1 The Cuckoo's Calling

From the depths of his agony he grinned at her expression, which was part
horrified, part excited.
“I wasn’t wrestling anyone, Robin. I just slipped.”
“Oh, I see. You’re a bit—you look a bit pale. You don’t think you could have
done something serious, do you? I could get a cab—maybe you should see a
doctor.”
“No need for that. Have we still got any of those painkillers lying around?”
She brought him water and paracetamol. He took them, then stretched out his
legs, flinched and asked:
“What’s been going on here? Did Graham Hardacre send you a picture?”
“Yes,” she said, hurrying to her computer monitor. “Here.”
With a shunt of her mouse and a click, the picture of Lieutenant Jonah
Agyeman filled the monitor.
In silence, they contemplated the face of a young man whose irrefutable
handsomeness was not diminished by the overlarge ears he had inherited from his
father. The scarlet, black and gold uniform suited him. His grin was slightly
lopsided, his cheekbones high, his jaw square and his skin dark with an undertone
of red, like freshly brewed tea. He conveyed the careless charm that Lula Landry
had had too; the indefinable quality that made the viewer linger over her image.
“He looks like her,” said Robin in a hushed voice.
“Yeah, he does. Anything else been going on?”
Robin seemed to snap back to attention.
“Oh God, yes…John Bristow called half an hour ago, to say he couldn’t get
hold of you, and Tony Landry’s called three times.”
“I thought he might. What did he say?”
“He was absolutely—well, the first time, he asked to speak to you, and when I
said you weren’t here, he hung up before I could give him your mobile number.
The second time, he told me you had to call him straightaway, but slammed
down the phone before I could tell him you still weren’t back. But the third time,
he was just—well—he was incredibly angry. Screaming at me.”
“He’d better not have been offensive,” said Strike, scowling.
“He wasn’t really. Well, not to me—it was all about you.”
“What did he say?”