1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“She didn’t want to let the girl down.”
“She got Rochelle to come right across town—this penniless, homeless girl,
the girl she usually gave a lift home afterwards, in her chauffeur-driven car—
dragged her into a cubicle, and then walked out fifteen minutes later, leaving her
to make her own way home.”
“She was a spoiled bitch.”
“If she was, why turn up at all? Because it was worth it, for some purpose of
her own. And if she wasn’t a spoiled bitch, she must have been in some kind of
emotional state that made her act out of character. There’s a living witness to the
fact that Lula begged somebody, over the phone, to come and see her, at her flat,
sometime after one in the morning. There’s also that piece of blue paper she had
before she went into Vashti, and which nobody’s admitting to having seen since.
What did she do with it? Why was she writing in the back of the car, before she
saw Rochelle?”
“It could’ve been—” said Wardle.
“It wasn’t a fucking shopping list,” groaned Strike, thumping the desk, “and
nobody writes a suicide note eight hours in advance, and then goes dancing. She
was writing a bloody will, don’t you get it? She took it into Vashti to get
Rochelle to witness it…”
“Bollocks!” said Carver, yet again, but Strike ignored him, addressing Wardle.
“…which fits with her telling Ciara Porter that she was going to leave
everything to her brother, doesn’t it? She’d just made it legal. It was on her
mind.”
“Why suddenly make a will?”
Strike hesitated and sat back. Carver leered at him.
“Imagination run out?”
Strike let out his breath in a long sigh. An uncomfortable night of alcoholsodden
unconsciousness; last night’s pleasurable excesses; half a cheese and
pickle sandwich in twelve hours: he felt hollowed-out, exhausted.
“If I had hard evidence, I’d have brought it to you.”
“The odds of people close to a suicide killing themselves go right up, did you
know that? This Raquelle was a depressive. She has a bad day, remembers the
way out her mate took, and does a copycat jump. Which leads us right back to
you, pal, persecuting people and pushing them…”