1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“You’d think Lula Landry would be a bit more careful, with the press
following her around wherever she went.”
“Yeah,” said the redhead. “You would. I mean, I’d never pass on anything I
heard, but some people might.”
Disregarding the fact that she had evidently shared whatever she’d heard with
her colleagues, Robin expressed appreciation for this rare sense of decency.
“I suppose you had to tell the police, though?” she said, pulling the dress
straight and bracing herself for the raising of the zip.
“The police never came here,” said the girl with cotton candy hair, regret in
her voice. “I said Mel should have gone and told them what she’d heard, but she
didn’t want to.”
“It wasn’t anything,” said Mel, quickly. “It wouldn’t have made any
difference. I mean, he wasn’t there, was he? That was proven.”
Strike had moved as close as he dared to the silk curtain, without arousing
suspicious looks from the customers and remaining assistants.
Inside the changing cubicle, the pink-haired girl was heaving on the zip.
Slowly Robin’s ribcage was compressed by a hidden boned corset. The listening
Strike was disconcerted that her next question was almost a groan.
“D’you mean that Evan Duffield wasn’t at her flat when she died?”
“Yeah,” said Mel. “So it didn’t matter what she was saying to him earlier, did
it? He wasn’t there.”
The four women considered Robin’s reflection for a moment.
“I don’t think,” said Robin, observing the way that two thirds of her breasts
were squashed flat by the straining material, while the upper slopes overflowed
the neckline, “Sandra’s going to fit into this. But don’t you think,” she said,
breathing more freely as the cotton candy–haired girl unzipped her, “you ought to
have told the police what she said, and let them decide whether it was
important?”
“I said that, Mel, didn’t I?” crowed the pink-haired girl. “I told her that.”
Mel was immediately on the defensive.
“But he wasn’t there! He never went to her flat! He must’ve been saying he
had something on and he didn’t want to see her, because she was going, ‘Come
after, then, I’ll wait up, it don’t matter. I probably won’t be home till one
anyway. Please come, please.’ Like, begging him. Anyway, she had her friend in