Robert Galbraith - The Cuckoo's Calling

“Would you say you were close to Lula?”

“Oh God, yeah, super -close, she told me everything.”

“A couple of people have mentioned that she didn’t trust too easily. That she was scared of confidences turning up in the press. I’ve been told that she tested people to see whether she could trust them.”

“Oh yeah, she did get a bit, like, paranoid after her real mum started selling stories about her. She actually asked me,” said Ciara, with an airy wave of her cigarette, “whether I’d told anyone she was back with Evan. I mean, come on. There was no way she was going to keep that quiet. Everyone was talking about it. I said to her, ‘Looly, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.’ That’s Oscar Wilde,” she added, kindly. “But Looly didn’t like that side of being famous.”

“Guy Somé thinks that Lula wouldn’t have got back with Duffield if he hadn’t been out of the country.”

Ciara glanced towards the door, and dropped her voice.

“Guy would say that. He was just, like, super -protective of Looly. He adored her; he really loved her. He thought Evan was bad for her, but honestly, he doesn’t know the real Evan. Evan’s, like, totally fucked up, but he’s a good person. He went to see Lady Bristow not long ago, and I said to him, ‘ Why, Evan, what on earth did you put yourself through that for?’ Because, you know, her family hated him. And d’you know what he said? ‘I just wanna speak to somebody who cares as much as I do that she’s gone.’ I mean, how sad is that?”

Strike cleared his throat.

“The press have totally got it in for Evan, it’s just so unfair, he can’t do anything right.”

“Duffield came to your place, didn’t he, the night she died?”

“God, yeah, and there you are!” said Ciara indignantly. “They made out we were, like, shagging or something! He had no money, and his driver had disappeared, so he just, like, hiked across London so he could crash at mine. He slept on the sofa. So we were together when we heard the news.”

She raised her cigarette to her full mouth and drew deeply on it, her eyes on the floor.

“It was terrible. You can’t imagine. Terrible. Evan was…oh my God. And then,” she said, in a voice barely louder than a whisper, “they were all saying it was him. After Tansy Chillingham said she’d heard a row. The press just went crazy. It was awful.”

She looked up at Strike, holding her hair off her face. The harsh overhead light merely illuminated her perfect bone structure.

“You haven’t met Evan, have you?”

“No.”

“D’you want to? You could come with me now. He said he was going along to Uzi tonight.”

“That’d be great.”

“Fabby. Hang on.”

She jumped up and called through the open door:

“Guy, sweetie, can I wear this tonight? Go on. To Uzi?”

Somé entered the small room. He looked exhausted behind his glasses.

“All right. Make sure you’re photographed. Wreck it and I’ll sue your skinny white arse.”

“I’m not going to wreck it. I’m taking Cormoran to meet Evan.”

She stuffed her cigarettes away into her enormous bag, which appeared to hold her day clothes too, and hoisted it over her shoulder. In her heels, she was within an inch of the detective’s height. Somé looked up at Strike, his eyes narrowed.

“Make sure you give the little shit a hard time.”

“Guy!” said Ciara, pouting. “Don’t be horrible.”

“And watch yourself, Master Rokeby,” Somé added, with his usual edge of spite. “Ciara’s a terrible slut, aren’t you, dear? And she’s like me. She likes them big.”

“ Guy!” said Ciara, in mock horror. “Come on, Cormoran. I’ve got a driver outside.”

STRIKE, FOREWARNED, WAS NOWHERE NEAR as surprised to see Kieran Kolovas-Jones as the driver was to see him. Kolovas-Jones was holding open the left-hand passenger door, faintly lit by the car’s interior light, but Strike spotted his momentary change of expression when he laid eyes on Ciara’s companion.

“Evening,” said Strike, moving around the car to open his own door and get in beside Ciara.

“Kieran, you’ve met Cormoran, haven’t you?” said Ciara, buckling herself in. Her dress had ridden up to the very top of her long legs. Strike could not be absolutely certain that she was wearing anything beneath it. She had certainly been braless in the white jumpsuit.

“Hi, Kieran,” said Strike.

The driver nodded at Strike in the rearview mirror, but did not speak. He had assumed a strictly professional demeanor that Strike doubted was habitual in the absence of detectives.

The car pulled away from the curb. Ciara started rummaging again in her bag; she removed a perfume spray and squirted herself liberally in a wide circle around her face and shoulders; then dabbed lip gloss over her lips, talking all the while.

“What am I going to need? Money. Cormoran, could you be a total darling and keep this in your pocket? I’m not going to take this massive thing in.” She handed him a crumpled wad of twenties. “You’re a sweetheart. Oh, and I’ll need my phone. Have you got a pocket for my phone? God, this bag’s a mess.”

She dropped it on the car floor.

“When you said that it would have been the dream of Lula’s life to find her real father…”

“Oh God, it would have been. She used to talk about that all the time. She got really excited when that bitch—her birth mother—told her he was African. Guy always said that was bullshit, but he hated the woman.”

“He met Marlene Higson, did he?”

“Oh no, he just hated the whole, like, idea of her. He could see how excited Looly got, and he just wanted to protect her from being disappointed.”

So much protection, Strike thought, as the car turned a corner in the dark. Had Lula been that fragile? The back of Kolovas-Jones’s head was rigid, correct; his eyes flickering more often than was necessary to rest upon Strike’s face.

“And then Looly thought she had a lead on him—her real father—but that went completely cold on her. Dead end. Yeah, it was so sad. She really thought she’d found him and then it all just fell through her fingers.”

“What lead was this?”

“It was something about where the college was. Something her mother said. Looly thought she’d found the place it must have been, and she went to look at the records, or something, with this funny friend of hers called…”

“Rochelle?” suggested Strike. The Mercedes was now purring up Oxford Street.

“Yeah, Rochelle, that’s right. Looly met her in rehab or something, poor little thing. Looly was, like, unbelievably sweet to her. Used to take her shopping and stuff. Anyway, they never found him, or it was the wrong place, or something. I can’t remember.”

“Was she looking for a man called Agyeman?”

“I don’t think she ever told me the name.”

“Or Owusu?”

Ciara turned her beautiful light eyes upon him in astonishment.

“That’s Guy’s real name!”

“I know.”

“Oh my God,” Ciara giggled. “ Guy’s dad never went to college. He was a bus driver. He used to beat Guy up for sketching dresses all the time. That’s why Guy changed his name.”

The car was slowing down. The long queue, four people wide, stretching along the block, led to a discreet entrance that might have been to a private house. A gaggle of dark figures was gathered around a white-pillared doorway.