1 The Cuckoo's Calling

problems, and I remembered how upset she’d been on the phone, and I thought,
did she lure me here to see her jump?
“I couldn’t sleep. I was glad to leave, to tell you the truth. To get away from
all the fucking news coverage.”
The pub buzzed around them, crowded with lunchtime customers.
“I think the reason she wanted to meet you so badly was because of what her
mother had just told her,” Strike said. “Lady Bristow had taken a lot of Valium.
I’m guessing she wanted to make the girl feel too bad to leave her, so she told
Lula what Tony had said about John all those years before: that he pushed his
younger brother Charlie into that quarry, and killed him.
“That’s why Lula was in such a state when she left her mother’s flat, and that’s
why she kept trying to call her uncle and find out whether there was any truth in
the story. And I think she was desperate to see you, because she wanted someone,
anyone, she could love and trust. Her mother was difficult and dying, she hated
her uncle, and she’d just been told her adoptive brother was a killer. She must
have been desperate. And I think she was scared. The day before she died,
Bristow had tried to force her to give him money. She must have been wondering
what he’d do next.”
The pub clattered and rang with talk and clinking glasses, but Jonah’s voice
sounded clearly over all of it.
“I’m glad you broke the bastard’s jaw.”
“And his nose,” said Strike cheerfully. “It’s lucky he’d stuck a knife in me, or
I might not have got off with ‘reasonable force.’ ”
“He came armed,” said Jonah thoughtfully.
“ ’Course he did,” said Strike. “I’d had my secretary tip him off, at Rochelle’s
funeral, that I was getting death threats from a nutter who wanted to slit me open.
That planted the seed in his head. He thought, if it came to it, he’d try and pass
off my death as the work of poor old Brian Mathers. Then, presumably, he’d
have gone home, doctored his mother’s clock and tried to pull the same trick all
over again. He’s not sane. Which isn’t to say he’s not a clever fucker.”
There seemed little more to say. As they left the pub, Agyeman, who had
bought the drinks with nervous insistence, made what might have been a tentative
offer of money to Strike, whose impecunious existence had padded out much of
the media coverage. Strike cut the offer short, but he was not offended. He could
see that the young Sapper was struggling to deal with the idea of his enormous
new wealth; that he was buckling under the responsibility of it, the demands it
made, the appeals it attracted, the decisions it entailed; that he was much more
overawed than glad. There was also, of course, the horrible and ever-present