The Cuckoo's Calling

jump.”
    “I don’t think she jumped,” said Strike.
    “Oh don’t you, now?”
    “I wanted to see her hands. She hated water over her face, she told me so. When people have struggled in the water, the position of their hands—”
    “Well, it’s nice to get your expert opinion,” said Carver, with sledgehammer irony. “I know who you are, Mr. Strike.”
    He leaned back in his chair, placing his hands behind his head, revealing dried patches of sweat on the underarms of his shirt. The sharp, sour, oniony smell of BO wafted across the desk.
    “He’s ex-SIB,” threw in Wardle, from beside the filing cabinet.
    “I know that,” barked Carver, raising wiry eyebrows flecked with scurf. “I’ve heard from Anstis all about the fucking leg and the life-saving medal. Quite the colorful CV.”
    Carver removed his hands from behind his head, leaned forwards and laced his fingers together on the desk instead. His corned-beef complexion and the purple bags under his hard eyes were not flattered by the strip lighting.
    “I know who your old man is and all.”
    Strike scratched his unshaven chin, waiting.
    “Like to be as rich and famous as Daddy, would you? Is that what all this is about?”
    Carver had the bright blue, bloodshot eyes that Strike had always (since meeting a major in the Paras with just such eyes, who was subsequently cashiered for serious bodily harm) associated with a choleric, violent nature.
    “Rochelle didn’t jump. Nor did Lula Landry.”
    “Bollocks,” shouted Carver. “You’re speaking to the two men who proved Landry jumped. We went through every bit of fucking evidence with a fine-toothed fucking comb. I know what you’re up to. You’re milking that poor sod Bristow for all you can get. Why are you fucking smiling at me?”
    “I’m thinking what a tit you’re going to look when this interview gets reported in the press.”
    “Don’t you dare fucking threaten me with the press, dickhead.”
    Carver’s blunt, wide face was clenched; his glaring blue eyes vivid in the purple-red face.
    “You’re in a heap of trouble here, pal, and a famous dad, a peg leg and a good war aren’t going to get you out of it. How do we know you didn’t scare the poor bitch into fucking jumping? Mentally ill, wasn’t she? How do we know you didn’t make her think she’d done something wrong? You were the last person to see her alive, pal. I wouldn’t like to be sitting where you are now.”
    “Rochelle crossed Grantley Road and walked away from me, as alive as you are. You’ll find someone who saw her after she left me. Nobody’s going to forget that coat.”
    Wardle pushed himself off the filing cabinets, dragged a hard plastic chair over to the desk and sat down.
    “Let’s have it, then,” he told Strike. “Your theory.”
    “She was blackmailing Lula Landry’s killer.”
    “Piss off,” snapped Carver, and Wardle snorted in slightly stagey amusement.
    “The day before she died,” said Strike, “Landry met Rochelle for fifteen minutes in that shop in Notting Hill. She dragged Rochelle straight into a changing cubicle, where she made a telephone call begging somebody to meet her at her flat in the early hours of the following morning. That call was overheard by an assistant at the shop; she was in the next cubicle; they’re separated by a curtain. Girl called Mel, red hair and tattoos.”
    “People will spout any amount of shit when there’s a celebrity involved,” said Carver.
    “If Landry phoned anyone from that cubicle,” said Wardle, “it was Duffield, or her uncle. Her phone records show they were the only people she called, all afternoon.”
    “Why did she want Rochelle there when she made the call?” asked Strike. “Why drag her friend into the cubicle with her?”
    “Women do that stuff,” said Carver. “They piss in herds, too.”
    “Use your fucking intelligence: she was making the call on Rochelle’s phone,” said Strike, exasperated. “She’d tested everyone she knew to try and see who was talking to the press about her. Rochelle was the only one who kept her mouth shut. She established that the girl was trustworthy, bought her a mobile, registered it in Rochelle’s name but took care of all the charges. She’d had her own phone hacked, hadn’t she? She was getting paranoid about people listening in and reporting on her, so she bought a Nokia and registered it to somebody else, to give herself a totally secure means of communication when she