1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“I—I’ll try.” Bristow sounded very stressed, almost tearful. “She’s very, very
weak now.”
“I’m sorry,” said Strike, formally. “I’ll be in touch shortly. ’Bye.”
He stepped back from the balcony and closed the doors, then turned to Wilson.
“Derrick, can you show me how you searched this place? What order you
looked in the rooms that night?”
Wilson thought for a moment, then said:
“I come in here first. Looked around, seen the doors open. Didn’t touch ’em.
Then,” he indicated that they should follow him, “I looked in here…”
Robin, following in the two men’s wake, noticed a subtle change in the way
that Strike was talking to the security man. He was asking simple, deft questions,
focusing on what Wilson had felt, touched, seen and heard at each step of his way
through the flat.
Under Strike’s guidance, Wilson’s body language started to change. He began
to enact the way he had held the doorjambs, leaning into rooms, casting a rapid
look around. When he crossed to the only bedroom, he did it at a slow-motion
run, responding to the spotlight of Strike’s undivided attention; he dropped to his
knees to demonstrate how he had looked under the bed, and at Strike’s prompting
remembered that a dress had lain crumpled beneath his legs; he led them, face set
with concentration, to the bathroom, and showed them how he had swiveled to
check behind the door before sprinting (he almost mimed it, arms moving
exaggeratedly as he walked) back to the front door.
“And then,” said Strike, opening it and gesturing Wilson through, “you came
out…”
“I came out,” agreed Wilson, in his bass voice, “an’ I jabbed the lift button.”
He pretended to do it, and feigned pushing open the doors in his anxiety to see
what was inside.
“Nothing—so I started running back down again.”
“What could you hear now?” Strike asked, following him; neither of them
were paying any attention to Robin, who closed the flat door behind her.
“Very distant—the Bestiguis yelling—and I turn round this corner and—”
Wilson stopped dead on the stair. Strike, who seemed to have anticipated
something like this, stopped too; Robin careered straight into him, with a
flustered apology that he cut off with a raised hand, as though, she thought,
Wilson was in a trance.