The Cuckoo's Calling - Страница 5

“But the police and the coroner couldn’t see past the girl who had a history of poor mental health. They insisted that she was depressed, but I can tell you myself that Lula wasn’t depressed at all. I saw her on the morning before she died, and she was absolutely fine. Things were going very well for her, particularly career-wise. She’d just signed a contract that would have brought in five million over two years; she asked me to look over it for her, and it was a bloody good deal. The designer was a great friend of hers, Somé, I expect you’ve heard of him? And she was booked solid for months; there was a shoot in Morocco coming up, and she loved the traveling. So you see, there was no reason whatsoever for her to take her own life.”

Strike nodded politely, inwardly unimpressed. Suicides, in his experience, were perfectly capable of feigning an interest in a future they had no intention of inhabiting. Landry’s rosy, golden-hued morning mood might easily have turned dark and hopeless in the day and half a night that had preceded her death; he had known it happen. He remembered the lieutenant in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, who had risen in the night after his own birthday party, of which, by all accounts, he had been the life and soul. He had penned his family a note, telling them to call the police and not go into the garage. The body had been found hanging from the garage ceiling by his fifteen-year-old son, who had not noticed the note as he hurried through the kitchen on the way to fetch his bicycle.

“That’s not all,” said Bristow. “There’s evidence, hard evidence. Tansy Bestigui’s, for a start.”

“She was the neighbor who said she heard an argument upstairs?”

“Exactly! She heard a man shouting up there, right before Lula went over the balcony! The police rubbished her evidence, purely because—well, she’d taken cocaine. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t know what she’d heard. Tansy maintains to this day that Lula was arguing with a man seconds before she fell. I know, because I’ve discussed it with her very recently. Our firm is handling her divorce. I’m sure I’d be able to persuade her to talk to you.

“And then,” said Bristow, watching Strike anxiously, trying to gauge his reaction, “there was the CCTV footage. A man walking towards Kentigern Gardens about twenty minutes before Lula fell, and then footage of the same man running hell for leather away from Kentigern Gardens after she’d been killed. They never found out who he was; never managed to trace him.”

With a kind of furtive eagerness, Bristow now drew from an inside pocket of his jacket a slightly crumpled clean envelope and held it out.

“I’ve written it all down. The timings and everything. It’s all in here. You’ll see how it fits together.”

The appearance of the envelope did nothing to increase Strike’s confidence in Bristow’s judgment. He had been handed such things before: the scribbled fruits of lonely and misguided obsessions; one-track maunderings on pet theories; complex timetables twisted to fit fantastic contingencies. The lawyer’s left eyelid was flickering, one of his knees was jerking up and down and the fingers proffering the envelope were trembling.

For a few seconds Strike weighed these signs of strain against Bristow’s undoubtedly hand-made shoes, and the Vacheron Constantin watch revealed on his pale wrist when he gesticulated. This was a man who could and would pay; perhaps long enough to enable Strike to clear one installment of the loan that was the most pressing of his debts. With a sigh, and an inner scowl at his own conscience, Strike said:

“Mr. Bristow—”

“Call me John.”

“John…I’m going to be honest with you. I don’t think it would be right to take your money.”

Red blotches blossomed on Bristow’s pale neck, and on the undistinguished face, as he continued to hold out the envelope.

“What do you mean, it wouldn’t be right?”

“Your sister’s death was probably as thoroughly investigated as anything can be. Millions of people, and media from all over the world, were following the police’s every move. They would have been twice as thorough as usual. Suicide is a difficult thing to have to accept—”

“I don’t accept it. I’ll never accept it. She didn’t kill herself. Someone pushed her over that balcony.”

The drill outside stopped suddenly, so that Bristow’s voice rang loudly through the room; and his hair-trigger fury was that of a meek man pushed to his absolute limit.

“I see. I get it. You’re another one, are you? Another fucking armchair psychologist? Charlie’s dead, my father’s dead, Lula’s dead and my mother’s dying—I’ve lost everyone, and I need a bereavement counselor, not a detective. D’you think I haven’t heard it about a hundred fucking times before?”

Bristow stood up, impressive for all his rabbity teeth and blotchy skin.

“I’m a pretty rich man, Strike. Sorry to be crass about it, but there you are. My father left me a sizeable trust fund. I’ve looked into the going rate for this kind of thing, and I would have been happy to pay you double.”

A double fee. Strike’s conscience, once firm and inelastic, had been weakened by repeated blows of fate; this was the knockout punch. His baser self was already gamboling off into the realms of happy speculation: a month’s work would give him enough to pay off the temp and some of the rent arrears; two months, the more pressing debts…three months, a chunk of the overdraft gone…four months…

But John Bristow was speaking over his shoulder as he moved towards the door, clutching and crumpling the envelope that Strike had refused to take.

“I wanted it to be you because of Charlie, but I found out a bit about you, I’m not a complete bloody idiot. Special investigation branch, military police, wasn’t it? Decorated as well. I can’t say I was impressed by your offices,” Bristow was almost shouting now, and Strike was aware that the muffled female voices in the outer office had fallen silent, “but apparently I was wrong, and you can afford to turn down work. Fine! Bloody forget it. I’m sure I’ll find somebody else to do the job. Sorry to have troubled you!”

4

THE MEN’S CONVERSATION HAD BEEN carrying, with increasing clarity, through the flimsy dividing wall for a couple of minutes; now, in the sudden silence following the cessation of the drill, Bristow’s words were plainly audible.

Purely for her own amusement, in the high spirits of this happy day, Robin had been trying to act convincingly the part of Strike’s regular secretary, and not to give away to Bristow’s girlfriend that she had only been working for a private detective for half an hour. She concealed as best she could any sign of surprise or excitement at the outbreak of shouting, but she was instinctively on Bristow’s side, whatever the cause of the conflict. Strike’s job and his black eye had a certain beaten-up glamour, but his attitude towards her was deplorable, and her left breast was still sore.

Bristow’s girlfriend had been staring at the closed door ever since the men’s voices had first become audible over the noise of the drill. Thick-set and very dark, with a limp bob and what might have been a monobrow if she had not plucked it, she looked naturally cross. Robin had often noticed how couples tended to be of roughly equivalent personal attractiveness, though of course factors such as money often seemed to secure a partner of significantly better looks than oneself. Robin found it endearing that Bristow, who on the evidence of his smart suit and his prestigious firm could have set his sights on somebody much prettier, had chosen this girl, who she assumed was warmer and kinder than her appearance suggested.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like a coffee, Alison?” she asked.

The girl looked around as though surprised at being spoken to, as though she had forgotten that Robin was there.

“No thanks,” she said, in a deep voice that was surprisingly melodious. “I knew he’d get upset,” she added, with an odd kind of satisfaction. “I’ve tried to talk him out of doing this, but he wouldn’t listen. Sounds like this so-called detective is turning him down. Good for him.”

Robin’s surprise must have shown, because Alison went on, with a trace of impatience:

“It’d be better for John if he’d just accept the facts. She killed herself. The rest of the family have come to terms with it, I don’t know why he can’t.”

There was no point pretending that she did not know what the woman was talking about. Everyone knew what had happened to Lula Landry. Robin could remember exactly where she had been when she had heard that the model had dived to her death on a sub-zero night in January: standing at the sink in the kitchen of her parents’ house. The news had come over the radio, and she had emitted a little cry of surprise, and run out of the kitchen in her nightshirt to tell Matthew, who was staying for the weekend. How could the death of someone you had never met affect you so? Robin had greatly admired Lula Landry’s looks. She did not much like her own milkmaid’s coloring: the model had been dark, luminous, fine-boned and fierce.

“It hasn’t been very long since she died.”

“Three months,” said Alison, shaking out her Daily Express. “Is he any good, this man?”

Robin had noticed Alison’s contemptuous expression as she took in the dilapidated condition, and undeniable grubbiness, of the little waiting room, and she had just seen, online, the pristine, palatial office where the other woman worked. Her answer was therefore prompted by self-respect rather than any desire to protect Strike.