1 The Cuckoo's Calling

2
A LARGE MAGNOLIA TREE STOOD in the front garden of Lucy’s house in Bromley.
Later in the spring it would cover the front lawn in what looked like crumpled
tissues; now, in April, it was a frothy cloud of white, its petals waxy as coconut
shavings. Strike had only visited this house a few times, because he preferred to
meet Lucy away from her home, where she always seemed most harried, and to
avoid encounters with his brother-in-law, for whom his feelings were on the
cooler side of tepid.
Helium-filled balloons, tied to the gate, bobbled in the light breeze. As Strike
walked down the steeply sloping front path to the door, the package Robin had
wrapped under his arm, he told himself that it would soon be over.
“Where’s Charlotte?” demanded Lucy, short, blonde and round-faced,
immediately upon opening the front door.
More big golden foil balloons, this time in the shape of the number seven,
filled the hall behind her. Screams that might have denoted excitement or pain
were issuing from some unseen region of the house, disturbing the suburban
peace.
“She had to go back to Ayr for the weekend,” lied Strike.
“Why?” asked Lucy, standing back to let him in.
“Another crisis with her sister. Where’s Jack?”
“They’re all through here. Thank God it’s stopped raining, or we’d have had to
have them in the house,” said Lucy, leading him out into the back garden.
They found his three nephews tearing around the large back lawn with twenty
assorted boys and girls in party clothes, who were shrieking their way through
some game that involved running to various cricket stumps on which pictures of
pieces of fruit had been taped. Parent helpers stood around in the weak sunlight,
drinking wine out of plastic cups, while Lucy’s husband, Greg, manned an iPod
standing in a dock on a trestle table. Lucy handed Strike a lager, then dashed
away from him almost immediately, to pick up the youngest of her three sons,
who had fallen hard and was bawling with gusto.
Strike had never wanted children; it was one of the things on which he and
Charlotte had always agreed, and it had been one of the reasons other
relationships over the years had foundered. Lucy deplored his attitude, and the
reasons he gave for it; she was always miffed when he stated life aims that
differed from hers, as though he were attacking her decisions and choices.
“All right, there, Corm?” said Greg, who had handed over the control of the
music to another father. Strike’s brother-in-law was a quantity surveyor, who
never seemed quite sure what tone to take with Strike, and usually settled for a
combination of chippiness and aggression that Strike found irksome. “Where’s