The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1)(57)
Author: J.K. Rowling

She dropped it on the car floor.

“When you said that it would have been the dream of Lula’s life to find her real father…”

“Oh God, it would have been. She used to talk about that all the time. She got really excited when that bitch—her birth mother—told her he was African. Guy always said that was bullshit, but he hated the woman.”

“He met Marlene Higson, did he?”

“Oh no, he just hated the whole, like, idea of her. He could see how excited Looly got, and he just wanted to protect her from being disappointed.”

So much protection, Strike thought, as the car turned a corner in the dark. Had Lula been that fragile? The back of Kolovas-Jones’s head was rigid, correct; his eyes flickering more often than was necessary to rest upon Strike’s face.

“And then Looly thought she had a lead on him—her real father—but that went completely cold on her. Dead end. Yeah, it was so sad. She really thought she’d found him and then it all just fell through her fingers.”

“What lead was this?”

“It was something about where the college was. Something her mother said. Looly thought she’d found the place it must have been, and she went to look at the records, or something, with this funny friend of hers called…”

“Rochelle?” suggested Strike. The Mercedes was now purring up Oxford Street.

“Yeah, Rochelle, that’s right. Looly met her in rehab or something, poor little thing. Looly was, like, unbelievably sweet to her. Used to take her shopping and stuff. Anyway, they never found him, or it was the wrong place, or something. I can’t remember.”

“Was she looking for a man called Agyeman?”

“I don’t think she ever told me the name.”

“Or Owusu?”

Ciara turned her beautiful light eyes upon him in astonishment.

“That’s Guy’s real name!”

“I know.”

“Oh my God,” Ciara giggled. “Guy’s dad never went to college. He was a bus driver. He used to beat Guy up for sketching dresses all the time. That’s why Guy changed his name.”

The car was slowing down. The long queue, four people wide, stretching along the block, led to a discreet entrance that might have been to a private house. A gaggle of dark figures was gathered around a white-pillared doorway.

“Paps,” said Kolovas-Jones, speaking for the first time. “Careful how you get out of the car, Ciara.”

He slid out of the driver’s seat and walked around to the left-hand back door; but the paparazzi were already running; ominous, darkly clad men, raising their long-nosed cameras as they closed in.

Ciara and Strike emerged into flashes like gunfire; Strike’s retinas were in sudden, dazzling whiteout; he ducked his head, his hand closed instinctively around Ciara Porter’s slender upper arm, and he steered her ahead of him through the black oblong that represented sanctuary, as the doors opened magically to admit them. The queuing hordes were shouting, protesting at their easy entry, yelping with excitement; and then the flashes stopped, and they were inside, where there was an industrial roar of noises, and a loud insistent bass line.

“Wow, you’ve got a great sense of direction,” said Ciara. “I usually, like, ricochet off the bouncers and they have to push me in.”

Streaks and blazes of purple and yellow light were still burned across Strike’s field of vision. He dropped her arm. She was so pale that she looked almost luminous in the gloom. Then they were jostled further inside the club by the entry of another dozen people behind them.

“C’mon,” said Ciara, and she slipped a soft, long-fingered hand inside his and tugged him along behind her.

Faces turned as they walked through the packed crowd, both of them taller by far than the majority of clubbers. Strike could see what looked like long glass fish tanks set into the walls, containing what seemed to be great floating blobs of wax, reminding him of his mother’s old lava lamps. There were long black leather banquettes along the walls, and, further in, nearer the dance floor, booths. It was hard to tell how big the club was, because of judiciously placed mirrors; at one point, Strike caught a glimpse of himself, head-on, looking like a sharply dressed heavy behind the silvery sylph that was Ciara. The music pounded through every part of him, vibrating through his head and body; the crowd on the dance floor was so dense that it seemed miraculous that they were managing even to stamp and sway.

They had reached a padded doorway, guarded by a bald bouncer who grinned at Ciara, revealing two gold teeth, and pushed open the concealed entrance.

They entered a quieter, though hardly less crowded bar area that was evidently reserved for the famous and their friends. Strike noticed a miniskirted television presenter, a soap actor, a comedian primarily famous for his sexual appetite; and then, in a distant corner, Evan Duffield.

He was wearing a skull-patterned scarf wound around his neck and skintight black jeans, sitting at the join of two black leather banquettes with arms stretched at right angles along the backs of the benches on either side, where his companions, mostly women, were crammed. His dark shoulder-length hair had been dyed blonde; he was pallid and bony-faced, and the smudges around his bright turquoise eyes were dark purple.

The group containing Duffield was emanating an almost magnetic force over the room. Strike saw it in the sneaking sidelong glances other occupants were shooting them; in the respectful space left around them, a wider orbit than anybody else had been granted. Duffield and his cohorts’ apparent unselfconsciousness was, Strike recognized, nothing but expert artifice; they had, all of them, the hyper-alertness of the prey animal combined with the casual arrogance of predators. In the inverted food chain of fame, it was the big beasts who were stalked and hunted; they were receiving their due.

Duffield was talking to a sexy brunette. Her lips were parted as she listened, almost ludicrously immersed in him. As Ciara and Strike drew nearer, Strike saw Duffield glance away from the brunette for a fraction of a second, making, Strike thought, a lightning-fast recce of the bar, taking the measure of the room’s attention, and of other possibilities it might offer.

“Ciara!” he yelled hoarsely.

The brunette looked deflated as Duffield jumped nimbly to his feet; thin and yet well muscled, he slid out from behind the table to embrace Ciara, who was eight inches taller than he in her platform shoes; she dropped Strike’s hand to return the hug. The whole bar seemed, for a few shining moments, to be watching; then they remembered themselves, and returned to their chat and their cocktails.

“Evan, this is Cormoran Strike,” said Ciara. She moved her mouth close to Duffield’s ear and Strike saw rather than heard her say, “He’s Jonny Rokeby’s son!”

“All right, mate?” asked Duffield, holding out a hand, which Strike shook.

Like other inveterate womanizers Strike had encountered, Duffield’s voice and mannerisms were slightly camp. Perhaps such men became feminized by prolonged immersion in women’s company, or perhaps it was a way of disarming their quarry. Duffield indicated with a flutter of the hand that the others should move along the bench to make room for Ciara; the brunette looked crestfallen. Strike was left to find himself a low stool, drag it alongside the table and ask Ciara what she wanted to drink.

“Oooh, get me a Boozy-Uzi,” she said, “and use my money, sweetie.”

Her cocktail smelled strongly of Pernod. Strike bought himself water, and returned to the table. Ciara and Duffield were now almost nose to nose, talking; but when Strike set down the drinks, Duffield looked around.

“So what d’you do, Cormoran? Music biz?”

“No,” said Strike. “I’m a detective.”

“No shit,” said Duffield. “Who’m I supposed to have killed this time?”

The group around him permitted themselves wry, or nervous, smiles, but Ciara said:

“Don’t joke, Evan.”

“I’m not joking, Ciara. You’ll notice when I am, because it’ll be f**king funny.”

The brunette giggled.

“I said I’m not joking,” snapped Duffield.

The brunette looked as though she had been slapped. The rest of the group seemed imperceptibly to withdraw, even in the cramped space; they began their own conversation, temporarily excluding Ciara, Strike and Duffield.

“Evan, not nice,” said Ciara, but her reproach seemed to caress rather than sting, and Strike noticed that the glance she threw the brunette held no pity.

Duffield drummed his fingers on the edge of the table.

“So, what kind of a detective are you, Cormoran?”

“A private one.”

“Evan, darling, Cormoran’s been hired by Looly’s brother…”

But Duffield had apparently spotted someone or something of interest up at the bar, for he leapt to his feet and disappeared into the crowd there.

“He’s always a bit ADHD,” said Ciara apologetically. “Plus, he’s still really, really f**ked up about Looly. He is,” she insisted, half cross, half amused, as Strike raised his eyebrows and looked pointedly in the direction of the voluptuous brunette, who was now cradling an empty mojito glass and looking morose. “You’ve got something on your smart jacket,” Ciara added, and she leaned forwards to brush off what Strike thought were pizza crumbs. He caught a strong whiff of her sweet, spicy perfume. The silver material of her dress was so stiff that it gaped, like armor, away from her body, affording him an unhampered view of small white br**sts and pointed shell-pink n**ples.

“What’s that perfume you’re wearing?”

She thrust a wrist under his nose.

“It’s Guy’s new one,” she said. “It’s called Éprise—it’s French for ‘smitten,’ you know?”

“Yeah,” he said.

Duffield had returned, holding another drink, cleaving his way back through the crowd, whose faces revolved after him, tugged by his aura. His legs in their tight jeans were like black pipe cleaners, and with his darkly smudged eyes he looked like a Pierrot gone bad.

“Evan, babes,” said Ciara, when Duffield had reseated himself, “Cormoran’s investigating—”

“He heard you the first time,” Strike interrupted her. “There’s no need.”

He thought that the actor had heard that, too. Duffield drank his drink quickly, and tossed a few comments into the group beside them. Ciara sipped her cocktail, then nudged Duffield.

“How’s the film going, sweetie?”

“Great. Well. Suicidal drug dealer. It’s not a stretch, y’know.”

Everyone smiled, except Duffield himself. He drummed his fingers on the table, his legs jerking in time.