The Cuckoo's Calling

“Here,” he said, pushing across the table a piece of torn paper, on which he had scribbled several six-figure numbers. “Try them first. Now get a fucking warrant.”

He pushed the will across the table to Wardle and slid off the high bar stool. The walk from the pub to the taxi was agony. The more pressure he put on his right leg, the more excruciating the pain became.

Robin had been calling Strike every ten minutes since one o’clock, but he had not picked up. She rang again as he was climbing, with enormous difficulty, up the metal stairs towards the office, heaving himself up with the use of his arms. She heard his ringtone echoing up the stairwell, and hurried out on to the top landing.

“There you are! I’ve been calling and calling, there’s been loads…What’s the matter, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he lied.

“No you’re…What’s happened to you?”

She hastened down the stairs towards him. He was white, and sweaty, and looked, in Robin’s opinion, as though he might be sick.

“Have you been drinking?”

“No I haven’t been bloody drinking!” he snapped. “I’ve—sorry, Robin. In a bit of pain here. I just need to sit down.”

“What’s happened? Let me…”

“I’ve got it. No problem. I can manage.”

Slowly he pulled himself to the top landing and limped very heavily to the old sofa. When he dropped his weight into it, Robin thought she heard something deep in the structure crack, and noted, We’ll need a new one, and then, But I’m leaving.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I fell down some stairs,” said Strike, panting a little, still wearing his coat. “Like a complete tit.”

“What stairs? What happened?”

From the depths of his agony he grinned at her expression, which was part horrified, part excited.

“I wasn’t wrestling anyone, Robin. I just slipped.”

“Oh, I see. You’re a bit—you look a bit pale. You don’t think you could have done something serious, do you? I could get a cab—maybe you should see a doctor.”

“No need for that. Have we still got any of those painkillers lying around?”

She brought him water and paracetamol. He took them, then stretched out his legs, flinched and asked:

“What’s been going on here? Did Graham Hardacre send you a picture?”

“Yes,” she said, hurrying to her computer monitor. “Here.”

With a shunt of her mouse and a click, the picture of Lieutenant Jonah Agyeman filled the monitor.

In silence, they contemplated the face of a young man whose irrefutable handsomeness was not diminished by the overlarge ears he had inherited from his father. The scarlet, black and gold uniform suited him. His grin was slightly lopsided, his cheekbones high, his jaw square and his skin dark with an undertone of red, like freshly brewed tea. He conveyed the careless charm that Lula Landry had had too; the indefinable quality that made the viewer linger over her image.

“He looks like her,” said Robin in a hushed voice.

“Yeah, he does. Anything else been going on?”

Robin seemed to snap back to attention.

“Oh God, yes…John Bristow called half an hour ago, to say he couldn’t get hold of you, and Tony Landry’s called three times.”

“I thought he might. What did he say?”

“He was absolutely—well, the first time, he asked to speak to you, and when I said you weren’t here, he hung up before I could give him your mobile number. The second time, he told me you had to call him straightaway, but slammed down the phone before I could tell him you still weren’t back. But the third time, he was just—well—he was incredibly angry. Screaming at me.”

“He’d better not have been offensive,” said Strike, scowling.

“He wasn’t really. Well, not to me—it was all about you.”

“What did he say?”

“He didn’t make a lot of sense, but he called John Bristow a ‘stupid prick,’ and then he was bawling something about Alison walking out, which he seemed to think had something to do with you, because he was yelling about suing you, and defamation, and all kinds of things.”

“Alison’s left her job?”

“Yes.”

“Did he say where she—no, of course he didn’t, why would he know?” he finished, more to himself than to Robin.

He looked down at his wrist. His cheap watch seemed to have hit something when he had fallen downstairs, because it had stopped at a quarter to one.

“What’s the time?”

“Ten to five.”

“Already?”

“Yes. Do you need anything? I can hang around a bit.”

“No, I want you out of here.”

His tone was such that instead of going to fetch her coat and handbag, Robin remained exactly where she was.

“What are you expecting to happen?”

Strike was busy fiddling with his leg, just below the knee.

“Nothing. You’ve just worked a lot of overtime lately. I’ll bet Matthew will be glad to see you back early for once.”

There was no adjusting the prosthesis through his trouser leg.

“Please, Robin, go,” he said, looking up.

She hesitated, then went to fetch her trench coat and bag.

“Thanks,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”

She left. He waited for the sound of her footsteps on the stairs before rolling up his trouser leg, but heard nothing. The glass door opened, and she reappeared.

“You’re expecting someone to come,” she said, clutching the edge of the door. “Aren’t you?”

“Maybe,” said Strike, “but it doesn’t matter.”

He mustered a smile at her tight, anxious expression.

“Don’t worry about me.” When her expression did not change, he added: “I boxed a bit, in the army, you know.”

Robin half laughed.

“Yes, you mentioned that.”

“Did I?”

“Repeatedly. That night you…you know.”

“Oh. Right. Well, it’s true.”

“But who are you…?”

“Matthew wouldn’t thank me for telling you. Go home, Robin, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

And this time, albeit reluctantly, she left. He waited until he heard the door on to Denmark Street bang shut, then rolled up his trouser leg, detached the prosthesis and examined his swollen knee, and the end of his leg, which was inflamed and bruised. He wondered exactly what he had done to himself, but there was no time to take the problem to an expert tonight.

He half wished, now, that he had asked Robin to fetch him something to eat before she left. Clumsily, hopping from spot to spot, holding on to the desk, the top of the filing cabinet and the arm of the sofa to balance, he managed to make himself a cup of tea. He drank it sitting in Robin’s chair, and ate half a packet of digestives, spending most of the time in contemplation of the face of Jonah Agyeman. The paracetamol had barely touched the pain in his leg.

When he had finished all the biscuits, he checked his mobile. There were many missed calls from Robin, and two from John Bristow.

Of the three people who Strike thought might present themselves at his office this evening, it was Bristow he hoped would make it there first. If the police wanted concrete evidence of murder, his client alone (though he might not realize it) could provide it. If either Tony Landry or Alison Cresswell turned up at his offices, I’ll just have to…then Strike snorted a little in his empty office, because the expression that had occurred to him was “think on my feet.”

But six o’clock came, and then half past, and nobody rang the bell. Strike rubbed more cream into the end of his leg, and reattached the prosthesis, which was agony. He limped through into the inner office, emitting grunts of pain, slumped down in his chair and, giving up, took the false leg off again and slid down, to lay his head on his arms, intending to do no more than rest his tired eyes.

2

FOOTSTEPS ON THE METAL STAIRS. Strike sat bolt upright, not knowing whether he had been asleep five minutes or fifty. Somebody rapped on the glass door.

“Come in, it’s open!” he shouted, and checked that the unattached prosthesis was covered by his trouser leg.

To Strike’s immense relief, it was John Bristow who entered the room, blinking through his thick-lensed glasses and looking agitated.

“Hi, John. Come and sit down.”

But Bristow strode towards him, blotchy-faced, as full of rage as he had been the day that Strike had refused to take the case, and gripped the back of the offered chair instead.

“I told you,” he said, the color waxing and waning in his thin face as he pointed a bony finger at Strike, “I told you quite clearly that I didn’t want you to see my mother without me present!”

“I know you did, John, but—”

“She’s unbelievably upset. I don’t know what you said to her, but I’ve had her crying and sobbing down the phone to me this afternoon!”

“I’m sorry to hear that; she didn’t seem to mind my questions when—”

“She’s in a dreadful state!” shouted Bristow, his buck teeth glinting. “How dared you go and see her without me? How dared you?”

“Because, John, as I told you after Rochelle’s funeral, I think we’re dealing with a murderer who might kill again,” said Strike. “The situation’s dangerous, and I want an end to it.”

“You want an end to it? How do you think I feel?” shouted Bristow, and his voice cracked and became a falsetto. “Do you have any idea of how much damage you’ve done? My mother’s devastated, and now my girlfriend seems to have vanished into thin air, which Tony is blaming on you! What have you done to Alison? Where is she?”

“I don’t know. Have you tried calling her?”

“She’s not picking up. What the hell’s been going on? I’ve been on a wild goose chase all day, and I come back—”

“Wild goose chase?” repeated Strike, surreptitiously shifting his leg to keep the prosthesis upright.

Bristow threw himself into the seat opposite, breathing hard and squinting at Strike in the bright evening sun streaming in through the window behind him.

“Somebody,” he said furiously, “called my secretary up this morning, purporting to be a very important client of ours in Rye, who was requesting an urgent meeting. I traveled all the way there to find that he’s out of the country, and nobody had called me at all. Would you mind,” he added, raising a hand to shield his eyes, “pulling down that blind? I can’t see a thing.”

Strike tugged the cord, and the blind fell with a clatter, casting them both into a cool, faintly striped gloom.

“That’s a very strange story,” said Strike. “It’s almost as though somebody wanted to lure you away from town.”

Bristow did not reply. He was glaring at Strike, his chest heaving.

“I’ve had enough,” he said abruptly. “I’m terminating this investigation. You can keep all the money I’ve given you. I’ve got to think of my mother.”

Strike slid his mobile out of his pocket, pressed a couple of buttons and laid it on his lap.

“Don’t you even want to know what I found today in your mother’s wardrobe?”

“You went—you went inside my mother’s wardrobe?”

“Yeah. I wanted to have a look inside those brand-new handbags Lula got, the day she died.”

Bristow began to stutter:

“You—you…”

“The bags have got detachable linings. Bizarre idea, isn’t it? Hidden under the lining of the white bag was a will, handwritten by Lula on your mother’s blue notepaper, and witnessed by Rochelle Onifade. I’ve given it to the police.”

Bristow’s mouth fell open. For several seconds he seemed unable to speak. Finally he whispered:

“But…what did it say?”

“That she was leaving everything, her entire estate, to her brother, Lieutenant Jonah Agyeman of the Royal Engineers.”

“Jonah…who?”

“Go and look on the computer monitor outside. You’ll find a picture there.”

Bristow got up and moved like a sleepwalker towards the computer in the next room. Strike watched the screen illuminate as Bristow shifted the mouse. Agyeman’s handsome face shone out of the monitor, with his sardonic smile, pristine in his dress uniform.

“Oh my God,” said Bristow.

He returned to Strike and lowered himself back into the chair, gaping at the detective.

“I—I can’t believe it.”

“That’s the man who was on the CCTV footage,” said Strike, “running away from the scene the night that Lula died. He was staying in Clerkenwell with his widowed mother while he was on leave. That’s why he was hotfooting it along Theobalds Road twenty minutes later. He was heading home.”

Bristow drew breath in a loud gasp.

“They all said I was deluded,” he almost shouted. “But I wasn’t bloody deluded at all!”

“No, John, you weren’t deluded,” said Strike. “Not deluded. More like bat-shit insane.”

Through the shaded window came the sounds of London, alive at all hours, rumbling and growling, part man, part machine. There was no noise inside the room but Bristow’s ragged breathing.

“Excuse me?” he said, ludicrously polite. “What did you call me?”

Strike smiled.

“I said you’re bat-shit insane. You killed your sister, got away with it, and then asked me to reinvestigate her death.”

“You—you cannot be serious.”

“Oh yeah, I can. It’s been obvious to me from the start that the person who benefits most from Lula’s death is you, John. Ten million quid, once your mother gives up the ghost. Not to be sniffed at, is it? Especially as I don’t think you’ve got much more than your salary, however much you bang on about your trust fund. Albris shares are hardly worth the paper they’re written on these days, are they?”

Bristow gaped at him for several long moments; then, sitting up a little straighter, he glanced at the camp bed propped in the corner.

“Coming from a virtual down-and-out who sleeps in his office, I find that a laughable assertion.” Bristow’s voice was calm and derisory, but his breathing was abnormally fast.

“I know you’ve got much more money than I have,” said Strike. “But, as you rightly point out, that’s not saying much. And I will say for myself that I haven’t yet stooped to embezzling from clients. How much of Conway Oates’s money did you steal before Tony realized what you were up to?”

“Oh, I’m an embezzler too, am I?” said Bristow, with an artificial laugh.

“Yeah, I think so,” said Strike. “Not that it matters to me. I don’t care whether you killed Lula because you needed to replace the money you’d nicked, or because you wanted her millions, or because you hated her guts. The jury will want to know, though. They’re always suckers for motive.”

Bristow’s knee had begun jiggling up and down again.

“You’re unhinged,” he said, with another forced laugh. “You’ve found a will in which she leaves everything not to me, but to that man.” He pointed towards the outer room, where he had viewed Jonah’s picture. “You tell me that it was that same man who was walking towards Lula’s flat, on camera, the night she fell to her death, and who was seen sprinting back past the camera ten minutes later. And yet you accuse me. Me.”

“John, you knew before you ever came to see me that it was Jonah on that CCTV footage. Rochelle told you. She was there in Vashti when Lula called Jonah and arranged to meet him that night, and she witnessed a will leaving him everything. She came to you, told you everything and started blackmailing you. She wanted money for a flat and some expensive clothes, and in return she promised to keep her mouth shut about the fact that you weren’t Lula’s heir.

“Rochelle didn’t realize you were the killer. She thought Jonah pushed Lula out of the window. And she was bitter enough, after seeing a will

in which she didn’t feature, and being dumped in that shop on the last day of Lula’s life, not to care about the killer walking free as long as she got the money.”

“This is utter rubbish. You’re out of your mind.”

“You put every obstacle you could in the way of me finding Rochelle,” Strike went on, as though he had not heard Bristow. “You pretended you didn’t know her name, or where she lived; you acted incredulous that I thought she might be useful to the inquiry and you took photos off Lula’s laptop so that I couldn’t see what she looked like. True, she could have pointed me directly to the man you were trying to frame for murder, but on the other hand, she knew that there was a will that would deprive you of your inheritance, and your number one objective was to keep that will quiet while you tried to find and destroy it. Bit of a joke, really, it being in your mother’s wardrobe all along.

“But even if you’d destroyed it, John, what then? For all you knew, Jonah himself knew that he was Lula’s heir. And there was another witness to the fact that there was a will, though you didn’t know it: Bryony Radford, the makeup artist.”

Strike saw Bristow’s tongue flick around his mouth, moistening his lips. He could feel the lawyer’s fear.

“Bryony doesn’t want to admit that she went snooping through Lula’s things, but she saw that will at Lula’s place, before Lula had time to hide it. Bryony’s dyslexic, though. She thought ‘Jonah’ said ‘John.’ She tied that in with Ciara saying that Lula was leaving her brother everything, and concluded that she needn’t tell anybody what she’d read on the sly, because you were getting the money anyway. You’ve had the luck of the devil at times, John.

“But I can see how—to a twisted mind like yours—the best solution to your predicament was to fit Jonah up for murder. If he was doing life, it wouldn’t matter whether or not the will ever surfaced—or whether he, or anyone else, knew about it—because the money would come to you in any case.”