1 The Cuckoo's Calling

a life. Get out of the closet. Have you heard him rhapsodizing about his mummy?
Have you met his girlfriend? Talk about a beard: I think she’s got one.”
He rattled out the words in one nervy, spiteful stream, pausing to open a
hidden drawer in the desk, from which he took out a packet of menthol cigarettes.
Strike had already noticed that Somé’s nails were bitten to their quicks.
“Her family was the whole reason she was so fucked up. I used to tell her,
‘Drop them, sweetie, move on.’ But she wouldn’t. That was Cuckoo for you,
always flogging a dead horse.”
He offered Strike one of the pure white cigarettes, which the detective
declined, before lighting one with an engraved Zippo. As he flipped the lid of the
lighter shut, Somé said:
“I wish I’d thought of calling in a private detective. It never occurred to me.
I’m glad someone’s done it. I just cannot believe she committed suicide. My
therapist says that’s denial. I’m having therapy twice a week, not that it makes
any fucking difference. I’d be snaffling Valium like Lady Bristow if I could still
design when I’m on it, but I tried it the week after Cuckoo died and I was like a
zombie. I suppose it got me through the funeral.”
Jingling and rattling from the spiral staircase announced the reappearance of
Trudie, who emerged through the floor in jerky stages. She laid upon the desk a
black lacquered tray, on which stood two silver filigree Russian tea glasses, in
each of which was a pale green steaming concoction with wilted leaves floating
in it. There was also a plate of wafer-thin biscuits that looked as though they
might be made of charcoal. Strike remembered his pie and mash and his
mahogany-colored tea at the Phoenix with nostalgia.
“Thanks, Trudie. And get me an ashtray, darling.”
The girl hesitated, clearly on the verge of protesting.
“Just do it,” snarled Somé. “I’m the fucking boss, I’ll burn the building down
if I want to. Pull the fucking batteries out of the fire alarms. But get the ashtray
first.
“The alarm went off last week, and set off all the sprinklers downstairs,” Somé
explained to Strike. “So now the backers don’t want anyone smoking in the
building. They can stick that one right up their tight little bumholes.”
He inhaled deeply, then exhaled through his nostrils.
“Don’t you ask questions? Or do you just sit there looking scary until someone
blurts out a confession?”
“We can do questions,” said Strike, pulling out his notebook and pen. “You
were abroad when Lula died, weren’t you?”