The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1)(69)
Author: J.K. Rowling

There was a tawdry impersonality about the whole affair; a feeling of faint embarrassment; a painful avoidance of the facts of Rochelle’s life. Nobody seemed to feel that they had the right to sit in the front row. Even the obese black woman wearing thick-lensed glasses and a knitted hat, who Strike assumed was Rochelle’s aunt, had chosen to sit three benches from the front of the crematorium, keeping her distance from the cheap coffin. The balding worker whom Strike had met at the homeless hostel had come, in an open shirt and a leather jacket; behind him was a fresh-faced, neatly suited young Asian man who Strike thought might turn out to be the psychiatrist who had run Rochelle’s outpatient group.

Strike, in his old navy suit, and Robin, in the black skirt and jacket she wore to interviews, sat at the very back. Across the aisle were Bristow, miserable and pale, and Alison, whose damp double-breasted black raincoat glistened a little in the cold light.

Cheap red curtains opened, the coffin slid out of sight, and the drowned girl was consumed by fire. The silent mourners exchanged pained, awkward smiles at the back of the crematorium; hovering, trying not to add unseemly haste of departure to the other inadequacies of the service. Rochelle’s aunt, who projected an aura of eccentricity that bordered on instability, introduced herself as Winifred, then announced loudly, with an accusatory undertone:

“Dere’s sandwiches in the pub. I thought dere would be more people.”

She led the way outside, as if brooking no opposition, up the street to the Red Lion, the six other mourners following in her wake, heads bowed slightly against the rain.

The promised sandwiches sat, dry and unappetizing, on a metal foil tray covered in cling film, on a small table in the corner of the dingy pub. At some point on the walk to the Red Lion Aunt Winifred had realized who John Bristow was, and she now took overpowering possession of him, pinning him up against the bar, gabbling at him without pause. Bristow responded whenever she allowed him to get a word in edgewise, but the looks he cast towards Strike, who was talking to Rochelle’s psychiatrist, became more frequent and desperate as the minutes passed.

The psychiatrist parried all Strike’s attempts to engage him in conversation about the outpatients’ group he had run, finally countering a question about disclosures Rochelle might have made with a polite but firm reminder about patient confidentiality.

“Were you surprised that she killed herself?”

“No, not really. She was a very troubled girl, you know, and Lula Landry’s death was a great shock to her.”

Shortly afterwards he issued a general farewell and left.

Robin, who had been trying to make conversation with a monosyllabic Alison at a small table beside the window, gave up and headed for the Ladies.

Strike ambled across the small lounge and sat down in Robin’s abandoned seat. Alison threw him an unfriendly look, then resumed her contemplation of Bristow, who was still being harangued by Rochelle’s aunt. Alison had not unbuttoned her rain-flecked coat. A small glass of what looked like port stood on the table in front of her, and a slightly scornful smile played around her mouth, as though she found her surroundings ramshackle and inadequate. Strike was still trying to think of a good opener when she said unexpectedly:

“John was supposed to be at a meeting with Conway Oates’s executors this morning. He’s left Tony to meet them on his own. Tony’s absolutely furious.”

Her tone implied that Strike was in some way responsible for this, and that he deserved to know what trouble he had caused. She took a sip of port. Her hair hung limply to her shoulders and her big hands dwarfed the glass. In spite of a plainness that would have made wallflowers of other women, she radiated a great sense of self-importance.

“You don’t think it was a nice gesture for John to come to the funeral?” asked Strike.

Alison gave a scathing little “huh,” a token laugh.

“It’s not as though he knew this girl.”

“Why did you come along, then?”

“Tony wanted me to.”

Strike noted the pleasurable self-consciousness with which she pronounced her boss’s name.

“Why?”

“To keep an eye on John.”

“Tony thinks John needs watching, does he?”

She did not answer.

“They share you, John and Tony, don’t they?”

“What?” she said sharply.

He was glad to have discomposed her.

“They share your services? As a secretary?”

“Oh—oh, no. I work for Tony and Cyprian; I’m the senior partners’ secretary.”

“Ah. I wonder why I thought you were John’s too?”

“I work on a completely different level,” said Alison. “John uses the typing pool. I have nothing to do with him at work.”

“Yet romance blossomed across secretarial rank and floors?”

She met his facetiousness with more disdainful silence. She seemed to see Strike as intrinsically offensive, somebody undeserving of manners, beyond the pale.

The hostel worker stood alone in a corner, helping himself to sandwiches, palpably killing time until he could decently leave. Robin emerged from the Ladies, and was instantly suborned by Bristow, who seemed eager for assistance in coping with Aunt Winifred.

“So, how long have you and John been together?” asked Strike.

“A few months.”

“You got together before Lula died, did you?”

“He asked me out not long afterwards,” she said.

“He must have been in a pretty bad way, was he?”

“He was a complete mess.”

She did not sound sympathetic, but slightly contemptuous.

“Had he been flirting for a while?”

He expected her to refuse to answer; but he was wrong. Though she tried to pretend otherwise, there was unmistakable self-satisfaction and pride in her answer.

“He came upstairs to see Tony. Tony was busy, so John came to wait in my office. He started talking about his sister, and he got emotional. I gave him tissues, and he ended up asking me out to dinner.”

In spite of what seemed to be lukewarm feelings for Bristow, he thought that she was proud of his overtures; they were a kind of trophy. Strike wondered whether Alison had ever, before desperate John Bristow came along, been asked out to dinner. It had been the collision of two people with an unhealthy need: I gave him tissues, and he asked me out to dinner.

The hostel worker was buttoning up his jacket. Catching Strike’s eye, he gave a farewell wave, and departed without speaking to anyone.

“So how does the big boss feel about his secretary dating his nephew?”

“It’s not up to Tony what I do in my private life,” she said.

“True enough,” said Strike. “Anyway, he can’t talk about mixing business with pleasure, can he? Sleeping with Cyprian May’s wife as he is.”

Momentarily fooled by his casual tone, Alison opened her mouth to respond; then the meaning of his words hit her, and her self-assurance shattered.

“That’s not true!” she said fiercely, her face burning. “Who said that to you? It’s a lie. It’s a complete lie. It’s not true. It isn’t.”

He heard a terrified child behind the woman’s protest.

“Really? Why did Cyprian May send you to Oxford to find Tony on the seventh of January then?”

“That—it was only—he’d forgotten to get Tony to sign some documents, that’s all.”

“And he didn’t use a fax machine or a courier because…?”

“They were sensitive documents.”

“Alison,” said Strike, enjoying her agitation, “we both know that’s balls. Cyprian thought Tony had sloped off somewhere with Ursula for the day, didn’t he?”

“He didn’t! He hadn’t!”

Up at the bar, Aunt Winifred was waving her arms, windmill-like, at Bristow and Robin, who were wearing frozen smiles.

“You found him in Oxford, did you?”

“No, because—”

“What time did you get there?”

“About eleven, but he’d—”

“Cyprian must’ve sent you out the moment you got to work, did he?”

“The documents were urgent.”

“But you didn’t find Tony at his hotel or in the conference center?”

“I missed him,” she said, in furious desperation, “because he’d gone back to London to visit Lady Bristow.”

“Ah,” said Strike. “Right. Bit odd that he didn’t let you or Cyprian know that he was going back to London, isn’t it?”

“No,” she said, with a valiant attempt at regaining her vanished superiority. “He was contactable. He was still on his mobile. It didn’t matter.”

“Did you call his mobile?”

She did not answer.

“Did you call it, and not get an answer?”

She sipped her port in simmering silence.

“In fairness, it would break the mood, taking a call from your secretary while you’re on the job.”

He thought that she would find this offensive, and was not disappointed.

“You’re disgusting. You’re really disgusting,” she said thickly, her cheeks a dull dark red with the prudishness she tried to disguise under a show of superiority.

“Do you live alone?” he asked her.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” she asked, completely off-balance now.

“Just wondered. So you don’t see anything odd in Tony booking into an Oxford hotel for the night, driving back to London the following morning, then returning to Oxford again, in time to check out of his hotel the next day?”

“He went back to Oxford so that he could attend the conference in the afternoon,” she said doggedly.

“Oh, really? Did you hang around and meet him there?”

“He was there,” she said evasively.

“You’ve got proof, have you?”

She said nothing.

“Tell me,” said Strike, “would you rather think that Tony was in bed with Ursula May all day, or having some kind of confrontation with his niece?”

Over at the bar, Aunt Winifred was straightening her knitted hat and retying her belt. She seemed to be preparing to leave.

For several seconds Alison fought herself, and then, with an air of unleashing something long suppressed, she said in a ferocious whisper:

“They aren’t having an affair. I know they aren’t. It wouldn’t happen. Ursula only cares about money; it’s all that matters to her, and Tony’s got less than Cyprian. Ursula wouldn’t want Tony. She wouldn’t.”