The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1)(14)
Author: J.K. Rowling

He had not needed the directions Derrick Wilson had given Robin, because he knew the Phoenix Café on Coldharbour Lane of old. Occasionally Shumba and his mother had taken them there: a tiny, brown-painted, shed-like place where you could (if not a vegetarian, like Shumba and his mother) eat large and delicious cooked breakfasts, with eggs and bacon piled high, and mugs of tea the color of teak. It was almost exactly as he remembered: cozy, snug and dingy, its mirrored walls reflecting tables of mock-wood Formica, stained floor tiles of dark red and white, and a tapioca-colored ceiling covered in molded wallpaper. The squat middle-aged waitress had short straightened hair and dangling orange plastic earrings; she moved aside to let Strike past the counter.

A heavily built West Indian man was sitting alone at one table, reading a copy of the Sun, under a plastic clock that bore the legend Pukka Pies.

“Derrick?”

“Yeah…you Strike?”

Strike shook Wilson’s big, dry hand, and sat down. He estimated Wilson to be almost as tall as himself when standing. Muscle as well as fat swelled the sleeves of the security guard’s sweatshirt; his hair was close-cropped and he was clean-shaven, with fine almond-shaped eyes. Strike ordered pie and mash off the scrawled menu board on the back wall, pleased to reflect that he could charge the £4.75 to expenses.

“Yeah, the pie ’n’ mash is good here,” said Wilson.

A faint Caribbean lilt lifted his London accent. His voice was deep, calm and measured. Strike thought that he would be a reassuring presence in a security guard’s uniform.

“Thanks for meeting me, I appreciate it. John Bristow’s not happy with the results of the inquest on his sister. He’s hired me to take another look at the evidence.”

“Yeah,” said Wilson, “I know.”

“How much did he give you to talk to me?” Strike asked casually.

Wilson blinked, then gave a slightly guilty, deep-throated chuckle.

“Pony,” he said. “But if it makes the man feel better, yuh know? It won’t change nuthin’. She killed huhself. But ask your questions. I don’t mind.”

He closed the Sun. The front page bore a picture of Gordon Brown looking baggy-eyed and exhausted.

“You’ll have gone over everything with the police,” said Strike, opening his notebook and setting it down beside his plate, “but it would be good to hear, first hand, what happened that night.”

“Yeah, no problem. An’ Kieran Kolovas-Jones might be comin’,” Wilson added.

He seemed to expect Strike to know who this was.

“Who?” asked Strike.

“Kieran Kolovas-Jones. He was Lula’s regular driver. He wants to talk to you too.”

“OK, great,” said Strike. “When will he be here?”

“I dunno. He’s on a job. He’ll come if he can.”

The waitress put a mug of tea in front of Strike, who thanked her and clicked out the nib of his pen. Before he could ask anything, Wilson said:

“You’re ex-milit’ry, Mister Bristow said.”

“Yeah,” said Strike.

“Mi nephew’s in Afghanistan,” said Wilson, sipping his tea. “Helmand Province.”

“What regiment?”

“Signals,” said Wilson.

“How long’s he been out there?”

“Four month. His mother’s not sleeping,” said Wilson. “How come you left?”

“Got my leg blown off,” said Strike, with an honesty that was not habitual.

It was only part of the truth, but the easiest part to communicate to a stranger. He could have stayed; they had been keen to keep him; but the loss of his calf and foot had merely precipitated a decision he had felt stealing towards him in the past couple of years. He knew that his personal tipping point was drawing nearer; that moment by which, unless he left, he would find it too onerous to go, to readjust to civilian life. The army shaped you, almost imperceptibly, with the years; wore you into a surface conformity that made it easier to be swept along by the tidal force of military life. Strike had never become entirely submerged, and had chosen to go before that happened. Even so, he remembered the SIB with a fondness that was unaffected by the loss of half a limb. He would have been glad to remember Charlotte with the same uncomplicated affection.

Wilson acknowledged Strike’s explanation with a slow nod of the head.

“Tough,” he said, in his deep voice.

“I got off light compared with some.”

“Yeah. Guy in mi nephew’s platoon got blown up two weeks ago.”

Wilson sipped his tea.

“How did you get on with Lula Landry?” Strike asked, pen poised. “Did you see a lot of her?”

“Just in and out past the desk. She always said hullo and please and thank you, which is more’n a whole lotta these rich f**kers manage,” said Wilson laconically. “Longest chat we ever had was about Jamaica. She was thinking of doing a job over there; asking me where tuh stay, what’s it like. And I got her autograph for mi nephew, Jason, for his birthday. Got her to sign a card, sent it outta Afghanistan. Just three weeks before she died. She asked after Jason by name every time I saw her after that, and I liked the girl for that, y’know? I been knocking around the security game forra long time. There’s people who’d expect you to take a bullet for them and they don’t bother rememb’ring yuh name. Yeah, she was all right.”

Strike’s pie and mash arrived, steaming hot. The two men accorded it a moment’s respectful silence as they contemplated the heaped plate. Mouth watering, Strike picked up his knife and fork and said:

“Can you talk me through what happened the night Lula died? She went out, what time?”

The security guard scratched his forearm thoughtfully, pushing up the sleeve of his sweatshirt; Strike saw tattoos there, crosses and initials.

“Musta bin just gone seven that evening. She was with her friend Ciara Porter. I remember, as they were going out the door, Mr. Bestigui come in. I remember that, because he said something to Lula. I didn’t hear what it was. She didn’t like it, though. I could tell by the look on her face.”

“What kind of look?”

“Offended,” said Wilson, the answer ready. “So then I seen the two of them on the monitor, Lula and Porter, getting in their car. We gotta camera over the door, see. It’s linked to a monitor on the desk, so we can see who’s buzzing to get in.”

“Does it record footage? Can I see a tape?”

Wilson shook his head.

“Mr. Bestigui didn’t want nothing like that on the door. No recording devices. He was the first to buy a flat, before they were all finished, so he had input into the arrangements.”

“The camera’s just a high-tech peephole, then?”

Wilson nodded. There was a fine scar running from just beneath his left eye to the middle of his cheekbone.

“Yeah. So I seen the girls get into their car. Kieran, guy who’s coming to meet us here, wasn’t driving her that night. He was supposedta be picking up Deeby Macc.”

“Who was her chauffeur that night?”

“Guy called Mick, from Execars. She’d had him before. I seen all the photographers crowdin’ round the car as it pulled away. They’d been sniffin’ around all week, because they knew she was back with Evan Duffield.”

“What did Bestigui do, once Lula and Ciara had left?”

“He collected his post from me and went up the stairs to his flat.”

Strike was putting down his fork with every mouthful, to make notes.

“Anyone go in or out after that?”

“Yeah, the caterers—they’d been up at the Bestiguis’ because they were having guests that night. An American couple arrived just after eight and went up to Flat One, and nobody come in or out till they left again, near midnight. Didn’t see no one else till Lula come home, round half past one.

“I heard the paps shouting her name outside. Big crowd by that time. A bunch of them had followed her from the nightclub, and there was a load waiting there already, looking out for Deeby Macc. He was supposedta be getting there round half twelve. Lula pressed the bell and I buzzed her in.”

“She didn’t punch the code into the keypad?”

“Not with them all around her; she wanted to get in quick. They were yelling, pressing in on her.”

“Couldn’t she have gone in through the underground car park and avoided them?”

“Yeah, she did that sometimes when Kieran was with her, ’cause she’d given him a control for the electric doors to the garage. But Mick didn’t have one, so it had to be the front.

“I said good morning, and I asked about the snow, ’cause she had some in her hair; she was shivering, wearin’ a skimpy little dress. She said it was way below freezing, something like that. Then she said, ‘I wish they’d f**k off. Are they gonna stay there all night?’ ’Bout the paps. I told her they were still waiting for Deeby Macc; he was late. She looked pissed off. Then she got in the lift and went up to her flat.”

“She looked pissed off?”

“Yeah, really pissed off.”

“Suicidal pissed off?”

“No,” said Wilson. “Angry pissed off.”

“Then what happened?”

“Then,” said Wilson, “I had to go into the back room. My guts were starting to feel really bad. I needed the bathroom. Urgent, yuh know. I’d caught what Robson had. He was off sick with his belly. I was away maybe fifteen minutes. No choice. Never had the shits like it.

“I was still in the can when the bawling started. No,” he corrected himself, “first thing I heard was a bang. Big bang in the distance. I realized later, that must’ve been the body—Lula, I mean—falling.

“Then the bawlin’ started, getting louder, coming down the stairs. So I pull up my pants and go running out into the lobby, and there’s Mrs. Bestigui, shaking and screaming and acting like one mad bitch in her underwear. She says Lula’s dead, that she’s been pushed off her balcony by a man in her flat.

“I tell her to stay where she is and I run out the front door. And there she was. Lyin’ in the middle of the road, face down in the snow.”

Wilson swigged his tea, and continued to cradle the mug in his large hand as he said:

“Half her head was caved in. Blood in the snow. I could tell her neck was broken. And there was—yeah.”

The sweet and unmistakable smell of human brains seemed to fill Strike’s nostrils. He had smelled it many times. You never forgot.

“I ran back inside,” resumed Wilson. “Both the Bestiguis were in the lobby; he was tryin’ to get her back upstairs, inna some clothes, and she was still bawling. I told them to call the police and to keep an eye on the lift, in case he tried to come down that way.