1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“You know, nobody here is obliged to answer your questions, Mr. Strike,” said
Landry.
“Of course not,” agreed Strike, and he made a small and incomprehensible
note in his pad. Bristow was looking at his uncle. Landry seemed to reconsider.
“I could see through the open door of the home study that John was hard at
work, and I didn’t want to disturb him. I sat with Yvette in her room for a while,
but she was groggy from the painkillers, so I left her with Lula. I knew,” said
Landry, with the faintest undertone of spite, “that there was nobody Yvette would
prefer to Lula.”
“Lula’s telephone records show that she called your mobile phone repeatedly
after she left Lady Bristow’s flat, Mr. Landry.”
Landry flushed.
“Did you speak to her on the phone?”
“No. I had my mobile switched to silent; I was late for the conference.”
“They vibrate, though, don’t they?”
He wondered what it would take to make Landry leave. He was sure that the
lawyer was close.
“I glanced at my phone, saw it was Lula and decided it could wait,” he said
shortly.
“You didn’t call her back?”
“No.”
“Didn’t she leave any kind of message, to tell you what she wanted to talk
about?”
“No.”
“That seems odd, doesn’t it? You’d just seen her at her mother’s, and you say
nothing very important passed between you; yet she spent much of the rest of the
afternoon trying to contact you. Doesn’t that seem as though she might have had
something urgent to say to you? Or that she wanted to continue a conversation
you’d been having at the flat?”
“Lula was the kind of girl who would call somebody thirty times in a row, on
the flimsiest pretext. She was spoiled. She expected people to jump to attention at
the sight of her name.”
Strike glanced at Bristow.