Robert Galbraith - The Cuckoo's Calling

“Now, the windows in those flats are triple-glazed or something. They’re designed to keep the heat and the air conditioning in, and the noise of the hoi polloi out. By the time we were interviewing her, the street below was full of panda cars and neighbors, but you’d never have known it from up there except for the flashing blue lights. We could’ve been inside a fucking pyramid for all the noise that got inside that place.

“So I said to her, ‘Are you sure you heard shouting, Mrs. Bestigui? Because this flat seems to be pretty much soundproofed.’

“She wouldn’t back down. Swore she’d heard every word. According to her, Landry screamed something like ‘You’re too late,’ and a man’s voice said, ‘You’re a fucking liar.’ Auditory hallucinations, they call them,” said Wardle. “You start hearing things when you snort so much coke your brains start dribbling out of your nose.”

He took another long pull on his pint.

“Anyway, we proved beyond doubt she couldn’t have heard it. The Bestiguis moved into a friend’s house the next day to get away from the press, so we put a few blokes in their flat, and a guy up on Landry’s balcony, shouting his head off. The lot on the first floor couldn’t hear a word he was saying, and they were stone-cold sober, and making an effort.

“But while we were proving she was talking shit, Mrs. Bestigui was phoning half of London to tell them she was the sole witness to the murder of Lula Landry. The press were already on to it, because some of the neighbors had heard her screaming about an intruder. Papers had tried and convicted Evan Duffield before we even got back to Mrs. Bestigui.

“We put it to her that we’d now proven she couldn’t have heard what she said she’d heard. Well, she wasn’t ready to admit it had all been in her own head. She’d got a lot riding on it now, with the press swarming outside her front door like she was Lula Landry reborn. So she came back with ‘Oh, didn’t I say? I opened them. Yeah, I opened the windows for a breath of fresh air.’ ”

Wardle gave a scathing laugh.

“Sub-zero outside, and snowing.”

“And she was in her underwear, right?”

“Looking like a rake with two plastic tangerines tied to it,” said Wardle, and the simile came out so easily that Strike was sure he was far from the first to have heard it. “We went ahead and double-checked the new story; we dusted for prints, and right enough, she hadn’t opened the windows. No prints on the latches or anywhere else; the cleaner had done them the morning before Landry died, and hadn’t been in since. As the windows were locked and bolted when we arrived, there’s only one conclusion to be drawn, isn’t there? Mrs. Tansy Bestigui is a fucking liar.”

Wardle drained his glass.

“Have another one,” said Strike, and he headed for the bar without waiting for an answer.

He noticed Wardle’s curious gaze roaming over his lower legs as he returned to the table. Under different circumstances, he might have banged the prosthesis hard against the table leg, and said “It’s this one.” Instead, he set down two fresh pints and some pork scratchings, which to his irritation were served in a small white ramekin, and continued where they had left off.

“Tansy Bestigui definitely witnessed Landry falling past the window, though, didn’t she? Because Wilson reckons he heard the body fall right before Mrs. Bestigui started screaming.”

“Maybe she saw it, but she wasn’t having a pee. She was doing a couple of lines of charlie in the bathroom. We found it there, cut and ready for her.”

“Left some, had she?”

“Yeah. Presumably the body falling past the window put her off.”

“The window’s visible from the bathroom?”

“Yeah. Well, just.”

“You got there pretty quickly, didn’t you?”

“Uniformed lot were there in about eight minutes, and Carver and I were there in about twenty.” Wardle lifted his glass, as though to toast the force’s efficiency.

“I’ve spoken to Wilson, the security guard,” said Strike.

“Yeah? He didn’t do bad,” said Wardle, with a trace of condescension. “It wasn’t his fault he had the runs. But he didn’t touch anything, and he did a proper search right after she’d jumped. Yeah, he did all right.”

“He and his colleagues were a bit lazy on the door codes.”

“People always are. Too many pin numbers and passwords to remember. Know the feeling.”

“Bristow’s interested in the possibilities of the quarter of an hour when Wilson was in the bog.”

“We were, too, for about five minutes, before we’d satisfied ourselves that Mrs. Bestigui was a publicity-mad cokehead.”

“Wilson mentioned that the pool was unlocked.”

“Can he explain how a murderer got into the pool area, or back to it, without walking right past him? A fucking pool,” said Wardle, “nearly as big as the one I’ve got at my gym, and all for the use of three fucking people. A gym on the ground floor behind the security desk. Underground fucking parking. Flats done up with marble and shit like…like a fucking five-star hotel.”

The policeman sat shaking his head very slowly over the unequal distribution of wealth.

“Different world,” he said.

“I’m interested in the middle flat,” said Strike.

“Deeby Macc’s?” said Wardle, and Strike was surprised to see a grin of genuine warmth spread across the policeman’s face. “What about it?”

“Did you go in there?”

“I had a look, but Bryant had already searched it. Empty. Windows bolted, alarm set and working properly.”

“Is Bryant the one who knocked into the table and smashed a big floral arrangement?”

Wardle snorted.

“Heard about that, did you? Mr. Bestigui wasn’t too chuffed about it. Oh yeah. Two hundred white roses in a crystal vase the size of a dustbin. Apparently he’d read that Macc asks for white roses in his rider. His rider,” Wardle said, as though Strike’s silence implied an ignorance of what the term meant. “Stuff they ask for in their dressing rooms. I’d’ve thought you’d know about this stuff.”

Strike ignored the insinuation. He had hoped for better from Anstis.

“Ever find out why Bestigui wanted Macc to have roses?”

“Just schmoozing, isn’t it? Probably wanted to put Macc in a film. He was fucked off to the back teeth when he heard Bryant had ruined them. Yelling the place down when he found out.”

“Anyone find it strange that he was upset about a bunch of flowers, when his neighbor’s lying in the street with her head smashed in?”

“He’s one obnoxious fucker, Bestigui,” said Wardle, with feeling. “Used to people jumping to attention when he speaks. He tried treating all of us like staff, till he realized that wasn’t clever.

“But the shouting wasn’t really about the flowers. He was trying to drown out his wife, give her a chance to pull herself together. He kept forcing his way in between her and anyone who wanted to question her. Big guy as well, old Freddie.”

“What was he worried about?”

“That the longer she bawled and shook like a frozen whippet, the more bloody obvious it became that she’d been doing coke. He must’ve known it was lying around somewhere in the flat. He can’t have been delighted to have the Met come bursting in. So he tried to distract everyone with a tantrum about his five-hundred-quid floral arrangement.

“I read somewhere that he’s divorcing her. I’m not surprised. He’s used to the press tiptoeing around him, because he’s such a litigious bastard; he can’t have enjoyed all the attention he got after Tansy shot her mouth off. The press made hay while they could. Rehashed old stories about him throwing plates at underlings. Punches in meetings. They say he paid his last wife a massive lump sum to stop her talking about his sex life in court. He’s pretty well known as a prize shit.”