1 The Cuckoo's Calling

she was out of control when we got there. But she said he’d been in bed, and the
bedclothes were disarranged and looked slept in.
“Plus, if he’d managed to sneak out of the flat without her realizing it, and
gone up to Landry’s place, we’re left with the problem of how he got past
Wilson. He can’t have taken the lift, so he’d have passed Wilson in the stairwell,
coming down.”
“So the timings rule him out?”
Wardle hesitated.
“Well, it’s just possible. Just, assuming Bestigui can move a damn sight faster
than most men of his age and weight, and that he started running the moment he
pushed her over. But there’s still the fact that we didn’t find his DNA anywhere
in the flat, the question of how he got out of the flat without his wife knowing
he’d gone, and the small matter of why Landry would have let him in. All her
friends agreed she didn’t like him. Anyway,” Wardle finished the dregs of his
pint, “Bestigui’s the kind of man who’d hire a killer if he wanted someone taken
care of. He wouldn’t sully his own hands.”
“Another one?”
Wardle checked his watch.
“My shout,” he said, and he ambled up to the bar. The three young women
standing around the high table fell silent, watching him greedily. Wardle threw
them a smirk as he walked back past with his drinks, and they glanced over at
him as he resumed the bar stool beside Strike.
“How d’you think Wilson shapes up as a possible killer?” Strike asked the
policeman.
“Badly,” said Wardle. “He couldn’t have got up and down quickly enough to
meet Tansy Bestigui on the ground floor. Mind you, his CV’s a crock of shit. He
was employed on the basis of being ex-police, and he was never in the force.”
“Interesting. Where was he?”
“He’s been knocking around the security world for years. He admitted he’d
lied to get his first job, about ten years ago, and he’d just kept it on his CV.”
“He seems to have liked Landry.”
“Yeah. He’s older than he looks,” said Wardle, inconsequentially. “He’s a
grandfather. They don’t show age like us, do they, Afro-Caribbeans? I
wouldn’t’ve put him as any older than you.” Strike wondered idly how old
Wardle thought he was.