Robert Galbraith - The Cuckoo's Calling

“So then Duffield, who’s got no money on him, walks all the way to Ciara Porter’s place in Notting Hill. We found a few people who’d seen a man wearing a wolf’s head strolling along relevant streets, and there’s footage of him cadging a free box of matches from a woman in an all-night garage.”

“Can you make out his face?”

“No, because he only shoved the wolf head up to speak to her, and all you can see is its snout. She said it was Duffield, though.

“He got to Porter’s around half four. She let him sleep on the sofa, and about an hour later she got the news about Landry being dead, and woke him up to tell him. Cue histrionics and rehab.”

“You checked for a suicide note?” asked Strike.

“Yeah. There was nothing in the flat, nothing on her laptop, but that wasn’t a surprise. She did it on the spur of the moment, didn’t she? She was bipolar, she’d just argued with that little tosser and it pushed her over—well, you know what I mean.”

Wardle checked his watch, and drained the last of his pint.

“I’m gonna have to go. The wife’ll be pissed off, I told her I’d only be half an hour.”

The over-tanned girls had left without either man noticing. Out on the pavement, both lit up cigarettes.

“I hate this fucking smoking ban,” said Wardle, zipping his leather jacket up to the neck.

“Have we got a deal, then?” asked Strike.

Cigarette between his lips, Wardle pulled on a pair of gloves.

“I dunno about that.”

“C’mon, Wardle,” said Strike, handing the policeman a card, which Wardle accepted as though it were a joke item. “I’ve given you Brett Fearney.”

Wardle laughed outright.

“Not yet you haven’t.”

He slipped Strike’s card into a pocket, inhaled, blew smoke skywards, then shot the larger man a look compounded of curiosity and appraisal.

“Yeah, all right. If we get Fearney, you can have the file.”

“EVAN DUFFIELD’S AGENT SAYS HIS client isn’t taking any further calls or giving any interviews about Lula Landry,” said Robin next morning. “I did make it clear that you’re not a journalist, but he was adamant. And the people in Guy Somé’s office are ruder than Freddie Bestigui’s. You’d think I was trying to get an audience with the Pope.”

“OK,” said Strike. “I’ll see whether I can get at him through Bristow.”

It was the first time that Robin had seen Strike in a suit. He looked, she thought, like a rugby player en route to an international: large, conventionally smart in his dark jacket and subdued tie. He was on his knees, searching through one of the cardboard boxes he had brought from Charlotte’s flat. Robin was averting her gaze from his boxed-up possessions. They were still avoiding any mention of the fact that Strike was living in his office.

“Aha,” he said, finally locating, from amid a pile of his mail, a bright blue envelope: the invitation to his nephew’s party. “Bollocks,” he added, on opening it.

“What’s the matter?”

“It doesn’t say how old he is,” said Strike. “My nephew.”

Robin was curious about Strike’s relations with his family. As she had never been officially informed, however, that Strike had numerous half-brothers and -sisters, a famous father and a mildly infamous mother, she bit back all questions and continued to open the day’s paltry mail.

Strike got up off the floor, replaced the cardboard box in a corner of the inner office and returned to Robin.

“What’s that?” he asked, seeing a sheet of photocopied newsprint on the desk.

“I kept it for you,” she said diffidently. “You said you were glad you’d seen that story about Evan Duffield…I thought you might be interested in this, if you haven’t already seen it.”

It was a neatly clipped article about film producer Freddie Bestigui, taken from the previous day’s Evening Standard.

“Excellent; I’ll read that on the way to lunch with his wife.”

“Soon to be ex,” said Robin. “It’s all in that article. He’s not very lucky in love, Mr. Bestigui.”

“From what Wardle told me, he’s not a very lovable man,” said Strike.

“How did you get that policeman to talk to you?” Robin said, unable to hold back her curiosity on this point. She was desperate to learn more about the process and progress of the investigation.

“We’ve got a mutual friend,” said Strike. “Bloke I knew in Afghanistan; Met officer in the TA.”

“You were in Afghanistan?”

“Yeah.” Strike was pulling on his overcoat, the folded article on Freddie Bestigui and the invitation to Jack’s party between his teeth.

“What were you doing in Afghanistan?”

“Investigating a Killed In Action,” said Strike. “Military police.”

“Oh,” said Robin.

Military police did not tally with Matthew’s impression of a charlatan, or a waster.

“Why did you leave?”

“Injured,” said Strike.

He had described that injury to Wilson in the starkest of terms, but he was wary of being equally frank with Robin. He could imagine her shocked expression, and he stood in no need of her sympathy.

“Don’t forget to call Peter Gillespie,” Robin reminded him, as he headed out of the door.

Strike read the photocopied article as he rode the Tube to Bond Street. Freddie Bestigui had inherited his first fortune from a father who had made a great deal of money in haulage; he had made his second by producing highly commercial films that serious critics treated with derision. The producer was currently going to court to refute claims, by two newspapers, that he had behaved with gross impropriety towards a young female employee, whose silence he had subsequently bought. The accusations, carefully hedged around with many “alleged”s and “reported”s, included aggressive sexual advances and a degree of physical bullying. They had been made “by a source close to the alleged victim,” the girl herself having refused either to press charges or to speak to the press. The fact that Freddie was currently divorcing his latest wife, Tansy, was mentioned in the concluding paragraph, which ended with a reminder that the unhappy couple had been in the building on the night that Lula Landry took her own life. The reader was left with the odd impression that the Bestiguis’ mutual unhappiness might have influenced Landry in her decision to jump.

Strike had never moved in the kinds of circles that dined at Cipriani. It was only as he walked up Davies Street, the sun warm on his back and imparting a ruddy glow to the red-brick building ahead, that he thought how odd it would be, yet not unlikely, if he ran into one of his half-siblings there. Restaurants like Cipriani were part of the regular lives of Strike’s father’s legitimate children. He had last heard from three of them while in Selly Oak Hospital, undergoing physiotherapy. Gabi and Danni had jointly sent flowers; Al had visited once, laughing too loudly and scared of looking at the lower end of the bed. Afterwards, Charlotte had imitated Al braying and wincing. She was a good mimic. Nobody ever expected a girl that beautiful to be funny, yet she was.

The interior of the restaurant had an art deco feeling, the bar and chairs of mellow polished wood, with pale yellow tablecloths on the circular tables and white-jacketed, bow-tied waiters and waitresses. Strike spotted his client immediately among the clattering, jabbering diners, sitting at a table set for four and talking, to Strike’s surprise, to two women instead of one, both with long, glossy brown hair. Bristow’s rabbity face was full of the desire to please, or perhaps placate.

The lawyer jumped up to greet Strike when he saw him, and introduced Tansy Bestigui, who held out a thin, cool hand, but did not smile, and her sister, Ursula May, who did not hold out a hand at all. While the preliminaries of ordering drinks and handing around menus were navigated, Bristow nervous and over-talkative throughout, the sisters subjected Strike to the kind of brazenly critical stares that only people of a certain class feel entitled to give.