Robert Galbraith - The Cuckoo's Calling

“To get files?”

“Yes. I just ran in and grabbed them. I was quick.”

“So you were back at your mother’s house…?”

“It can’t have been later than ten.”

“And the man who came in, when did he arrive?”

“Maybe…maybe half an hour afterwards? I can’t honestly remember. I wasn’t watching the clock. But why would Tony say he was there if he wasn’t?”

“Well, if he knew you’d been working at home, he could easily say that he came in, and didn’t want to disturb you, and just walked down the hall to speak to your mother. She, presumably, confirmed his presence to the police?”

“I suppose so. Yes, I think so.”

“But you’re not sure?”

“I don’t think we’ve ever discussed it. Mum was groggy and in pain; she slept a lot that day. And then the next morning we had the news about Lula…”

“But you’ve never thought it was strange that Tony didn’t come into the study and speak to you?”

“It wasn’t strange at all,” said Bristow. “He was in a foul temper about the Conway Oates business. I’d have been more surprised if he had been chatty.”

“John, I don’t want to alarm you, but I think that both you and your mother could be in danger.”

Bristow’s little bleat of nervous laughter sounded thin and unconvincing. Strike could see Alison standing fifty yards away, her arms folded, ignoring Robin, watching the two men.

“You—you can’t be serious?” said Bristow.

“I’m very serious.”

“But…does…Cormoran, are you saying you know who killed Lula?”

“Yeah, I think I do—but I still need to speak to your mother before we wrap this up.”

Bristow looked as though he wished he could drink the contents of Strike’s mind. His myopic eyes scanned every inch of Strike’s face, his expression half afraid, half imploring.

“I must be there,” he said. “She’s very weak.”

“Of course. How about tomorrow morning?”

“Tony will be livid if I take off any more time during work hours.”

Strike waited.

“All right,” said Bristow. “All right. Ten thirty tomorrow.”

THE FOLLOWING MORNING WAS FRESH and bright. Strike took the underground to genteel and leafy Chelsea. This was a part of London that he barely knew, for Leda had never, even in her most spendthrift phases, managed to secure a toehold in the vicinity of the Royal Chelsea Hospital, pale and gracious in the spring sun.

Franklin Row was an attractive street of more red brick; here were plane trees, and a great grassy space bordered with railings, in which a throng of primary school children were playing games in pale blue Aertex tops and navy blue shorts, watched by tracksuited teachers. Their happy cries punctuated the sedate quiet otherwise disturbed only by birdsong; no cars passed as Strike strolled down the pavement towards the house of Lady Yvette Bristow, his hands in his pockets.

The wall beside the partly glass door, set at the top of four white stone steps, bore an old-fashioned Bakelite panel of doorbells. Strike checked to see that Lady Yvette Bristow’s name was clearly marked beside Flat E, then retreated to the pavement and stood waiting in the gentle warmth of the day, looking up and down the street.

Ten thirty arrived, but John Bristow did not. The square remained deserted, but for the twenty small children running between hoops and colored cones beyond the railings.

At ten forty-five, Strike’s mobile vibrated in his pocket. The text was from Robin:

Alison has just called to say that JB is unavoidably detained. He does not want you to speak to his mother without him present.

Strike immediately texted Bristow:

How long are you likely to be detained? Any chance of doing this later today?

He had barely sent the message when the phone began to ring.

“Yeah, hello?” said Strike.

“Oggy?” came Graham Hardacre’s tinny voice, all the way from Germany. “I’ve got the stuff on Agyeman.”

“Your timing’s uncanny.” Strike pulled out his notebook. “Go on.”

“He’s Lieutenant Jonah Francis Agyeman, Royal Engineers. Aged twenty-one, unmarried, last tour of duty started eleventh of January. He’s back in June. Next of kin, a mother. No siblings, no kids.”

Strike scribbled it all down in his notebook, with the mobile phone held between jaw and shoulder.

“I owe you one, Hardy,” he said, putting the notebook away. “Haven’t got a picture, have you?”

“I could email you one.”

Strike gave Hardacre the office email address, and, after routine inquiries about each other’s lives, and mutual expressions of goodwill, terminated the call.

It was five to eleven. Strike waited, phone in hand, in the peaceful, leafy square, while the gamboling children played with their hoops and their beanbags, and a tiny silver plane drew a thick white line across the periwinkle sky. At last, with a small chirrup clearly audible in the quiet street, Bristow’s texted reply arrived:

No chance today. I’ve been forced to go out to Rye. Maybe tomorrow?

Strike sighed.

“Sorry, John,” he muttered, and he climbed the steps and rang Lady Bristow’s doorbell.

The entrance hall, quiet, spacious and sunny, nevertheless had a faintly depressing air of communality that a bucket-shaped vase of dried flowers and a dull green carpet and pale yellow walls, probably chosen for their inoffensiveness, could not dissipate. As at Kentigern Gardens, there was a lift, this one with wooden doors. Strike chose to walk upstairs. The building had a faint shabbiness that in no way diminished its quiet aura of wealth.

The door of the top flat was opened by the smiling West Indian Macmillan nurse who had buzzed him through the front door.

“You’re not Mister Bristow,” she said brightly.

“No, I’m Cormoran Strike. John’s on his way.”

She let him in. Lady Bristow’s hallway was pleasantly cluttered, papered in faded red and covered in watercolors in old gilt frames; an umbrella stand was full of walking sticks, and coats hung on a row of pegs. Strike glanced right, and saw a sliver of the study at the end of the corridor: a heavy wooden desk and a swivel chair with its back to the door.

“Will you wait in the sitting room while I check whether Lady Bristow is ready to see you?”

“Yeah, of course.”

He walked through the door she indicated into a charming room with primrose walls, lined with bookcases bearing photographs. An old-fashioned dial telephone sat on an end table beside a comfortable chintz-covered sofa. Strike checked that the nurse was out of sight before slipping the receiver off the hook and repositioning it, unobtrusively skewed on its rests.

Close by the bay window on a bonheur du jour stood a large photograph, framed in silver, showing the wedding of Sir and Lady Alec Bristow. The groom looked much older than his wife, a rotund, beaming, bearded man; the bride was thin, blonde and pretty in an insipid way. Ostensibly admiring the photograph, Strike stood with his back to the door, and slid open a little drawer in the delicate cherrywood desk. Inside was a supply of fine pale blue writing paper and matching envelopes. He slid the drawer shut again.

“Mister Strike? You can come through.”

Back through the red-papered hall, a short passage, and into a large bedroom, where the dominant colors were duck-egg blue and white, and everywhere gave an impression of elegance and taste. Two doors on the left, both ajar, led to a small en-suite bathroom, and what seemed to be a large walk-in wardrobe. The furniture was delicate and Frenchified; the props of serious illness—the drip on its metal stand, the bedpan lying clean and shiny on a chest of drawers, with an array of medications—were glaring impostors.