1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“Big fucking deal,” said Somé, with easy contempt. “My proper stuff goes for
upwards of three grand a coat. I slap the logo on shell suits and they sell like
crazy, so it’d be silly not to.”
“Yeah, I was going to ask you about that,” said Strike. “Your—ready-to-wear
line, is it?”
Somé looked amused.
“That’s right. That’s the stuff that isn’t made-to-measure, see? You buy it
straight off the rack.”
“Right. How widely is that stuff sold?”
“It’s everywhere. When were you last in a clothes shop?” asked Somé, his
wicked bulging eyes roving over Strike’s dark blue jacket. “What is that, anyway,
your demob suit?”
“When you say ‘everywhere’…”
“Smart department stores, boutiques, online,” rattled off Somé. “Why?”
“One of two men caught on CCTV running away from Lula’s area that night
was wearing a jacket with your logo on it.”
Somé twitched his head very slightly, a gesture of repudiation and irritation.
“Him and a million other people.”
“Didn’t you see—?”
“I didn’t look at any of that shit,” said Somé fiercely. “All the—all the
coverage. I didn’t want to read about it, I didn’t want to think about it. I told them
to keep it away from me,” he said, gesturing towards the stairs and his staff. “All
I knew was that she was dead and Duffield was behaving like someone with
something to hide. That’s all I knew. That was enough.”
“OK. Still on the subject of clothes, in the last picture of Lula, the one where
she was walking into the building, she seemed to be wearing a dress and a
coat…”
“Yeah, she was wearing Maribelle and Faye,” said Somé. “The dress was
called Maribelle—”
“Yeah, got it,” said Strike. “But when she died, she was wearing something
different.”
This seemed to surprise Somé.
“Was she?”