The Cuckoo's Calling - Страница 55

His mobile phone rang as he stood there. John Bristow’s name and number were displayed; he took the call.

“Hi, John, thanks for getting back to me.”

“No problem. Any news?” asked the lawyer.

“Maybe. I’ve had an expert look at Lula’s laptop, and he found out a file of photographs had been deleted from it after Lula died. Do you know anything about that?”

His words were met by complete silence. The only reason Strike knew that they had not been cut off was that he could hear a small amount of background noise at Bristow’s end.

At last the lawyer said, in an altered voice:

“They were taken off after Lula died?”

“That’s what the expert says.”

Strike watched a car roll slowly down the street below, and pause halfway along. A woman got out, swathed in fur.

“I—I’m sorry,” Bristow said, sounding thoroughly shaken. “I’m just—just shocked. Perhaps the police removed this file?”

“When did you get the laptop back from them?”

“Oh…sometime in February, I suppose, early February.”

“This file was removed on March the seventeenth.”

“But—but this just doesn’t make sense. Nobody knew the password.”

“Well, evidently somebody did. You said the police told your mother what it was.”

“My mother certainly wouldn’t have removed—”

“I’m not suggesting she did. Is there any chance she could have left the laptop open, and running? Or that she gave somebody else the password?”

He thought that Bristow must be in his office. He could hear faint voices in the background, and, distantly, a woman laughing.

“I suppose that’s possible,” said Bristow slowly. “But who would have removed photographs? Unless…but God, that’s horrible…”

“What is?”

“You don’t think one of the nurses could have taken the pictures? To sell to a newspaper? But that’s a dreadful thought…a nurse…”

“All the expert knows is that they were deleted; there’s no evidence that they were copied and stolen. But as you say—anything’s possible.”

“But who else—I mean, naturally I hate to think it could be a nurse, but who else could it be? The laptop’s been at my mother’s ever since the police gave it back.”

“John, are you aware of every visitor your mother’s had in the last three months?”

“I think so. I mean, obviously, I can’t be sure…”

“No. Well, there’s the difficulty.”

“But why—why would anyone do this?”

“I can think of a few reasons. It would be a big help if you could ask your mother about this, though, John. Whether she had the laptop running in mid-March. Whether any of her visitors expressed an interest in it.”

“I—I’ll try.” Bristow sounded very stressed, almost tearful. “She’s very, very weak now.”

“I’m sorry,” said Strike, formally. “I’ll be in touch shortly. ’Bye.”

He stepped back from the balcony and closed the doors, then turned to Wilson.

“Derrick, can you show me how you searched this place? What order you looked in the rooms that night?”

Wilson thought for a moment, then said:

“I come in here first. Looked around, seen the doors open. Didn’t touch ’em. Then,” he indicated that they should follow him, “I looked in here…”

Robin, following in the two men’s wake, noticed a subtle change in the way that Strike was talking to the security man. He was asking simple, deft questions, focusing on what Wilson had felt, touched, seen and heard at each step of his way through the flat.

Under Strike’s guidance, Wilson’s body language started to change. He began to enact the way he had held the doorjambs, leaning into rooms, casting a rapid look around. When he crossed to the only bedroom, he did it at a slow-motion run, responding to the spotlight of Strike’s undivided attention; he dropped to his knees to demonstrate how he had looked under the bed, and at Strike’s prompting remembered that a dress had lain crumpled beneath his legs; he led them, face set with concentration, to the bathroom, and showed them how he had swiveled to check behind the door before sprinting (he almost mimed it, arms moving exaggeratedly as he walked) back to the front door.

“And then,” said Strike, opening it and gesturing Wilson through, “you came out…”

“I came out,” agreed Wilson, in his bass voice, “an’ I jabbed the lift button.”

He pretended to do it, and feigned pushing open the doors in his anxiety to see what was inside.

“Nothing—so I started running back down again.”

“What could you hear now?” Strike asked, following him; neither of them were paying any attention to Robin, who closed the flat door behind her.

“Very distant—the Bestiguis yelling—and I turn round this corner and—”

Wilson stopped dead on the stair. Strike, who seemed to have anticipated something like this, stopped too; Robin careered straight into him, with a flustered apology that he cut off with a raised hand, as though, she thought, Wilson was in a trance.

“And I slipped,” said Wilson. He sounded shocked. “I forgot that. I slipped. Here. Backwards. Sat down hard. There was water. Here. Drops. Here.”

He was pointing at the stairs.

“Drops of water,” repeated Strike.

“Yeah.”

“Not snow.”

“No.”

“Not wet footprints.”

“Drops. Big drops. Here. Mi foot skidded and I slipped. And I just got up and kept running.”

“Did you tell the police about the drops of water?”

“No. I forgot. Till now. I forgot.”

Something that had bothered Strike all along had at last been made clear. He let out a great satisfied sigh and grinned. The other two stared.

4

THE WEEKEND STRETCHED AHEAD, WARM and empty. Strike sat at his open window again, smoking and watching the hordes of shoppers passing along Denmark Street, the case report open on his lap, the police file on the desk, making a list for himself of points still to be clarified, and sifting the morass of information he had collected.

For a while he contemplated a photograph of the front of number 18 as it had been on the morning after Lula died. There was a small, but to Strike significant, difference between the frontage as it had been then, and as it was now. From time to time he moved to the computer; once to find out the agent who represented Deeby Macc; then to look at the share price for Albris. His notebook lay open beside him at a page full of truncated sentences and questions, all in his dense, spiky handwriting. When his mobile rang, he raised it to his ear without checking who was on the other end.

“Ah, Mr. Strike,” said Peter Gillespie’s voice. “How nice of you to pick up.”

“Oh, hello, Peter,” said Strike. “Got you working weekends now, has he?”

“Some of us have no option but to work at weekends. You haven’t returned any of my weekday phone calls.”

“I’ve been busy. Working.”

“I see. Does that mean we can expect a repayment soon?”

“I expect so.”

“You expect so?”

“Yeah,” said Strike. “I should be in a position to give you something in the next few weeks.”

“Mr. Strike, your attitude astounds me. You undertook to repay Mr. Rokeby monthly, and you are now in arrears to the tune of—”

“I can’t pay you what I haven’t got. If you hold tight, I should be able to give you all of it back. Maybe even in a oner.”

“I’m afraid that simply isn’t good enough. Unless you bring these repayments up to date—”

“Gillespie,” said Strike, his eyes on the bright sky beyond the window, “we both know old Jonny isn’t going to sue his one-legged war-hero son for repayment of a loan that wouldn’t keep his butler in fucking bath salts. I’ll give him back his money, with interest, within the next couple of months, and he can stick it up his arse and set fire to it, if he likes. Tell him that, from me, and now get off my fucking back.”

Strike hung up, interested to note that he had not really lost his temper at all, but still felt mildly cheerful.

He worked on, in what he had come to think of as Robin’s chair, late into the night. The last thing he did before turning in was to underline, three times, the words “Malmaison Hotel, Oxford” and to circle in heavy ink the name “J. P. Agyeman.”

The country was lumbering towards election day. Strike turned in early on Sunday and watched the day’s gaffes, counterclaims and promises being tabulated on his portable TV. There was an air of joylessness in every news report he watched. The national debt was so huge that it was difficult to comprehend. Cuts were coming, whoever won; deep, painful cuts; and sometimes, with their weasel words, the party leaders reminded Strike of the surgeons who had told him cautiously that he might experience a degree of discomfort; they who would never personally feel the pain that was about to be inflicted.

On Monday morning Strike set out for a rendezvous in Canning Town, where he was to meet Marlene Higson, Lula Landry’s biological mother. The arrangement of this interview had been fraught with difficulty. Bristow’s secretary, Alison, had telephoned Robin with Marlene Higson’s number, and Strike had called her personally. Though clearly disappointed that the stranger on the phone was not a journalist, she had initially expressed herself willing to meet Strike. She had then called the office back, twice: firstly to ask Robin whether the detective would pay her expenses to travel into the center of town, to which a negative answer was given; next, in high dudgeon, to cancel the meeting. A second call from Strike had secured a tentative agreement to meet in her local pub; then an irritable voicemail message cancelled once more.