Robert Galbraith - The Cuckoo's Calling

“Why do you think Lula changed her name?”

“Because she hated her fucking family, same as me. She didn’t want to be associated with them anymore.”

“Why choose the same name as her Uncle Tony, then?”

“He’s not famous. It made a good name. Deeby couldn’t have written ‘Double L U B Mine’ if she’d been Lula Bristow, could he?”

“Charles Street isn’t too far from Kentigern Gardens, is it?”

“About a twenty-minute walk. I wanted Cuckoo to move in with me when she said she couldn’t stand her old place anymore, but she wouldn’t; she chose that fucking five-star prison instead, just to get away from the press. They drove her into that place. They bear responsibility.”

Strike remembered Deeby Macc: The motherfuckin’ press chased her out that window.

“She took me to see it. Mayfair, full of rich Russians and Arabs and bastards like Freddie Bestigui. I said to her, sweetie, you can’t live here; marble everywhere, marble isn’t chic in our climate…it’s like living in your own tomb …”

He faltered, then went on:

“She’d been through this head-fuck for a few months. There’d been a stalker who was hand-delivering letters through her front door at three in the morning; she kept getting woken up by the letter box going. The things he said he wanted to do to her, it scared her. Then she split up with Duffield, and she had the paps round the front of her house all the bloody time. Then she finds out they’re hacking all her calls. And then she had to go and find that bitch of a mother. It was all getting too much. She wanted to be away from it all, to feel secure. I told her to move in with me, but instead she went and bought that fucking mausoleum.

“She took it because it felt like a fortress with the round-the-clock security. She thought she’d be safe from everyone, that nobody would be able to get at her.

“But she hated it from the word go. I knew she would. She was cut off from everything she liked. Cuckoo loved color and noise. She liked being on the street, she liked walking, being free.

“One of the reasons the police said it wasn’t murder was the open windows. She’d opened them herself; it was only her prints on the handles. But I know why she opened them. She always opened the windows, even when it was freezing cold, because she couldn’t stand the silence. She liked being able to hear London.”

Somé’s voice had lost all its slyness and sarcasm. He cleared his throat and went on:

“She was trying to connect with something real; we used to talk about it all the time. It was our big thing. That’s what made her get involved with bloody Rochelle. It was a case of ‘there but for the grace of God.’ Cuckoo thought that’s what she’d have been, if she hadn’t been beautiful; if the Bristows hadn’t taken her in as a little plaything for Yvette.”

“Tell me about this stalker.”

“Mental case. He thought they were married or something. He was given a restraining order and compulsory psychiatric treatment.”

“Any idea where he is now?”

“I think he was deported back to Liverpool,” said Somé. “But the police checked him out; they told me he was in a secure ward up there the night she died.”

“Do you know the Bestiguis?”

“Only what Lula told me, that he was sleazy and she’s a walking waxwork. I don’t need to know her. I know her type. Rich girls spending their ugly husbands’ money. They come to my shows. They want to be my friend. Gimme an honest hooker any day.”

“Freddie Bestigui was at the same country-house weekend as Lula, a week before she died.”

“Yeah, I heard. He had a hard-on for her,” said Somé dismissively. “She knew it, as well; it wasn’t exactly a unique experience in her life, you know. He never got further than trying to get in the same lift, though, from what she told me.”

“You never spoke to her after their weekend at Dickie Carbury’s, did you?”

“No. Did he do something then? You don’t suspect Bestigui, do you?”

Somé sat up in his seat, staring.

“Fuck…Freddie Bestigui? Well, he’s a shit, I know that. This little girl I know…well, friend of a friend…she was working for his production company, and he tried to fucking rape her. No, I am not exaggerating,” said Somé. “Literally. Rape. Got her a bit drunk after work and had her on the floor; some assistant had forgotten his mobile and came back for it, and walked in on them. Bestigui paid them both off. Everyone was telling her to press charges, but she took the money and ran. They say he used to discipline his second wife in some pretty fucking kinky ways; that’s why she walked away with three mill; she threatened him with the press. But Cuckoo would never have let Freddie Bestigui into her flat at two in the morning. Like I say, she wasn’t a stupid girl.”

“What do you know about Derrick Wilson?”

“Who’s he?”

“The security guard who was on duty the night she died.”

“Nothing.”

“He’s a big guy, with a Jamaican accent.”

“This might shock you, but not all the black people in London know each other.”

“I wondered whether you’d ever spoken to him, or heard Lula talk about him.”

“No, we had more interesting things to talk about than the security guard.”

“Does the same apply to her driver, Kieran Kolovas-Jones?”

“Oh, I know who Kolovas-Jones is,” said Somé, with a slight smirk. “Striking little poses whenever he thought I might be looking out of the window. He’s about five fucking feet too short to model.”

“Did Lula ever talk about him?”

“No, why would she?” asked Somé restlessly. “He was her driver.”

“He’s told me they were quite close. He mentioned that she’d given him a jacket you designed. Worth nine hundred quid.”

“Big fucking deal,” said Somé, with easy contempt. “My proper stuff goes for upwards of three grand a coat. I slap the logo on shell suits and they sell like crazy, so it’d be silly not to.”

“Yeah, I was going to ask you about that,” said Strike. “Your—ready-to-wear line, is it?”

Somé looked amused.

“That’s right. That’s the stuff that isn’t made-to-measure, see? You buy it straight off the rack.”

“Right. How widely is that stuff sold?”

“It’s everywhere. When were you last in a clothes shop?” asked Somé, his wicked bulging eyes roving over Strike’s dark blue jacket. “What is that, anyway, your demob suit?”

“When you say ‘everywhere’…”

“Smart department stores, boutiques, online,” rattled off Somé. “Why?”

“One of two men caught on CCTV running away from Lula’s area that night was wearing a jacket with your logo on it.”

Somé twitched his head very slightly, a gesture of repudiation and irritation.

“Him and a million other people.”

“Didn’t you see—?”

“I didn’t look at any of that shit,” said Somé fiercely. “All the—all the coverage. I didn’t want to read about it, I didn’t want to think about it. I told them to keep it away from me,” he said, gesturing towards the stairs and his staff. “All I knew was that she was dead and Duffield was behaving like someone with something to hide. That’s all I knew. That was enough.”

“OK. Still on the subject of clothes, in the last picture of Lula, the one where she was walking into the building, she seemed to be wearing a dress and a coat…”

“Yeah, she was wearing Maribelle and Faye,” said Somé. “The dress was called Maribelle—”

“Yeah, got it,” said Strike. “But when she died, she was wearing something different.”

This seemed to surprise Somé.