The Cuckoo's Calling - Страница 77

“I forgot that,” said Bestigui, and for a fraction of a second he seemed almost vulnerable. “I forgot. There was a lot going on. Tansy screaming.”

“And, of course, you were thinking about your own skin,” said Strike briskly, inserting notepad and pen back in his pocket and hoisting himself out of the leather chair. “Well, I won’t keep you; you’ll be wanting to call your lawyer. You’ve been very helpful. I expect we’ll see each other again in court.”

13

ERIC WARDLE CALLED STRIKE THE following day.

“I phoned Deeby,” he said curtly.

“And?” said Strike, motioning to Robin to pass him pen and paper. They had been sitting together at her desk, enjoying tea and biscuits while discussing the latest death threat from Brian Mathers, in which he promised, not for the first time, to slit open Strike’s guts and piss on his entrails.

“He got sent a customized hoodie by Somé. Handgun in studs on the front and a couple of lines of Deeby’s own lyrics on the back.”

“Just the one?”

“Yeah.”

“What else?” asked Strike.

“He remembers a belt, a beanie hat and a pair of cufflinks.”

“No gloves?”

Wardle paused, perhaps checking his notes.

“No, he didn’t mention gloves.”

“Well, that clears that up,” said Strike.

Wardle said nothing at all. Strike waited for the policeman to either hang up or impart more information.

“The inquest is on Thursday,” said Wardle abruptly. “On Rochelle Onifade.”

“Right,” said Strike.

“You don’t sound that interested.”

“I’m not.”

“I thought you were sure it was murder?”

“I am, but the inquest won’t prove that one way or the other. Any idea when her funeral’s going to be?”

“No,” said Wardle irritably. “What does that matter?”

“I thought I might go.”

“What for?”

“She had an aunt, remember?” said Strike.

Wardle rang off in what Strike suspected was disgust.

Bristow called Strike later that morning with the time and place of Rochelle’s funeral.

“Alison managed to find out all the details,” he told the detective on the telephone. “She’s super-efficient.”

“Clearly,” said Strike.

“I’m going to come. To represent Lula. I ought to have helped Rochelle.”

“I think it was always going to end this way, John. Are you bringing Alison?”

“She says she wants to come,” said Bristow, though he sounded less than enamored of the idea.

“I’ll see you there, then. I’m hoping to speak to Rochelle’s aunt, if she turns up.”

When Strike told Robin that Bristow’s girlfriend had discovered the time and place of the funeral, she appeared put out. She herself had been trying to find out the details at Strike’s request, and seemed to feel that Alison had put one over on her.

“I didn’t realize you were this competitive,” said Strike, amused. “Not to worry. Maybe she had some kind of head start on you.”

“Like what?”

But Strike was looking at her speculatively.

“What?” repeated Robin, a little defensively.

“I want you to come with me to the funeral.”

“Oh,” said Robin. “OK. Why?”

She expected Strike to reply that it would look more natural for them to turn up as a couple, just as it had seemed more natural for him to visit Vashti with a woman in tow. Instead he said:

“There’s something I want you to do for me there.”

Once he had explained, clearly and concisely, what it was that he wanted her to do, Robin looked utterly bewildered.

“But why?”

“I can’t say.”

“Why not?”

“I’d rather not say that, either.”

Robin no longer saw Strike through Matthew’s eyes; no longer wondered whether he was faking, or showing off, or pretending to be cleverer than he was. She did him the credit, now, of discounting the possibility that he was being deliberately mysterious. All the same, she repeated, as though she must have heard him wrongly:

“Brian Mathers.”

“Yeah.”

“The Death Threat Man.”

“Yeah.”

“But,” said Robin, “what on earth can he have to do with Lula Landry’s death?”

“Nothing,” said Strike, honestly enough. “Yet.”

The north London crematorium where Rochelle’s funeral was held three days later was chilly, anonymous and depressing. Everything was smoothly nondenominational; from the dark-wood pews and blank walls, carefully devoid of any religious device; to the abstract-stained glass window, a mosaic of little jewel-bright squares. Sitting on hard wood, while a whiny-voiced minister called Rochelle “Roselle” and the fine rain speckled the gaudy patchwork window above him, Strike understood the appeal of gilded cherubs and plaster saints, of gargoyles and Old Testament angels, of gem-set golden crucifixes; anything that might give an aura of majesty and grandeur, a firm promise of an afterlife, or retrospective worth to a life like Rochelle’s. The dead girl had had her glimpse of earthly paradise: littered with designer goods, and celebrities to sneer at, and handsome drivers to joke with, and the yearning for it had brought her to this: seven mourners, and a minister who did not know her name.

There was a tawdry impersonality about the whole affair; a feeling of faint embarrassment; a painful avoidance of the facts of Rochelle’s life. Nobody seemed to feel that they had the right to sit in the front row. Even the obese black woman wearing thick-lensed glasses and a knitted hat, who Strike assumed was Rochelle’s aunt, had chosen to sit three benches from the front of the crematorium, keeping her distance from the cheap coffin. The balding worker whom Strike had met at the homeless hostel had come, in an open shirt and a leather jacket; behind him was a fresh-faced, neatly suited young Asian man who Strike thought might turn out to be the psychiatrist who had run Rochelle’s outpatient group.

Strike, in his old navy suit, and Robin, in the black skirt and jacket she wore to interviews, sat at the very back. Across the aisle were Bristow, miserable and pale, and Alison, whose damp double-breasted black raincoat glistened a little in the cold light.

Cheap red curtains opened, the coffin slid out of sight, and the drowned girl was consumed by fire. The silent mourners exchanged pained, awkward smiles at the back of the crematorium; hovering, trying not to add unseemly haste of departure to the other inadequacies of the service. Rochelle’s aunt, who projected an aura of eccentricity that bordered on instability, introduced herself as Winifred, then announced loudly, with an accusatory undertone:

“Dere’s sandwiches in the pub. I thought dere would be more people.”

She led the way outside, as if brooking no opposition, up the street to the Red Lion, the six other mourners following in her wake, heads bowed slightly against the rain.

The promised sandwiches sat, dry and unappetizing, on a metal foil tray covered in cling film, on a small table in the corner of the dingy pub. At some point on the walk to the Red Lion Aunt Winifred had realized who John Bristow was, and she now took overpowering possession of him, pinning him up against the bar, gabbling at him without pause. Bristow responded whenever she allowed him to get a word in edgewise, but the looks he cast towards Strike, who was talking to Rochelle’s psychiatrist, became more frequent and desperate as the minutes passed.

The psychiatrist parried all Strike’s attempts to engage him in conversation about the outpatients’ group he had run, finally countering a question about disclosures Rochelle might have made with a polite but firm reminder about patient confidentiality.

“Were you surprised that she killed herself?”

“No, not really. She was a very troubled girl, you know, and Lula Landry’s death was a great shock to her.”

Shortly afterwards he issued a general farewell and left.

Robin, who had been trying to make conversation with a monosyllabic Alison at a small table beside the window, gave up and headed for the Ladies.

Strike ambled across the small lounge and sat down in Robin’s abandoned seat. Alison threw him an unfriendly look, then resumed her contemplation of Bristow, who was still being harangued by Rochelle’s aunt. Alison had not unbuttoned her rain-flecked coat. A small glass of what looked like port stood on the table in front of her, and a slightly scornful smile played around her mouth, as though she found her surroundings ramshackle and inadequate. Strike was still trying to think of a good opener when she said unexpectedly:

“John was supposed to be at a meeting with Conway Oates’s executors this morning. He’s left Tony to meet them on his own. Tony’s absolutely furious.”

Her tone implied that Strike was in some way responsible for this, and that he deserved to know what trouble he had caused. She took a sip of port. Her hair hung limply to her shoulders and her big hands dwarfed the glass. In spite of a plainness that would have made wallflowers of other women, she radiated a great sense of self-importance.

“You don’t think it was a nice gesture for John to come to the funeral?” asked Strike.

Alison gave a scathing little “huh,” a token laugh.

“It’s not as though he knew this girl.”

“Why did you come along, then?”