1 The Cuckoo's Calling

weren’t you? But you can’t go back and Photoshop reality. Your wife was
perfectly positioned to hear what happened up on the third-floor balcony just
before Lula Landry died.
“Here’s what I think happened,” Strike went on, while Bestigui continued to
squint through the smoke rising from his cigarillo. “You and your wife had a row
while she was undressing for bed. Perhaps you found her stash in the bathroom,
or you interrupted her doing a couple of lines. So you decided an appropriate
punishment would be to shut her outside on the sub-zero balcony.
“People might ask how a street full of paps didn’t notice a part-naked woman
being shoved out on a balcony over their heads, but the snow was falling very
thickly, and they’ll have been stamping their feet trying to keep the circulation
going, and their attention was focused on the ends of the street, while they were
waiting for Lula and Deeby Macc. And Tansy didn’t make any noise, did she?
She ducked down and hid; she didn’t want to show herself, half naked, in front of
thirty photographers. You might even have shoved her out there at the same time
that Lula’s car came round the corner. Nobody would have been looking at your
windows if Lula Landry had just appeared in a skimpy little dress.”
“You’re full of shit,” said Bestigui. “You haven’t got any photographs.”
“I never said I had them. I said I’d been shown them.”
Bestigui took the cigarillo from his lips, changed his mind about talking, and
replaced it. Strike allowed several moments to elapse, but when it became clear
that Bestigui was not going to avail himself of the opportunity to speak, he
continued:
“Tansy must’ve started hammering on the window immediately after Landry
fell past her. You weren’t expecting your wife to start screaming and banging on
the glass, were you? Understandably averse to anyone witnessing your bit of
domestic abuse, you opened up. She ran straight past you, screaming her head
off, out of the flat, and downstairs to Derrick Wilson.
“At which point you looked down over the balustrade and saw Lula Landry
lying dead in the street below.”
Bestigui puffed smoke slowly, without taking his eyes off Strike’s face.
“What you did next might seem quite incriminating to a jury. You didn’t dial
999. You didn’t run after your half-frozen, hysterical wife. You didn’t even—
which the jury might find more understandable—run and flush away the coke
you knew was lying in open view in the bathroom.
“No, what you did next, before following your wife or calling the police, was
to wipe that window clean. There’d be no prints to show that Tansy had placed
her hands on the outside of the glass, would there? Your priority was to make