1 The Cuckoo's Calling

Her animosity fell away at once, as he had meant it to; her voice was many
degrees warmer when she spoke again; verging, in fact, on excited.
“But Duffield can’t have had anything to do with it, can he? He had a cast-iron
alibi!”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see about that,” said Strike, deliberately ominous. “And
listen, Robin, if another death threat comes in—they usually arrive on
Mondays…”
“Yes?” she said eagerly.
“File it,” said Strike.
He could not be sure—it seemed unlikely; she struck him as so prim—but he
thought he heard her mutter, “Sod you, then,” as she hung up.
Strike spent the rest of the day engaged in tedious but necessary spadework.
When Robin had texted him the address, he visited his second nightclub of the
day, this time in South Kensington. The contrast with Barrack was extreme;
Uzi’s discreet entrance might have been to a smart private house. There were
security cameras over its doors, too. Strike then took a bus to Charles Street,
where he was fairly sure Guy Somé lived, and walked what he guessed to be the
most direct route between the designer’s address and the house where Landry had
died.
His leg was aching badly again by late afternoon, and he stopped for a rest and
more sandwiches before setting out for the Feathers, near Scotland Yard, and his
appointment with Eric Wardle.
It was another Victorian pub, this time with enormous windows reaching
almost from floor to ceiling, looking out on to a great gray 1920s building
decorated with statues by Jacob Epstein. The nearest of these sat over the doors,
and stared down through the pub windows; a fierce seated deity was being
embraced by his infant son, whose body was weirdly twisted back on itself, to
show his genitalia. Time had eroded all shock value.
Inside the Feathers, machines were clinking and jingling and flashing primarycolored
lights; the wall-mounted plasma TVs, surrounded with padded leather,
were showing West Bromwich Albion versus Chelsea with the sound off, while
Amy Winehouse throbbed and moaned from hidden speakers. The names of ales
were painted on the cream wall above the long bar, which faced a wide darkwood
staircase with curving steps and shining brass handrails, leading up to the
first floor.
Strike had to wait to be served, giving him time to look around. The place was
full of men, most of whom had military-short hair; but a trio of girls with
tangerine tans stood around a high table, throwing back their over-straightened