1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“Better suit, by the way,” Somé added, with a flash of his old archness. He
marched back into the room from which he had come.
Strike followed the designer, and took up the space vacated by the roughly
dispatched onlookers. The room was long and almost bare, but its ornate
cornices, pale blank walls and curtainless windows gave it an atmosphere of
mournful grandeur. A further group of people, including a long-haired male
photographer bent over his camera, stood between Strike and the scene at the far
end of the room, which was dazzlingly illuminated by a series of arc lights and
light screens. Here was an artful arrangement of tattered old chairs, one on its
side, and three models. They were a breed apart, with faces and bodies in rare
proportions that fell precisely between the categories of strange and impressive.
Fine-boned and recklessly slim, they had been chosen, Strike assumed, for the
dramatic contrast in their coloring and features. Sitting like Christine Keeler on a
back-to-front chair, long legs splayed in spray-on white leggings, but apparently
naked from the waist up, was a black girl as dark-skinned as Somé himself, with
an Afro and slanting, seductive eyes. Standing over her in a white vest decorated
in chains, which just covered her pubis, was a Eurasian beauty with flat black
hair cut into an asymmetric fringe. To one side, leaning alone and sideways on
the back of another chair, was Ciara Porter; alabaster fair, with long baby-blonde
hair, wearing a white semitransparent jumpsuit through which her pale, pointed
nipples were clearly visible.
The makeup artist, almost as tall and thin as the models, was bending over the
black girl, pressing a pad into the sides of her nose. The three models waited
silently in position, still as portraits, all three faces blank and empty, waiting to
be called to attention. The other people in the room (the photographer appeared to
have two assistants; Somé, now biting his fingernails on the sidelines, was
accompanied by the cross-looking woman in glasses) all spoke in low mutters, as
though frightened of disturbing some delicate equilibrium.
At last the makeup artist joined Somé, who talked inaudibly and rapidly to her,
gesticulating; she stepped back into the bright light and, without speaking to the
model, ruffled and rearranged Ciara Porter’s long mane of hair; Ciara showed no
sign that she knew she was being touched, but waited in patient silence. Bryony
retreated into the shadows once more, and asked Somé something; he responded
with a shrug and gave her some inaudible instruction that had her look around
until her eyes rested on Strike.
They met at the foot of the magnificent staircase.
“Hi,” she whispered. “Let’s go through here.”
She led him across the hall into the opposite room, which was slightly smaller
than the first, and dominated by the large table covered with buffet-style food.
Several long, wheeled clothing racks, jammed with sequined, ruffled and
feathered creations arranged according to color, stood in front of a marble