1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“The balcony she fell from was on the top floor,” said Strike, “about forty feet
up, I’d say.”
He contemplated the handsome frontage. The balconies on the top three floors,
Robin saw, were shallow, with barely standing room between the balustrade and
the long windows.
“The thing is,” Strike told Robin, while he squinted at the balcony high above
them, “pushing someone from that height wouldn’t guarantee death.”
“Oh—but surely?” protested Robin, contemplating the awful drop between top
balcony and hard road.
“You’d be surprised. I spent a month in a bed next to a Welsh bloke who got
blown off a building about that height. Smashed his legs and pelvis, lot of
internal bleeding, but he’s still with us.”
Robin glanced at Strike, wondering why he had been in bed for a month; but
the detective was oblivious, now scowling at the front door.
“Keypad,” he muttered, noting the metal square inset with buttons, “and a
camera over the door. Bristow didn’t mention a camera. Could be new.”
He stood for a few minutes testing theories against the intimidating red-brick
face of these fantastically expensive fortresses. Why had Lula Landry chosen to
live here in the first place? Sedate, traditional, stuffy, Kentigern Gardens was
surely the natural domain of a different kind of rich: Russian and Arab oligarchs;
corporate giants splitting their time between town and their country estates;
wealthy spinsters, slowly decaying amidst their art collections. He found it a
strange choice of abode for a girl of twenty-three, who ran, according to every
story Robin had read out that morning, with a hip, creative crowd, whose
celebrated sense of style owed more to the street than the salon.
“It looks very well protected, doesn’t it?” said Robin.
“Yeah, it does. And that’s without the crowd of paparazzi who were standing
guard over it that night.”
Strike leaned back against the black railings of number 23, staring at number
18. The windows of Landry’s former residence were taller than those on the
lower floors, and its balcony, unlike the other two, had not been decorated with
topiary shrubs. Strike slipped a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and offered
Robin one; she shook her head, surprised, because she had not seen him smoke in
the office. Having lit up and inhaled deeply, he said, with his eyes on the front
door:
“Bristow thinks someone got in and out that night, undetected.”