1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“He wasn’t angry, then, when he called you to talk about it?”
“As long as it’s tastefully handled, yadda yadda…”
“D’you know Tony Landry well?”
“I know of him.”
“In what context?”
Bestigui scratched his chin, smiling to himself.
“He’s your wife’s divorce lawyer, of course.”
“For now he is,” said Bestigui.
“You think she’s going to sack him?”
“She might have to,” said Bestigui, and the smile became a self-satisfied leer.
“Conflict of interest. We’ll see.”
Strike glanced down at his notebook, considering, with the gifted poker
player’s dispassionate calculation of the odds, how much risk there was in
pushing this line of questioning to the limit, on no proof.
“Do I take it,” he said, looking back up, “that you’ve told Landry you know
he’s sleeping with his business partner’s wife?”
One moment’s stunned surprise, and then Bestigui laughed out loud, a boorish,
aggressive blast of glee.
“Know that, do you?”
“How did you find out?”
“I hired one of your lot. I thought Tansy was doing the dirty, but it turned out
she was giving alibis to her bloody sister, while Ursula was having it away with
Tony Landry. It’ll be a shitload of fun to watch the Mays divorcing. Highpowered
lawyers on both sides. Old family firm broken up. Cyprian May’s not as
limp as he looks. He represented my second wife. I’m going to have a fucking
blast watching that one play out. Watching the lawyers screw each other for a
change.”
“That’s a nice bit of leverage you’ve got with your wife’s divorce lawyer,
then?”
Bestigui smiled nastily through the smoke.
“Neither of them know I know yet. I’ve been waiting for a good moment to
tell them.”