The Cuckoo's Calling
crazy in love. She was so fucking happy, I’d never seen her happier.”
“You met Freddie Bestigui again, didn’t you, on the evening before Lula died? Didn’t the two of you pass him in the lobby, on your way out?”
“Yeah,” said Ciara, still dabbing at her eyes. “How did you know that?”
“Wilson, the security guard. He thought Bestigui said something to Lula that she didn’t like.”
“Yeah. He’s right. I’d forgotten about that. Freddie said something about Deeby Macc, about Looly being excited about him coming, how he really wanted to get them on film together. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but he made it sound dirty, you know?”
“Did Lula know that Bestigui and her adoptive father had been friends?”
“She told me it was the first she’d ever heard of it. She always stayed out of Freddie’s way at the flats. She didn’t like Tansy.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, Looly wasn’t interested in that whole, like, whose husband’s got the biggest fucking yacht crap, she didn’t want to get into their crowd. She was so much better than that. So not like the Chillingham girls.”
“OK,” said Strike, “can you talk me through the afternoon and evening you were with her?”
Ciara dropped her second fag end into the Coke can, with another little spitting fizz, and immediately lit another.
“Yeah. OK, let me think. Well, I met her at her place in the afternoon. Bryony came over to do her eyebrows and ended up giving us both manicures. We just had, like, a girlie afternoon together.”
“How did she seem?”
“She was…” Ciara hesitated. “Well, she wasn’t quite as happy as she’d been that week. But not suicidal, I mean, no way.”
“Her driver, Kieran, thought she seemed strange when she left her mother’s house in Chelsea.”
“Oh God, yeah, well why wouldn’t she be? Her mum had cancer, didn’t she?”
“Did Lula discuss her mother, when she saw you?”
“No, not really. I mean, she said she’d just been sitting with her, because she was a bit, you know, pulled down after her op, but nobody thought then that Lady Bristow was going to die. The op was supposed to cure her, wasn’t it?”
“Did Lula mention any other reason that she was feeling less happy than she had been?”
“No,” said Ciara, slowly shaking her head, the white-blonde hair tumbling around her face. She raked it back again and took a deep drag on her cigarette. “She did seem a bit down, a bit distracted, but I just put it down to having seen her mum. They had a weird relationship. Lady Bristow was, like, really overprotective and possessive. Looly found it, you know, a bit claustrophobic.”
“Did you notice Lula telephoning anyone while she was with you?”
“No,” said Ciara, after a thoughtful pause. “I remember her checking her phone a lot, but she didn’t speak to anyone, as far as I can remember. If she was phoning anyone, she was doing it on the quiet. She was in and out of the room a bit. I don’t know.”
“Bryony thought she seemed excited about Deeby Macc.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Ciara impatiently. “It was everyone else who was excited about Deeby Macc—Guy and Bryony and—well, even I was, a bit,” she said, with endearing honesty. “But Looly wasn’t that fussed. She was in love with Evan. You can’t believe everything Bryony says.”
“Did Lula have a piece of paper with her, that you can remember? A bit of blue paper, which she’d written on?”
“No,” said Ciara again. “Why? What was it?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Strike, and Ciara looked suddenly thunderstruck.
“God—you’re not telling me she left a note ? Oh my God. How fucking mad would that be? But—no! That would mean she’d have, like, already decided she was going to do it.”
“Maybe it was something else,” said Strike. “You mentioned at the inquest that Lula expressed an intention to leave everything to her brother, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” said Ciara earnestly, nodding. “Yeah, what happened was, Guy had sent Looly these fabby handbags from the new range. I knew he wouldn’t have sent me any, even though I was in the advert too. Anyway, I unwrapped the white one, Cashile, you know, and it was just, like, beautiful ; he does these detachable silk linings and he’d had it custom-printed for her with this amazing African print. So I said, ‘Looly, will you leave me this one?’ just as a joke. And she said, like,
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