1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“I’ve found Rochelle Onifade.”
He lowered the mug.
“You’re kidding. How the hell…?”
“I saw in the file that she was supposed to attend an outpatient clinic at St.
Thomas’s,” said Robin excitedly, flushed and talking fast, “so I rang up the
hospital yesterday evening, pretending to be her, and I said I’d forgotten the time
of my appointment, and they told me it’s at ten thirty on Thursday morning.
You’ve got,” she glanced at her computer monitor, “fifty-five minutes.”
Why had he not thought to tell her to do this?
“You genius, you bloody genius…”
He had slopped hot tea over his hand, and put the mug down on her desk.
“D’you know exactly…?”
“It’s in the psychiatric unit round the back of the main building,” said Robin,
exhilarated. “See, you go in off Grantley Road, there’s a second car park…”
She had turned the monitor towards him to show him the map of St. Thomas’s.
He checked his wrist, but his watch was still in the inner room.
“You’ll have time if you leave now,” Robin urged him.
“Yeah—I’ll get my stuff.”
Strike hurried to fetch his watch, wallet, cigarettes and phone. He was almost
through the glass door, cramming his wallet into his back pocket, when Robin
said:
“Er—Cormoran…”
She had never called him by his first name before. Strike assumed that this
accounted for her slight air of bashfulness; then he realized that she was pointing
meaningfully at his navel. Looking down, he saw that he had done up the buttons
on his shirt wrongly, and was exposing a patch of belly so hairy that it resembled
black coconut matting.
“Oh—right—cheers…”
Robin turned her attention politely to her monitor while he undid and
refastened the buttons.
“See you later.”
“Yeah, ’bye,” she said, smiling at him as he departed at speed; but within
seconds he was back, panting slightly.