1 The Cuckoo's Calling

But Bestigui seemed to remember, suddenly, that Tansy might now be in
possession of an even more powerful weapon in their divorce battle, and the
smile faded from his crumpled face, leaving it bitter.
“One last thing,” said Strike. “The night that Lula died: after you’d followed
your wife down into the lobby, and brought her back upstairs, did you hear
anything outside the flat?”
“I thought your whole fucking point is that you can’t hear anything inside my
flat with the windows closed?” snapped Bestigui.
“I’m not talking about outside in the street; I’m talking about outside your
front door. Tansy might’ve been making too much noise to hear anything, but
I’m wondering whether, when the pair of you were in your own hall—perhaps
you stayed there, trying to calm her down, once you’d got her inside?—you heard
any movement on the other side of the door? Or was Tansy screaming too
much?”
“She was making a fuck of a lot of noise,” said Bestigui. “I didn’t hear
anything.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Nothing suspicious. Just Wilson, running past the door.”
“Wilson.”
“Yeah.”
“When was this?”
“When you’re talking about. When we’d got back inside our flat.”
“Immediately after you’d shut the door?”
“Yeah.”
“But Wilson had already run upstairs while you were still in the lobby, hadn’t
he?”
“Yeah.”
The crevices in Bestigui’s forehead and around his mouth deepened.
“So when you got to your flat on the first floor, Wilson must’ve been out of
sight and earshot already?”
“Yeah…”
“But you heard footsteps on the stairs, immediately after closing your front
door?”