The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1)(41)
Author: J.K. Rowling

She did not answer.

“If Lula was murdered,” said Strike, while the cars whooshed by them, and rain glittered in the gutters at their feet, “and you know something, you could be in danger from the killer too.”

This evoked a tiny, complacent, scathing smile. Rochelle did not think she was in danger. She thought she was safe.

The green man had appeared. Rochelle gave a toss of her dry, wiry hair and moved away across the road, ordinary, squat and plain, still clutching her mobile in one hand and Strike’s card in the other. Strike stood alone on the island, watching her with a feeling of impotence and unease. She might never have sold her story to the newspapers, but he could not believe that she had bought that designer jacket, ugly though he found it, from the proceeds of a job in a shop.

9

THE JUNCTION OF TOTTENHAM COURT and Charing Cross Roads was still a scene of devastation, with wide gashes in the road, white hardboard tunnels and hard-hatted builders. Strike traversed the narrow walkways barricaded by metal fences, past the rumbling diggers full of rubble, bellowing workmen and more drills, smoking as he walked.

He felt weary and sore; very conscious of the pain in his leg, of his unwashed body, of the greasy food lying heavily in his stomach. On impulse, he took a detour right up Sutton Row, away from the clatter and grind of the roadworks, and called Rochelle. It went to voicemail, but it was her husky voice that answered: she had not given him a fake number. He left no message; he had already said everything he could think of saying; and yet he was worried. He half wished he had followed her, covertly, to find out where she was living.

Back on Charing Cross Road, limping on to the office through the temporary shadow of the pedestrian tunnel, he remembered the way that Robin had woken him up that morning: the tactful knock, the cup of tea, the studied avoidance of the subject of the camp bed. He ought not to have let it happen. There were other routes to intimacy than admiring a woman’s figure in a tight dress. He did not want to explain why he was sleeping at work; he dreaded personal questions. And he had let a situation arise in which she had called him Cormoran and told him to do up his buttons. He ought never to have overslept.

As he climbed the metal stairs, past the closed door of Crowdy Graphics, Strike resolved to treat Robin with a slightly cooler edge of authority for the rest of the day, to counterbalance that glimpse of hairy belly.

The decision was no sooner made than he heard high-pitched laughter, and two female voices talking at the same time, issuing from his own office.

Strike froze, listening, panicking. He had not returned Charlotte’s call. He tried to make out her tone and inflection; it would be like her to come in person and overwhelm his temp with charm, to make of his ally a friend, to saturate his own staff with Charlotte’s version of the truth. The two voices melded in laughter again, and he could not tell whose they were.

“Hi, Stick,” said a cheery voice as he pushed open the glass door.

His sister, Lucy, was sitting on the sagging sofa, with her hands around a mug of coffee, bags from Marks and Spencer and John Lewis heaped all around her.

Strike’s first surge of relief that she was not Charlotte was nevertheless tainted with a lesser dread of what she and Robin had been talking about, and how much each of them now knew about his private life. As he returned Lucy’s hug, he noticed that Robin had, again, closed the inner door on the camp bed and kitbag.

“Robin says you’ve been out detecting.” Lucy seemed in high spirits, as she so often was when she was out alone, unencumbered by Greg and the boys.

“Yeah, we do that sometimes, detectives,” said Strike. “Been shopping?”

“Yes, Sherlock, I have.”

“D’you want to go out for a coffee?”

“I’ve already got one, Stick,” she said, holding up the mug. “You’re not very sharp today. Are you limping a bit?”

“Not that I’ve noticed.”

“Have you seen Mr. Chakrabati recently?”

“Fairly recently,” lied Strike.

“If it’s all right,” said Robin, who was putting on her trench coat, “I’ll take lunch, Mr. Strike. I haven’t had any yet.”

The resolution of moments ago, to treat her with professional froideur, now seemed not only unnecessary but unkind. She had more tact than any woman he had ever met.

“That’s fine, Robin, yeah,” he said.

“Nice to meet you, Lucy,” Robin said, and with a wave she disappeared, closing the glass door behind her.

“I really like her,” said Lucy enthusiastically, as Robin’s footsteps clanged away. “She’s great. You should try and get her to stay on permanently.”

“Yeah, she’s good,” said Strike. “What were you two having such a laugh about?”

“Oh, her fiancé—he sounds a bit like Greg. Robin says you’ve got an important case on. It’s all right. She was very discreet. She says it’s a suspicious suicide. That can’t be very nice.”

She gave him a meaningful look he chose not to understand.

“It’s not the first time. I had a couple of those in the army, too.”

But he doubted that Lucy was listening. She had taken a deep breath. He knew what was coming.

“Stick, have you and Charlotte split up?”

Better get it over with.

“Yeah, we have.”

“Stick!”

“It’s fine, Luce. I’m fine.”

But her good humor had been obliterated in a great gush of fury and disappointment. Strike waited patiently, exhausted and sore, while she raged: she had known all along, known that Charlotte would do it all over again; she had lured him away from Tracey, and from his fantastic army career, rendered him as insecure as possible, persuaded him to move in, only to dump him—

“I ended it, Luce,” he said, “and Tracey and I were over before…” but he might as well have commanded lava to flow backwards: why hadn’t he realized that Charlotte would never change, that she had only returned to him for the drama of the situation, attracted by his injury and his medal? The bitch had played the ministering angel and then got bored; she was dangerous and wicked; measuring her own worth in the havoc she caused, glorying in the pain she inflicted…

“I left her, it was my choice…”

“Where have you been living? When did this happen? That absolute bloody bitch—no, I’m sorry, Stick, I’m not going to pretend anymore—all the years and years of shit she’s put you through—oh God, Stick, why didn’t you marry Tracey?”

“Luce, let’s not do this, please.”

He moved aside some of her John Lewis bags, full, he saw, of small pants and socks for her sons, and sat down heavily on the sofa. He knew he looked grubby and scruffy. Lucy seemed on the verge of tears; her day out in town was ruined.

“I suppose you haven’t told me because you knew I’d do this?” she said at last, gulping.

“It might’ve been a consideration.”

“All right, I’m sorry,” she said furiously, her eyes shining with tears. “But that bitch, Stick. Oh God, tell me you’re never going to go back to her. Please just tell me that.”

“I’m not going back to her.”

“Where are you staying—Nick and Ilsa’s?”

“No. I’ve got a little place in Hammersmith” (the first place that occurred to him, associated, now, with homelessness). “Bedsit.”

“Oh Stick…come and stay with us!”

He had a fleeting vision of the all-blue spare room, and Greg’s forced smile.

“Luce, I’m happy where I am. I just want to get on with work and be on my own for a bit.”

It took him another half-hour to shift her out of his office. She felt guilty that she had lost her temper; apologized, then attempted to justify herself, which triggered another diatribe about Charlotte. When she finally decided to leave, he helped her downstairs with her bags, successfully distracting her from the boxes full of his possessions that still stood on the landing, and finally depositing her into a black cab at the end of Denmark Street.

Her round, mascara-streaked face looked back at him out of the rear window. He forced a grin and a wave before lighting another cigarette, and reflecting that Lucy’s idea of sympathy compared unfavorably with some of the interrogation techniques they had used at Guantanamo.

10

ROBIN HAD FALLEN INTO THE habit of buying Strike a pack of sandwiches with her own, if he happened to be in the office over lunchtime, and reimbursing herself from petty cash.

Today, however, she did not hurry back. She had noticed, though Lucy had seemed oblivious, how unhappy Strike had been to find them in conversation. His expression, when he had entered the office, had been every bit as grim as the first time they had met.

Robin hoped that she had not said anything to Lucy that Strike would not like. Lucy had not exactly pried, but she had asked questions to which it was difficult to know the answer.

“Have you met Charlotte yet?”

Robin guessed that this was the stunning ex-wife or girlfriend whose exit she had witnessed on her first morning. Near-collision hardly constituted a meeting, however, so she answered:

“No, I haven’t.”

“Funny.” Lucy had given a disingenuous little smile. “I’d have thought she’d have wanted to meet you.”

For some reason, Robin had felt prompted to reply:

“I’m only temporary.”

“Still,” said Lucy, who seemed to understand the answer better than Robin did herself.

It was only now, wandering up and down the aisle of crisps without really concentrating on them, that the implications of what Lucy had said slid into place. Robin supposed that Lucy might have meant to flatter her, except that the mere possibility of Strike making any kind of pass was extremely distasteful to her.

(“Matt, honestly, if you saw him…he’s enormous and he’s got a face like some beaten-up boxer. He is not remotely attractive, I’m sure he’s over forty, and…” she had cast around for more aspersions to cast upon Strike’s appearance, “he’s got that sort of pubey hair.”

Matthew had only really become reconciled to her continuing employment with Strike now that Robin had accepted the media consultancy job.)

Robin selected two bags of salt and vinegar crisps at random, and headed towards the cash desk. She had not yet told Strike that she would be leaving in two and a half weeks’ time.

Lucy had moved from the subject of Charlotte only to interrogate Robin on the amount of business coming through the shabby little office. Robin had been as vague as she dared, intuiting that if Lucy did not know how bad Strike’s finances were, it was because he did not want her to know. Hoping that he would be pleased for his sister to think that business was good, she mentioned that his latest client was wealthy.