1 The Cuckoo's Calling

your mother’s room in the small hours, reset her clock and then woke her up,
pretending it was dinnertime. You think you’re a criminal genius, John, but that’s
been done a million times before, though rarely with such an easy mark. Your
mother hardly knows what day it is, the amount of opiates she’s got in her
system.”
“I was in Chelsea all day,” repeated Bristow, his knee jiggling up and down.
“All day, except for when I nipped into the office for files.”
“You took a hoodie and gloves out of the flat beneath Lula’s. You’re wearing
them in the CCTV footage,” said Strike, ignoring the interruption, “and that was
a big mistake. That hoodie was unique. There was only one of them in the world;
it had been customized for Deeby Macc by Guy Somé. It could only have come
out of the flat beneath Lula’s, so we know that’s where you’d been.”
“You have absolutely no proof,” said Bristow. “I am waiting for proof.”
“Of course you are,” said Strike, simply. “An innocent man wouldn’t be sitting
here listening to me. He’d have stormed out by now. But don’t worry. I’ve got
proof.”
“You can’t have,” said Bristow hoarsely.
“Motive, means and opportunity, John. You had the lot.
“Let’s start at the beginning. You don’t deny that you went to Lula’s first thing
in the morning…”
“No, of course not.”
“…because people saw you there. But I don’t think Lula ever gave you the
contract with Somé that you used to get upstairs to see her. I think you’d swiped
that at some point previously. Wilson waved you up, and minutes later you were
having a shouting match with Lula on her doorstep. You couldn’t pretend that
didn’t happen, because the cleaner overheard it. Fortunately for you, Lechsinka’s
English is so bad that she confirmed your version of the row: that you were
furious that Lula had reunited with her freeloading druggie boyfriend.
“But I think that row was really about Lula’s refusal to give you money. All
her sharper friends have told me you had quite the reputation for coveting her
fortune, but you must have been particularly desperate for a handout that day, to
force your way in and start shouting like that. Had Tony noticed a lack of funds
in Conway Oates’s account? Did you need to replace it urgently?”
“Baseless speculation,” said Bristow, his knee still jerking up and down.
“We’ll see whether it’s baseless or not once we get to court,” said Strike.
“I’ve never denied that Lula and I argued.”