The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1)(27)
Author: J.K. Rowling

“This is a surprise,” he said smoothly, stopping in the space between the two women’s chairs. None of the other three had seen the man coming, and all bar Strike displayed equal parts of shock and something more than displeasure at the sight of him. For a fraction of a second, Tansy and Ursula froze, Ursula in the act of pulling sunglasses out of her bag.

Tansy recovered first.

“Cyprian,” she said, offering her face for his kiss. “Yes, what a lovely surprise!”

“I thought you were going shopping, Ursula dear?” he said, his eyes on his wife as he gave Tansy a conventional peck on each cheek.

“We stopped for lunch, Cyps,” she replied, but her color was heightened, and Strike sensed an ill-defined nastiness in the air.

The older man’s pale eyes moved deliberately over Strike and came to rest on Bristow.

“I thought Tony was handling your divorce, Tansy?” he asked.

“He is,” said Tansy. “This isn’t a business lunch, Cyps. Purely social.”

He gave a wintry smile.

“Let me escort you out, then, m’dears,” he said.

With a cursory farewell to Bristow, and no word whatsoever for Strike, the two sisters permitted themselves to be shepherded out of the restaurant by Ursula’s husband. When the door had swung shut behind the threesome, Strike asked Bristow:

“What was that about?”

“That was Cyprian,” said Bristow. He seemed agitated as he fumbled with his credit card and the bill. “Cyprian May. Ursula’s husband. Senior partner at the firm. He won’t like Tansy talking to you. I wonder how he knew where we were. Probably got it out of Alison.”

“Why won’t he like her talking to me?”

“Tansy’s his sister-in-law,” said Bristow, putting on his overcoat. “He won’t want her to make a fool of herself—as he’ll see it—all over again. I’ll probably get a real bollocking for persuading her to meet you. I expect he’s phoning my uncle right now, to complain about me.”

Bristow’s hands, Strike noticed, were trembling.

The lawyer left in a taxi ordered by the maître d’. Strike headed away from Cipriani on foot, loosening his tie as he walked, and lost so deeply in thought that he was only jerked out of his reverie by a loud horn blast from a car he had not seen speeding towards him as he crossed Grosvenor Street.

With this salutary reminder that his safety would otherwise be in jeopardy, Strike headed for a patch of pale wall belonging to the Elizabeth Arden Red Door Spa, leaned up against it out of the pedestrian flow, lit up and pulled out his mobile phone. After some listening and fast-forwarding, he managed to locate that part of Tansy’s recorded testimony that dealt with those moments immediately preceding Lula Landry’s fall past her window.

…towards the bedroom, I heard shouting. She—Lula—was saying, “It’s too late, I’ve already done it,” and then a man said, “You’re a lying f**king bitch,” and then—and then he threw her over. I actually saw her fall.

He could just make out the tiny chink of Bristow’s glass hitting the table top. Strike rewound again and listened.

…saying, “It’s too late, I’ve already done it,” and then a man said, “You’re a lying f**king bitch,” and then—and then he threw her over. I actually saw her fall.

He recalled Tansy’s imitation of Landry’s flailing arms, and the horror on her frozen face as she did it. Slipping his mobile back into his pocket, he took out his notebook and began to make notes for himself.

Strike had met countless liars; he could smell them; and he knew perfectly well that Tansy was of their number. She could not have heard what she claimed to have heard from her flat; the police had therefore deduced that she could not have heard it at all. Against Strike’s expectation, however, in spite of the fact that every piece of evidence he had heard until this moment suggested that Lula Landry had committed suicide, he found himself convinced that Tansy Bestigui really believed that she had overheard an argument before Landry fell. That was the only part of her story that rang with authenticity, an authenticity that shone a garish light on the fakery with which she garnished it.

Strike pushed himself off the wall and began to walk east along Grosvenor Street, paying slightly more attention to traffic, but inwardly recalling Tansy’s expression, her tone, her mannerisms, as she spoke of Lula Landry’s final moments.

Why would she tell the truth on the essential point, but surround it with easily disproven falsehoods? Why would she lie about what she had been doing when she heard shouting from Landry’s flat? Strike remembered Adler: “A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt as dangerous.” Tansy had come along today to make a last attempt to find someone who would believe her, and yet swallow the lies in which she insisted on swaddling her evidence.

He walked fast, barely conscious of the twinges from his right knee. At last he realized that he had walked all along Maddox Street and emerged on Regent Street. The red awnings of Hamleys Toy Shop fluttered a little in the distance, and Strike remembered that he had intended to buy a birthday present for his nephew’s forthcoming birthday on the way back to the office.

The multicolored, squeaking, flashing maelstrom into which he walked registered on him only vaguely. Blindly he moved from floor to floor, untroubled by the shrieks, the whirring of airborne toy helicopters, the oinks of mechanical pigs moving across his distracted path. Finally, after twenty minutes or so, he came to rest near the HM Forces dolls. Here he stood, quite still, gazing at the ranks of miniature marines and paratroopers but barely seeing them; deaf to the whispers of parents trying to maneuver their sons around him, too intimidated to ask the strange, huge, staring man to move.

Part Three

Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.

Maybe one day it will be cheering even to remember these things.

Virgil, Aeneid, Book 1

1

IT STARTED TO RAIN ON Wednesday. London weather; dank and gray, through which the old city presented a stolid front: pale faces under black umbrellas, the eternal smell of damp clothing, the steady pattering on Strike’s office window in the night.

The rain in Cornwall had a different quality, when it came: Strike remembered how it had lashed like whips against the panes of Aunt Joan and Uncle Ted’s spare room, during those months in the neat little house that smelled of flowers and baking, while he had attended the village school in St. Mawes. Such memories swam to the forefront of his mind whenever he was about to see Lucy.

Raindrops were still dancing exuberantly on the windowsills on Friday afternoon, while at opposite ends of her desk, Robin wrapped Jack’s new paratrooper doll, and Strike wrote her a check to the amount of a week’s work, minus the commission of Temporary Solutions. Robin was about to attend the third of that week’s “proper” interviews, and was looking neat and groomed in her black suit, with her bright gold hair pinned back in a chignon.

“There you are,” they both said simultaneously, as Robin pushed across the desk a perfect parcel patterned with small spaceships, and Strike held out the check.

“Cheers,” said Strike, taking the present. “I can’t wrap.”

“I hope he likes it,” she replied, tucking the check away in her black handbag.

“Yeah. And good luck with the interview. D’you want the job?”

“Well, it’s quite a good one. Human resources in a media consultancy in the West End,” she said, sounding unenthusiastic. “Enjoy the party. I’ll see you Monday.”

The self-imposed penance of walking down into Denmark Street to smoke became even more irksome in the ceaseless rain. Strike stood, minimally shielded beneath the overhang of his office entrance, and asked himself when he was going to kick the habit and set to work to restore the fitness that had slipped away along with his solvency and his domestic comfort. His mobile rang while he stood there.

“Thought you might like to know your tip-off’s paid dividends,” said Eric Wardle, who sounded triumphant. Strike could hear engine noise and the sound of men talking in the background.

“Quick work,” commented Strike.

“Yeah, well, we don’t hang around.”

“Does this mean I’m going to get what I was after?”

“That’s what I’m calling about. It’s a bit late today, but I’ll bike it over Monday.”

“Sooner rather than later suits me. I can hang on here at the office.”

Wardle laughed a little offensively.

“You get paid by the hour, don’t you? I’d’ve thought it suited you to string it out a bit.”

“Tonight would be better. If you can get it here this evening, I’ll make sure you’re the first to know if my old mate drops any more tip-offs.”

In the slight pause that followed, Strike heard one of the men in the car with Wardle say:

“…Fearney’s f**king face…”

“Yeah, all right,” said Wardle. “I’ll get it over later. Might not be till seven. Will you still be there?”

“I’ll make sure I am,” Strike replied.

The file arrived three hours later, while he was eating fish and chips out of a small polystyrene tray in his lap and watching the London evening news on his portable television. The courier buzzed the outer door and Strike signed for a bulky package sent from Scotland Yard. Once unwrapped, a thick gray folder full of photocopied material was disclosed. Strike took it back to Robin’s desk, and began the lengthy process of digesting the contents.

Here were statements from those who had seen Lula Landry during the final evening of her life; a report on the DNA evidence lifted from her flat; photocopied pages of the visitors’ book complied by security at number 18, Kentigern Gardens; details of the medication Lula had been prescribed to control bipolar disorder; the autopsy report; medical records for the previous year; mobile phone and landline records; and a precis of the findings on the model’s laptop. There was also a DVD, on which Wardle had scribbled CCTV 2 Runners.

The DVD drive on Strike’s secondhand computer had not worked since he acquired it; he therefore slipped the disc into the pocket of the overcoat hanging by the glass door, and resumed his contemplation of the printed material contained within the ring-binder, his notebook open beside him.

Night descended outside the office, and a pool of golden light fell from the desk lamp on to each page as Strike methodically read the documents that had added up to a conclusion of suicide. Here, amid the statements shorn of superfluity, minutely detailed timings, the copied labels from the bottles of drugs found in Landry’s bathroom cabinet, Strike tracked the truth he had sensed behind Tansy Bestigui’s lies.