1 The Cuckoo's Calling

Carver’s blunt, wide face was clenched; his glaring blue eyes vivid in the
purple-red face.
“You’re in a heap of trouble here, pal, and a famous dad, a peg leg and a good
war aren’t going to get you out of it. How do we know you didn’t scare the poor
bitch into fucking jumping? Mentally ill, wasn’t she? How do we know you
didn’t make her think she’d done something wrong? You were the last person to
see her alive, pal. I wouldn’t like to be sitting where you are now.”
“Rochelle crossed Grantley Road and walked away from me, as alive as you
are. You’ll find someone who saw her after she left me. Nobody’s going to forget
that coat.”
Wardle pushed himself off the filing cabinets, dragged a hard plastic chair
over to the desk and sat down.
“Let’s have it, then,” he told Strike. “Your theory.”
“She was blackmailing Lula Landry’s killer.”
“Piss off,” snapped Carver, and Wardle snorted in slightly stagey amusement.
“The day before she died,” said Strike, “Landry met Rochelle for fifteen
minutes in that shop in Notting Hill. She dragged Rochelle straight into a
changing cubicle, where she made a telephone call begging somebody to meet
her at her flat in the early hours of the following morning. That call was
overheard by an assistant at the shop; she was in the next cubicle; they’re
separated by a curtain. Girl called Mel, red hair and tattoos.”
“People will spout any amount of shit when there’s a celebrity involved,” said
Carver.
“If Landry phoned anyone from that cubicle,” said Wardle, “it was Duffield,
or her uncle. Her phone records show they were the only people she called, all
afternoon.”
“Why did she want Rochelle there when she made the call?” asked Strike.
“Why drag her friend into the cubicle with her?”
“Women do that stuff,” said Carver. “They piss in herds, too.”
“Use your fucking intelligence: she was making the call on Rochelle’s phone,”
said Strike, exasperated. “She’d tested everyone she knew to try and see who was
talking to the press about her. Rochelle was the only one who kept her mouth
shut. She established that the girl was trustworthy, bought her a mobile,
registered it in Rochelle’s name but took care of all the charges. She’d had her
own phone hacked, hadn’t she? She was getting paranoid about people listening
in and reporting on her, so she bought a Nokia and registered it to somebody else,
to give herself a totally secure means of communication when she wanted it.