1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“You mean…in general?” she said at last. “On principle?”
“No,” said Strike, continuing his report. “I mean that I specifically do not want
to allow the defending counsel in the trial of the person who killed Lula Landry
to get off because he was able to show that I can’t keep records properly, thereby
calling into question my reliability as a witness.”
Strike was showing off again, and he knew it; but he could not help himself.
He was, as he put it to himself, on a roll. Some might have questioned the taste of
finding amusement in the midst of a murder inquiry, but he had found humor in
darker places.
“Couldn’t nip out for some sandwiches, Robin, could you?” he added, just so
that he could glance up at her satisfyingly astonished expression.
He finished his notes during her absence, and was just about to call an old
colleague in Germany when Robin burst back in, holding two packs of
sandwiches and a newspaper.
“Your picture’s on the front of the Standard,” she panted.
“What?”
It was a photograph of Ciara following Duffield into his flat. Ciara looked
stunning; for half a second Strike was transported back to half past two that
morning, when she had lain, white and naked, beneath him, that long silky hair
spread on the pillow like a mermaid’s as she whispered and moaned.
Strike refocused: he was half cropped out of the picture; one arm raised to
keep the paparazzi at bay.
“That’s all right,” he told Robin with a shrug, handing her back the paper.
“They think I was the minder.”
“It says,” said Robin, turning to the inside page, “that she left Duffield’s with
her security guard at two.”
“There you go, then.”
Robin stared at him. His account of the night had terminated with himself,
Duffield and Ciara at Duffield’s flat. She had been so interested in the various
pieces of evidence he had laid out before her, she had forgotten to wonder where
he had slept. She had assumed that he had left the model and the actor together.
He had arrived at the office still wearing the clothes in the photograph.
She turned away, reading the story on page two. The clear implication of the
piece was that Ciara and Duffield had enjoyed an amorous encounter while the
supposed minder waited in the hall.