1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“Bummer,” said Spanner, and then, with the incuriosity towards human pain
versus technological challenges that was characteristic of him, he pointed a
spatulate fingertip at the Dell and asked: “What d’you want doing with this,
then?”
“The police have already had a look at it,” said Strike, lowering his voice even
though he and Spanner were the only people nearby not speaking Cantonese, “but
I want a second opinion.”
“Police’ve got good techie people. I doubt I’m gonna find anything they
haven’t.”
“They might not have been looking for the right stuff,” said Strike, “and they
might not’ve realized what it meant even if they found it. They seemed mostly
interested in her recent emails, and I’ve already seen them.”
“What am I looking for, then?”
“All activity on or leading up to the eighth of January. The most recent
internet searches, stuff like that. I haven’t got the password, and I’d rather not go
back to the police and ask unless I have to.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” said Spanner. He was not writing these instructions
down, but typing them on to his mobile phone; Spanner was ten years younger
than Strike, and he rarely wielded a pen by choice. “Who’s it belong to,
anyway?”
When Strike told him, Spanner said:
“The model? Whoa.”
But Spanner’s interest in human beings, even when dead or famous, was still
secondary to his fondness for rare comics, technological innovation and bands of
which Strike had never heard. After eating several spoonfuls of soup, Spanner
broke the silence to inquire brightly how much Strike was planning to pay him
for the work.
When Spanner had left with the pink laptop under his arm, Strike limped back
to his office. He washed the end of his right leg carefully that night and then
applied cream to the irritated and inflamed scar tissue. For the first time in many
months, he took painkillers before easing himself into his sleeping bag. Lying
there waiting for the raw ache to deaden, he wondered whether he ought to make
an appointment to see the consultant in rehabilitation medicine under whose care
he was supposed to fall. The symptoms of choke syndrome, the nemesis of
amputees, had been described to him repeatedly: suppurating skin and swelling.
He was wondering whether he might be showing the early signs, but he dreaded
the prospect of returning to corridors stinking of disinfectant; of doctors with
their detached interest in this one small mutilated portion of his body; of further