1 The Cuckoo's Calling

He sat quite still on his camp bed for five minutes, holding the note, wondering
whether he was about to throw up, but enjoying the warm sunshine on his back.
Four paracetamol and a glass of Alka-Seltzer, which almost decided the
vomiting question for him, were followed by fifteen minutes in the dingy toilet,
with results offensive to both nose and ear; but he was sustained throughout by a
feeling of profound gratitude for Robin’s absence. Back in the outer office, he
drank two more bottles of water and turned off the alarm, which had set his
throbbing brains rattling in his skull. After some deliberation, he chose a set of
clean clothes, took shower gel, deodorant, razor, shaving cream and towel out of
the kitbag, pulled a pair of swimming trunks out of the bottom of one of the
cardboard boxes on the landing, extracted the pair of gray metal crutches from
another, then limped down the metal stair with a sports bag over his shoulder and
the crutches in his other hand.
He bought himself a family-sized bar of Dairy Milk on the way to Malet
Street. Bernie Coleman, an acquaintance in the Army Medical Corps, had once
explained to Strike how the majority of the symptoms associated with a crashing
hangover were due to dehydration and hypoglycemia, which were the inevitable
results of prolonged vomiting. Strike munched his way through the chocolate,
crutches jammed under his arm and every step jarring his head, which still felt as
though it was being compressed by tight wires.
But the laughing god of drunkenness had not yet forsaken him. Agreeably
detached from reality and from his fellow human beings, he walked down the
steps to the ULU pool with an unfeigned sense of entitlement, and as usual
nobody challenged him, not even the only other occupant of the changing room,
who, after one glance of arrested interest at the prosthesis Strike was unstrapping,
kept his eyes politely averted. His false leg stuffed into a locker along with
yesterday’s clothes, and leaving the door open due to lack of change, Strike
moved towards the shower on crutches, his belly spilling over the top of his
trunks.
He noted, as he soaped himself, that the chocolate and paracetamol were
beginning to take the edge off his nausea and pain. Now, for the first time, he
walked out to the large pool. There were only two students in here, both in the
fast lane and wearing goggles, oblivious to everything but their own prowess.
Strike proceeded to the far side, set the crutches down carefully beside the steps
and slid into the slow lane.
He was more unfit than he had ever been in his life. Ungainly and lopsided, he
kept swimming into the side of the pool, but the cool, clean water was soothing to
body and spirit. Panting, he completed a single length and rested there, his thick
arms spread along the side of the pool, sharing the responsibility for his heavy
body with the caressing water and gazing up at the high white ceiling.