1 The Cuckoo's Calling

She glanced up to see who had shouted, but kept walking without any sign that
the name had a personal application, and disappeared into the building. Next
came a couple, both white; then a group of people of assorted ages and races
whom Strike guessed to be hospital workers; but on the mere off-chance he
called again:
“Rochelle!”
Some of them glanced at him, but returned immediately to their conversations.
Consoling himself that frequenters of this entrance were probably used to a
degree of eccentricity in those they met in its vicinity, Strike lit a cigarette and
waited.
Half past ten passed, and no black girl went through the doors. Either she had
missed her appointment, or she had used a different entrance. A feather-light
breeze tickled the back of his neck as he sat smoking, watching, waiting. The
hospital building was enormous, a vast concrete box with rectangular windows;
there were surely numerous entrances on every side.
Strike straightened his injured leg, which was still sore, and considered, again,
the possibility that he would have to return to see his consultant. He found even
this degree of proximity to a hospital slightly depressing. His stomach rumbled.
He had passed a McDonald’s on the way here. If he had not found her by
midday, he would go and eat there.
Twice more he shouted “Rochelle!” at black women who entered and exited
the building, and both times they glanced back, purely to see who had shouted, in
one case giving him a look of disdain.
Then, just after eleven, a short, stocky black girl emerged from the hospital
with a slightly awkward, rocking, side-to-side gait. He knew quite well that he
had not missed her going in, not only because of her distinctive walk, but because
she wore a very noticeable short coat of magenta-colored fake fur, which
flattered neither her height nor her breadth.
“Rochelle!”
The girl stopped, turned and stared around, scowling, looking for the person
who had called her name. Strike limped towards her, and she glared at him with
an understandable mistrust.
“Rochelle? Rochelle Onifade? Hi. My name’s Cormoran Strike. Can I have a
word?”
“I always come in Redbourne Street entrance,” she told him five minutes later,
after he had given a garbled and fictitious account of the way he had found her. “I
come out this way ’cause I was gonna go to McDonald’s.”