1 The Cuckoo's Calling

But Robin, heading back to the office with sandwiches and crisps, felt even
sorrier for Strike than she had done before. His marriage—or, if they had not
been married, his live-in relationship—had failed; he was sleeping in his office;
he had been injured in the war, and now she discovered that his mother had died
in dubious and squalid circumstances.
She did not pretend to herself that this compassion was untinged with
curiosity. She already knew that she would certainly, at some point in the near
future, try and find the online particulars of Leda Strike’s death. At the same
time, she felt guilty that she had been given another glimpse of a part of Strike
she had not been meant to see, like that patch of virtually furry belly he had
accidentally exposed that morning. She knew him to be a proud and selfsufficient
man; these were the things she liked and admired about him, even if the
way these qualities expressed themselves—the camp bed, the boxed possessions
on the landing, the empty Pot Noodle tubs in the bin—aroused the derision of
such as Matthew, who assumed that anyone living in uncomfortable
circumstances must have been profligate or feckless.
Robin was not sure whether or not she imagined the slightly charged
atmosphere in the office when she returned. Strike was sitting in front of her
computer monitor, tapping away at the keyboard, and while he thanked her for
the sandwiches, he did not (as was usual) turn away from work for ten minutes
for a chat about the Landry case.
“I need this for a couple of minutes; will you be OK on the sofa?” he asked
her, continuing to type.
Robin wondered whether Lucy had told Strike what they had discussed. She
hoped not. Then she felt resentful for feeling guilty; after all, she had done
nothing wrong. Her aggravation put a temporary stop on her great desire to know
whether he had found Rochelle Onifade.
“Aha,” said Strike.
He had found, on the Italian designer’s website, the magenta fake-fur coat that
Rochelle had been wearing that morning. It had become available for purchase
only within the last two weeks, and it cost fifteen hundred pounds.
Robin waited for Strike to explain the exclamation, but he did not.
“Did you find her?” she asked, at last, when finally Strike turned from the
computer to unwrap the sandwiches.
He told her about their encounter, but all the enthusiasm and gratitude of that
morning, when he had called her “genius” over and again, was absent. Robin’s
tone, as she gave him the results of her own telephone inquiries, was, therefore,
similarly cool.