1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“It was stuck in with her Oyster card, in a plastic cover inside her back jeans
pocket. The plastic protected it.”
“What was she wearing?”
“Big pink fake-fur coat. Like a skinned Muppet. Jeans and trainers.”
“That’s what she was wearing when I bought her the burger.”
“In that case, the contents of the stomach should give an accurate—” began the
mortician.
“D’you know if she’s got any next of kin?” Carver demanded of Strike.
“There’s an aunt in Kilburn. I don’t know her name.”
Slivers of glistening eyeball showed through Rochelle’s almost closed lids;
they had the characteristic brightness of the drowned. There were traces of
bloody foam in the creases around her nostrils.
“How are her hands?” Strike asked the mortician, because Rochelle was
uncovered only to the chest.
“Never mind her hands,” snapped Carver. “We’re done here, thanks,” he told
the mortician loudly, his voice reverberating around the room; and then, to
Strike: “We want a word with you. Car’s outside.”
He was helping police with their inquiries. Strike remembered hearing the
phrase on the news when he had been a small boy, obsessed by every aspect of
police work. His mother had always blamed this strange early preoccupation on
her brother, Ted, ex-Red Cap and fount of (to Strike) thrilling stories of travel,
mystery and adventure. Helping police with their inquiries: as a five-year-old,
Strike had imagined a noble and disinterested citizen volunteering to give up his
time and energy to assist the police, who issued him with magnifying glass and
truncheon and allowed him to operate under a cloak of glamorous anonymity.
This was the reality: a small interrogation room, with a cup of machine-made
coffee given to him by Wardle, whose attitude towards Strike was devoid of the
animosity that crackled from Carver’s every open pore, but free of every trace of
former friendliness. Strike suspected that Wardle’s superior did not know the full
extent of their previous interactions.
A small black tray on the scratched desk held seventeen pence in change, a
single Yale key and a plastic-covered bus pass; Strike’s card was discolored and
crinkled but still legible.
“What about her bag?” Strike asked Carver, who was sitting across the desk,
while Wardle leaned up against the filing cabinet in the corner. “Gray. Cheap and
plastic-looking. That hasn’t turned up, has it?”