1 The Cuckoo's Calling

efore he died, when he knew he had days left, he told me. ‘Don’t upset your
mother,’ he said. ‘I’m telling you this because I’m dying, and I don’t know
whether you’ve got a half-brother or sister out there.’ He said the mother had
been white, and that she’d disappeared. She might have aborted it. Fuck me. If
you’d known my dad. Never missed a Sunday at church. Took communion on his
deathbed. I’d never expected anything like that, never.
“I was never even going to say anything to her about Dad and this woman. But
then, out of the blue, I get this phone call. Thank Christ I was there, on leave.
Only, Lula,” he said her name tentatively, as though he was not sure whether he
had the right to it, “said she’d’ve hung up if it’d been my mum. She said she
didn’t want to hurt anyone. She sounded all right.”
“I think she was,” said Strike.
“Yeah…but fuck me, it was weird. Would you believe it if some supermodel
called you up and told you she was your sister?”
Strike thought of his own bizarre family history.
“Probably,” he said.
“Yeah, well, I suppose. Why would she lie? That’s what I thought, anyway. So
I gave her my mobile number and we talked a few times, when she could hook up
with her friend Rochelle. She had it all figured out, so the press wouldn’t find
out. Suited me. I didn’t want my mother upset.”
Agyeman had pulled out a packet of Lambert and Butler cigarettes and was
turning the box nervously in his fingers. They would have been bought cheap,
Strike thought, with a small pang of remembrance, at the NAAFI.
“So she phones me up the day before it—it happened,” Jonah continued, “and
she was begging me to come over. I’d already told her I couldn’t meet her that
leave. Man, the situation was doing my head in. My sister the supermodel. Mum
was worried about me leaving for Helmand. I couldn’t spring it on her, that Dad
had had another kid. Not then. So I told Lula I couldn’t see her.
“She begged me to meet her before I left. She sounded upset. I said maybe I
could get out later, you know, after Mum was in bed. I’d tell her I was going out
for a quick drink with a mate or something. She told me to come really late, like
at half one.
“So,” said Jonah, scratching the back of his neck uncomfortably, “I went. I
was on the corner of her road…and I saw it happen.”
He wiped his hand across his mouth.
“I ran. I just ran. I didn’t know what the hell to think. I didn’t want to be there,
I didn’t want to have to explain anything to anyone. I knew she’d had mental