1 The Cuckoo's Calling

7
STRIKE HAD SPENT THE EARLY afternoon at the University of London Union
building, where, by dint of walking determinedly past reception with a slight
scowl on his face, he had gained the showers without being challenged or asked
for his student card. He had then eaten a stale ham roll and a bar of chocolate in
the café. After that he had wandered, blank-eyed in his tiredness, smoking
between the cheap shops he visited to buy, with Bristow’s cash, the few
necessities he needed now that bed and board were gone. Early evening found
him holed up in an Italian restaurant, several large boxes propped up at the back,
beside the bar, and spinning out his beer until he had half forgotten why he was
killing time.
It was nearly eight before he returned to the office. This was the hour when he
found London most lovable; the working day over, her pub windows were warm
and jewel-like, her streets thrummed with life, and the indefatigable permanence
of her aged buildings, softened by the street lights, became strangely reassuring.
We have seen plenty like you, they seemed to murmur soothingly, as he limped
along Oxford Street carrying a boxed-up camp bed. Seven and a half million
hearts were beating in close proximity in this heaving old city, and many, after
all, would be aching far worse than his. Walking wearily past closing shops,
while the heavens turned indigo above him, Strike found solace in vastness and
anonymity.
It was some feat to force the camp bed up the metal stairwell to the second
floor, and by the time he reached the entrance bearing his name the pain in the
end of his right leg was excruciating. He leaned for a moment, bearing all his
weight on his left foot, panting against the glass door, watching it mist.
“You fat cunt,” he said aloud. “You knackered old dinosaur.”
Wiping the sweat off his forehead, he unlocked the door, and heaved his
various purchases over the threshold. In the inner office he pushed his desk aside
and set up the bed, unrolled the sleeping bag, and filled his cheap kettle at the
sink outside the glass door.
His dinner was still in a Pot Noodle, which he had chosen because it reminded
him of the fare he used to carry in his ration pack: some deep-rooted association
between quickly heated and rehydrated food and makeshift dwelling places had
made him reach automatically for the thing. When the kettle had boiled, he added
the water to the tub, and ate the rehydrated pasta with a plastic fork he had taken
from the ULU café, sitting in his office chair, looking down into the almost
deserted street, the traffic rumbling past in the twilight at the end of the road, and
listening to the determined thud of a bass from two floors below, in the 12 Bar
Café.