1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“Yes, that would be good.”
“Just heard Deeby Macc playing in the shop,” Strike informed her, setting
down the fan in a corner and peeling off his jacket. ‘Something something and
Ferrari, Fuck yo’ meds and fuck Johari.’ Wonder who Johari was. Some rapper
he was having a feud with, d’you think?”
“No,” said Robin, wishing that he was not so cheerful. “It’s a psychological
term. The Johari window. It’s all to do with how well we know ourselves, and
how well other people know us.”
Strike paused in the act of hanging up his jacket and stared at her.
“You didn’t get that out of Heat magazine.”
“No. I was doing psychology at university. I dropped out.”
She felt, obscurely, that it might somehow even the playing field to tell him
about one of her own personal failures, before delivering the bad news.
“You dropped out of university?” He seemed uncharacteristically interested.
“That’s a coincidence. I did, too. So why ‘fuck Johari’?”
“Deeby Macc had therapy in prison. He became interested and did a lot of
reading on psychology. I got that bit out of the papers,” she added.
“You’re a mine of useful information.”
She experienced another elevator-drop in the pit of her stomach.
“There was a call, when you were out. From a Charlotte Campbell.”
He looked up quickly, frowning.
“She asked me to give you a message, which was,” Robin’s gaze slid
sideways, to hover momentarily on Strike’s ear, “that she’s engaged to Jago
Ross.”
Her eyes were drawn, irresistibly, back to his face, and she felt a horrible chill.
One of the earliest and most vivid memories of Robin’s childhood was of the
day that the family dog had been put down. She herself had been too young to
understand what her father was saying; she took the continuing existence of
Bruno, her oldest brother’s beloved Labrador, for granted. Confused by her
parents’ solemnity, she had turned to Stephen for a clue as to how to react, and
all security had crumbled, for she had seen, for the first time in her short life,
happiness and comfort drain out of his small and merry face, and his lips whiten
as his mouth fell open. She had heard oblivion howling in the silence that
preceded his awful scream of anguish, and then she had cried, inconsolably, not
for Bruno, but for the terrifying grief of her brother.