The Cuckoo's Calling - Страница 49

Jingling and rattling from the spiral staircase announced the reappearance of Trudie, who emerged through the floor in jerky stages. She laid upon the desk a black lacquered tray, on which stood two silver filigree Russian tea glasses, in each of which was a pale green steaming concoction with wilted leaves floating in it. There was also a plate of wafer-thin biscuits that looked as though they might be made of charcoal. Strike remembered his pie and mash and his mahogany-colored tea at the Phoenix with nostalgia.

“Thanks, Trudie. And get me an ashtray, darling.”

The girl hesitated, clearly on the verge of protesting.

“Just do it,” snarled Somé. “I’m the fucking boss, I’ll burn the building down if I want to. Pull the fucking batteries out of the fire alarms. But get the ashtray first.

“The alarm went off last week, and set off all the sprinklers downstairs,” Somé explained to Strike. “So now the backers don’t want anyone smoking in the building. They can stick that one right up their tight little bumholes.”

He inhaled deeply, then exhaled through his nostrils.

“Don’t you ask questions? Or do you just sit there looking scary until someone blurts out a confession?”

“We can do questions,” said Strike, pulling out his notebook and pen. “You were abroad when Lula died, weren’t you?”

“I’d just got back, a couple of hours before.” Somé’s fingers twitched a little on the cigarette. “I’d been in Tokyo, hardly any sleep for eight days. Touched down at Heathrow at about ten thirty with the most fucking appalling jet lag. I can’t sleep on planes. I wanna be awake if I’m going to crash.”

“How did you get home from the airport?”

“Cab. Elsa had fucked up my car booking. There should’ve been a driver there to meet me.”

“Who’s Elsa?”

“The girl I sacked for fucking up my car booking. It was the last thing I fucking wanted, to have to find a cab at that time of night.”

“Do you live alone?”

“No. By midnight I was tucked up in bed with Viktor and Rolf. My cats,” he added with a flicker of a grin. “I took an Ambien, slept for a few hours, then woke up at five in the morning. I switched on Sky News from the bed, and there was a man in a horrible sheepskin hat, standing in the snow in Cuckoo’s street, saying she was dead. The ticker-tape across the bottom of the screen was saying it too.”

Somé inhaled heavily on the cigarette, and white smoke curled out of his mouth with his next words.

“I nearly fucking died. I thought I was still asleep, or that I’d woken up in the wrong fucking dimension or something…I started calling everyone…Ciara, Bryony…all their phones were engaged. And all the time I was watching the screen, thinking they’d flash up something saying there had been a mistake, that it wasn’t her. I kept praying it was the bag lady. Rochelle.”

He paused, as though he expected some comment from Strike. The latter, who had been making notes as Somé spoke, asked, still writing:

“You know Rochelle, do you?”

“Yeah. Cuckoo brought her in here once. In it for all she could get.”

“What makes you say that?”

“She hated Cuckoo. Jealous as fuck; I could see it, even if Cuckoo couldn’t. She was in it for the freebies, she didn’t give a monkey’s whether Cuckoo lived or died. Lucky for her, as it turned out…

“So, the longer I watched the news, I knew there wasn’t a mistake. I fell a-fucking-part.”

His fingers trembled a little on the snow-white stick he was sucking.

“They said that a neighbor had overheard an argument; so of course I thought it was Duffield. I thought Duffield had knocked her through the window. I was all set to tell the pigs what a cunt he is; I was ready to stand in the dock and testify to the fucker’s character. And if this ash falls off my cigarette,” he continued in precisely the same tone, “I will fire that little bitch.”

As though she had heard him, Trudie’s rapid footfalls grew louder and louder until she emerged again into the room, breathing heavily and clutching a heavy glass ashtray.

“Thank you,” said Somé, with a pointed inflection, as she placed it in front of him and scurried back downstairs.

“Why did you think it was Duffield?” asked Strike, once he judged Trudie to be safely out of earshot.

“Who else would Cuckoo have let in at two in the morning?”

“How well do you know him?”

“Well enough, little piss ant that he is.” Somé picked up his mint tea. “Why do women do it? Cuckoo, too…she wasn’t stupid—actually, she was razor-sharp—so what did she see in Evan Duffield? I’ll tell you,” he said, without pausing for an answer. “It’s that wounded-poet crap, that soul-pain shit, that too-much-of-a-tortured-genius-to-wash bollocks. Brush your teeth, you little bastard. You’re not fucking Byron.”

He slammed his glass down and cupped his right elbow in his left hand, steadying his forearm and continuing to draw heavily on the cigarette.

“No man would put up with the likes of Duffield. Only women. Maternal instinct gone warped, if you ask me.”

“You think he had it in him to kill her, do you?”

“Of course I do,” said Somé dismissively. “Of course he has. All of us have got it in us, somewhere, to kill, so why would Duffield be any exception? He’s got the mentality of a vicious twelve-year-old. I can imagine him in one of his rages, having a tantrum and then just—”

With his cigarette-free hand he made a violent shoving movement.

“I saw him shouting at her once. At my after-show party, last year. I got in between them; I told him to have a go at me instead. I might be a little poof,” Somé said, the round-cheeked face set, “but I’d back myself against that drugged-up fuck any day. He was a tit at the funeral, too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Lurching around, off his face. No fucking respect. I was full of tranks myself or I’d’ve told him what I thought of him. Pretending to be devastated, hypocritical little shit.”

“You never thought it was suicide?”

Somé’s strange, bulging eyes bored into Strike.

“Never. Duffield says he was at his dealer’s, disguised as a wolf. What kind of fucking alibi is that? I hope you’re checking him out. I hope you’re not dazzled by his fucking celebrity, like the police.”

Strike remembered Wardle’s comments on Duffield.

“I don’t think they found Duffield dazzling.”

“They’ve got more taste than I credited them with, then,” said Somé.

“Why are you so sure it wasn’t suicide? Lula had had mental health problems, hadn’t she?”

“Yeah, but we had a pact, like Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift. We’d sworn that if either of us was thinking seriously of killing themselves, we’d call the other. She would’ve called me.”

“When did you last hear from her?”

“She phoned me on the Wednesday, while I was still in Tokyo,” said Somé. “Silly cow always forgot it was eight hours ahead; I had my phone on mute at two in the morning, so I didn’t pick up; but she left a message, and she was not suicidal. Listen to this.”

He reached into his desk drawer again, pressed several buttons, then held the mobile out to Strike.

And Lula Landry spoke close and real, slightly raw and throaty, in Strike’s ear, in deliberately affected mockney.

“Aw wight, darlin’? Got something to tell you, I’m not sure whether you’re going to like it but it’s a biggie, and I’m so fucking happy I’ve gotta tell someone, so ring me when you can, OK, can’t wait, mwah mwah.”

Strike handed back the phone.

“Did you call her back? Did you find out what the big news was?”

“No.” Somé ground out his cigarette and reached immediately for another one. “The Japs had me in back-to-back meetings; every time I thought of calling her, the time difference was in the way. Anyway…to tell you the truth, I thought I knew what she was going to say, and I wasn’t any too fucking pleased about it. I thought she was pregnant.”

Somé nodded several times with the fresh cigarette clutched between his teeth; then he removed it to say:

“Yeah, I thought she’d gone and got herself knocked up.”

“By Duffield?”

“I hoped to fuck not. I didn’t know at the time that they’d got back together. She wouldn’t have dared hook up with him if I’d been in the country; no, she waited till I was in Japan, the sneaky little bitch. She knew I hated him, and she cared what I thought. We were like family, Cuckoo and me.”

“Why did you think she might be pregnant?”

“It was the way she sounded. You’ve heard it—she was so excited…I had this feeling. It was the kind of thing Cuckoo would’ve done, and she’d have expected me to be as pleased as she was, and fuck her career, fuck me, counting on her to launch my brand-new accessories line…”

“Was this the five-million-pound contract her brother told me about?”

“Yeah, and I’ll bet the Accountant pushed her to hold out for as much as she could get, too,” said Somé, with another flash of temper. “It wasn’t like Cuckoo to try and wring every last penny out of me. She knew it was going to be fabulous, and would take her to a whole new level if she fronted it. It shouldn’t have been all about the money. Everyone associated her with my stuff; her big break came on a shoot for Vogue when she wore my Jagged dress. Cuckoo loved my clothes, she loved me, but people get to a certain level, and everyone’s telling them they’re worth more, and they forget who put them there, and suddenly it’s all about the bottom line.”