1 The Cuckoo's Calling

A rustle, the blur of a pale hand, and Bristow lunged. The knife point grazed
Strike’s chest as he slammed Bristow sideways; the lawyer slid off the desk,
rolled over and attacked again, and this time Strike fell over backwards in his
chair, with Bristow on top of him, trapped between the wall and the desk.
Strike had one of Bristow’s wrists, but he couldn’t see where the knife was: all
was darkness, and he threw a punch that hit Bristow hard under the chin,
knocking his head back and sending his glasses flying; Strike punched again, and
Bristow hit the wall; Strike tried to sit up, with Bristow’s lower body pinning his
agonizing half-leg to the ground, and the knife struck him hard in the upper arm:
he felt it pierce the flesh, and the flow of warm blood, and the white-hot stinging
pain.
He saw Bristow raise his arm in dim silhouette against the faint window;
forcing himself up against the lawyer’s weight, he deflected the second knife
blow, and with an almighty effort managed to throw the lawyer off, and the
prosthesis slid out of his trouser leg as he tried to pin Bristow down, with his hot
blood spattering over everything, and no knowledge of where the knife was now.
The desk was knocked over by Strike’s wrestling weight, and then, as he knelt
with his good knee on Bristow’s thin chest, groping with his good hand to find
the knife, light split his retinas in two, and a woman was screaming.
Dazzled, Strike glimpsed the knife rising to his stomach; he seized the
prosthetic leg beside him and brought it down like a club on Bristow’s face, once,
twice—
“Stop! Cormoran, STOP! YOU’RE GOING TO KILL HIM!”
Strike rolled off Bristow, who was no longer moving, dropped the prosthetic
leg and lay on his back, clutching his bleeding arm beside the overturned desk.
“I thought,” he panted, unable to see Robin, “I told you to go home?”
But she was already on the telephone.
“Police and ambulance!”
“And get a taxi,” Strike croaked from the floor, his throat dry from so much
talking. “I’m not traveling to hospital with this piece of shit.”
He stretched out an arm and retrieved the mobile that lay several feet away.
The face was smashed, but it was still recording.