The Cuckoo's Calling

shoulder as he disappeared, with a directive jab of the thumb, “Drinks are in the kitchen, Cici.”
    She threw a smile at Strike, then left through the door Duffield had indicated.
    Strike glanced around the room, which looked as though it had been left, by parents of impeccable taste, in the care of a teenager. Every surface was covered in debris, much of it in the form of scribbled notes. Three guitars stood propped against the walls. A cluttered glass coffee table was surrounded by black-and-white seats, angled towards an enormous plasma TV. Bits of debris had overflowed from the coffee table on to the black fur rug below. Beyond the long windows, with their gauzy gray curtains, Strike could make out the shapes of the photographers still prowling beneath the street light.
    Duffield had returned, tugging up his fly. On finding himself alone with Strike, he gave a nervous giggle.
    “Make yourself at home, big fella. Hey, I know your old man, actually.”
    “Yeah?” said Strike, sitting down in one of the squashy ponyskin cube-shaped armchairs.
    “Yeah. Met him a couple of times,” said Duffield. “Cool dude.”
    He picked up a guitar, began to pick out a twiddling tune on it, thought better of it and put the instrument back against the wall.
    Ciara returned, carrying a bottle of wine and three glasses.
    “Couldn’t you get a cleaner, dearie?” she asked Duffield reprovingly.
    “They give up,” said Duffield. He vaulted over the back of a chair and landed with his legs sprawled over the side. “No fucking stamina.”
    Strike pushed aside the mess on the coffee table so that Ciara could set down the bottle and glasses.
    “I thought you’d moved in with Mo Innes,” she said, pouring out wine.
    “Yeah, that didn’t work out,” said Duffield, raking through the detritus on the table for cigarettes. “Ol’ Freddie’s rented me this place just for a month, while I’m going out to Pinewood. He wants to keep me away from me old haunts.”
    His grubby fingers passed over a string of what seemed to be rosary beads; numerous empty cigarette packets with bits of card torn out of them; three lighters, one of them an engraved Zippo; Rizla papers; tangled leads unattached to appliances; a pack of cards; a sordid stained handkerchief; sundry crumpled pieces of grubby paper; a music magazine featuring a picture of Duffield in moody black and white on the cover; opened and unopened mail; a pair of crumpled black leather gloves; a quantity of loose change and, in a clean china ashtray on the edge of the debris, a single cufflink in the form of a tiny silver gun. At last he unearthed a soft packet of Gitanes from under the sofa; lit up, blew a long jet of smoke at the ceiling, then addressed Ciara, who had placed herself on the sofa at right angles to the two men, sipping her wine.
    “They’ll say we’re fucking each other, again, Ci,” he said, pointing out of the window at the prowling shadows of the waiting photographers.
    “And what’ll they say Cormoran’s here for?” asked Ciara, with a sidelong glance at Strike. “A threesome?”
    “Security,” said Duffield, appraising Strike through narrowed eyes. “He looks like a boxer. Or a cage fighter. Don’t you want a proper drink, Cormoran?”
    “No, thanks,” said Strike.
    “What’s that, AA or being on duty?”
    “Duty.”
    Duffield raised his eyebrows and sniggered. He seemed nervous, shooting Strike darting looks, drumming his fingers on the glass table. When Ciara asked him whether he had visited Lady Bristow again, he seemed relieved to be offered a subject.
    “Fuck, no. Once was enough. It was fucking horrible. Poor bitch. On her fucking deathbed.”
    “It was beyond nice of you to go, though, Evan.”
    Strike knew that she was trying to show Duffield off in his best light.
    “Do you know Lula’s mother well?” he asked Duffield.
    “No. I only met her once before Lu died. She didn’t approve of me. None of Lu’s family approved of me. I dunno,” he fidgeted, “I just wanted to talk to someone who really gives a shit that she’s dead.”
    “Evan!” Ciara pouted. “ I care she’s dead, excuse me!”
    “Yeah, well…”
    With one of his oddly feminine, fluid movements, Duffield curled up in the chair so that he was almost fetal, and sucked hard on his cigarette. On a table behind his head, illuminated by a cone of lamplight, was a large, stagey photograph of him with Lula Landry, clearly taken from a fashion shoot. They were