1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“We usedta listen to Deeby Macc in his car. Me, Kieran and Lula.”
And she began to rap:
No hydroquinone, black to the backbone,
Takin’ Deeby lightly, better buy an early tombstone,
I’m drivin’ my Ferrari—fuck Johari—got my head on straight
Nothin’ talks like money talks—I’m shoutin’ at ya, Mister Jake.
She looked proud, as though she had put him firmly in his place, with no retort
possible.
“Tha’s from ‘Hydroquinone,’ ” she said. “On Jake On My Jack.”
“What’s hydroquinone?” Strike asked.
“Skin light’ner. We usedta rap that with the car windows down,” said
Rochelle. A warm, reminiscent smile lit her face out of plainness.
“Lula was looking forward to meeting Deeby Macc, then, was she?”
“Yeah, she wuz,” said Rochelle. “She knew ’e liked ’er, she wuz pleased with
herself about that. Kieran wuz proper excited an’ all, he kep’ askin’ Lula to
introduce him. He wanted to meet Deeby.”
Her smile faded; she picked morosely at her burger, then said:
“Is that all you wanna know, then? ’Cause I gotta go.”
She began wolfing the remnants of her meal, cramming food into her mouth.
“Lula must have taken you to a lot of places, did she?”
“Yeah,” said Rochelle, her mouth full of burger.
“Did you go to Uzi with her?”
“Yeah. Once.”
She swallowed, and began to talk about the other places she had seen during
the early phase of her friendship with Lula, which (in spite of Rochelle’s
determined attempts to repudiate any suggestion that she had been dazzled by the
lifestyle of a multimillionairess) had all the romance of a fairy tale. Lula had
snatched Rochelle away from the bleak world of her hostel and group therapy
and swept her, once a week, into a whirl of expensive fun. Strike noted how very
little Rochelle had told him about Lula the person, as opposed to Lula the holder
of the magic plastic cards that bought handbags, jackets and jewelry, and the
necessary means by which Kieran appeared regularly, like a genie, to whisk
Rochelle away from her hostel. She described, in loving detail, the presents Lula