1 The Cuckoo's Calling

Strike had met countless liars; he could smell them; and he knew perfectly
well that Tansy was of their number. She could not have heard what she claimed
to have heard from her flat; the police had therefore deduced that she could not
have heard it at all. Against Strike’s expectation, however, in spite of the fact that
every piece of evidence he had heard until this moment suggested that Lula
Landry had committed suicide, he found himself convinced that Tansy Bestigui
really believed that she had overheard an argument before Landry fell. That was
the only part of her story that rang with authenticity, an authenticity that shone a
garish light on the fakery with which she garnished it.
Strike pushed himself off the wall and began to walk east along Grosvenor
Street, paying slightly more attention to traffic, but inwardly recalling Tansy’s
expression, her tone, her mannerisms, as she spoke of Lula Landry’s final
moments.
Why would she tell the truth on the essential point, but surround it with easily
disproven falsehoods? Why would she lie about what she had been doing when
she heard shouting from Landry’s flat? Strike remembered Adler: “A lie would
have no sense unless the truth were felt as dangerous.” Tansy had come along
today to make a last attempt to find someone who would believe her, and yet
swallow the lies in which she insisted on swaddling her evidence.
He walked fast, barely conscious of the twinges from his right knee. At last he
realized that he had walked all along Maddox Street and emerged on Regent
Street. The red awnings of Hamleys Toy Shop fluttered a little in the distance,
and Strike remembered that he had intended to buy a birthday present for his
nephew’s forthcoming birthday on the way back to the office.
The multicolored, squeaking, flashing maelstrom into which he walked
registered on him only vaguely. Blindly he moved from floor to floor, untroubled
by the shrieks, the whirring of airborne toy helicopters, the oinks of mechanical
pigs moving across his distracted path. Finally, after twenty minutes or so, he
came to rest near the HM Forces dolls. Here he stood, quite still, gazing at the
ranks of miniature marines and paratroopers but barely seeing them; deaf to the
whispers of parents trying to maneuver their sons around him, too intimidated to
ask the strange, huge, staring man to move.