The Cuckoo's Calling

She had brought up a screen full of identically sized photographs, each showing one or more people dressed in dark clothes, all heading from left to right, making for the funeral. Crash barriers and the blurred faces of a crowd formed the backdrop to each picture.

Most striking of all was the picture of a very tall, pale girl with golden hair drawn back into a ponytail, on whose head was perched a confection of black net and feathers. Strike recognized her, because everyone knew who she was: Ciara Porter, the model with whom Lula had spent much of her last day on earth; the friend with whom Landry had been photographed for one of the most famous shots of her career. Porter looked beautiful and somber as she walked towards Lula’s funeral service. She seemed to have attended alone, because there was no disembodied hand supporting her thin arm or resting on her long back.

Next to Porter’s picture was that of a couple captioned Film producer Freddie Bestigui and wife Tansy. Bestigui was built like a bull, with short legs, a broad barrel chest and a thick neck. His hair was gray and brush-cut; his face a crumpled mass of folds, bags and moles, out of which his fleshy nose protruded like a tumor. Nevertheless, he cut an imposing figure in his expensive black overcoat, with his skeletal young wife on his arm. Almost nothing could be discerned of Tansy’s true appearance, behind the upturned fur of her coat collar and the enormous round sunglasses.

Last in this top row of photographs was Guy Somé, fashion designer. He was a thin black man who was wearing a midnight-blue frock coat of exaggerated cut. His face was bowed and his expression indiscernible, due to the way the light fell on his dark head, though three large diamond earrings in the lobe facing the camera had caught the flashes and glittered like stars. Like Porter, he appeared to have arrived unaccompanied, although a small group of mourners, unworthy of their own legends, had been captured within the frame of his picture.

Strike drew his chair nearer to the screen, though still keeping more than an arm’s length between himself and Robin. One of the unidentified faces, half severed by the edge of the picture, was John Bristow, recognizable by the short upper lip and the hamsterish teeth. He had his arm around a stricken-looking older woman with white hair; her face was gaunt and ghastly, the nakedness of her grief touching. Behind this pair was a tall, haughty-looking man who gave the impression of deploring the surroundings in which he found himself.

“I can’t see anyone who might be this ordinary girl,” said Robin, moving the screen down to scrutinize more pictures of famous and beautiful people looking sad and serious. “Oh, look…Evan Duffield.”

He was dressed in a black T-shirt, black jeans and a military-style black overcoat. His hair, too, was black; his face all sharp planes and hollows; icy blue eyes stared directly into the camera lens. Though taller than both of them, he looked fragile compared to the companions flanking him: a large man in a suit and an anxious-looking older woman, whose mouth was open and who was making a gesture as though to clear a path ahead of them. The threesome reminded Strike of parents steering a sick child away from a party. Strike noticed that, in spite of Duffield’s air of disorientation and distress, he had made a good job of applying his eyeliner.

“Look at those flowers!”

Duffield slid up into the top of the screen and vanished: Robin had paused on the photograph of an enormous wreath in the shape of what Strike took, initially, to be a heart, before realizing it represented two curved angel wings, composed of white roses. An inset photograph showed a close-up of the attached card.

“ ‘Rest in peace, Angel Lula. Deeby Macc,’ ” Robin read aloud.

“Deeby Macc? The rapper? So they knew each other, did they?”

“No, I don’t think so; but there was that whole thing about him renting a flat in her building; she’d been mentioned in a couple of his songs, hadn’t she? The press were all excited about him staying there…”

“You’re well informed on the subject.”

“Oh, you know, just magazines,” said Robin vaguely, scrolling back through the funeral photographs.

“What kind of name is ‘Deeby’?” Strike wondered aloud.

“It comes from his initials. It’s ‘D. B.’ really,” she enunciated clearly. “His real name’s Daryl Brandon Macdonald.”

“A rap fan, are you?”

“No,” said Robin, still intent on the screen. “I just remember things like that.”

She clicked off the images she was perusing and began tapping away on the keyboard again. Strike returned to his photographs. The next showed Mr. Geoffrey Hook kissing his ginger-haired companion, hand palpating one large, canvas-covered buttock, outside Ealing Broadway Tube station.

“Here’s a bit of film on YouTube, look,” said Robin. “Deeby Macc talking about Lula after she died.”