The Cuckoo's Calling

“Because I heard a man she wasn’t married to telling her he was lying in a hotel room fantasizing about going down on her, I expect,” said Bryony, coolly.

“So she might be trading up after all?” asked Strike.

“That’s not up,” said Bryony; but then she added hastily, “I mean, pretty tacky message. Anyway, listen, I’ve got to get back out there, or Guy will be going ballistic.”

He let her go. After she had left, he made two more pages of notes. Bryony Radford had shown herself a highly unreliable witness, suggestible and mendacious, but she had told him much more than she knew.

7

THE SHOOT LASTED FOR ANOTHER three hours. Strike waited in the garden, smoking and consuming more bottled water, while dusk fell. From time to time he wandered back into the building to check on progress, which seemed immensely slow. Occasionally he glimpsed or heard Somé, whose temper seemed frayed, barking instructions at the photographer or one of the black-clad minions who flitted between clothes racks. Finally, at nearly nine o’clock, after Strike had consumed a few slices of the pizza that had been ordered by the morose and exhausted stylist’s assistant, Ciara Porter descended the stairs where she had been posing with her two colleagues, and joined Strike in the makeup room, which Bryony was busy stripping bare.

Ciara was still wearing the stiff silver minidress in which she had posed for the last pictures. Attenuated and angular, with milk-white skin, hair almost as fair, and pale blue eyes set very wide apart, she stretched out her endless legs, in platform shoes that were tied with long silver threads up her calves, and lit a Marlboro Light.

“God, I can’t believe you’re Rokers’ son!” she said breathlessly, her chrysoberyl eyes and full lips both wide. “Just beyond weird! I know him; he invited Looly and me to the Greatest Hits launch last year! And I know your brothers, Al and Eddie! They told me they had a big brother in the army! God. Mad. Is that you done, Bryony?” Ciara added pointedly.

The makeup artist seemed to be making a laborious business of gathering up the tools of her trade. Now she sped up perceptibly, while Ciara smoked and watched her in silence.

“Yep, that’s me,” said Bryony brightly at last, hoisting a heavy box over her shoulder and picking up more cases in each hand. “See you, Ciara. Goodbye,” she added to Strike, and left.

“She is so bloody nosy, and such a gossip,” Ciara told Strike. She threw back her long white hair, rearranged her coltish legs and asked:

“D’you see a lot of Al and Eddie?”

“No,” said Strike.

“And your mum,” she said, unfazed, blowing smoke out of the corner of her mouth. “I mean, she’s just, like, a legend. You know how Baz Carmichael did a whole collection two seasons back called ‘Supergroupie,’ and it was like, Bebe Buell and your mum were the whole inspiration? Maxi skirts and buttonless shirts and boots?”

“I didn’t,” said Strike.

“Oh, it was, like—you know that great quote about Ossie Clark dresses, how men liked them because they could just, like, open them up really easily and fuck the girls? That’s, like, your mum’s whole era.”

She shook her hair out of her eyes again and gazed at him, not with the chilling and offensive appraisal of Tansy Bestigui, but in what seemed to be frank and open wonder. It was difficult for him to decide whether she was sincere, or performing her own character; her beauty got in the way, like a thick cobweb through which it was difficult to see her clearly.

“So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you about Lula.”

“God, yeah. Yeah. No, I really want to help. When I heard someone was investigating it, I was, like, well, good. At last.”

“Really?”

“God, yeah. The whole thing was so fucking shocking. I just couldn’t believe it. She’s still on my phone, look at this.”

She rummaged in an enormous handbag, finally retrieving a white iPhone. Scrolling down the contact list, she leaned into him, showing him the name “Looly.” Her perfume was sweet and peppery.

“I keep expecting her to call me,” said Ciara, momentarily subdued, slipping the phone back into her bag. “I can’t delete her; I keep going to do it, and then just, like, bottling it, you know?”

She raised herself restlessly, twisted one of the long legs underneath her, sat back down and smoked in silence for a few seconds.

“You were with her most of her last day, weren’t you?” Strike asked.

“Don’t fucking remind me,” said Ciara, closing her eyes. “I’ve only been over it, like, a million times. Trying to get my head around how you can go from, like, completely bloody happy to dead in, like, hours.”

“She was completely happy?”

“God, happier than I’d ever seen her, that last week. We got back from a job in Antigua for Vogue, and she and Evan got back together and they had the commitment ceremony; it was all fantastic for her, she was on cloud nine.”

“You were at this commitment ceremony?”