1 The Cuckoo's Calling

have hoped. As Wilson had already told Strike, the movements of the building’s
residents were not recorded in the book; so the comings and goings of Landry
and the Bestiguis were missing. The first entry Wilson had made was for the
postman, at 9:10; next, at 9:22, came Florist delivery Flat 2; finally, at 9:50,
Securibell. No time of departure was marked for the alarm checker.
Otherwise it had been (as Wilson had said) a quiet day. Ciara Porter had
arrived at 12:50; Bryony Radford at 1:20. While Radford’s departure was
recorded with her own signature at 4:40, Wilson had added the entrance of
caterers to the Bestiguis’ flat at 7, Ciara’s exit with Lula at 7:15 and the departure
of the caterers at 9:15.
It frustrated Strike that the only page that the police had photocopied was the
day before Landry’s death, because he had hoped that he might find the surname
of the elusive Rochelle somewhere in the entrance log’s pages.
It was nearly midnight when Strike turned his attention to the police report on
the contents of Landry’s laptop. They appeared to have been searching,
principally, for emails indicating suicidal mood or intent, and in this respect they
had been unsuccessful. Strike scanned the emails Landry had sent and received in
the last two weeks of her life.
It was strange, but nevertheless true, that the countless photographs of her
otherworldly beauty had made it harder rather than easier for Strike to believe
that Landry had ever really existed. The ubiquity of her features had made them
seem abstract, generic, even if the face itself had been uniquely beautiful.
Now, however, out of these dry black marks on paper, out of erratically
spelled messages littered with in-jokes and nicknames, the wraith of the dead girl
rose before him in the dark office. Her emails gave him what the multitude of
photographs had not: a realization in the gut, rather than the brain, that a real,
living, laughing and crying human being had been smashed to death on that
snowy London street. He had hoped to spot the flickering shadow of a murderer
as he turned the file’s pages, but instead it was the ghost of Lula herself who
emerged, gazing up at him, as victims of violent crimes sometimes did, through
the detritus of their interrupted lives.
He saw, now, why John Bristow insisted that his sister had had no thought of
death. The girl who had typed out these words emerged as a warmhearted friend,
sociable, impulsive, busy and glad to be so; enthusiastic about her job, excited, as
Bristow had said, about the prospect of a trip to Morocco.
Most of the emails had been sent to the designer Guy Somé. They held nothing
of interest except a tone of cheery confidentiality, and, once, a mention of her
most incongruous friendship: