1 The Cuckoo's Calling

over the prettified, pink and palpably feminine device, but the sight had drawn
smirks from two of the black-T-shirted waiters.
“How’s tricks, Federico?” asked a pallid, straggly-haired young man at half
past eight. The newcomer, who dropped into the seat opposite Strike, wore jeans,
a psychedelic T-shirt, Converse sneakers, and a leather bag slung diagonally
across his chest.
“Been worse,” grunted Strike. “How’re you? Want a drink?”
“Yeah, I’ll have a lager.”
Strike ordered the drink for his guest, whom he was accustomed, for longforgotten
reasons, to call Spanner. Spanner had a first-class degree in computer
science, and was much better paid than his clothing suggested.
“I’m not that hungry, I had a burger after work,” Spanner said, looking down
the menu. “I could do a soup. Wonton soup, please,” he added to the waiter.
“Interesting choice of laptop, Fed.”
“It’s not mine,” said Strike.
“It’s the job, is it?”
“Yeah.”
Strike slid the computer around to face Spanner, who surveyed the device with
the mixture of interest and disparagement characteristic of those to whom
technology is no necessary evil, but the stuff of life.
“Junk,” said Spanner cheerfully. “Where’ve you been hiding yourself, Fed?
People’ve been worried.”
“Nice of them,” said Strike, through a mouthful of noodles. “No need,
though.”
“I was round Nick and Ilsa’s coupla nights ago and you were the only topic of
conversation. They were saying you’ve gone underground. Oh, cheers,” he said,
as his soup arrived. “Yeah, they’ve been ringing your flat and they keep getting
the answering machine. Ilsa reckons it’s woman trouble.”
It now occurred to Strike that the best way to inform his friends of his ruptured
engagement might be through the medium of the unconcerned Spanner. The
younger brother of one of Strike’s old friends, Spanner was largely ignorant of,
and indifferent to, the long and tortured history of Strike and Charlotte. Given
that it was face-to-face sympathy and postmortems that Strike wanted to avoid,
and that he had no intention of pretending forever that he and Charlotte had not
split up, he agreed that Ilsa had correctly divined his main trouble, and that it
would be better if his friends avoided calling Charlotte’s flat henceforth.