1 The Cuckoo's Calling

Their pale reflections were swaying in the opaque black window; drained of
color in the harsh overhead light, Robin looked older, yet ethereal, and Strike
craggier, uglier.
“Thursday nights.”
“And was she?”
“No, she really was going to bingo with her friend Maggie, but all four
Thursdays that I watched her, she made herself deliberately late home. She drove
around a little bit after she’d left Maggie. One night she went into a pub and had
a tomato juice on her own, sitting in a corner looking timid. Another night she
waited in her car at the end of their street for forty-five minutes before driving
around the corner.”
“Why?” asked Robin, as the train rattled loudly through a lengthy tunnel.
“Well that’s the question, isn’t it? Proving something? Trying to get him
worked up? Taunting him? Punishing him? Trying to inject a bit of excitement
into their dull marriage? Every Thursday, just a bit of unexplained time.
“He’s a twitchy bugger, and he’d swallowed the bait all right. It was driving
him mad. He was sure she was meeting a lover once a week, that her friend
Maggie was covering for her. He’d tried following her himself, but he was
convinced that she went to bingo on those occasions because she knew he was
watching.”
“So you told him the truth?”
“Yeah, I did. He didn’t believe me. He got very worked up and started
shouting and screaming about everyone being in a conspiracy against him.
Refused to pay my bill.
“I was worried he was going to end up doing her an injury, which was where I
made my big mistake. I phoned her and told her he’d paid me to watch her, that I
knew what she was doing, and that her husband was heading for breaking point.
For her own sake, she ought to be careful how far she pushed him. She didn’t say
a word, just hung up on me.
“Well, he was checking her mobile regularly. He saw my number, and drew
the obvious conclusion.”
“That you’d told her he was having her watched?”
“No, that I had been seduced by her charms and was her new lover.”
Robin clapped her hands over her mouth. Strike laughed.