The Cuckoo's Calling

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 anticlimax. 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.