1 The Cuckoo's Calling

uncle, who treated Cuckoo like scum until she started pulling in big money. He
got a bit more respectful then. They all know the value of a buck, the Bristows.”
“They’re a wealthy family, aren’t they?”
“Alec Bristow didn’t leave that much, not relatively speaking. Not compared
to proper money. Not like your old man. How come,” said Somé, swerving
suddenly off the conversational track, “Jonny Rokeby’s son’s working as a
private dick?”
“Because that’s his job,” said Strike. “Go on about the Bristows.”
Somé did not appear to resent being bossed around; if anything, he seemed to
relish it, possibly because it was such an unusual experience.
“I just remember Cuckoo telling me that most of what Alec Bristow left was in
shares in his old company, and Albris has gone down the pan in the recession.
It’s hardly fucking Apple. Cuckoo had out-earned the whole fucking lot of them
before she was twenty.”
“Was that picture,” said Strike, indicating the enormous “Fallen Angels”
image on the wall behind him, “part of the five-million-pound campaign?”
“Yeah,” said Somé. “Those four bags were the start of it. She’s holding
‘Cashile’ there; I gave them all African names, for her. She was fixated on
Africa. That whorish real mother she unearthed had told her her father was
African, so Cuckoo had gone mad on it; talking about studying there, doing
voluntary work…never mind that the old slapper had probably been sleeping
with about fifty Yardies. African,” said Guy Somé, grinding out his cigarette stub
in the glass ashtray, “my Aunt Fanny. The bitch just told Cuckoo what she
wanted to hear.”
“And you decided to go ahead and use the picture for the campaign, even
though Lula had just…?”
“It was meant as a fucking tribute.” Somé spoke loudly over him. “She’d
never looked more beautiful. It was supposed to be a fucking tribute to her, to us.
She was my muse. If the bastards couldn’t understand that, fuck ’em, that’s all.
The press in this country are lower than scum. Judging everyone by their fucking
selves.”
“The day before she died, some handbags were sent to Lula…”
“Yeah, they were mine. I sent her one of each of those,” said Somé, indicating
the picture with the end of a new cigarette, “and I sent Deeby Macc some clothes
by the same courier.”
“Had he ordered them, or…?”