The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1)(39)
Author: J.K. Rowling

“She jumped,” declared Rochelle Onifade firmly.

“What makes you so sure?” asked Strike.

“I jus’ know.”

“It seems to have come as a shock to nearly everyone else she knew.”

“She wuz depressed. Yeah, she wuz on stuff for it. Like me. Sometimes it jus’ takes you over. It’s an illness,” she said, although she made the words sound like “it’s uh nillness.”

Nillness, thought Strike, for a second distracted. He had slept badly. Nillness, that was where Lula Landry had gone, and where all of them, he and Rochelle included, were headed. Sometimes illness turned slowly to nillness, as was happening to Bristow’s mother…sometimes nillness rose to meet you out of nowhere, like a concrete road slamming your skull apart.

He was sure that if he took out his notebook, she would clam up, or leave. He therefore continued to ask questions as casually as he could manage, asking her how she had come to attend the clinic, how she had first met Lula.

Still immensely suspicious, she gave monosyllabic answers at first, but slowly, gradually, she became more forthcoming. Her own history was pitiful. Early abuse, care, severe mental illness, foster homes and violent outbursts culminating, at sixteen, in homelessness. She had secured proper treatment as the indirect result of being hit by a car. Hospitalized when her bizarre behavior had made treating her physical wounds nearly impossible, a psychiatrist had at last been called in. She was on drugs now, which, when she took them, greatly eased her symptoms. Strike found it pathetic, and touching, that the outpatient clinic where she had met Lula Landry seemed to have become, for Rochelle, the highlight of her week. She spoke with some affection of the young psychiatrist who ran the group.

“So that’s where you met Lula?”

“Di’n’t her brother tell ya?”

“He was vague on the details.”

“Yeah, she come to our group. She wuz referred.”

“And you got talking?”

“Yeah.”

“You became friends?”

“Yeah.”

“You visited her at home? Swam in the pool?”

“Why shou’n’t I?”

“No reason. I’m only asking.”

She thawed very slightly.

“I don’t like swimming. I don’t like water over m’face. I went in the jacuzzi. And we went shoppin’ an’ stuff.”

“Did she ever talk to you about her neighbors; the other people in her building?”

“Them Bestiguis? A bit. She din’ like them. That woman’s a bitch,” said Rochelle, with sudden savagery.

“What makes you say that?”

“Have you met ’er? She look at me like I wuz dirt.”

“What did Lula think of her?”

“She din’ like ’er neither, nor her husband. He’s a creep.”

“In what way?”

“He jus’ is,” said Rochelle, impatiently; but then, when Strike did not speak, she went on. “He wuz always tryin’ ter get her downstairs when his wife wuz out.”

“Did Lula ever go?”

“No fuckin’ chance,” said Rochelle.

“You and Lula talked to each other a lot, I suppose, did you?”

“Yeah, we did, at f—Yeah, we did.”

She looked out of the window. A sudden shower of rain had caught passersby unawares. Transparent ellipses peppered the glass beside them.

“At first?” said Strike. “Did you talk less as time went on?”

“I’m gonna have to go soon,” said Rochelle, grandly. “I got things to do.”

“People like Lula,” said Strike, feeling his way, “can be spoiled. Treat people badly. They’re used to getting their own—”

“I ain’t no one’s servant,” said Rochelle fiercely.

“Maybe that’s why she liked you? Maybe she saw you as someone more equal—not a hanger-on?”

“Yeah, igzactly,” said Rochelle, mollified. “I weren’t impressed by her.”

“You can see why she’d want you as a friend, someone more down-to-earth…”

“Yeah.”

“…and you had your illness in common, didn’t you? So you understood her on a level most people wouldn’t.”

“And I’m black,” said Rochelle, “and she wuz wanting to feel proper black.”

“Did she talk to you about that?”

“Yeah, ’course,” said Rochelle. “She wuz wanting to find out where she come from, where she belong.”

“Did she talk to you about trying to find the black side of her family?”

“Yeah, of course. And she…yeah.”

She had braked almost visibly.

“Did she ever find anyone? Her father?”

“No. She never found ’im. No fuckin’ chance.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

She began eating fast. Strike was afraid that she would leave the moment she had finished.

“Was Lula depressed when you met her at Vashti, the day before she died?”

“Yeah, she wuz.”

“Did she tell you why?”

“There don’t ’ave to be a reason why. It’s uh nillness.”

“But she told you she was feeling bad, did she?”

“Yeah,” she said, after a fractional hesitation.

“You were supposed to be having lunch together, weren’t you?” he asked. “Kieran told me that he drove her to meet you. You know Kieran, right? Kieran Kolovas-Jones?”

Her expression softened; the corners of her mouth lifted.

“Yeah, I know Kieran. Yeah, she come to meet me at Vashti.”

“But she didn’t stop for lunch?”

“No. She wuz in a hurry,” said Rochelle.

She bowed her head to drink more coffee, concealing her face.

“Why didn’t she just ring you? You’ve got a phone, have you?”

“Yeah, I gotta phone,” she snapped, bristling, and drew from the fur jacket a basic-looking Nokia, stuck all over with gaudy pink crystals.

“So why d’you think she didn’t call to say she couldn’t see you?”

Rochelle glowered at him.

“Because she didn’t like using the phone, because of them listenin’ in.”

“Journalists?”

“Yeah.”

She had almost finished her cookie.

“Journalists wouldn’t have been very interested in her saying that she wasn’t coming to Vashti, though, would they?”

“I dunno.”

“Didn’t you think it was odd, at the time, that she drove all the way to tell you she couldn’t stay for lunch?”

“Yeah. No,” said Rochelle. And then, with a sudden burst of fluency:

“When ya gotta driver it don’t matter, does it? You jus’ go wherever you want, don’t cost you nothing extra, you just get them to take you, don’t ya? She was passing, so she come in to tell me she wasn’t gonna stop because she ’ad to get ’ome to see f**king Ciara Porter.”

Rochelle looked as though she regretted the traitorous “f**king” as soon as it was out, and pursed her lips together as though to ensure no more swear words escaped her.

“And that was all she did, was it? She came into the shop, said ‘I can’t stop, I’ve got to get home and see Ciara’ and left?”

“Yeah. More uh less,” said Rochelle.

“Kieran says they usually gave you a lift home after you’d been out together.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Well. She wuz too busy that day, weren’ she?”

Rochelle did a poor job of masking her resentment.

“Talk me through what happened in the shop. Did either of you try anything on?”

“Yeah,” said Rochelle, after a pause. “She did.” Another hesitation. “Long Alexander McQueen dress. He killed hiself and all,” she added, in a distant voice.

“Did you go into the changing room with her?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened in the changing room?” prompted Strike.

Her eyes reminded him of those of a bull he had once come face to face with as a small boy: deep-set, deceptively stoic, unfathomable.

“She put on the dress,” said Rochelle.

“She didn’t do anything else? Didn’t call anyone?”

“No. Well, yeah. She mighta.”

“D’you know who she called?”

“I can’t remember.”

She drank, obscuring her face again with the paper cup.

“Was it Evan Duffield?”

“It mighta bin.”

“Can you remember what she said?”

“No.”

“One of the shop assistants overheard her, while she was on the phone. She seemed to be making an appointment to meet someone at her flat much later. In the early hours of the morning, the girl thought.”

“Yeah?”

“So that doesn’t seem like it could have been Duffield, does it, seeing as she already had an arrangement to meet him at Uzi?”

“Know a lot, don’t you?” she said.

“Everyone knows they met at Uzi that night,” said Strike. “It was in all the papers.”

The dilating or contracting of Rochelle’s pupils would be almost impossible to see, because of the virtually black irises surrounding them.

“Yeah, I s’pose,” she conceded.

“Was it Deeby Macc?”

“No!” She yelped it on a laugh. “She din’ know his number.”

“Famous people can nearly always get each other’s numbers,” said Strike.

Rochelle’s expression clouded. She glanced down at the blank screen on her gaudy pink mobile.

“I don’ think she had his,” she said.

“But you heard her trying to make an arrangement to meet someone in the small hours?”

“No,” said Rochelle, avoiding his eyes, swilling the dregs of her coffee around the paper cup. “I can’ remember nuthin’ like that.”

“You understand how important this could be?” said Strike, careful to keep his tone unthreatening. “If Lula made an arrangement to meet someone at the time she died? The police never knew about this, did they? You never told them?”

“I gotta go,” she said, throwing down the last morsel of cookie, grabbing the strap of her cheap handbag and glaring at him.