1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“You were taking a lot of drugs at the time, were you?”
“Yeah.”
“And Lula didn’t like it?”
“Well, people round her were telling her she didn’t like it, you know?”
“Like who?”
“Like her family, like fucking Guy Somé. That little pansy twat.”
“When you say that she didn’t trust anybody because of the press, what do you
mean by that?”
“Fuck, innit obvious? Don’t you know all this, from your old man?”
“I know jack shit about my father,” said Strike coolly.
“Well, they were tapping her fucking phone, man, and that gives you a weird
fucking feeling; haven’t you got any imagination? She started getting paranoid
about people selling stuff on her. Trying to work out what she’d said on the
phone, and what she hadn’t, and who mighta given stuff to the papers and that. It
fucked with her head.”
“Was she accusing you of selling stories?”
“No,” snapped Duffield, and then, just as vehemently, “Yeah, sometimes. How
did they know we were coming here, how did they know I said that to you, yadda
yadda yadda…I said to her, it’s all part and fucking parcel of fame, innit, but she
thought she could have her cake and eat it.”
“But you didn’t ever sell stories about her to the press?”
He heard Ciara’s hissing intake of breath.
“No I fucking didn’t,” said Duffield quietly, holding Strike’s gaze without
blinking. “No I fucking did not. All right?”
“And you split up for how long?”
“Two months, give or take.”
“But you got back together, what, a week before she died?”
“Yeah. At Mo Innes’s party.”
“And you had this commitment ceremony forty-eight hours later? At
Carbury’s house in the Cotswolds?”
“Yeah.”