1 The Cuckoo's Calling

9
THE JUNCTION OF TOTTENHAM COURT and Charing Cross Roads was still a scene of
devastation, with wide gashes in the road, white hardboard tunnels and hardhatted
builders. Strike traversed the narrow walkways barricaded by metal fences,
past the rumbling diggers full of rubble, bellowing workmen and more drills,
smoking as he walked.
He felt weary and sore; very conscious of the pain in his leg, of his unwashed
body, of the greasy food lying heavily in his stomach. On impulse, he took a
detour right up Sutton Row, away from the clatter and grind of the roadworks,
and called Rochelle. It went to voicemail, but it was her husky voice that
answered: she had not given him a fake number. He left no message; he had
already said everything he could think of saying; and yet he was worried. He half
wished he had followed her, covertly, to find out where she was living.
Back on Charing Cross Road, limping on to the office through the temporary
shadow of the pedestrian tunnel, he remembered the way that Robin had woken
him up that morning: the tactful knock, the cup of tea, the studied avoidance of
the subject of the camp bed. He ought not to have let it happen. There were other
routes to intimacy than admiring a woman’s figure in a tight dress. He did not
want to explain why he was sleeping at work; he dreaded personal questions.
And he had let a situation arise in which she had called him Cormoran and told
him to do up his buttons. He ought never to have overslept.
As he climbed the metal stairs, past the closed door of Crowdy Graphics,
Strike resolved to treat Robin with a slightly cooler edge of authority for the rest
of the day, to counterbalance that glimpse of hairy belly.
The decision was no sooner made than he heard high-pitched laughter, and
two female voices talking at the same time, issuing from his own office.
Strike froze, listening, panicking. He had not returned Charlotte’s call. He
tried to make out her tone and inflection; it would be like her to come in person
and overwhelm his temp with charm, to make of his ally a friend, to saturate his
own staff with Charlotte’s version of the truth. The two voices melded in laughter
again, and he could not tell whose they were.
“Hi, Stick,” said a cheery voice as he pushed open the glass door.
His sister, Lucy, was sitting on the sagging sofa, with her hands around a mug
of coffee, bags from Marks and Spencer and John Lewis heaped all around her.
Strike’s first surge of relief that she was not Charlotte was nevertheless tainted
with a lesser dread of what she and Robin had been talking about, and how much
each of them now knew about his private life. As he returned Lucy’s hug, he
noticed that Robin had, again, closed the inner door on the camp bed and kitbag.