1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“He must have moved quickly.”
“Why?”
“You said: ‘I ran out of the flat, past Freddie, and downstairs.’ So he was
already in the room before you ran out to tell Derrick what had happened?”
A missed beat.
“That’s right,” she said, smoothing her immaculate hair again, shielding her
face.
“So he went from fast asleep in bed, to awake and in the sitting room, within
seconds? Because you started screaming and running pretty much
instantaneously, from what you said?”
Another infinitesimal pause.
“Yah,” she said. “Well—I don’t know. I think I screamed—I screamed while I
was frozen on the spot—for a moment, maybe—I was just so shocked—and
Freddie came running out of the bedroom, and then I ran past him.”
“Did you stop to tell him what you’d seen?”
“I can’t remember.”
Bristow looked as though he was about to stage one of his untimely
interventions again. Strike held up a hand to forestall him; but Tansy plunged off
on another tack, eager, he guessed, to leave the subject of her husband.
“I’ve thought and thought about how the killer got in, and I’m sure he must
have followed her inside when she came in that morning, because of Derrick
Wilson leaving his desk and being in the bathroom. I thought Wilson ought to
have been bloody sacked for it, actually. If you ask me, he was having a sneaky
sleep in the back room. I don’t know how the killer would have known the key
code, but I’m sure that’s when he must have got in.”
“Do you think you’d be able to recognize the man’s voice again? The one you
heard shouting?”
“I doubt it,” she said. “It was just a man’s voice. It could have been anyone.
There was nothing unusual about it. I mean, afterwards I thought, Was it
Duffield?” she said, gazing at him intently, “because I’d heard Duffield shouting
upstairs, once before, from the top landing. Wilson had to throw him out;
Duffield was trying to kick in Lula’s door. I never understood what a girl with
her looks was doing with someone like Duffield,” she added in parenthesis.
“Some women say he’s sexy,” agreed Ursula, emptying the wine bottle into
her glass, “but I can’t see the appeal. He’s just skanky and horrible.”