1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“Nothing came of it?”
“They decided to go in another direction,” said Kolovas-Jones. “They wrote
out the part.”
“OK, so you picked up Deeby Macc from, where—Heathrow?—that night?”
“Terminal Five, yeah,” said Kolovas-Jones, apparently brought back to a sense
of mundane reality, and glancing at his watch. “Listen, I’d better get going.”
“All right if I walk you back to the car?” asked Strike.
Wilson showed himself happy to go along too; Strike paid the bill for all three
of them and they left. Out on the pavement, Strike offered both his companions
cigarettes; Wilson declined, Kolovas-Jones accepted.
A silver Mercedes was parked a short distance away, around the corner in
Electric Lane.
“Where did you take Deeby when he arrived?” Strike asked Kolovas-Jones, as
they approached the car.
“He wanted a club, so I took him to Barrack.”
“What time did you get him there?”
“I dunno…half eleven? Quarter to twelve? He was wired. Didn’t want to
sleep, he said.”
“Why Barrack?”
“Friday night at Barrack’s best hip-hop night in London,” said Kolovas-Jones,
on a slight laugh, as though this was common knowledge. “And he musta liked it,
’cause it was gone three by the time he came out again.”
“So did you drive him to Kentigern Gardens and find the police there, or…?”
“I’d already heard on the car radio what had happened,” said Kolovas-Jones.
“I told Deeby when he got back to the car. His entourage all started making
phone calls, waking up people at the record company, trying to make other
arrangements. They got him a suite at Claridges; I drove him there. I didn’t get
home till gone five. Switched on the news and watched it all on Sky. Fucking
unbelievable.”
“I’ve been wondering who let the paparazzi staking out number eighteen know
that Deeby wasn’t going to be there for hours. Someone tipped them off; that’s
why they’d left the street before Lula fell.”
“Yeah? I dunno,” said Kolovas-Jones.