1 The Cuckoo's Calling

He saw the pale teeth, bared as Bristow opened his mouth, but no sound came
out.
“Tony knows you did it, doesn’t he? All that bullshit about the hard, cruel
things he said after Charlie died. Tony was there; he saw you cycling away from
the place where you’d pushed Charlie over. Did you dare him to ride close to the
edge? I knew Charlie: he couldn’t resist a dare. Tony saw Charlie dead at the
bottom of that quarry, and he told your parents that he thought you’d done it,
didn’t he? That’s why your father hit him. That’s why your mother fainted.
That’s why Tony was thrown out of the house after Charlie died: not because
Tony said that your mother had raised delinquents, but because he told her she
was raising a psychopath.”
“This is—No,” croaked Bristow. “No!”
“But Tony couldn’t face a family scandal. He kept quiet. Panicked a bit when
he heard they were adopting a little girl, though, didn’t he? He called them and
tried to stop it happening. He was right to be worried, wasn’t he? I think you’ve
always been a bit scared of Tony. What a fucking irony that he backed himself
into a corner where he had to give you an alibi for Lula’s murder.”
Bristow said nothing at all. He was breathing very fast.
“Tony needed to pretend he was somewhere, anywhere, other than shacked up
in a hotel with Cyprian May’s wife that day, so he said he doubled back to
London to go and visit his sick sister. Then he realized that both you and Lula
were supposed to have been there at the same time.
“His niece was dead, so she couldn’t contradict him; but he had no choice but
to pretend he saw you through the study door, and didn’t talk to you. And you
backed him up. Both of you, lying through your teeth, wondering what the other
one was up to, but too scared to question each other. I think Tony kept telling
himself he’d wait until your mother died before he confronted you. Perhaps that’s
how he kept his conscience quiet. But he’s still been worried enough to ask
Alison to keep an eye on you. And meanwhile, you’ve been feeding me that
bullshit about Lula hugging you, and the touching reconciliation before she
returned home.”
“I was there,” said Bristow, in a rasping whisper. “I was in my mother’s flat. If
Tony wasn’t there, that’s his affair. You can’t prove I wasn’t.”
“I’m not in the business of proving negatives, John. All I’m saying is, you’ve
now lost every alibi except your Valium-addled mother.
“But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that while Lula’s visiting your
groggy mother, and Tony’s off fucking Ursula in a hotel somewhere, you’re still
hiding out in Flat Two, and starting to think out a much more daring solution to
your cash-flow problem. You wait. At some point you put on the black leather