1 The Cuckoo's Calling

sole support of Uncle Ted, he had vanished into the army, and refound there the
life he had been taught by Leda: constant uprootings, self-reliance and the
endless appeal of the new.
Tonight, though, he could not help seeing his mother as a spiritual sister to the
beautiful, needy and depressive girl who had broken apart on a frozen road, and
to the plain, homeless outsider now lying in the chilly morgue. Leda, Lula and
Rochelle had not been women like Lucy, or his Aunt Joan; they had not taken
every reasonable precaution against violence or chance; they had not tethered
themselves to life with mortgages and voluntary work, safe husbands and cleanfaced
dependants: their deaths, therefore, were not classed as “tragic,” in the
same way as those of staid and respectable housewives.
How easy it was to capitalize on a person’s own bent for self-destruction; how
simple to nudge them into non-being, then to stand back and shrug and agree that
it had been the inevitable result of a chaotic, catastrophic life.
Nearly all the physical evidence of Lula’s murder had long since been wiped
away, trodden underfoot or covered by thickly falling snow; the most persuasive
clue Strike had was, after all, that grainy black-and-white footage of two men
running away from the scene: a piece of evidence given a cursory check and
tossed aside by the police, who were convinced that nobody could have entered
the building, that Landry had committed suicide, and that the film showed
nothing more than a pair of larcenous loiterers with intent.
Strike roused himself and looked at his watch. It was half past ten, but he was
sure the man to whom he wished to speak would be awake. He flicked on his
desk lamp, took up his mobile and dialed, this time, a number in Germany.
“Oggy,” bellowed the tinny voice on the other end of the phone. “How the
fuck are you?”
“Need a favor, mate.”
And Strike asked Lieutenant Graham Hardacre to give him all the information
he could find on one Agyeman of the Royal Engineers, Christian name and rank
unknown, but with particular reference to the dates of his tours of duty in
Afghanistan.