1 The Cuckoo's Calling

“I don’t need help from the British Legion, Luce, all right?”
“There’s no need to be so proud…”
“How are the boys?”
“They’re fine. Look, Stick, I just think it’s outrageous that Rokeby’s getting
his lawyer to hassle you, when he’s never given you a penny in his life. He ought
to have made it a gift, seeing what you’ve been through and how much he’s—”
“Business is good. I’m going to pay off the loan,” said Strike. A teenaged
couple on the corner of the street were having an argument.
“Are you sure everything’s all right between you and Charlotte? Why’s she
visiting her mother? I thought they hated each other?”
“They’re getting on better these days,” he said, as the teenage girl gesticulated
wildly, stamped her foot and walked away.
“Have you bought her a ring yet?” asked Lucy.
“I thought you wanted me to get Gillespie off my back?”
“Is she all right about not having a ring?”
“She’s been great about it,” said Strike. “She says she doesn’t want one; she
wants me to put all my money into the business.”
“Really?” said Lucy. She always seemed to think that she made a good job of
dissimulating her deep dislike of Charlotte. “Are you going to come to Jack’s
birthday party?”
“When is it?”
“I sent you an invitation over a week ago, Stick!”
He wondered whether Charlotte had slipped it into one of the boxes he had left
unpacked on the landing, not having room for all his possessions in the office.
“Yeah, I’ll be there,” he said; there was little he wanted to do less.
The call terminated, he returned to his computer and continued work. His
notes from the Wilson and Kolovas-Jones interviews were soon completed, but a
sense of frustration persisted. This was the first case that he had taken since
leaving the army that required more than surveillance work, and it might have
been designed to remind him daily that he had been stripped of all power and
authority. Film producer Freddie Bestigui, the man who had been in closest
proximity to Lula Landry at the time of her death, remained unreachable behind
his faceless minions, and, in spite of John Bristow’s confident assertion that he