1 The Cuckoo's Calling

miles, stay overnight in this plush prison, go to the conference, sign in and then
double back to town?”
“Maybe he got a call saying she was feeling bad, something like that? Maybe
John Bristow rang him and asked him to come?”
“Bristow’s never mentioned asking his uncle to drop in. I’d say they were on
bad terms at the time. They’re both shifty about that visit of Landry’s. Neither of
them likes talking about it.”
Strike stood up and began to walk up and down, limping slightly, barely
noticing the pain in his leg.
“No,” he said, “Bristow asking his sister, who by all accounts was the apple of
his mother’s eye, to drop by—that makes sense. Asking his mother’s brother,
who was out of town and by no means her biggest fan, to make a massive detour
to see her…that doesn’t smell right. And now we find out that Alison went
looking for Landry at his hotel in Oxford. It was a workday. Was she checking up
on him on her own account, or did someone send her?”
The telephone rang. Robin picked up the receiver. To Strike’s surprise, she
immediately affected a very stilted Australian accent.
“Oy’m sorry, shiz not here…Naoh…Naoh…I dunnaoh where she
iz…Naoh…My nem’s Annabel…”
Strike laughed quietly. Robin threw him a look of mock anguish. After nearly
a minute of strangled Australian, she hung up.
“Temporary Solutions,” she said.
“I’m getting through a lot of Annabels. That one sounded more South African
than Australian.”
“Now I want to hear what happened to you yesterday,” said Robin, unable to
conceal her impatience any longer. “Did you meet Bryony Radford and Ciara
Porter?”
Strike told her everything that had happened, omitting only the aftermath of
his excursion to Evan Duffield’s flat. He placed particular emphasis on Bryony
Radford’s insistence that it was dyslexia that had caused her to listen to Ursula
May’s voicemail messages; on Ciara Porter’s continuing assertion that Lula had
told her she would leave everything to her brother; on Evan Duffield’s annoyance
that Lula had kept checking the time while she was in Uzi; and on the threatening
email that Tansy Bestigui had sent her estranged husband.
“So where was Tansy?” asked Robin, who had listened to every word of
Strike’s story with gratifying attention. “If we can just find out…”