1 The Cuckoo's Calling

So that was where they went. Strike bought two coffees and two large cookies,
and carried them to the window table where Rochelle was waiting, curious and
suspicious.
She was uncompromisingly plain. Her greasy skin, which was the color of
burned earth, was covered in acne pustules and pits; her small eyes were deep-set
and her teeth were crooked and rather yellow. The chemically straightened hair
showed four inches of black roots, then six inches of harsh, coppery wire-red.
Her tight, too-short jeans, her shiny gray handbag and her bright white trainers
looked cheap. However, the squashy fake-fur jacket, garish and unflattering
though Strike found it, was of a different quality altogether: fully lined, as he saw
when she took it off, with a patterned silk, and bearing the label not (as he had
expected, remembering Lula Landry’s email to the designer) of Guy Somé, but of
an Italian of whom even Strike had heard.
“You sure you inna journalist?” she asked, in her low, husky voice.
Strike had already spent some time outside the hospital trying to establish his
bona fides in this respect.
“No, I’m not a journalist. Like I said, I know Lula’s brother.”
“You a friend of his?”
“Yeah. Well, not exactly a friend. He’s hired me. I’m a private detective.”
She was instantly, openly scared.
“Whaddayuhwanna talk to me for?”
“There’s nothing to worry about…”
“Whyd’yuhwanna talk to me, though?”
“It’s nothing bad. John isn’t sure that Lula committed suicide, that’s all.”
He guessed that the only thing keeping her in the seat was her terror of the
construction he might put on instant flight. Her fear was out of all proportion to
his manner or words.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” he assured her again. “John wants me to
take another look at the circumstances, that’s—”
“Does ’e say I’ve got something to do wiv ’er dying?”
“No, of course not. I’m just hoping you might be able to tell me about her state
of mind, what she got up to in the lead-up to her death. You saw her regularly,
didn’t you? I thought you might be able to tell me what was going on in her life.”