1 The Cuckoo's Calling

peroxide hair, in their tiny, tight spangled dresses, shifting their weight
unnecessarily on their teetering heels. They were pretending not to know that the
only solitary drinker, a handsome, boyish man in a leather jacket, who was sitting
on a high bar seat beside the nearby window, was examining them, point by
point, with a practiced eye. Strike bought himself a pint of Doom Bar and
approached their appraiser.
“Cormoran Strike,” he said, reaching Wardle’s table. Wardle had the kind of
hair Strike envied in other men; nobody would ever have called Wardle
“pubehead.”
“Yeah, I thought it might be you,” said the policeman, shaking hands. “Anstis
said you were a big bloke.”
Strike pulled up a bar stool, and Wardle said, without preamble:
“What’ve you got for me, then?”
“There was a fatal stabbing just off Ealing Broadway last month. Guy called
Liam Yates? Police informant, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah, he got a knife in the neck. But we know who did it,” said Wardle, with
a patronizing laugh. “Half the crooks in London know. If that’s your
information—”
“Don’t know where he is, though, do you?”
With a quick glance at the determinedly unconscious girls, Wardle slid a
notebook out of his pocket.
“Go on.”
“There’s a girl who works in Betbusters on the Hackney Road called Shona
Holland. She lives in a rented flat two streets away from the bookie’s. She’s got
an unwelcome house guest at the moment called Brett Fearney, who used to beat
up her sister. Apparently he’s not the sort of bloke you refuse a favor.”
“Got the full address?” asked Wardle, who was scribbling hard.
“I’ve just given you the name of the tenant and half the postcode. How about
trying a bit of detective work?”
“And where did you say you got this?” asked Wardle, still jotting rapidly with
the notebook balanced under the table on his knee.
“I didn’t,” replied Strike equably, sipping his beer.
“Got some interesting friends, haven’t you?”
“Very. Now, in a spirit of fair exchange…”