn’t locked that night?” Strike asked Wilson, who nodded as he pressed another switch, and light blazed.

They had walked on to the broad marble rim of the pool, which was shielded by a thick plastic cover. The opposite wall was, again, mirrored; Robin saw the three of them standing there, incongruous in full dress against a mural of tropical plants and fluttering butterflies that extended up over the ceiling. The pool was around fifteen meters long, and at the far end was a hexagonal jacuzzi, beyond which were three changing cubicles, fronted by lockable doors.

“No cameras here?” asked Strike, looking around, and Wilson shook his head.

Robin could feel sweat prickling on the back of her neck and under her arms. It was oppressive in the pool area, and she was pleased to climb the stairs ahead of the two men, back to the lobby, which in comparison was pleasant and airy. A petite young blonde had appeared in their absence, wearing a pink overall, jeans and a T-shirt, and carrying a plastic bucket full of cleaning implements.

“Derrick,” she said in heavily accented English, when the security guard emerged from downstairs. “I neet key for two.”

“This is Lechsinka,” said Wilson. “The cleaner.”

She favored Robin and Strike with a small, sweet smile. Wilson moved around behind the mahogany desk and handed her a key from beneath it, and Lechsinka then ascended the stairs, her bucket swinging, her tightly bejeaned backside swelling and swaying seductively. Strike, conscious of Robin’s sideways glance, withdrew his gaze from it reluctantly.

Strike and Robin followed Wilson upstairs to Flat 1, which he opened up with a master key. The door on to the stairwell, Strike noted, had an old-fashioned peephole.

“Mister Bestigui’s place,” announced Wilson, stifling the alarm by entering the code on a pad to the right of the door. “Lechsinka’s already bin in this morning.”

Strike could smell polish and see the track marks of a vacuum cleaner on the white carpet of the hallway, with its brass wall lights and its five immaculate white doors. He noticed the discreet alarm keypad on the right wall, at right angles to a painting in which dreamy goats and peasants floated over a blue-toned village. Tall vases of orchids stood on a black japanned table beneath the Chagall.

“Where’s Bestigui?” Strike asked Wilson.

“LA,” said the security guard. “Back in two days.”

The light, bright sitting room had three tall windows, each of them with a shallow stone balcony beyond; its walls were Wedgwood blue and nearly everything else was white. All was pristine, elegant and beautifully proportioned. Here, too, there was a single superb painting: macabre, surreal, with a spear-bearing man masked as a blackbird, arm in arm with a gray-toned headless female torso.

It was from this room that Tansy Bestigui maintained she had heard a screaming match two floors above. Strike moved up close to the long windows, noting the modern catches, the thickness of the panes, the complete lack of noise from the street, though his ear was barely half an inch from the cold glass. The balcony beyond was narrow, and filled with potted shrubs trimmed into pointed cones.

Strike moved off towards the bedroom. Robin remained in the sitting room, turning slowly where she stood, taking in the chandelier of Venetian glass, the muted rug in shades of pale blue and pink, the enormous plasma TV, the modern glass and iron dining table and silk-cushioned iron chairs; the small silver objets d’art on glass side tables and on the white marble mantelpiece. She thought, a little sadly, of the IKEA sofa of which she had, until now, felt so proud; then she remembered Strike’s camp bed in the office with a twinge of shame. Catching Wilson’s eye, she said, unconsciously echoing Eric Wardle:

“It’s a different world, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You couldn’t have kids in here.”

“No,” said Robin, who had not considered the place from that point of view.

Her employer strode out of the bedroom, evidently absorbed in establishing some point to his own satisfaction, and disappeared into the hall.

Strike was, in fact, proving to himself that the logical route from the Bestiguis’ bedroom to their bathroom was through the hall, bypassing the sitting room altogether. Furthermore, it was his belief that the only place in the flat from which Tansy could conceivably have witnessed the fatal fall of Lula Landry—and realized what she was seeing—was from the sitting room. In spite of Eric Wardle’s assertion to the contrary, nobody standing in the bathroom could have had more than a partial view of the window past which Landry had fallen: insufficient, at night, to be sure that whatever had fallen was a human, let alone to identify which human it had been.

Strike returned to the bedroom. Now that he was in solitary possession of the marital home, Bestigui was sleeping on the side nearest the door and the hall, judging by the clutter of pills, glasses and books piled on that bedside table. Strike wondered whether this had been the case while he cohabited with his wife.

A large walk-in wardrobe with mirrored doors led off the bedroom. It was full of Italian suits and shirts from Turnbull & Asser. Two shallow subdivided drawers were devoted entirely to cufflinks in gold and platinum. There was a safe behind a false panel at the back of the shoe racks.

“I think that’s everything in here,” Strike told Wilson, rejoining the other two in the sitting room

.

Wilson set the alarm when they left the flat.

“You know all the codes for the different flats?”

“Yeah,” said Wilson. “Gotta, in case they go off.”

They climbed the stairs to the second floor. The staircase turned so tightly around the lift shaft that it was a succession of blind corners. The door to Flat 2 was identical to that of Flat 1, except that it was standing ajar. They could hear the growl of Lechsinka’s vacuum cleaner from inside.

“We got Mister an’ Missus Kolchak in here now,” said Wilson. “Ukrainian.”

The hallway was identical in shape to that of number 1, with many of the same features, including the alarm keypad on the wall at right angles to the front door; but it was tiled instead of carpeted. A large gilt mirror faced the entrance instead of a painting, and two fragile, spindly wooden tables on either side of it bore ornate Tiffany lamps.

“Were Bestigui’s roses on something like that?” asked Strike.

“On one that’s jus’ like ’em, yeah,” said Wilson. “It’s back in the lounge now.”

“And you put it here, in the middle of the hall, with the roses on it?”

“Yeah, Bestigui wanted Macc to see ’em soon as he walked in, but there was plenty of room to walk around ’em, you can see that. No need to knock ’em over. But he was young, the copper,” said Wilson tolerantly.

“Where are the panic buttons you told me about?” Strike asked.

“Round here,” said Wilson, leading him out of the hall and into the bedroom. “There’s one by the bed, and there’s another one in the sitting room.”

“Have all the flats got these?”

“Yeah.”

The relative positions of the bedrooms, sitting room, kitchen and bathroom were identical to those of Flat 1. Many of the finishings were similar, down to the mirrored doors in the walk-in wardrobe, which Strike went to check. While he was opening doors and surveying the thousands of pounds’ worth of women’s dresses and coats, Lechsinka emerged from the bedroom with a belt, two ties and several polythene-covered dresses, fresh from the dry-cleaner’s, over her arm.