1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“One of the shop assistants overheard her, while she was on the phone. She
seemed to be making an appointment to meet someone at her flat much later. In
the early hours of the morning, the girl thought.”
“Yeah?”
“So that doesn’t seem like it could have been Duffield, does it, seeing as she
already had an arrangement to meet him at Uzi?”
“Know a lot, don’t you?” she said.
“Everyone knows they met at Uzi that night,” said Strike. “It was in all the
papers.”
The dilating or contracting of Rochelle’s pupils would be almost impossible to
see, because of the virtually black irises surrounding them.
“Yeah, I s’pose,” she conceded.
“Was it Deeby Macc?”
“No!” She yelped it on a laugh. “She din’ know his number.”
“Famous people can nearly always get each other’s numbers,” said Strike.
Rochelle’s expression clouded. She glanced down at the blank screen on her
gaudy pink mobile.
“I don’ think she had his,” she said.
“But you heard her trying to make an arrangement to meet someone in the
small hours?”
“No,” said Rochelle, avoiding his eyes, swilling the dregs of her coffee around
the paper cup. “I can’ remember nuthin’ like that.”
“You understand how important this could be?” said Strike, careful to keep his
tone unthreatening. “If Lula made an arrangement to meet someone at the time
she died? The police never knew about this, did they? You never told them?”
“I gotta go,” she said, throwing down the last morsel of cookie, grabbing the
strap of her cheap handbag and glaring at him.
Strike said:
“It’s nearly lunchtime. Can I buy you anything else?”
“No.”