The Cuckoo's Calling

mock-wrestling against a backdrop of fake trees; she was wearing a floor-length red dress, and he was in a slim black suit, with a hairy wolf’s mask pushed up on top of his forehead.
    “I wonder what my mum would say if I carked it? My parents’ve got an injunction out against me,” Duffield informed Strike. “Well, it was mainly my fucking father. Because I nicked their telly a couple of years ago. D’you know what?” he added, craning his neck to look at Ciara, “I’ve been clean five weeks, two days.”
    “That’s so fabulous, baby! That’s fantastic!”
    “Yeah,” he said. He swiveled upright again. “Aren’t you gonna ask me any questions?” he demanded of Strike. “I thought you were investigating Lu’s murder ?”
    The bravado was undermined by the tremor in his fingers. His knees began bouncing up and down, just like John Bristow’s.
    “D’you think it was murder?” Strike asked.
    “No.” Duffield dragged on his cigarette. “Yeah. Maybe. I dunno. Murder makes more sense than fucking suicide, anyway. Because she wouldn’ta gone without leaving me a note. I keep waiting for a note to turn up, y’know, and then I’ll know it’s real. It don’t feel real. I can’t even remember the funeral. I was out of my fucking head. I took so much stuff I couldn’t fucking walk. I think, if I could just remember the funeral, it’d be easier to get my head round.”
    He jammed his cigarette between his lips and began drumming with his fingers on the edge of the glass table. After a while, apparently discomforted by Strike’s silent observation, he demanded:
    “Ask me something, then. Who’s hired you, anyway?”
    “Lula’s brother John.”
    Duffield stopped drumming.
    “That money-grabbing, poker-arsed wanker?”
    “Money-grabbing?”
    “He was fucking obsessed with how she spent her fucking money, like it was any of his fucking business. Rich people always think everyone else is a fucking freeloader, have you noticed that? Her whole frigging family thought I was gold-digging, and after a bit,” he raised a finger to his temple and made a boring motion, “it went in, it planted doubts, y’know?”
    He snatched one of the Zippos from the table and began flicking at it, trying to make it ignite. Strike watched tiny blue sparks erupt and die as Duffield talked.
    “I expect he thought she’d be better off with some rich fucking accountant, like him.”
    “He’s a lawyer.”
    “Whatever. What’s the difference, it’s all about helping rich people keep their mitts on as much money as they can, innit? He’s got his fucking trust fund from Daddy, what skin is it off his nose what his sister did with her own money?”
    “What was it that he objected to her buying, specifically?”
    “Shit for me. The whole fucking family was the same; they didn’t mind if she chucked it their way, keep it in the fucking family, that was OK. Lu knew they were a mercenary load of fuckers, but, like I say, it still left its fucking mark. Planted ideas in her head.”
    He threw the dead Zippo back on to the table, drew his knees up to his chest and glared at Strike with his disconcerting turquoise eyes.
    “So he still thinks I did it, does he? Your client?”
    “No, I don’t think he does,” said Strike.
    “He’s changed his narrow fuckwitted mind, then, because I heard he was going round telling everyone it was me, before they ruled it as suicide. Only, I’ve got a cast-iron fucking alibi, so fuck him. Fuck. Them. All.”
    Restless and nervy, he got to his feet, added wine to his almost untouched glass, then lit another cigarette.
    “What can you tell me about the day Lula died?” Strike asked.
    “The night, you mean.”
    “The day leading up to it might be quite important too. There are a few things I’d like to clear up.”
    “Yeah? Go on, then.”
    Duffield dropped back down into the chair, and pulled his knees up to his chest again.
    “Lula called you repeatedly between around midday and six in the evening, but you didn’t answer your phone.”
    “No,” said Duffield. He began picking, childishly, at a small hole in the knee of his jeans. “Well, I was busy. I was working. On a song. Didn’t want to stem the flow. The old inspiration.”
    “So you didn’t know she was calling you?”
    “Well, yeah. I saw her number coming up.” He rubbed his nose, stretched his legs out on to the glass table, folded his arms and said, “I felt like teaching her a little lesson. Let her