The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1)(59)
Author: J.K. Rowling

The bravado was undermined by the tremor in his fingers. His knees began bouncing up and down, just like John Bristow’s.

“D’you think it was murder?” Strike asked.

“No.” Duffield dragged on his cigarette. “Yeah. Maybe. I dunno. Murder makes more sense than f**king suicide, anyway. Because she wouldn’ta gone without leaving me a note. I keep waiting for a note to turn up, y’know, and then I’ll know it’s real. It don’t feel real. I can’t even remember the funeral. I was out of my f**king head. I took so much stuff I couldn’t f**king walk. I think, if I could just remember the funeral, it’d be easier to get my head round.”

He jammed his cigarette between his lips and began drumming with his fingers on the edge of the glass table. After a while, apparently discomforted by Strike’s silent observation, he demanded:

“Ask me something, then. Who’s hired you, anyway?”

“Lula’s brother John.”

Duffield stopped drumming.

“That money-grabbing, poker-arsed wanker?”

“Money-grabbing?”

“He was f**king obsessed with how she spent her f**king money, like it was any of his f**king business. Rich people always think everyone else is a f**king freeloader, have you noticed that? Her whole frigging family thought I was gold-digging, and after a bit,” he raised a finger to his temple and made a boring motion, “it went in, it planted doubts, y’know?”

He snatched one of the Zippos from the table and began flicking at it, trying to make it ignite. Strike watched tiny blue sparks erupt and die as Duffield talked.

“I expect he thought she’d be better off with some rich f**king accountant, like him.”

“He’s a lawyer.”

“Whatever. What’s the difference, it’s all about helping rich people keep their mitts on as much money as they can, innit? He’s got his f**king trust fund from Daddy, what skin is it off his nose what his sister did with her own money?”

“What was it that he objected to her buying, specifically?”

“Shit for me. The whole f**king family was the same; they didn’t mind if she chucked it their way, keep it in the f**king family, that was OK. Lu knew they were a mercenary load of f**kers, but, like I say, it still left its f**king mark. Planted ideas in her head.”

He threw the dead Zippo back on to the table, drew his knees up to his chest and glared at Strike with his disconcerting turquoise eyes.

“So he still thinks I did it, does he? Your client?”

“No, I don’t think he does,” said Strike.

“He’s changed his narrow fuckwitted mind, then, because I heard he was going round telling everyone it was me, before they ruled it as suicide. Only, I’ve got a cast-iron f**king alibi, so f**k him. Fuck. Them. All.”

Restless and nervy, he got to his feet, added wine to his almost untouched glass, then lit another cigarette.

“What can you tell me about the day Lula died?” Strike asked.

“The night, you mean.”

“The day leading up to it might be quite important too. There are a few things I’d like to clear up.”

“Yeah? Go on, then.”

Duffield dropped back down into the chair, and pulled his knees up to his chest again.

“Lula called you repeatedly between around midday and six in the evening, but you didn’t answer your phone.”

“No,” said Duffield. He began picking, childishly, at a small hole in the knee of his jeans. “Well, I was busy. I was working. On a song. Didn’t want to stem the flow. The old inspiration.”

“So you didn’t know she was calling you?”

“Well, yeah. I saw her number coming up.” He rubbed his nose, stretched his legs out on to the glass table, folded his arms and said, “I felt like teaching her a little lesson. Let her wonder what I was up to.”

“Why did you think she needed a lesson?”

“That f**king rapper. I wanted her to move in with me while he was staying in her building. ‘Don’t be silly, don’t you trust me?’ ” His imitation of Lula’s voice and expression was disingenuously girlish. “I said to her, ‘Don’t you be f**king silly. Show me I got nothing to worry about, and come and stay with me.’ But she wouldn’t. So then I thought, two can play at that f**king game, darling. Let’s see how you like it. So I got Ellie Carreira over to my place, and we did a bit of writing together, and then I brought Ellie along to Uzi with me. Lu couldn’t f**king complain. Just business. Just songwriting. Just friends, like her and that rapper-gangster.”

“I didn’t think she’d ever met Deeby Macc.”

“She hadn’t, but he’d made his intentions pretty f**king public, hadn’t he? Have you heard that song he wrote? She was creaming her panties over it.”

“ ‘Bitch you ain’t all that…’ ” Ciara began to quote obligingly, but a filthy look from Duffield silenced her.

“Did she leave you voicemail messages?”

“Yeah, a couple. ‘Evan, will you call me, please. It’s urgent. I don’t want to say it on the phone.’ It was always f**king urgent when she wanted to find out what I was up to. She knew I was pissed off. She was worried I might’ve called Ellie. She had a real hang-up about Ellie, because she knew we’d f**ked.”

“She said it was urgent, and that she didn’t want to say it on the phone?”

“Yeah, but that was just to try and make me call. One of her little games. She could be f**king jealous, Lu. And pretty f**king manipulative.”

“Can you think why she’d be calling her uncle repeatedly that day as well?”

“What uncle?”

“His name’s Tony Landry; he’s another lawyer.”

“Him? She wouldn’t be calling him, she f**king hated him worse than her brother.”

“She called him, repeatedly, over the same period that she was calling you. Leaving more or less the same message.”

Duffield raked his unshaven chin with dirty nails, staring at Strike.

“I dunno what that was about. Her mum, maybe. Old Lady B going into hospital or something.”

“You don’t think something might have happened that morning which she thought was either relevant to or of interest to both you and her uncle?”

“There isn’t any subject that could interest me and her f**king uncle at the same time,” said Duffield. “I’ve met him. Share prices and shit are all he’d be interested in.”

“Maybe it was something about her, something personal?”

“If it was, she wouldn’t call that f**ker. They didn’t like each other.”

“What makes you say that?”

“She felt about him like I feel about my f**king father. Neither of them thought we were worth shit.”

“Did she talk to you about that?”

“Oh, yeah. He thought her mental problems were just attention-seeking, bad behavior. Put on. Burden on her mother. He got a bit smarmier when she started making money, but she didn’t forget.”

“And she didn’t tell you why she’d been calling you, once she got to Uzi?”

“Nope,” said Duffield. He lit another cigarette. “She was f**ked off from the moment she arrived, because Ellie was there. Didn’t like that at all. In a right f**king mood, wasn’t she?”

For the first time he appealed to Ciara, who nodded sadly.

“She didn’t really talk to me,” said Duffield. “She was mostly talking to you, wasn’t she?”

“Yes,” said Ciara. “And she didn’t tell me there was anything, like, upsetting her or anything.”

“A couple of people have told me her phone was hacked…” began Strike; Duffield talked over him.

“Oh yeah, they were listening in on our messages for f**king weeks. They knew everywhere we were meeting and everything. Fucking bastards. We changed our phone numbers when we found out what was going on and we were f**king careful what messages we left after that.”

“So you wouldn’t be surprised, if Lula had had something important or upsetting to tell you, that she didn’t want to be explicit over the phone?”

“Yeah, but if it was that f**king important, she woulda told me at the club.”

“But she didn’t?”

“No, like I say, she never spoke to me all night.” A muscle was jumping in Duffield’s chiseled jaw. “She kept checking the time on her f**king phone. I knew what she was doing; trying to wind me up. Showing me she couldn’t wait to get home and meet f**king Deeby Macc. She waited until Ellie went off to the bog; then got up, came over to tell me she was leaving, and said I could have my bangle back; the one I gave her when we had our commitment ceremony. She chucked it down on the table in front of me, with everyone f**king gawping. So I picked it up and said, ‘Anyone fancy this, it’s going spare?’ and she f**ked off.”

He did not speak as though Lula had died three months previously, but as though it had all happened the day before, and there was still a possibility of reconciliation.

“You tried to restrain her, though, right?” asked Strike.

Duffield’s eyes narrowed.

“Restrain her?”

“You grabbed her arms, according to witnesses.”

“Did I? I can’t remember.”

“But she pulled free, and you stayed behind, is that right?”

“I waited ten minutes, because I wasn’t gonna give her the satisfaction of chasing her in front of all those people, and then I left the club and got my driver to take me to Kentigern Gardens.”

“Wearing the wolf mask,” said Strike.

“Yeah, to stop those f**king scumbags,” he nodded towards the window, “selling pictures of me looking wasted or pissed off. They hate it when you cover your face. Depriving them of making their f**king parasitic living. One of them tried to pull Wolfie off me, but I held on. I got in the car and gave ’em a few pictures of the Wolf giving them the finger, out the back window. Got to the corner of Kentigern Gardens and there were more paps everywhere. I knew she must’ve got in already.”

“Did you know the key code?”

“Nineteen sixty-six, yeah. But I knew she’d’ve told security not to let me up. I wasn’t gonna walk in in front of all of them and then get chucked out on me arse five minutes later. I tried to phone her from the car, but she wouldn’t pick up. I thought she’d probably gone downstairs to welcome Deeby f**king Macc to London. So I went off to see a man about pain relief.”