The Cuckoo's Calling

“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.”

“Oh, you never know. Physical passion might have overpowered her mercenary tendencies,” said Strike, watching Alison closely. “It can happen. It’s hard for another man to judge, but he’s not bad-looking, Tony, is he?”

He saw the rawness of her pain, her fury, and her voice was choked as she said:

“Tony’s right—you’re taking advantage—in it for all you can get—John’s gone funny—Lula jumped. She jumped. She was always unbalanced. John’s like his mother, he’s hysterical, he imagines things. Lula took drugs, she was one of those sort of people, out of control, always causing trouble and trying to get attention. Spoiled. Throwing money around. She could have anything she liked, anyone she wanted, but nothing was enough for her.”

“I didn’t realize you knew her.”

“I—Tony’s told me about her.”

“He really didn’t like her, did he?”

“He just saw her for what she was. She was no good. Some women,” she said, her chest heaving beneath the shapeless raincoat, “aren’t.”

A chill breeze cut through the musty air of the lounge as the door swung shut behind Rochelle’s aunt. Bristow and Robin kept smiling weakly until the door had closed completely, then exchanged looks of relief.

The barman had disappeared. Only four of them were left in the little lounge now. Strike became aware, for the first time, of the eighties ballad playing in the background: Jennifer Rush, “The Power of Love.” Bristow and Robin approached their table.

“I thought you wanted to speak to Rochelle’s aunt?” asked Bristow, looking aggrieved, as though he had been through an ordeal for nothing.

“Not enough to chase after her,” replied Strike cheerfully. “You can fill me in.”

Strike could tell, by the expressions on Robin’s and Bristow’s faces, that both thought this attitude strangely lackadaisical. Alison was fumbling for something in her bag, her own face hidden.

The rain had stopped, the pavements were slippery and the sky was gloomy, threatening a fresh downpour. The two women walked ahead in silence, while Bristow earnestly related to Strike all that he could remember of Aunt Winifred’s conversation. Strike, however, was not listening. He was watching the backs of the two women, both in black—almost, to the careless observer, alike, interchangeable. He remembered the sculptures on either side of the Queen’s Gate; not identical at all, in spite of the assumptions made by lazy eyes; one male, one female, the same species, yes, but profoundly different.

When he saw Robin and Alison come to a halt beside a BMW he assumed must be Bristow’s, he too slowed up, and cut across Bristow’s rambling recital of Rochelle’s stormy relations with her family.

“John, I need to check something with you.”

“Fire away.”

“You say you heard your uncle come into your mother’s flat on the morning before Lula died?”

“Yep, that’s right.”

“Are you absolutely sure that the man you heard was Tony?”

“Yes, of course.”

“You didn’t see him, though?”

“I…” Bristow’s rabbity face was suddenly puzzled. “…no, I—I don’t think I actually saw him. But I heard him let himself in. I heard his voice from the hall.”

“You don’t think that, perhaps, because you were expecting Tony, you assumed it was Tony?”

Another pause.

Then, in a changed voice:

“Are you saying Tony wasn’t there?”

“I just want to know how certain you are that he was.”

“Well…until this moment, I was completely certain. Nobody else has got a key to my mother’s flat. It couldn’t have been anyone except Tony.”