The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1)(55)
Author: J.K. Rowling

“Have you talked to Lula’s mother yet? She’s a bit weird.”

“…and I’d like to find out what it was.”

Bryony flicked her cigarette stub out of the open door and shifted restlessly on the desk.

“It could have been anything.” He waited for the inevitable suggestion, and was not disappointed. “A shopping list or something.”

“Yeah, it could’ve been; but if, for the sake of argument, it was a suicide note…”

“But it wasn’t—I mean, that’s silly—how could it’ve been? Who’d write a suicide note that far in advance, and then get their face done and go out dancing? That doesn’t make any sense at all!”

“It doesn’t seem likely, I agree, but it would be good to find out what it was.”

“Maybe it had nothing to do with her dying. Why couldn’t it have been a letter to Evan or something, telling him how hacked off she was?”

“She doesn’t seem to have become hacked off with him until later that day. Anyway, why would she write a letter, when she had his telephone number and was going to see him that night?”

“I don’t know,” said Bryony restlessly. “I’m just saying, it could’ve been something that doesn’t make any difference.”

“And you’re quite sure you didn’t see it?”

“Yes, I’m quite sure,” she said, her color definitely heightened. “I was there to do a job, not go snooping around her stuff. Is that everything, then?”

“Yeah, I think that’s all I’ve got to ask about that afternoon,” said Strike, “but you might be able to help me with something else. Do you know Tansy Bestigui?”

“No,” said Bryony. “Only her sister, Ursula. She’s hired me a couple of times for big parties. She’s awful.”

“In what way?”

“Just one of those spoiled rich women—well,” said Bryony, with a twist to her mouth, “she isn’t nearly as rich as she’d like to be. Both those Chillingham sisters went for old men with bags of money; wealth-seeking missiles, the pair of them. Ursula thought she’d hit the jackpot when she married Cyprian May, but he hasn’t got nearly enough for her. She’s knocking forty now; the opportunities aren’t there the way they used to be. I suppose that’s why she hasn’t been able to trade up.”

Then, evidently feeling that her tone needed some explanation, she continued:

“I’m sorry, but she accused me of listening to her bloody voicemail messages.” The makeup artist folded her arms across her chest, glaring at Strike. “I mean, please. She chucked me her mobile and told me to call her a cab, without so much as a bloody please or thank you. I’m dyslexic. I hit the wrong button and the next thing I know, she’s screaming her bloody head off at me.”

“Why do you think she was so upset?”

“Because I heard a man she wasn’t married to telling her he was lying in a hotel room fantasizing about going down on her, I expect,” said Bryony, coolly.

“So she might be trading up after all?” asked Strike.

“That’s not up,” said Bryony; but then she added hastily, “I mean, pretty tacky message. Anyway, listen, I’ve got to get back out there, or Guy will be going ballistic.”

He let her go. After she had left, he made two more pages of notes. Bryony Radford had shown herself a highly unreliable witness, suggestible and mendacious, but she had told him much more than she knew.

7

THE SHOOT LASTED FOR ANOTHER three hours. Strike waited in the garden, smoking and consuming more bottled water, while dusk fell. From time to time he wandered back into the building to check on progress, which seemed immensely slow. Occasionally he glimpsed or heard Somé, whose temper seemed frayed, barking instructions at the photographer or one of the black-clad minions who flitted between clothes racks. Finally, at nearly nine o’clock, after Strike had consumed a few slices of the pizza that had been ordered by the morose and exhausted stylist’s assistant, Ciara Porter descended the stairs where she had been posing with her two colleagues, and joined Strike in the makeup room, which Bryony was busy stripping bare.

Ciara was still wearing the stiff silver minidress in which she had posed for the last pictures. Attenuated and angular, with milk-white skin, hair almost as fair, and pale blue eyes set very wide apart, she stretched out her endless legs, in platform shoes that were tied with long silver threads up her calves, and lit a Marlboro Light.

“God, I can’t believe you’re Rokers’ son!” she said breathlessly, her chrysoberyl eyes and full lips both wide. “Just beyond weird! I know him; he invited Looly and me to the Greatest Hits launch last year! And I know your brothers, Al and Eddie! They told me they had a big brother in the army! God. Mad. Is that you done, Bryony?” Ciara added pointedly.

The makeup artist seemed to be making a laborious business of gathering up the tools of her trade. Now she sped up perceptibly, while Ciara smoked and watched her in silence.

“Yep, that’s me,” said Bryony brightly at last, hoisting a heavy box over her shoulder and picking up more cases in each hand. “See you, Ciara. Goodbye,” she added to Strike, and left.

“She is so bloody nosy, and such a gossip,” Ciara told Strike. She threw back her long white hair, rearranged her coltish legs and asked:

“D’you see a lot of Al and Eddie?”

“No,” said Strike.

“And your mum,” she said, unfazed, blowing smoke out of the corner of her mouth. “I mean, she’s just, like, a legend. You know how Baz Carmichael did a whole collection two seasons back called ‘Supergroupie,’ and it was like, Bebe Buell and your mum were the whole inspiration? Maxi skirts and buttonless shirts and boots?”

“I didn’t,” said Strike.

“Oh, it was, like—you know that great quote about Ossie Clark dresses, how men liked them because they could just, like, open them up really easily and f**k the girls? That’s, like, your mum’s whole era.”

She shook her hair out of her eyes again and gazed at him, not with the chilling and offensive appraisal of Tansy Bestigui, but in what seemed to be frank and open wonder. It was difficult for him to decide whether she was sincere, or performing her own character; her beauty got in the way, like a thick cobweb through which it was difficult to see her clearly.

“So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you about Lula.”

“God, yeah. Yeah. No, I really want to help. When I heard someone was investigating it, I was, like, well, good. At last.”

“Really?”

“God, yeah. The whole thing was so f**king shocking. I just couldn’t believe it. She’s still on my phone, look at this.”

She rummaged in an enormous handbag, finally retrieving a white iPhone. Scrolling down the contact list, she leaned into him, showing him the name “Looly.” Her perfume was sweet and peppery.

“I keep expecting her to call me,” said Ciara, momentarily subdued, slipping the phone back into her bag. “I can’t delete her; I keep going to do it, and then just, like, bottling it, you know?”

She raised herself restlessly, twisted one of the long legs underneath her, sat back down and smoked in silence for a few seconds.

“You were with her most of her last day, weren’t you?” Strike asked.

“Don’t f**king remind me,” said Ciara, closing her eyes. “I’ve only been over it, like, a million times. Trying to get my head around how you can go from, like, completely bloody happy to dead in, like, hours.”

“She was completely happy?”

“God, happier than I’d ever seen her, that last week. We got back from a job in Antigua for Vogue, and she and Evan got back together and they had the commitment ceremony; it was all fantastic for her, she was on cloud nine.”

“You were at this commitment ceremony?”

“Oh yeah,” said Ciara, dropping her cigarette end into a can of Coke, where it was extinguished with a small hiss. “God, it was beyond romantic. Evan just, like, sprang it on her at Dickie Carbury’s house. You know Dickie Carbury, the restaurateur? He’s got this fabulous place in the Cotswolds, and we were all there for the weekend, and Evan had bought them both matching bangles from Fergus Keane, gorgeous, oxidized silver. He forced us all down to the lake after dinner in the freezing cold and the snow, and then he recited this poem he’d written to her, and put the bangle on her wrist. Looly was laughing her head off, but then she just, like, recited a poem she knew back to him. Walt Whitman. It was,” said Ciara, with an air of sudden seriousness, “honestly, like, so impressive, just to have the perfect poem to say, just like that. People think models are dumb, you know.” She threw her hair back again and offered Strike a cigarette before taking another herself. “I get so bored of telling people I’ve got a deferred place to read English at Cambridge.”

“Have you?” asked Strike, unable to suppress the surprise in his voice.

“Yeah,” she said, blowing out smoke prettily, “but, you know, the modeling’s going so well, I’m going to give it another year. It’s opening doors, you know?”

“So this commitment ceremony was when—a week before Lula died?”

“Yeah,” said Ciara, “the Saturday before.”

“And it was just an exchange of poems and bangles. No vows, no officiant?”

“No, it wasn’t legally binding or anything, it was just, like, this lovely, this perfect moment. Well, except for Freddie Bestigui, he was being a bit of a pain. But at least,” Ciara drew hard on her cigarette, “his bloody wife wasn’t there.”

“Tansy?”

“Tansy Chillingham, yeah. She’s a bitch. It’s so not a surprise they’re divorcing; they led, like, totally separate lives, you never saw them out together.

“To tell you the truth, Freddie wasn’t too bad that weekend, seeing what a nasty rep he’s got. He was just a bore, the way he kept trying to suck up to Looly, but he wasn’t awful like they say he can be. I heard a story about this, like, totally naive girl he promised a bit part in a film…Well, I don’t know whether it was true.” Ciara squinted for a moment at the end of her cigarette. “She never reported it, anyway.”

“You said Freddie was being a pain; in what way?”

“Oh God, he kept, like, cornering Looly and going on about how great she’d be on screen, and like, what a great bloke her dad was.”

“Sir Alec?”

“Yeah, Sir Alec, of course. Oh my God,” said Ciara, wide-eyed, “if he’d known her real father, Looly would’ve, like, flipped out completely! That would have been, like, the dream of her life! No, he just said he’d known Sir Alec years and years ago, and they came from, like, the same East End manor or something, so he should be considered, like, her godfather or something. I think he was trying to be funny, but not. Anyway, everyone could tell he was just trying to work out how to get her into a film. He was a jerk about the commitment ceremony; he kept shouting ‘I’ll give away the bride.’ He was pissed; he drank like crazy all through dinner. Dickie had to shut him up. Then after the ceremony, we all had champagne back at the house and Freddie had, like, another two bottles on top of everything he’d already put away. He kept yelling at Looly that she’d make such a great actress, but she didn’t care. She just ignored him. She was cuddled up with Evan on the sofa, just, like…”