1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“No, well, you’d make him look fucking old, wouldn’t you?” said Somé, with
a cackle. He fidgeted in his seat, lit yet another cigarette, clamped it between his
lips and squinted at Strike through billows of menthol smoke.
“Why are we talking about me, anyway? Do people usually start telling you
their life stories when you get out that notebook?”
“Sometimes.”
“Don’t you want your tea? I don’t blame you. I don’t know why I drink this
shit. My old dad would have a coronary if he asked for a cup of tea and got this.”
“Is your family still in Hackney?”
“I haven’t checked,” said Somé. “We don’t talk. I practice what I preach,
see?”
“Why do you think Lula changed her name?”
“Because she hated her fucking family, same as me. She didn’t want to be
associated with them anymore.”
“Why choose the same name as her Uncle Tony, then?”
“He’s not famous. It made a good name. Deeby couldn’t have written ‘Double
L U B Mine’ if she’d been Lula Bristow, could he?”
“Charles Street isn’t too far from Kentigern Gardens, is it?”
“About a twenty-minute walk. I wanted Cuckoo to move in with me when she
said she couldn’t stand her old place anymore, but she wouldn’t; she chose that
fucking five-star prison instead, just to get away from the press. They drove her
into that place. They bear responsibility.”
Strike remembered Deeby Macc: The motherfuckin’ press chased her out that
window.
“She took me to see it. Mayfair, full of rich Russians and Arabs and bastards
like Freddie Bestigui. I said to her, sweetie, you can’t live here; marble
everywhere, marble isn’t chic in our climate…it’s like living in your own
tomb…”
He faltered, then went on:
“She’d been through this head-fuck for a few months. There’d been a stalker
who was hand-delivering letters through her front door at three in the morning;
she kept getting woken up by the letter box going. The things he said he wanted
to do to her, it scared her. Then she split up with Duffield, and she had the paps
round the front of her house all the bloody time. Then she finds out they’re
hacking all her calls. And then she had to go and find that bitch of a mother. It