1 The Cuckoo's Calling

the Runner and his sidekick. Buried in voluminous and rabid press coverage that
survived online were appeals for the men to come forward, but they seemed to
have yielded no results.
Unlike Bristow, Strike did not find any of this suggestive of police
incompetence, or of a plausible murder suspect left uninvestigated. The sudden
sounding of a car alarm around the time that the two men had fled the area
suggested a good reason for their reluctance to talk to the police. Moreover,
Strike did not know whether Bristow was familiar with the varying quality of
CCTV footage, but he himself had extensive experience of frustrating blurry
black-and-white images from which it was impossible to glean a true likeness.
Strike had also noticed that Bristow had said not a word in person, or in his
notes, about the DNA evidence gathered from inside his sister’s flat. He strongly
suspected, from the fact that the police had been happy to exclude the Runner and
his friend from further inquiries, that no trace of foreign DNA had been found
there. However, Strike knew that the truly deluded would happily discount such
trivialities as DNA evidence, citing contamination, or conspiracy. They saw what
they wanted to see, blind to inconvenient, implacable truth.
But the Google searches of the morning had suggested a possible explanation
for Bristow’s fixation on the Runner. His sister had been researching her
biological roots, and had managed to trace her birth mother, who sounded, even
when allowance was made for press sensationalism, an unsavory character.
Doubtless revelations such as those that Robin had found online would have been
unpleasant not just for Landry, but for her whole adoptive family. Was it part of
Bristow’s instability (for Strike could not pretend to himself that his client gave
the impression of a well-balanced man) that he believed Lula, so fortunate in
some ways, had tempted fate? That she had stirred up trouble in trying to plumb
the secrets of her origins; that she had woken a demon that had reached out of the
distant past, and killed her? Was that why a black man in her vicinity so
disturbed him?
Deeper and deeper into the enclave of the wealthy Strike and Robin walked,
until they arrived at the corner of Kentigern Gardens. Like Bellamy Road, it
projected an aura of intimidating, self-contained prosperity. The houses here were
high Victorian, red brick with stone dressings and heavy pedimented windows on
four floors, with their own small stone balconies. White marble porticos framed
each entrance, and three white steps led from the pavement to more glossy black
front doors. Everything was expensively well maintained, clean and regimented.
There were only a few cars parked here; a small sign declared that permits were
needed for the privilege.
No longer set apart by police tape and massing journalists, number 18 had
faded back into graceful conformity with its neighbors.