1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“I can’t see anyone who might be this ordinary girl,” said Robin, moving the
screen down to scrutinize more pictures of famous and beautiful people looking
sad and serious. “Oh, look…Evan Duffield.”
He was dressed in a black T-shirt, black jeans and a military-style black
overcoat. His hair, too, was black; his face all sharp planes and hollows; icy blue
eyes stared directly into the camera lens. Though taller than both of them, he
looked fragile compared to the companions flanking him: a large man in a suit
and an anxious-looking older woman, whose mouth was open and who was
making a gesture as though to clear a path ahead of them. The threesome
reminded Strike of parents steering a sick child away from a party. Strike noticed
that, in spite of Duffield’s air of disorientation and distress, he had made a good
job of applying his eyeliner.
“Look at those flowers!”
Duffield slid up into the top of the screen and vanished: Robin had paused on
the photograph of an enormous wreath in the shape of what Strike took, initially,
to be a heart, before realizing it represented two curved angel wings, composed
of white roses. An inset photograph showed a close-up of the attached card.
“ ‘Rest in peace, Angel Lula. Deeby Macc,’ ” Robin read aloud.
“Deeby Macc? The rapper? So they knew each other, did they?”
“No, I don’t think so; but there was that whole thing about him renting a flat in
her building; she’d been mentioned in a couple of his songs, hadn’t she? The
press were all excited about him staying there…”
“You’re well informed on the subject.”
“Oh, you know, just magazines,” said Robin vaguely, scrolling back through
the funeral photographs.
“What kind of name is ‘Deeby’?” Strike wondered aloud.
“It comes from his initials. It’s ‘D. B.’ really,” she enunciated clearly. “His
real name’s Daryl Brandon Macdonald.”
“A rap fan, are you?”
“No,” said Robin, still intent on the screen. “I just remember things like that.”
She clicked off the images she was perusing and began tapping away on the
keyboard again. Strike returned to his photographs. The next showed Mr.
Geoffrey Hook kissing his ginger-haired companion, hand palpating one large,
canvas-covered buttock, outside Ealing Broadway Tube station.