The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1)(44)
Author: J.K. Rowling

He reached into his desk drawer again, pressed several buttons, then held the mobile out to Strike.

And Lula Landry spoke close and real, slightly raw and throaty, in Strike’s ear, in deliberately affected mockney.

“Aw wight, darlin’? Got something to tell you, I’m not sure whether you’re going to like it but it’s a biggie, and I’m so f**king happy I’ve gotta tell someone, so ring me when you can, OK, can’t wait, mwah mwah.”

Strike handed back the phone.

“Did you call her back? Did you find out what the big news was?”

“No.” Somé ground out his cigarette and reached immediately for another one. “The Japs had me in back-to-back meetings; every time I thought of calling her, the time difference was in the way. Anyway…to tell you the truth, I thought I knew what she was going to say, and I wasn’t any too f**king pleased about it. I thought she was pregnant.”

Somé nodded several times with the fresh cigarette clutched between his teeth; then he removed it to say:

“Yeah, I thought she’d gone and got herself knocked up.”

“By Duffield?”

“I hoped to f**k not. I didn’t know at the time that they’d got back together. She wouldn’t have dared hook up with him if I’d been in the country; no, she waited till I was in Japan, the sneaky little bitch. She knew I hated him, and she cared what I thought. We were like family, Cuckoo and me.”

“Why did you think she might be pregnant?”

“It was the way she sounded. You’ve heard it—she was so excited…I had this feeling. It was the kind of thing Cuckoo would’ve done, and she’d have expected me to be as pleased as she was, and f**k her career, f**k me, counting on her to launch my brand-new accessories line…”

“Was this the five-million-pound contract her brother told me about?”

“Yeah, and I’ll bet the Accountant pushed her to hold out for as much as she could get, too,” said Somé, with another flash of temper. “It wasn’t like Cuckoo to try and wring every last penny out of me. She knew it was going to be fabulous, and would take her to a whole new level if she fronted it. It shouldn’t have been all about the money. Everyone associated her with my stuff; her big break came on a shoot for Vogue when she wore my Jagged dress. Cuckoo loved my clothes, she loved me, but people get to a certain level, and everyone’s telling them they’re worth more, and they forget who put them there, and suddenly it’s all about the bottom line.”

“You must’ve thought she was worth it, to commit to a five-million-pound contract?”

“Yeah, well, I’d pretty much designed the range for her, so having to shoot around a f**king pregnancy wouldn’t have been funny. And I could just imagine Cuckoo going silly afterwards, throwing it all in, not wanting to leave the f**king baby. She was the type; always looking for people to love, for a surrogate family. Those Bristows f**ked her up good. They only adopted her as a toy for Yvette, who is the scariest bitch in the world.”

“In what way?”

“Possessive. Morbid. Didn’t want to let Cuckoo out of her sight in case she died, like the kid she’d been bought to replace. Lady Bristow used to come to all the shows, getting under everyone’s feet, till she got too ill. And there was an uncle, who treated Cuckoo like scum until she started pulling in big money. He got a bit more respectful then. They all know the value of a buck, the Bristows.”

“They’re a wealthy family, aren’t they?”

“Alec Bristow didn’t leave that much, not relatively speaking. Not compared to proper money. Not like your old man. How come,” said Somé, swerving suddenly off the conversational track, “Jonny Rokeby’s son’s working as a private dick?”

“Because that’s his job,” said Strike. “Go on about the Bristows.”

Somé did not appear to resent being bossed around; if anything, he seemed to relish it, possibly because it was such an unusual experience.

“I just remember Cuckoo telling me that most of what Alec Bristow left was in shares in his old company, and Albris has gone down the pan in the recession. It’s hardly f**king Apple. Cuckoo had out-earned the whole f**king lot of them before she was twenty.”

“Was that picture,” said Strike, indicating the enormous “Fallen Angels” image on the wall behind him, “part of the five-million-pound campaign?”

“Yeah,” said Somé. “Those four bags were the start of it. She’s holding ‘Cashile’ there; I gave them all African names, for her. She was fixated on Africa. That whorish real mother she unearthed had told her her father was African, so Cuckoo had gone mad on it; talking about studying there, doing voluntary work…never mind that the old slapper had probably been sleeping with about fifty Yardies. African,” said Guy Somé, grinding out his cigarette stub in the glass ashtray, “my Aunt Fanny. The bitch just told Cuckoo what she wanted to hear.”

“And you decided to go ahead and use the picture for the campaign, even though Lula had just…?”

“It was meant as a f**king tribute.” Somé spoke loudly over him. “She’d never looked more beautiful. It was supposed to be a f**king tribute to her, to us. She was my muse. If the bastards couldn’t understand that, f**k ’em, that’s all. The press in this country are lower than scum. Judging everyone by their f**king selves.”

“The day before she died, some handbags were sent to Lula…”

“Yeah, they were mine. I sent her one of each of those,” said Somé, indicating the picture with the end of a new cigarette, “and I sent Deeby Macc some clothes by the same courier.”

“Had he ordered them, or…?”

“Freebies, dear,” drawled Somé. “Just good business. Couple of customized hoodies and some accessories. Celebrity endorsements never hurt.”

“Did he ever wear the stuff?”

“I don’t know,” said Somé in a more subdued tone. “I had other things to worry about the next day.”

“I’ve seen YouTube footage of him wearing a hoodie with studs on it, like that,” said Strike, pointing at Somé’s chest. “Making a fist.”

“Yeah, that was one of them. Someone must’ve sent the stuff on to him. One had a fist, one had a handgun, and some of his lyrics on the backs.”

“Did Lula talk to you about Deeby Macc coming to stay in the flat downstairs?”

“Oh yeah. She wasn’t nearly excited enough. I kept saying to her, babes, if he’d written three tracks about me I’d be waiting behind the front door nak*d when he got in.” Somé blew smoke in two long streams from his nostrils, looking sideways at Strike. “I like ’em big and rough,” he said. “But Cuckoo didn’t. Well, look what she hooked up with. I kept telling her, you’re the one making all this f**king song-and-dance about your roots; find yourself a nice black boy and settle down. Deeby would’ve been f**king perfect; why not?

“Last season’s show, I had her walking down the catwalk to Deeby’s ‘Butterface Girl.’ ‘Bitch you ain’t all that, get a mirror that don’ fool ya, Give it up an’ tone it down, girl, ’cause you ain’t no fuckin’ Lula.’ Duffield hated it.”

Somé smoked for a moment in silence, his eyes on the wall of photographs. Strike asked:

“Where do you live? Around here?” though he knew the answer.

“No, I’m in Charles Street, in Kensington,” said Somé. “Moved there last year. It’s a long f**king way from Hackney, I can tell you, but it was getting silly, I had to leave. Too much hassle. I grew up in Hackney,” he explained, “back when I was plain old Kevin Owusu. I changed my name when I left home. Like you.”

“I was never Rokeby,” said Strike, flicking over a page in his notebook. “My parents weren’t married.”

“We all know that, dear,” said Somé, with another flash of malice. “I dressed your old man for a Rolling Stone shoot last year: skinny suit and broken bowler. D’you see him much?”

“No,” said Strike.

“No, well, you’d make him look f**king old, wouldn’t you?” said Somé, with a cackle. He fidgeted in his seat, lit yet another cigarette, clamped it between his lips and squinted at Strike through billows of menthol smoke.

“Why are we talking about me, anyway? Do people usually start telling you their life stories when you get out that notebook?”

“Sometimes.”

“Don’t you want your tea? I don’t blame you. I don’t know why I drink this shit. My old dad would have a coronary if he asked for a cup of tea and got this.”

“Is your family still in Hackney?”

“I haven’t checked,” said Somé. “We don’t talk. I practice what I preach, see?”

“Why do you think Lula changed her name?”

“Because she hated her f**king family, same as me. She didn’t want to be associated with them anymore.”

“Why choose the same name as her Uncle Tony, then?”

“He’s not famous. It made a good name. Deeby couldn’t have written ‘Double L U B Mine’ if she’d been Lula Bristow, could he?”

“Charles Street isn’t too far from Kentigern Gardens, is it?”

“About a twenty-minute walk. I wanted Cuckoo to move in with me when she said she couldn’t stand her old place anymore, but she wouldn’t; she chose that f**king five-star prison instead, just to get away from the press. They drove her into that place. They bear responsibility.”

Strike remembered Deeby Macc: The motherfuckin’ press chased her out that window.

“She took me to see it. Mayfair, full of rich Russians and Arabs and bastards like Freddie Bestigui. I said to her, sweetie, you can’t live here; marble everywhere, marble isn’t chic in our climate…it’s like living in your own tomb…”

He faltered, then went on:

“She’d been through this head-fuck for a few months. There’d been a stalker who was hand-delivering letters through her front door at three in the morning; she kept getting woken up by the letter box going. The things he said he wanted to do to her, it scared her. Then she split up with Duffield, and she had the paps round the front of her house all the bloody time. Then she finds out they’re hacking all her calls. And then she had to go and find that bitch of a mother. It was all getting too much. She wanted to be away from it all, to feel secure. I told her to move in with me, but instead she went and bought that f**king mausoleum.