1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“Yeah,” he said. “You couldn’t have kids in here.”
“No,” said Robin, who had not considered the place from that point of view.
Her employer strode out of the bedroom, evidently absorbed in establishing
some point to his own satisfaction, and disappeared into the hall.
Strike was, in fact, proving to himself that the logical route from the Bestiguis’
bedroom to their bathroom was through the hall, bypassing the sitting room
altogether. Furthermore, it was his belief that the only place in the flat from
which Tansy could conceivably have witnessed the fatal fall of Lula Landry—
and realized what she was seeing—was from the sitting room. In spite of Eric
Wardle’s assertion to the contrary, nobody standing in the bathroom could have
had more than a partial view of the window past which Landry had fallen:
insufficient, at night, to be sure that whatever had fallen was a human, let alone
to identify which human it had been.
Strike returned to the bedroom. Now that he was in solitary possession of the
marital home, Bestigui was sleeping on the side nearest the door and the hall,
judging by the clutter of pills, glasses and books piled on that bedside table.
Strike wondered whether this had been the case while he cohabited with his wife.
A large walk-in wardrobe with mirrored doors led off the bedroom. It was full
of Italian suits and shirts from Turnbull & Asser. Two shallow subdivided
drawers were devoted entirely to cufflinks in gold and platinum. There was a safe
behind a false panel at the back of the shoe racks.
“I think that’s everything in here,” Strike told Wilson, rejoining the other two
in the sitting room.
Wilson set the alarm when they left the flat.
“You know all the codes for the different flats?”
“Yeah,” said Wilson. “Gotta, in case they go off.”
They climbed the stairs to the second floor. The staircase turned so tightly
around the lift shaft that it was a succession of blind corners. The door to Flat 2
was identical to that of Flat 1, except that it was standing ajar. They could hear
the growl of Lechsinka’s vacuum cleaner from inside.
“We got Mister an’ Missus Kolchak in here now,” said Wilson. “Ukrainian.”
The hallway was identical in shape to that of number 1, with many of the same
features, including the alarm keypad on the wall at right angles to the front door;
but it was tiled instead of carpeted. A large gilt mirror faced the entrance instead
of a painting, and two fragile, spindly wooden tables on either side of it bore
ornate Tiffany lamps.