The Cuckoo's Calling

“Oh, about her boyfriend, Evan Duffield. They’d just got back together again. The family had thought it was over and we’d been so pleased. He’s a horrible person, an addict and a chronic self-publicist; about the worst influence on Lula you could imagine.

“I might have been a bit heavy-handed, I—I see that now. I was eleven years older than Lula. I felt protective of her, you know. Perhaps I was bossy at times. She was always telling me that I didn’t understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Well…anything. She had lots of issues. Issues with being adopted. Issues with being black in a white family. She used to say I had it easy…I don’t know. Perhaps she was right.”

He blinked rapidly behind his glasses. “The row was really the continuation of a row we’d had on the telephone the night before. I just couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid as to go back to Duffield. The relief we all felt when they split up…I mean, given her own history with drugs, hooking up with an addict…” He drew breath. “She didn’t want to hear it. She never did. She was furious with me. She’d actually given instructions to the security man at the flats not to let me past the front desk next morning, but—well, Wilson waved me through anyway.”

Humiliating, thought Strike, to have to rely on the pity of doormen.

“I wouldn’t have gone up,” said Bristow miserably, blotches of color dappling his thin neck again, “but I had the contract with Somé to give back to her; she’d asked me to look over it and she needed to sign it…She could be quite blasé about things like that. Anyway, she wasn’t too happy that they’d let me upstairs, and we rowed again, but it burned itself out quite quickly. She calmed down.

“So then I told her that Mum would appreciate a visit. Mum had just got out of hospital, you see. She’d had a hysterectomy. Lula said she might pop in and see her later, at her flat, but that she couldn’t be sure. She had things on.”

Bristow took a deep breath; his right knee started jiggling up and down again and his knobble-knuckled hands washed each other in dumb show.

“I don’t want you to think badly of her. People thought her selfish, but she’d been the youngest in the family and rather indulged, and then she was ill and, naturally, the center of attention, and then she was plunged into this extraordinary life where things, people, revolved around her, and she was pursued everywhere by the paparazzi. It wasn’t a normal existence.”

“No,” said Strike.

“So, anyway, I told Lula how groggy and sore Mum was feeling, and she said she might look in on her later. I left; I nipped into my office to get some files from Alison, because I wanted to work from Mum’s flat that day and keep her company. I next saw Lula at Mum’s, mid-morning. She sat with Mum for a while in the bedroom until my uncle arrived to visit, and then nipped into the study where I was working, to say goodbye. She hugged me before she…”

Bristow’s voice cracked, and he stared down into his lap.

“More coffee?” Strike suggested. Bristow shook his bowed head. To give him a moment to pull himself together, Strike picked up the tray and headed for the outer office.

Bristow’s girlfriend looked up from her newspaper, scowling, when Strike appeared. “Aren’t you finished?” she asked.

“Evidently not,” said Strike, with no attempt at a smile. She glared at him while he addressed Robin.

“Could I get another cup of coffee, er…?”

Robin stood up and took the tray from him in silence.

“John needs to be back in the office at half past ten,” Alison informed Strike, in a slightly louder voice. “We’ll need to be off in ten minutes at the most.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Strike assured her blandly, before returning to the inner office, where Bristow was sitting as though in prayer, his head bowed over his clasped hands.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, as Strike sat back down. “It’s still difficult talking about it.”

“No problem,” said Strike, picking up his notebook again. “So Lula came to see your mother? What time was that?”

“Elevenish. It all came out at the inquest, what she did after that. She got her driver to take her to some boutique that she liked, and then she went back to her flat. She had an appointment at home with a makeup artist she knew, and her friend Ciara Porter joined her there. You’ll have seen Ciara Porter, she’s a model. Very blonde. They were photographed together as angels, you probably saw it: naked except for handbags and wings. Somé used the picture in his advertising campaign after Lula died. People said it was tasteless.

“So Lula and Ciara spent the afternoon together at Lula’s flat, and then they left to go out to dinner, where they met up with Duffield and some other people. The whole group went on to Uzi, the nightclub, and they were there until past midnight.

“Then Duffield and Lula argued. Lots of people saw it happen. He manhandled her a bit, tried to make her stay, but she left the club alone. Everyone thought he’d done it, afterwards, but he turned out to have a cast-iron alibi.”