The Cuckoo's Calling

Bristows.”
    “They’re a wealthy family, aren’t they?”
    “Alec Bristow didn’t leave that much, not relatively speaking. Not compared to proper money. Not like your old man. How come,” said Somé, swerving suddenly off the conversational track, “Jonny Rokeby’s son’s working as a private dick?”
    “Because that’s his job,” said Strike. “Go on about the Bristows.”
    Somé did not appear to resent being bossed around; if anything, he seemed to relish it, possibly because it was such an unusual experience.
    “I just remember Cuckoo telling me that most of what Alec Bristow left was in shares in his old company, and Albris has gone down the pan in the recession. It’s hardly fucking Apple. Cuckoo had out-earned the whole fucking lot of them before she was twenty.”
    “Was that picture,” said Strike, indicating the enormous “Fallen Angels” image on the wall behind him, “part of the five-million-pound campaign?”
    “Yeah,” said Somé. “Those four bags were the start of it. She’s holding ‘Cashile’ there; I gave them all African names, for her. She was fixated on Africa. That whorish real mother she unearthed had told her her father was African, so Cuckoo had gone mad on it; talking about studying there, doing voluntary work…never mind that the old slapper had probably been sleeping with about fifty Yardies. African,” said Guy Somé, grinding out his cigarette stub in the glass ashtray, “my Aunt Fanny. The bitch just told Cuckoo what she wanted to hear.”
    “And you decided to go ahead and use the picture for the campaign, even though Lula had just…?”
    “It was meant as a fucking tribute.” Somé spoke loudly over him. “She’d never looked more beautiful. It was supposed to be a fucking tribute to her, to us. She was my muse. If the bastards couldn’t understand that, fuck ’em, that’s all. The press in this country are lower than scum. Judging everyone by their fucking selves.”
    “The day before she died, some handbags were sent to Lula…”
    “Yeah, they were mine. I sent her one of each of those,” said Somé, indicating the picture with the end of a new cigarette, “and I sent Deeby Macc some clothes by the same courier.”
    “Had he ordered them, or…?”
    “Freebies, dear,” drawled Somé. “Just good business. Couple of customized hoodies and some accessories. Celebrity endorsements never hurt.”
    “Did he ever wear the stuff?”
    “I don’t know,” said Somé in a more subdued tone. “I had other things to worry about the next day.”
    “I’ve seen YouTube footage of him wearing a hoodie with studs on it, like that,” said Strike, pointing at Somé’s chest. “Making a fist.”
    “Yeah, that was one of them. Someone must’ve sent the stuff on to him. One had a fist, one had a handgun, and some of his lyrics on the backs.”
    “Did Lula talk to you about Deeby Macc coming to stay in the flat downstairs?”
    “Oh yeah. She wasn’t nearly excited enough. I kept saying to her, babes, if he’d written three tracks about me I’d be waiting behind the front door naked when he got in.” Somé blew smoke in two long streams from his nostrils, looking sideways at Strike. “I like ’em big and rough,” he said. “But Cuckoo didn’t. Well, look what she hooked up with. I kept telling her, you’re the one making all this fucking song-and-dance about your roots; find yourself a nice black boy and settle down. Deeby would’ve been fucking perfect; why not?
    “Last season’s show, I had her walking down the catwalk to Deeby’s ‘Butterface Girl.’ ‘Bitch you ain’t all that, get a mirror that don’ fool ya, Give it up an’ tone it down, girl, ’cause you ain’t no fuckin’ Lula.’ Duffield hated it.”
    Somé smoked for a moment in silence, his eyes on the wall of photographs. Strike asked:
    “Where do you live? Around here?” though he knew the answer.
    “No, I’m in Charles Street, in Kensington,” said Somé. “Moved there last year. It’s a long fucking way from Hackney, I can tell you, but it was getting silly, I had to leave. Too much hassle. I grew up in Hackney,” he explained, “back when I was plain old Kevin Owusu. I changed my name when I left home. Like you.”
    “I was never Rokeby,” said Strike, flicking over a page in his notebook. “My parents weren’t married.”
    “We all know that, dear,” said Somé, with another flash of malice. “I dressed your old man for a Rolling Stone