The Cuckoo's Calling (4 page)

“If, say, a quarter of it could be in cash,” Strike added, chancing his luck; and was staggered for the second time that morning when Bristow said, “I did wonder whether you’d prefer…” and counted out a pile of fifties in addition to the check.

They emerged into the outer office at the very moment that Robin was about to enter with Strike’s fresh coffee. Bristow’s girlfriend stood up when the door opened, and folded her newspaper with the air of one who had been kept waiting too long. She was almost as tall as Bristow, large-framed, with a surly expression and big, mannish hands.

“So you’ve agreed to do it, have you?” she asked Strike. He had the impression that she thought he was taking advantage of her rich boyfriend. Very possibly she was right.

“Yes, John’s hired me,” he replied.

“Oh well,” she said, ungraciously. “You’re pleased, I expect, John.”

The lawyer smiled at her, and she sighed and patted his arm, like a tolerant but slightly exasperated mother to a child. John Bristow raised his hand in a salute, then followed his girlfriend out of the room, and their footsteps clanged away down the metal stairs.

STRIKE TURNED TO ROBIN, WHO
had sat back down at the computer. His coffee was sitting beside the piles of neatly sorted mail lined up on the desk beside her.

“Thanks,” he said, taking a sip, “and for the note. Why are you a temp?”

“What d’you mean?” she asked, looking suspicious.

“You can spell and punctuate. You catch on quick. You show initiative—where did the cups and the tray come from? The coffee and biscuits?”

“I borrowed them all from Mr. Crowdy. I told him we’d return them by lunchtime.”

“Mr. who?”

Mr. Crowdy, the man downstairs. The graphic designer.”

“And he just let you have them?”

“Yes,” she said, a little defensively. “I thought, having offered the client coffee, we ought to provide it.”

Her use of the plural pronoun was like a gentle pat to his morale.

“Well, that was efficiency way beyond anything Temporary Solutions has sent here before, take it from me. Sorry I kept calling you Sandra; she was the last girl. What’s your real name?”

“Robin.”

“Robin,” he repeated. “That’ll be easy to remember.”

He had some notion of making a jocular allusion to Batman and his dependable sidekick, but the feeble jest died on his lips as her face turned brilliantly pink. Too late, he realized that the most unfortunate construction could be put on his innocent words. Robin swung the swivel chair back towards the computer monitor, so that all Strike could see was an edge of a flaming cheek. In one frozen moment of mutual mortification, the room seemed to have shrunk to the size of a telephone kiosk.

“I’m going to nip out for a bit,” said Strike, putting down his virtually untouched coffee and moving crabwise towards the door, taking down the overcoat hanging beside it. “If anyone calls…”

“Mr. Strike—before you go, I think you ought to see this.”

Still flushed, Robin took, from on top of the pile of opened letters beside her computer, a sheet of bright pink writing paper and a matching envelope, both of which she had put into a clear plastic pocket. Strike noticed her engagement ring as she held the things up.

“It’s a death threat,” she said.

“Oh yeah,” said Strike. “Nothing to worry about. They come in about once a week.”

“But—”

“It’s a disgruntled ex-client. Bit unhinged. He thinks he’s throwing me off the scent by using that paper.”

“Surely, though—shouldn’t the police see it?”

“Give them a laugh, you mean?”

“It isn’t funny, it’s a death threat!” she said, and Strike realized why she had placed it, with its envelope, in the plastic pocket. He was mildly touched.

“Just file it with the others,” he said, pointing towards the filing cabinets in the corner. “If he was going to kill me he’d have made his move before now. You’ll find six months’ worth of letters in there somewhere. Will you be all right to hold the fort for a bit while I’m out?”

“I’ll cope,” she said, and he was amused by the sour note in her voice, and her obvious disappointment that nobody was going to fingerprint the be-kittened death threat.

“If you need me, my mobile number’s on the cards in the top drawer.”

“Fine,” she said, looking at neither the drawer nor him.

“If you want to go out for lunch, feel free. There’s a spare key in the desk somewhere.”

“OK.”

“See you later, then.”

He paused just outside the glass door, on the threshold of the tiny dank bathroom. The pressure in his guts was becoming painful, but he felt that her efficiency, and her impersonal concern for his safety, entitled her to some consideration. Resolving to wait until he reached the pub, Strike headed down the stairs.

Out in the street, he lit a cigarette, turned left and proceeded past the closed 12 Bar Café, up the narrow walkway of Denmark Place past a window full of multicolored guitars, and walls covered in fluttering fliers, away from the relentless pounding of the pneumatic drill. Skirting the rubble and wreckage of the street at the foot of Center Point, he marched past a gigantic gold statue of Freddie Mercury that stood over the entrance of the Dominion Theatre across the road, head bowed, one fist raised in the air, like some pagan god of chaos.

The ornate Victorian face of the Tottenham pub rose up behind the rubble and roadworks, and Strike, pleasurably aware of the large amount of cash in his pocket, pushed his way through its doors, into a serene Victorian atmosphere of gleaming scrolled dark wood and brass fittings. Its frosted glass half-partitions, its aged leather banquettes, its bar mirrors covered in gilt, cherubs and horns of plenty spoke of a confident and ordered world that was in satisfying contrast to the ruined street. Strike ordered a pint of Doom Bar and took it to the back of the almost deserted pub, where he placed his glass on a high circular table, under the garish glass cupola in the ceiling, and headed straight into the Gents, which smelled strongly of piss.

Ten minutes later, and feeling considerably more comfortable, Strike was a third of the way into his pint, which was deepening the anesthetic effect of his exhaustion. The Cornish beer tasted of home, peace and long-gone security. There was a large and blurry painting of a Victorian maiden, dancing with roses in her hands, directly opposite him. Frolicking coyly as she gazed at him through a shower of petals, her enormous breasts draped in white, she was as unlike a real woman as the table on which his pint rested, or the obese man with the ponytail who was working the pumps at the bar.

And now Strike’s thoughts swarmed back to Charlotte, who was indubitably real; beautiful, dangerous as a cornered vixen, clever, sometimes funny, and, in the words of Strike’s very oldest friend, “fucked to the core.” Was it over, really over, this time? Cocooned in his tiredness, Strike recalled the scenes of last night and this morning. Finally she had done something he could not forgive, and the pain would, no doubt be excruciating once the anesthetic wore off: but in the meantime, there were certain practicalities to be faced. It had been Charlotte’s flat that they had been living in; her stylish, expensive maisonette in Holland Park Avenue, which meant that he was, as of two o’clock that morning, voluntarily homeless.

(“Bluey, just move in with me. For God’s sake, you know it makes sense. You can save money while you’re building up the business, and I can look after you. You shouldn’t be on your own while you’re recuperating. Bluey, don’t be silly…

Nobody would ever call him Bluey again. Bluey was dead.)

It was the first time in their long and turbulent relationship that he had walked out. Three times previously it had been Charlotte who had called a halt. There had been an unspoken awareness between them, always, that if ever he left, if ever he decided he had had enough, the parting would be of an entirely different order to all those she had instigated, none of which, painful and messy though they had been, had ever felt definitive.

Charlotte would not rest until she had hurt him as badly as she could in retaliation. This morning’s scene, when she had tracked him to his office, had doubtless been a mere foretaste of what would unfold in the months, even years, to come. He had never known anyone with such an appetite for revenge.

Strike limped to the bar, secured a second pint and returned to the table for further gloomy reflection. Walking out on Charlotte had left him on the brink of true destitution. He was so deeply in debt that all that stood between him and a sleeping bag in a doorway was John Bristow. Indeed, if Gillespie called in the loan that had formed the down payment on Strike’s office, Strike would have no alternative but to sleep rough.

(“I’m just calling to check how things are going, Mr. Strike, because this month’s installment still hasn’t arrived…Can we expect it within the next few days?”)

And finally (since he had started looking at the inadequacies of his life, why not make a comprehensive survey?) there was his recent weight gain; a full stone and a half, so that he not only felt fat and unfit, but was putting unnecessary additional strain on the prosthetic lower leg he was now resting on the brass bar beneath the table. Strike was developing the shadow of a limp purely because the additional load was causing some chafing. The long walk across London in the small hours, kitbag over his shoulder, had not helped. Knowing that he was heading into penury, he had been determined to travel there in the cheapest fashion.

He returned to the bar to buy a third pint. Back at his table beneath the cupola, he drew out his mobile phone and called a friend in the Metropolitan Police whose friendship, though of only a few years’ duration, had been forged under exceptional conditions.

Just as Charlotte was the only person to call him “Bluey,” so Detective Inspector Richard Anstis was the only person to call Strike “Mystic Bob,” which name he bellowed at the sound of his friend’s voice.

“Looking for a favor,” Strike told Anstis.

“Name it.”

“Who handled the Lula Landry case?”

While Anstis searched out their numbers, he asked after Strike’s business, right leg and fiancée. Strike lied about the status of all three.

“Glad to hear it,” said Anstis cheerfully. “OK, here’s Wardle’s number. He’s all right; loves himself, but you’ll be better off with him than Carver; he’s a cunt. I can put in a word with Wardle. I’ll ring him right now for you, if you like.”

Strike tweaked a tourist leaflet from a wooden display on the wall, and copied down Wardle’s number in the space beside a picture of the Horse Guards.

“When’re you coming over?” Anstis asked. “Bring Charlotte one night.”

“Yeah, that’d be great. I’ll give you a ring; got a lot on just now.”

After hanging up, Strike sat in deep thought for a while, then called an acquaintance much older than Anstis, whose life path had run in a roughly opposite direction.

“Calling in a favor, mate,” said Strike. “Need some information.”

“On what?”

“You tell me. I need something I can use for leverage with a copper.”

The conversation ran to twenty-five minutes, and involved many pauses, which grew longer and more pregnant until finally Strike was given an approximate address and two names, which he also copied down beside the Horse Guards, and a warning, which he did not write down, but took in the spirit in which he knew it was intended. The conversation ended on a friendly note, and Strike, now yawning widely, dialed Wardle’s number, which was answered almost immediately by a loud, curt voice.

“Wardle.”

“Yeah, hello. My name’s Cormoran Strike, and—”

“You’re what?”

“Cormoran Strike,” said Strike, “is my name.”

“Oh yeah,” said Wardle. “Anstis just rang. You’re the private dick? Anstis said you were interested in talking about Lula Landry?”

“Yeah, I am,” said Strike again, suppressing another yawn as he examined the painted panels on the ceiling; bacchanalian revels that became, as he looked, a feast of fairies:
Midsummer Night’s Dream,
a man with a donkey’s head. “But what I’d really like is the file.”

Wardle laughed.

“You didn’t save
my
fucking life, mate.”

“Got some information you might be interested in. Thought we could do an exchange.”

There was a short pause.

“I take it you don’t want to do this exchange over the phone?”

“That’s right,” said Strike. “Is there anywhere you like to have a pint after a hard day’s work?”

Having jotted down the name of a pub near Scotland Yard, and agreed that a week today (failing any nearer date) would suit him too, Strike rang off.

It had not always been thus. A couple of years ago, he had been able to command the compliance of witnesses and suspects; he had been like Wardle, a man whose time had more value than most of those with whom he consorted, and who could choose when, where and how long interviews would be. Like Wardle, he had needed no uniform; he had been constantly cloaked in officialdom and prestige. Now, he was a limping man in a creased shirt, trading on old acquaintances, trying to do deals with policemen who would once have been glad to take his calls.

“Arsehole,” said Strike aloud, into his echoing glass. The third pint had slid down so easily that there was barely an inch left.

His mobile rang; glancing at the screen, he saw his office number. No doubt Robin was trying to tell him that Peter Gillespie was after money. He let her go straight to voicemail, drained his glass and left.

The street was bright and cold, the pavement damp, and the puddles intermittently silver as clouds scudded across the sun. Strike lit another cigarette outside the front door, and stood smoking it in the doorway of the Tottenham, watching the workmen as they moved around the pit in the road. Cigarette finished, he ambled off down Oxford Street to kill time until the Temporary Solution had left, and he could sleep in peace.

ROBIN HAD WAITED TEN MINUTES,
to make sure that Strike was not about to come back, before making several delightful telephone calls from her mobile phone. The news of her engagement was received by her friends with either squeals of excitement or envious comments, which gave Robin equal pleasure. At lunchtime, she awarded herself an hour off, bought three bridal magazines and a packet of replacement biscuits (which put the petty cash box, a labeled shortbread tin, into her debt to the tune of forty-two pence), and returned to the empty office, where she spent a happy forty minutes examining bouquets and bridal gowns, and tingling all over with excitement.

When her self-appointed lunch hour was over, Robin washed and returned Mr. Crowdy’s cups and tray, and his biscuits. Noting how eagerly he attempted to detain her in conversation on her second appearance, his eyes wandering distractedly from her mouth to her breasts, she resolved to avoid him for the rest of the week.

Still Strike did not return. For want of anything else to do, Robin neatened the contents of her desk drawers, disposing of what she recognized as the accumulated waste of other temporaries: two squares of dusty milk chocolate, a bald emery board and many pieces of paper carrying anonymous telephone numbers and doodles. There was a box of old-fashioned metal acro clips, which she had never come across before, and a considerable number of small, blank blue notebooks, which, though unmarked, had an air of officialdom. Robin, experienced in the world of offices, had the feeling that they might have been pinched from an institutional store cupboard.

The office telephone rang occasionally. Her new boss seemed to be a person of many names. One man asked for “Oggy”; another for “Monkey Boy,” while a dry, clipped voice asked that “Mr. Strike” return Mr. Peter Gillespie’s call as soon as possible. On each occasion, Robin contacted Strike’s mobile phone, and reached only his voicemail. She therefore left verbal messages, wrote down each caller’s name and number on a Post-it note, took it into Strike’s office and stuck it neatly on his desk.

The pneumatic drill rumbled on and on outside. Around two o’clock, the ceiling began to creak as the occupant of the flat overhead became more active; otherwise, Robin might have been alone in the whole building. Gradually solitude, coupled with the feeling of pure delight that threatened to burst her ribcage every time her eyes fell on the ring on her left hand, emboldened her. She began to clean and tidy the tiny room under her interim control.

In spite of its general shabbiness, and an overlying grubbiness, Robin soon discovered a firm organizational structure that pleased her own neat and orderly nature. The brown card folders (oddly old-fashioned, in these days of neon plastic) lined up on the shelves behind her desk were arranged in date order, each with a handwritten serial number on the spine. She opened one of them, and saw that the acro clips had been used to secure loose leaves of paper into each file. Much of the material inside was in a deceptive, difficult-to-read hand. Perhaps this was how the police worked; perhaps Strike was an ex-policeman.

Robin discovered the stack of pink death threats to which Strike had alluded in the middle drawer of the filing cabinet, beside a slim sheaf of confidentiality agreements. She took one of these out and read it: a simple form, requesting that the signatory refrain from discussing, outside hours, any of the names or information they might be privy to during their working day. Robin pondered for a moment, then carefully signed and dated one of the documents, carried it through to Strike’s inner office, and placed it on his desk, so that he might add his name on the dotted line supplied. Taking this one-sided vow of secrecy gave back to her some of the mystique, even glamour, that she had imagined lay beyond the engraved glass door, before it had flown open and Strike had nearly bowled her down the stairwell.

It was after placing the form on Strike’s desk that she spotted the kitbag stuffed away in a corner behind the filing cabinet. The edge of his dirty shirt, an alarm clock and a soap bag peeked from between the open teeth of the bag’s zip. Robin closed the door between inner and outer offices as though she had accidentally witnessed something embarrassing and private. She added together the dark-haired beauty fleeing the building that morning, Strike’s various injuries and what seemed, in retrospect, to have been a slightly delayed, but determined, pursuit. In her new and joyful condition of betrothal, Robin was disposed to feel desperately sorry for anyone with a less fortunate love life than her own—if desperate pity could describe the exquisite pleasure she actually felt at the thought of her own comparative paradise.

At five o’clock, and in the continuing absence of her temporary boss, Robin decided that she was free to go home. She hummed to herself as she filled in her own time sheet, bursting into song as she buttoned up her trench coat; then she locked the office door, slid the spare key back through the letter box and proceeded, with some caution, back down the metal stairs, towards Matthew and home.