The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1)(51)
Author: J.K. Rowling

“D’you know whether Lula tried to find her father?”

“Yeah, she tried,” said Marlene dismissively.

“How?”

“She looked up college records,” said Marlene.

“But if you couldn’t remember where he went…”

“I dunno, she thought she’d found the place or summit, but she couldn’t find ’im, no. Mebbe I wasn’ remembrin’ his name right, I dunno. She used to go on an’ fuckin’ on; what did ’e look like, where was ’e studyin’. I said to ’er, he was tall an’ skinny an’ you wanna be grateful you got my ears, not ’is, ’cause there wouldna bin no fuckin’ modelin’ career if you’d got them f**king elephant lugs.”

“Did Lula ever talk to you about her friends?”

“Oh, yeah. There was that little black bitch, Raquelle, or whatever she called ’erself. Leechin’ all she could outta Lula. Oh, she did herself all right. Fuckin’ clothes an’ jew’lry an’ I-dunno-what-the-fuck else. I sez to Lula once, ‘I wouldn’ mind a new coat.’ But I wasn’ pushy, see. That Raquelle din’ mind askin’.”

She sniffed, and drained her glass.

“Did you ever meet Rochelle?”

“That was ’er name, was it? Yeah, once. She come along in a fuckin’ car with a driver to pick Lula up from seein’ me. Like Lady Muck out the back window, sneerin’ at me. She’ll be missin’ all of that now, I ’spect. In it for all she could get.

“An’ there was that Ciara Porter,” Marlene plowed on, with, if possible, even greater spite, “sleepin’ with Lula’s boyfriend the night she fuckin’ died. Nasty fuckin’ bitch.”

“Do you know Ciara Porter?”

“I seen it in the fuckin’ papers. ’E wen’ off to ’er place, di’n’t ’e, Evan? After he rowed with Lula. Went to Ciara. Fuckin’ bitch.”

It became clear, as Marlene talked on, that Lula had kept her natural mother firmly segregated from her friends, and that, with the exception of a brief glimpse of Rochelle, Marlene’s opinions and deductions about Lula’s social set were based entirely on the press reports she had greedily consumed.

Strike fetched more drinks, and listened to Marlene describe the horror and shock she had experienced on hearing (from the neighbor who had run in with the news, early in the morning of the 8th) that her daughter had fallen to her death from her balcony. Careful questioning revealed that Lula had not seen Marlene for two months before she died. Strike then listened to a diatribe about the treatment she had received from Lula’s adoptive family, following the model’s death.

“They di’n’t want me around, ’specially that fuckin’ uncle. ’Ave ya met ’im, ’ave ya? Fuckin’ Tony Landry? I contacted ’im abou’ the funeral an’ all I got was threats. Oh yeah. Fuckin’ threats. I said to ’im, ‘I’m ’er mother. I gotta right to be there.’ An’ he tole me I wasn’t ’er mother, that mad bitch was ’er mother, Lady Bristow. Funny, I says, ’cause I remember pushing ’er outta my fanny. Sorry for my crudity, but there you are. An’ he said I was causing distress, talkin’ to the press. They come an’ found me,” she told Strike furiously, and she jabbed her finger at the block of flats overlooking them. “Press come an’ foun’ me. ’Course I tole my side o’ the fuckin’ story. ’Course I did.

“Well, I didn’t wanna scene, not at a funeral, I didn’t wanna ruin things, but I wasn’t gonna be kept away. I went an’ sat in the back. I seen fuckin’ Rochelle there, givin’ me looks like I wuz dirt. But nobody stopped me in the end.

“They got what they wanted, that fuckin’ family. I di’n’ get nothin’. Nothin’. Tha’s not what Lula woulda wanted, I know that for a fact. She woulda wanted me to ’ave something. Not,” said Marlene, with an assumption of dignity, “that I cared abou’ the money. It weren’ about the money for me. Nuthin’ was gonna replace my daughter, not ten, not twenny mill.

“Mind you, she’d of bin livid if she’d known I didn’t get nuthin’,” she went on. “All that money goin’ begging; people can’t believe it when I tell ’em that I got nuthin’. Struggling to make the rent, and me own daughter lef’ millions. But there you are. That’s how the rich stay rich, ain’t it? They didn’ need it, but they didn’ mind a bit more. I dunno how that Landry sleeps at night, but that’s ’is business.”

“Did Lula ever tell you she was going to leave you anything? Did she mention having made a will?”

Marlene seemed suddenly alert to a whiff of hope.

“Oh yeah, she said she’d look aft’r me, yeah. Yeah, she tole me she’d see me all right. D’you think I shoulda tole someone that? Mentioned it, like?”

“I don’t think it would have made any difference, unless she made a will and left you something in it,” said Strike.

Her face fell back into its sullen expression.

“They prob’ly fuckin’ destroyed it, them bastards. They coulda done. That’s the sort of people they are. I wouldn’t put nuthin’ past that uncle.”

5

“I’M SO SORRY HE HASN’T got back to you,” Robin told the caller, seven miles away in the office. “Mr. Strike’s incredibly busy at the moment. Let me take your name and number, and I’ll make sure he phones you this afternoon.”

“Oh, there’s no need for that,” said the woman. She had a pleasant, cultivated voice with a faint suspicion of hoarseness, as though her laugh would be sexy and bold. “I don’t really need to speak to him. Could you just give him a message for me? I wanted to warn him, that’s all. God, this is…it’s a bit embarrassing; it isn’t the way I’d have chosen…Well, anyway. Could you please just tell him that Charlotte Campbell called, and that I’m engaged to Jago Ross? I didn’t want him to hear about it from anyone else, or read about it. Jago’s parents have gone and put it in the bloody Times. Mortifying.”

“Oh. All right,” said Robin, her mind suddenly paralyzed like her pen.

“Thanks very much—Robin, did you say? Thanks. ’Bye.”

Charlotte rang off first. Robin replaced the receiver in slow motion, feeling acutely anxious. She did not want to deliver this news. She might be only the messenger, but she would feel as though she were delivering an assault on Strike’s determination to keep his private life under wraps, on his firm avoidance of the subject of the boxes of possessions, the camp bed, the detritus of his evening meals in the bins every morning.

Robin pondered her options. She could forget to relay the message, and simply tell him to call Charlotte and get her to do her own dirty work (as Robin put it to herself). What, though, if Strike refused to call, and somebody else told him about the engagement? Robin had no means of knowing whether Strike and his ex (girlfriend? fiancée? wife?) had legions of mutual friends. If she and Matthew ever split up, if he became engaged to another woman (it gave her a twisting feeling in her chest to even think of it), all her closest friends and family would feel involved, and would undoubtedly stampede to tell her; she would, she supposed, prefer to be forewarned in as low-key and private a way as possible.

When she heard Strike ascending the stair nearly an hour later, apparently talking on his mobile and in good spirits, Robin experienced a sharp stab of panic to the stomach as though she were about to sit an exam. When he pushed open the glass door, and she saw that he was not holding a mobile at all, but rapping under his breath, she felt even worse.

“Fuck yo’ meds and f**k Johari,” muttered Strike, who was holding a boxed electric fan in his arms. “Afternoon.”

“Hello.”

“Thought we could use this. It’s stuffy in here.”

“Yes, that would be good.”

“Just heard Deeby Macc playing in the shop,” Strike informed her, setting down the fan in a corner and peeling off his jacket. ‘Something something and Ferrari, Fuck yo’ meds and f**k Johari.’ Wonder who Johari was. Some rapper he was having a feud with, d’you think?”

“No,” said Robin, wishing that he was not so cheerful. “It’s a psychological term. The Johari window. It’s all to do with how well we know ourselves, and how well other people know us.”

Strike paused in the act of hanging up his jacket and stared at her.

“You didn’t get that out of Heat magazine.”

“No. I was doing psychology at university. I dropped out.”

She felt, obscurely, that it might somehow even the playing field to tell him about one of her own personal failures, before delivering the bad news.

“You dropped out of university?” He seemed uncharacteristically interested. “That’s a coincidence. I did, too. So why ‘fuck Johari’?”

“Deeby Macc had therapy in prison. He became interested and did a lot of reading on psychology. I got that bit out of the papers,” she added.

“You’re a mine of useful information.”

She experienced another elevator-drop in the pit of her stomach.

“There was a call, when you were out. From a Charlotte Campbell.”

He looked up quickly, frowning.

“She asked me to give you a message, which was,” Robin’s gaze slid sideways, to hover momentarily on Strike’s ear, “that she’s engaged to Jago Ross.”

Her eyes were drawn, irresistibly, back to his face, and she felt a horrible chill.

One of the earliest and most vivid memories of Robin’s childhood was of the day that the family dog had been put down. She herself had been too young to understand what her father was saying; she took the continuing existence of Bruno, her oldest brother’s beloved Labrador, for granted. Confused by her parents’ solemnity, she had turned to Stephen for a clue as to how to react, and all security had crumbled, for she had seen, for the first time in her short life, happiness and comfort drain out of his small and merry face, and his lips whiten as his mouth fell open. She had heard oblivion howling in the silence that preceded his awful scream of anguish, and then she had cried, inconsolably, not for Bruno, but for the terrifying grief of her brother.

Strike did not speak immediately. Then he said, with palpable difficulty:

“Right. Thanks.”

He walked into the inner office, and closed the door.

Robin sat back down at her desk, feeling like an executioner. She could not settle to anything. She considered knocking on the door again, and offering a cup of tea, but decided against. For five minutes she restlessly reorganized the items on her desk, glancing regularly at the closed inner door, until it opened again, and she jumped, and pretended to be busy at the keyboard.