Robert Galbraith - The Cuckoo's Calling

“You didn’t fancy him as a suspect?”

“Oh, we fancied him a lot; he was on the spot and he’s got a rep for violence. It never looked likely, though. If his wife knew that he’d done it, or that he’d been out of the flat at the moment Landry fell, I’m betting she’d have told us so: she was out of control when we got there. But she said he’d been in bed, and the bedclothes were disarranged and looked slept in.

“Plus, if he’d managed to sneak out of the flat without her realizing it, and gone up to Landry’s place, we’re left with the problem of how he got past Wilson. He can’t have taken the lift, so he’d have passed Wilson in the stairwell, coming down.”

“So the timings rule him out?”

Wardle hesitated.

“Well, it’s just possible. Just, assuming Bestigui can move a damn sight faster than most men of his age and weight, and that he started running the moment he pushed her over. But there’s still the fact that we didn’t find his DNA anywhere in the flat, the question of how he got out of the flat without his wife knowing he’d gone, and the small matter of why Landry would have let him in. All her friends agreed she didn’t like him. Anyway,” Wardle finished the dregs of his pint, “Bestigui’s the kind of man who’d hire a killer if he wanted someone taken care of. He wouldn’t sully his own hands.”

“Another one?”

Wardle checked his watch.

“My shout,” he said, and he ambled up to the bar. The three young women standing around the high table fell silent, watching him greedily. Wardle threw them a smirk as he walked back past with his drinks, and they glanced over at him as he resumed the bar stool beside Strike.

“How d’you think Wilson shapes up as a possible killer?” Strike asked the policeman.

“Badly,” said Wardle. “He couldn’t have got up and down quickly enough to meet Tansy Bestigui on the ground floor. Mind you, his CV’s a crock of shit. He was employed on the basis of being ex-police, and he was never in the force.”

“Interesting. Where was he?”

“He’s been knocking around the security world for years. He admitted he’d lied to get his first job, about ten years ago, and he’d just kept it on his CV.”

“He seems to have liked Landry.”

“Yeah. He’s older than he looks,” said Wardle, inconsequentially. “He’s a grandfather. They don’t show age like us, do they, Afro-Caribbeans? I wouldn’t’ve put him as any older than you.” Strike wondered idly how old Wardle thought he was.

“You got forensics to check out her flat?”

“Oh yeah,” said Wardle, “but that was purely because the higher-ups wanted to put the thing beyond reasonable doubt. We knew within the first twenty-four hours it had to be suicide. We went the extra mile, though, with the whole fucking world watching.”

He spoke with poorly disguised pride.

“The cleaner had been through the whole place that morning—sexy Polish girl, crap English, but bloody thorough with a duster—so the day’s prints stood out good and clear. Nothing unusual.”

“Wilson’s prints were in there, presumably, because he searched the place after she fell?”

“Yeah, but nowhere suspicious.”

“So as far as you’re concerned, there were only three people in the whole building when she fell. Deeby Macc should have been there, but…”

“…he went straight from the airport to a nightclub, yeah,” said Wardle. Again, a broad and apparently involuntary grin illuminated his face. “I interviewed Deeby at Claridges the day after she died. Massive bloke. Like you,” he said, with a glance at Strike’s bulky torso, “only fit.” Strike took the hit without demur. “Proper ex-gangster. He’s been in and out of the nick in LA. He nearly didn’t get a visa to get into the UK.

“He had an entourage with him,” said Wardle. “All hanging around the room, rings on every finger, tattoos on their necks. He was the biggest, though. One scary fucker Deeby’d be, if you met him down an alleyway. Politer than Bestigui by ten fucking miles. Asked me how the hell I could do my job without a gun.”

The policeman was beaming. Strike could not help drawing the conclusion that Eric Wardle, CID, was, in this case, as starstruck as Kieran Kolovas-Jones.

“Wasn’t a long interview, seeing as he’d only just got off a plane and never set foot inside Kentigern Gardens. Routine. I got him to sign his latest CD for me at the end,” Wardle added, as though he could not help himself. “That brought the house down, he loved it. The missus wanted to put it on eBay, but I’m keeping…”

Wardle stopped talking with an air of having given away a little more than he had intended. Amused, Strike helped himself to a handful of pork scratchings.

“What about Evan Duffield?”

“Him,” said Wardle. The stardust that had sparkled over the policeman’s account of Deeby Macc was gone; the policeman was scowling. “Little junkie shit. He pissed us around from start to finish. He went straight into rehab the day after she died.”

“I saw. Where?”

“Priory, where else? Fucking rest cure.”

“So when did you interview him?”

“Next day, but we had to find him first; his people were being as obstructive as possible. Same story as Bestigui, wasn’t it? They didn’t want us to know what he’d really been doing. My missus,” said Wardle, scowling even harder, “thinks he’s sexy. You married?”

“No,” said Strike.

“Anstis told me you left the army to get married to some woman who looks like a supermodel.”

“What was Duffield’s story, once you got to him?”

“They’d had a big bust-up in the club, Uzi. Plenty of witnesses to that. She left, and his story was that he followed her, about five minutes later, wearing this fucking wolf mask. It covers the whole head. Lifelike, hairy thing. He told us he’d got it from a fashion shoot.”

Wardle’s expression was eloquent of contempt.

“He liked putting this thing on to get in and out of places, to piss off the paparazzi. So, after Landry left Uzi, he got in his car—he had a driver outside, waiting for him—and went to Kentigern Gardens. Driver confirmed all that. Yeah, all right,” Wardle corrected himself impatiently, “he confirmed that he drove a man in a wolf’s head, who he assumed was Duffield as he was of Duffield’s height and build, and wearing what looked like Duffield’s clothes, and speaking in Duffield’s voice, to Kentigern Gardens.”

“But he didn’t take the wolf head off on the journey?”

“It’s only about fifteen minutes to her flat from Uzi. No, he didn’t take it off. He’s a childish little prick.

“So then, by Duffield’s own account, he saw the paps outside her flat and decided not to go in after all. He told the driver to take him off to Soho, where he let him out. Duffield walked round the corner to his dealer’s flat in d’Arblay Street, where he shot up.”

“Still wearing the wolf’s head?”

“No, he took it off there,” said Wardle. “The dealer, name of Whycliff, is an ex-public schoolboy with a habit way worse than Duffield’s. He gave a full statement agreeing that Duffield had come round at about half past two. It was only the pair of them there, and yeah, I’d take long odds that Whycliff would lie for Duffield, but a woman on the ground floor heard the doorbell ring and says she saw Duffield on the stair.

“Anyway, Duffield left Whycliff’s around four, with the bloody wolf’s head back on, and rambled off towards the place where he thought his car and driver were waiting; except that the driver was gone. The driver claimed a misunderstanding. He thought Duffield was an arsehole; he made that clear when we took his statement. Duffield wasn’t paying him; the car was on Landry’s account.