1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“Coming from a virtual down-and-out who sleeps in his office, I find that a
laughable assertion.” Bristow’s voice was calm and derisory, but his breathing
was abnormally fast.
“I know you’ve got much more money than I have,” said Strike. “But, as you
rightly point out, that’s not saying much. And I will say for myself that I haven’t
yet stooped to embezzling from clients. How much of Conway Oates’s money
did you steal before Tony realized what you were up to?”
“Oh, I’m an embezzler too, am I?” said Bristow, with an artificial laugh.
“Yeah, I think so,” said Strike. “Not that it matters to me. I don’t care whether
you killed Lula because you needed to replace the money you’d nicked, or
because you wanted her millions, or because you hated her guts. The jury will
want to know, though. They’re always suckers for motive.”
Bristow’s knee had begun jiggling up and down again.
“You’re unhinged,” he said, with another forced laugh. “You’ve found a will
in which she leaves everything not to me, but to that man.” He pointed towards
the outer room, where he had viewed Jonah’s picture. “You tell me that it was
that same man who was walking towards Lula’s flat, on camera, the night she fell
to her death, and who was seen sprinting back past the camera ten minutes later.
And yet you accuse me. Me.”
“John, you knew before you ever came to see me that it was Jonah on that
CCTV footage. Rochelle told you. She was there in Vashti when Lula called
Jonah and arranged to meet him that night, and she witnessed a will leaving him
everything. She came to you, told you everything and started blackmailing you.
She wanted money for a flat and some expensive clothes, and in return she
promised to keep her mouth shut about the fact that you weren’t Lula’s heir.
“Rochelle didn’t realize you were the killer. She thought Jonah pushed Lula
out of the window. And she was bitter enough, after seeing a will in which she
didn’t feature, and being dumped in that shop on the last day of Lula’s life, not to
care about the killer walking free as long as she got the money.”
“This is utter rubbish. You’re out of your mind.”
“You put every obstacle you could in the way of me finding Rochelle,” Strike
went on, as though he had not heard Bristow. “You pretended you didn’t know
her name, or where she lived; you acted incredulous that I thought she might be
useful to the inquiry and you took photos off Lula’s laptop so that I couldn’t see
what she looked like. True, she could have pointed me directly to the man you
were trying to frame for murder, but on the other hand, she knew that there was a
will that would deprive you of your inheritance, and your number one objective
was to keep that will quiet while you tried to find and destroy it. Bit of a joke,
really, it being in your mother’s wardrobe all along.