The Cuckoo's Calling (26 page)

“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.”

“You must’ve thought she was worth it, to commit to a five-million-pound contract?”

“Yeah, well, I’d pretty much designed the range
for
her, so having to shoot around a fucking pregnancy wouldn’t have been funny. And I could just imagine Cuckoo going silly afterwards, throwing it all in, not wanting to leave the fucking baby. She was the type; always looking for people to love, for a surrogate family. Those Bristows fucked her up good. They only adopted her as a toy for Yvette, who is the scariest bitch in the world.”

“In what way?”

“Possessive. Morbid. Didn’t want to let Cuckoo out of her sight in case she died, like the kid she’d been bought to replace. Lady Bristow used to come to all the shows, getting under everyone’s feet, till she got too ill. And there was an uncle, who treated Cuckoo like scum until she started pulling in big money. He got a bit more respectful then. They all know the value of a buck, the Bristows.”

“They’re a wealthy family, aren’t they?”

“Alec Bristow didn’t leave
that
much, not relatively speaking. Not compared to proper money. Not like
your
old man. How come,” said Somé, swerving suddenly off the conversational track, “Jonny Rokeby’s son’s working as a private dick?”

“Because that’s his job,” said Strike. “Go on about the Bristows.”

Somé did not appear to resent being bossed around; if anything, he seemed to relish it, possibly because it was such an unusual experience.

“I just remember Cuckoo telling me that most of what Alec Bristow left was in shares in his old company, and Albris has gone down the pan in the recession. It’s hardly fucking Apple. Cuckoo had out-earned the whole fucking lot of them before she was twenty.”

“Was that picture,” said Strike, indicating the enormous “Fallen Angels” image on the wall behind him, “part of the five-million-pound campaign?”

“Yeah,” said Somé. “Those four bags were the start of it. She’s holding ‘Cashile’ there; I gave them all African names, for her. She was fixated on Africa. That whorish real mother she unearthed had told her her father was African, so Cuckoo had gone mad on it; talking about studying there, doing voluntary work…never mind that the old slapper had probably been sleeping with about fifty Yardies. African,” said Guy Somé, grinding out his cigarette stub in the glass ashtray, “my Aunt Fanny. The bitch just told Cuckoo what she wanted to hear.”

“And you decided to go ahead and use the picture for the campaign, even though Lula had just…?”

“It was meant as a fucking
tribute.”
Somé spoke loudly over him. “She’d never looked more beautiful. It was supposed to be a fucking tribute to her, to
us.
She was my muse. If the bastards couldn’t understand that, fuck ’em, that’s all. The press in this country are lower than scum. Judging everyone by their fucking selves.”

“The day before she died, some handbags were sent to Lula…”

“Yeah, they were mine. I sent her one of each of those,” said Somé, indicating the picture with the end of a new cigarette, “and I sent Deeby Macc some clothes by the same courier.”

“Had he ordered them, or…?”

“Freebies, dear,” drawled Somé. “Just good business. Couple of customized hoodies and some accessories. Celebrity endorsements never hurt.”

“Did he ever wear the stuff?”

“I don’t know,” said Somé in a more subdued tone. “I had other things to worry about the next day.”

“I’ve seen YouTube footage of him wearing a hoodie with studs on it, like that,” said Strike, pointing at Somé’s chest. “Making a fist.”

“Yeah, that was one of them. Someone must’ve sent the stuff on to him. One had a fist, one had a handgun, and some of his lyrics on the backs.”

“Did Lula talk to you about Deeby Macc coming to stay in the flat downstairs?”

“Oh yeah. She wasn’t
nearly
excited enough. I kept saying to her, babes, if he’d written three tracks about me I’d be waiting behind the front door
naked
when he got in.” Somé blew smoke in two long streams from his nostrils, looking sideways at Strike. “I like ’em big and rough,” he said. “But Cuckoo didn’t. Well, look what she hooked up with. I kept telling her, you’re the one making all this fucking song-and-dance about your roots; find yourself a nice black boy and settle down. Deeby would’ve been fucking perfect; why not?

“Last season’s show, I had her walking down the catwalk to Deeby’s ‘Butterface Girl.’ ‘Bitch you ain’t all that, get a mirror that don’ fool ya, Give it up an’ tone it down, girl, ’cause you ain’t no fuckin’ Lula.’ Duffield hated it.”

Somé smoked for a moment in silence, his eyes on the wall of photographs. Strike asked:

“Where do you live? Around here?” though he knew the answer.

“No, I’m in Charles Street, in Kensington,” said Somé. “Moved there last year. It’s a long fucking way from Hackney, I can tell you, but it was getting silly, I had to leave. Too much hassle. I grew up in Hackney,” he explained, “back when I was plain old Kevin Owusu. I changed my name when I left home. Like you.”

“I was never Rokeby,” said Strike, flicking over a page in his notebook. “My parents weren’t married.”

“We all know that, dear,” said Somé, with another flash of malice. “I dressed your old man for a
Rolling Stone
shoot last year: skinny suit and broken bowler. D’you see him much?”

“No,” said Strike.

“No, well, you’d make him look fucking old, wouldn’t you?” said Somé, with a cackle. He fidgeted in his seat, lit yet another cigarette, clamped it between his lips and squinted at Strike through billows of menthol smoke.

“Why are we talking about me, anyway? Do people usually start telling you their life stories when you get out that notebook?”

“Sometimes.”

“Don’t you want your tea? I don’t blame you. I don’t know why I drink this shit. My old dad would have a coronary if he asked for a cup of tea and got this.”

“Is your family still in Hackney?”

“I haven’t checked,” said Somé. “We don’t talk. I practice what I preach, see?”

“Why do you think Lula changed her name?”

“Because she hated her fucking family, same as me. She didn’t want to be associated with them anymore.”

“Why choose the same name as her Uncle Tony, then?”

“He’s not famous. It made a good name. Deeby couldn’t have written ‘Double L U B Mine’ if she’d been Lula Bristow, could he?”

“Charles Street isn’t too far from Kentigern Gardens, is it?”

“About a twenty-minute walk. I wanted Cuckoo to move in with me when she said she couldn’t stand her old place anymore, but she wouldn’t; she chose that fucking five-star prison instead, just to get away from the press. They drove her into that place. They bear responsibility.”

Strike remembered Deeby Macc:
The motherfuckin’ press chased her out that window.

“She took me to see it.
Mayfair,
full of rich Russians and Arabs and bastards like Freddie Bestigui. I said to her, sweetie, you can’t live here; marble everywhere, marble isn’t chic in our climate…it’s like living in your own
tomb
…”

He faltered, then went on:

“She’d been through this head-fuck for a few months. There’d been a stalker who was hand-delivering letters through her front door at three in the morning; she kept getting woken up by the letter box going. The things he said he wanted to do to her, it scared her. Then she split up with Duffield, and she had the paps round the front of her house all the bloody time. Then she finds out they’re hacking all her calls. And
then
she had to go and find that bitch of a mother. It was all getting too much. She wanted to be away from it all, to feel secure. I
told
her to move in with me, but instead she went and bought that fucking mausoleum.

“She took it because it felt like a fortress with the round-the-clock security. She thought she’d be safe from everyone, that nobody would be able to get at her.

“But she hated it from the word go. I knew she would. She was cut off from everything she liked. Cuckoo loved color and noise. She liked being on the street, she liked walking, being free.

“One of the reasons the police said it wasn’t murder was the open windows. She’d opened them herself; it was only her prints on the handles. But I know why she opened them. She always opened the windows, even when it was freezing cold, because she couldn’t stand the silence. She liked being able to hear London.”

Somé’s voice had lost all its slyness and sarcasm. He cleared his throat and went on:

“She was trying to connect with something real; we used to talk about it all the time. It was our big thing. That’s what made her get involved with bloody Rochelle. It was a case of ‘there but for the grace of God.’ Cuckoo thought that’s what she’d have been, if she hadn’t been beautiful; if the Bristows hadn’t taken her in as a little plaything for Yvette.”

“Tell me about this stalker.”

“Mental case. He thought they were married or something. He was given a restraining order and compulsory psychiatric treatment.”

“Any idea where he is now?”

“I think he was deported back to Liverpool,” said Somé. “But the police checked him out; they told me he was in a secure ward up there the night she died.”

“Do you know the Bestiguis?”

“Only what Lula told me, that he was sleazy and she’s a walking waxwork. I don’t need to know her. I know her type. Rich girls spending their ugly husbands’ money. They come to my shows. They want to be my friend. Gimme an honest hooker any day.”

“Freddie Bestigui was at the same country-house weekend as Lula, a week before she died.”

“Yeah, I heard. He had a hard-on for her,” said Somé dismissively. “She knew it, as well; it wasn’t exactly a unique experience in her life, you know. He never got further than trying to get in the same lift, though, from what she told me.”

“You never spoke to her after their weekend at Dickie Carbury’s, did you?”

“No. Did he do something then? You don’t suspect Bestigui, do you?”

Somé sat up in his seat, staring.

“Fuck…Freddie Bestigui? Well, he’s a shit, I know that. This little girl I know…well, friend of a friend…she was working for his production company, and he tried to fucking rape her. No, I am not exaggerating,” said Somé. “Literally. Rape. Got her a bit drunk after work and had her on the floor; some assistant had forgotten his mobile and came back for it, and walked in on them. Bestigui paid them both off. Everyone was telling her to press charges, but she took the money and ran. They say he used to discipline his second wife in some pretty fucking kinky ways; that’s why she walked away with three mill; she threatened him with the press. But Cuckoo would never have let Freddie Bestigui into her flat at two in the morning. Like I say, she wasn’t a stupid girl.”