The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1)(61)
Author: J.K. Rowling

“OK, if you haven’t got anything to tell me…” said Strike, and he pushed himself up out of the armchair. To his slight surprise, and Duffield’s evident displeasure, Ciara set her empty wineglass down and began to unfold her long legs, preparatory to standing.

“All right,” said Duffield sharply. “There’s one thing.”

Strike sank back into his chair. Ciara thrust one of her own cigarettes at Duffield, who took it with muttered thanks, then she too sat down, watching Strike.

“Go on,” said the latter, while Duffield fiddled with his lighter.

“All right. I dunno whether it matters,” said the actor. “But I don’t want you to say where you got the information.”

“I can’t guarantee that,” said Strike.

Duffield scowled, his knees jumping up and down, smoking with his eyes on the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, Strike saw Ciara open her mouth to speak, and forestalled her, one hand in the air.

“Well,” said Duffield, “two days ago I was having lunch with Freddie Bestigui. He left his BlackBerry on the table when he went up to the bar.” Duffield puffed and jiggled. “I don’t wanna be fired,” he said, glaring at Strike. “I need this f**king job.”

“Go on,” said Strike.

“He got an email. I saw Lula’s name. I read it.”

“OK.”

“It was from his wife. It said something like, ‘I know we’re supposed to be talking through lawyers, but unless you can do better than £1.5 million, I will tell everyone exactly where I was when Lula Landry died, and exactly how I got there, because I’m sick of taking shit for you. This is not an empty threat. I’m starting to think I should tell the police anyway.’ Or something like that,” said Duffield.

Dimly, through the curtained window, came the sound of a couple of the paparazzi outside laughing together.

“That’s very useful information,” Strike told Duffield. “Thank you.”

“I don’t want Bestigui to know it was me who told you.”

“I don’t think your name’ll need to come into it,” said Strike, standing up again. “Thanks for the water.”

“Hang on, sweetie, I’m coming,” said Ciara, her phone pressed to her ear. “Kieran? We’re coming out now, Cormoran and me. Right now. Bye-bye, Evan darling.”

She bent over and kissed him on both cheeks, while Duffield, halfway out of his chair, looked disconcerted.

“You can crash here if you—”

“No, sweetie, I’ve got a job tomorrow afternoon; need my beauty sleep,” she said.

More flashes blinded Strike as he stepped outside; but the paparazzi seemed confused this time. As he helped Ciara down the steps, and followed her into the back of the car, one of them shouted at Strike: “Who the f**k are you?”

Strike slammed the door, grinning. Kolovas-Jones was back in the driver’s seat; they were pulling away from the curb, and this time they were not pursued.

After a block or so of silence, Kolovas-Jones looked in the rear-view mirror and asked Ciara:

“Home?”

“I suppose so. Kieran, will you turn on the radio? I fancy a bit of music,” she said. “Louder than that, sweetie. Oh, I love this.”

“Telephone” by Lady Gaga filled the car.

She turned to Strike as the orange glow of street lights swept across her extraordinary face. Her breath smelled of alcohol, her skin of that sweet, peppery perfume.

“Don’t you want to ask me anything else?”

“You know what?” said Strike. “I do. Why would you have a detachable lining in a handbag?”

She stared at him for several seconds, then let out a great giggle, slumping sideways into his shoulder, nudging him. Lithe and slight, she continued to rest against him as she said:

“You are funny.”

“But why would you?”

“Well, it just makes the bag more, like, individual; you can customize them, you see; you can buy a couple of linings and swap them over; you can pull them out and use them as scarves; they’re beautiful. Silk with gorgeous patterns. The zip edging is very rock-and-roll.”

“Interesting,” said Strike, as her upper leg moved to rest lightly along his own, and she gave a second, deep-throated giggle.

Call all you want, but there’s no one home, sang Lady Gaga.

The music masked their conversation, but Kolovas-Jones’s eyes were moving with unnecessary regularity from road ahead to rear-view mirror. After another minute, Ciara said:

“Guy’s right, I do like them big. You’re very butch. And, like, stern. It’s sexy.”

A block later she whispered:

“Where do you live?” while rubbing her silky cheek against his, like a cat.

“I sleep on a camp bed in my office.”

She giggled again. She was definitely a little drunk.

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll go to mine, then, shall we?”

Her tongue was cool and sweet and tasted of Pernod.

“Have you slept with my father?” he managed to say, between the pressings of her full lips on to his.

“No…God, no…” A little giggle. “He dyes his hair…it’s, like, purple close up…I used to call him the rocking prune…”

And then, ten minutes later, a lucid voice in his mind urging him not to let desire lead on to humiliation, he surfaced for air to mutter:

“I’ve only got one leg.”

“Don’t be silly…”

“I’m not being silly…it got blown off in Afghanistan.”

“Poor baby…” she whispered. “I’ll rub it better.”

“Yeah—that’s not my leg…It’s helping, though…”

9

ROBIN RAN UP THE CLANGING metal stairs in the same low heels that she had worn the previous day. Twenty-four hours ago, unable to dislodge the word “gumshoe” from her mind, she had selected her frumpiest footwear for a day’s walking; today, excited by what she had achieved in the old black shoes, they had taken on the glamour of Cinderella’s glass slippers. Hardly able to wait to tell Strike everything she had found out, she had almost run to Denmark Street through the sunlit rubble. She was confident that any lingering awkwardness after Strike’s drunken escapades of two nights previously would be utterly eclipsed by their mutual excitement about her dazzling solo discoveries of the previous day.

But when she reached the second landing, she pulled up short. For the third time, the glass door was locked, and the office beyond it unlit and silent.

She let herself in and made a swift survey of the evidence. The door to the inner office stood open. Strike’s camp bed was folded neatly away. There was no sign of an evening meal in the bin. The computer monitor was dark, the kettle cold. Robin was forced to conclude that Strike had not (as she phrased it to herself) spent the night at home.

She hung up her coat, then took from her handbag a small notebook, turned on the computer and, after a few minutes’ hopeful but fruitless wait, began to type up a precis of what she had found out the day before. She had barely slept for the excitement of telling Strike everything in person. Typing it all out was a bitter anticli**x. Where was he?

As her fingers flew over the keyboard, an answer she did not much like presented itself for her consideration. Devastated as he had been at the news of his ex’s engagement, was it not likely that he had gone to beg her not to marry this other man? Hadn’t he shouted to the whole of Charing Cross Road that Charlotte did not love Jago Ross? Perhaps, after all, it was true; perhaps Charlotte had thrown herself into Strike’s arms, and they were now reconciled, lying asleep, entwined, in the house or flat from which he had been ejected four weeks ago. Robin remembered Lucy’s oblique inquiries and insinuations about Charlotte, and suspected that any such reunion would not bode well for her job security. Not that it matters, she reminded herself, typing furiously, and with uncharacteristic inaccuracy. You’re leaving in a week’s time. The reflection made her feel even more agitated.

Alternatively, of course, Strike had gone to Charlotte and she had turned him away. In that case, the matter of his current whereabouts became a matter of more pressing, less personal concern. What if he had gone out, unchecked and unprotected, hell-bent on intoxication again? Robin’s busy fingers slowed and stopped, mid-sentence. She swiveled on her computer chair to look at the silent office telephone.

She might well be the only person who knew that Cormoran Strike was not where he was supposed to be. Perhaps she ought to call him on his mobile? And if he did not pick up? How many hours ought she to let elapse before contacting the police? The idea of ringing Matthew at his office and asking his advice came to her, only to be swatted away.

She and Matthew had rowed when Robin arrived home, very late, after walking a drunken Strike back to the office from the Tottenham. Matthew had told her yet again that she was naive, impressionable and a sucker for a hard-luck story; that Strike was after a secretary on the cheap, and using emotional blackmail to achieve his ends; that there was probably no Charlotte at all, that it was all an extravagant ploy to engage Robin’s sympathy and services. Then Robin had lost her temper, and told Matthew that if anybody was blackmailing her it was he, with his constant harping on the money she ought to be bringing in, and his insinuation that she was not pulling her weight. Hadn’t he noticed that she was enjoying working for Strike; hadn’t it crossed his insensitive, obtuse accountant’s mind that she might be dreading the tedious bloody job in human resources? Matthew had been aghast, and then (though reserving the right to deplore Strike’s behavior) apologetic; but Robin, usually conciliatory and amiable, had remained aloof and angry. The truce effected the following morning had prickled with antagonism, mainly Robin’s.

Now, in the silence, watching the telephone, some of her anger at Matthew spilled over on to Strike. Where was he? What was he doing? Why was he acting up to Matthew’s accusations of irresponsibility? She was here, holding the fort, and he was presumably off chasing his ex-fiancée, and never mind their business…

…his business…

Footsteps on the stairwell: Robin thought she recognized the very slight unevenness in Strike’s tread. She waited, glaring towards the stairs, until she was sure that the footfalls were proceeding beyond the first landing; then she turned her chair resolutely back to face the monitor and began pounding at the keys again, while her heart raced.

“Morning.”

“Hi.”

She accorded Strike a fleeting glance while continuing to type. He looked tired, unshaven and unnaturally well dressed. She was instantly confirmed in her view that he had attempted a reconciliation with Charlotte; by the looks of it, successfully. The next two sentences were pockmarked with typos.