The Cuckoo's Calling

“Let him. She won’t. She’s ripe to tell anyway. But if you’re too much of a pussy to do anything about this, Wardle,” said Strike, who could feel cold sweat on his back and a fiery pain in what remained of his right leg, “and anyone else who was close to Landry turns up dead, I’m gonna go straight to the fucking press. I’ll tell them I gave you every bit of information I had, and that you had every fucking chance to bring this killer in. I’ll make up my fee in selling the rights to my story, and you can pass that message on to Carver for me.

“Here,” he said, pushing across the table a piece of torn paper, on which he had scribbled several six-figure numbers. “Try them first. Now get a fucking warrant.”

He pushed the will across the table to Wardle and slid off the high bar stool. The walk from the pub to the taxi was agony. The more pressure he put on his right leg, the more excruciating the pain became.

Robin had been calling Strike every ten minutes since one o’clock, but he had not picked up. She rang again as he was climbing, with enormous difficulty, up the metal stairs towards the office, heaving himself up with the use of his arms. She heard his ringtone echoing up the stairwell, and hurried out on to the top landing.

“There you are! I’ve been calling and calling, there’s been loads…What’s the matter, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he lied.

“No you’re…What’s happened to you?”

She hastened down the stairs towards him. He was white, and sweaty, and looked, in Robin’s opinion, as though he might be sick.

“Have you been drinking?”

“No I haven’t been bloody drinking!” he snapped. “I’ve—sorry, Robin. In a bit of pain here. I just need to sit down.”

“What’s happened? Let me…”

“I’ve got it. No problem. I can manage.”

Slowly he pulled himself to the top landing and limped very heavily to the old sofa. When he dropped his weight into it, Robin thought she heard something deep in the structure crack, and noted, We’ll need a new one, and then, But I’m leaving.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I fell down some stairs,” said Strike, panting a little, still wearing his coat. “Like a complete tit.”

“What stairs? What happened?”

From the depths of his agony he grinned at her expression, which was part horrified, part excited.

“I wasn’t wrestling anyone, Robin. I just slipped.”

“Oh, I see. You’re a bit—you look a bit pale. You don’t think you could have done something serious, do you? I could get a cab—maybe you should see a doctor.”

“No need for that. Have we still got any of those painkillers lying around?”

She brought him water and paracetamol. He took them, then stretched out his legs, flinched and asked:

“What’s been going on here? Did Graham Hardacre send you a picture?”

“Yes,” she said, hurrying to her computer monitor. “Here.”

With a shunt of her mouse and a click, the picture of Lieutenant Jonah Agyeman filled the monitor.

In silence, they contemplated the face of a young man whose irrefutable handsomeness was not diminished by the overlarge ears he had inherited from his father. The scarlet, black and gold uniform suited him. His grin was slightly lopsided, his cheekbones high, his jaw square and his skin dark with an undertone of red, like freshly brewed tea. He conveyed the careless charm that Lula Landry had had too; the indefinable quality that made the viewer linger over her image.

“He looks like her,” said Robin in a hushed voice.

“Yeah, he does. Anything else been going on?”

Robin seemed to snap back to attention.

“Oh God, yes…John Bristow called half an hour ago, to say he couldn’t get hold of you, and Tony Landry’s called three times.”

“I thought he might. What did he say?”

“He was absolutely—well, the first time, he asked to speak to you, and when I said you weren’t here, he hung up before I could give him your mobile number. The second time, he told me you had to call him straightaway, but slammed down the phone before I could tell him you still weren’t back. But the third time, he was just—well—he was incredibly angry. Screaming at me.”

“He’d better not have been offensive,” said Strike, scowling.

“He wasn’t really. Well, not to me—it was all about you.”

“What did he say?”

“He didn’t make a lot of sense, but he called John Bristow a ‘stupid prick,’ and then he was bawling something about Alison walking out, which he seemed to think had something to do with you, because he was yelling about suing you, and defamation, and all kinds of things.”

“Alison’s left her job?”

“Yes.”

“Did he say where she—no, of course he didn’t, why would he know?” he finished, more to himself than to Robin.

He looked down at his wrist. His cheap watch seemed to have hit something when he had fallen downstairs, because it had stopped at a quarter to one.

“What’s the time?”

“Ten to five.”

“Already?”

“Yes. Do you need anything? I can hang around a bit.”

“No, I want you out of here.”

His tone was such that instead of going to fetch her coat and handbag, Robin remained exactly where she was.

“What are you expecting to happen?”