1 The Cuckoo's Calling

ottles on top of everything he’d already put away. He kept yelling at Looly that
she’d make such a great actress, but she didn’t care. She just ignored him. She
was cuddled up with Evan on the sofa, just, like…”
And suddenly, tears were sparkling in Ciara’s kohled eyes, and she squashed
them out of sight with the flat palms of her pretty white hands.
“…crazy in love. She was so fucking happy, I’d never seen her happier.”
“You met Freddie Bestigui again, didn’t you, on the evening before Lula died?
Didn’t the two of you pass him in the lobby, on your way out?”
“Yeah,” said Ciara, still dabbing at her eyes. “How did you know that?”
“Wilson, the security guard. He thought Bestigui said something to Lula that
she didn’t like.”
“Yeah. He’s right. I’d forgotten about that. Freddie said something about
Deeby Macc, about Looly being excited about him coming, how he really wanted
to get them on film together. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but he made it
sound dirty, you know?”
“Did Lula know that Bestigui and her adoptive father had been friends?”
“She told me it was the first she’d ever heard of it. She always stayed out of
Freddie’s way at the flats. She didn’t like Tansy.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, Looly wasn’t interested in that whole, like, whose husband’s got the
biggest fucking yacht crap, she didn’t want to get into their crowd. She was so
much better than that. So not like the Chillingham girls.”
“OK,” said Strike, “can you talk me through the afternoon and evening you
were with her?”
Ciara dropped her second fag end into the Coke can, with another little spitting
fizz, and immediately lit another.
“Yeah. OK, let me think. Well, I met her at her place in the afternoon. Bryony
came over to do her eyebrows and ended up giving us both manicures. We just
had, like, a girlie afternoon together.”
“How did she seem?”
“She was…” Ciara hesitated. “Well, she wasn’t quite as happy as she’d been
that week. But not suicidal, I mean, no way.”
“Her driver, Kieran, thought she seemed strange when she left her mother’s
house in Chelsea.”