The Cuckoo's Calling

instruct the waiting guards to drag Strike from his room.
    “The photographer was standing on the pavement opposite your house in the early hours of the eighth of January. The guy who took the pictures doesn’t realize what he’s got. If you don’t want to discuss it, fine; police or press, I don’t care. It’ll come to the same thing in the end.”
    Strike took a few steps towards the door; the guards, each of whom was still holding him by the arm, were caught by surprise, and momentarily forced into the absurd position of holding him back.
    “Get out,” Bestigui said abruptly to his minions. “I’ll let you know if I need you. Close the door behind you.”
    They left. When the door had closed, Bestigui said:
    “All right, whatever your fucking name is, you can have five minutes.”
    Strike sat down, uninvited, in one of the black leather chairs facing Bestigui’s desk, while the producer returned to his seat behind it, subjecting Strike to a hard, cold glare that was quite unlike the one Strike had received from Bestigui’s estranged wife; this was the intense scrutiny of a professional gambler. Bestigui reached for a packet of cigarillos, pulled a black glass ashtray towards himself and lit up with a gold lighter.
    “All right, let’s hear what these alleged photographs show,” he said, squinting through clouds of pungent smoke, the picture of a film mafioso.
    “The silhouette,” said Strike, “of a woman crouching on the balcony outside your sitting-room windows. She looks naked, but as you and I know, she was in her underwear.”
    Bestigui puffed hard for a few seconds, then removed the cigarillo and said:
    “Bullshit. You couldn’t see that from the street. Solid stone bottom of the balcony; from that angle you wouldn’t see anything. You’re taking a punt.”
    “The lights were on in your sitting room. You can see her outline through the gaps in the stone. There was room then, of course, because the shrubs weren’t there, were they? People can’t resist fiddling with the scene afterwards, even when they’ve got away with it,” Strike added, conversationally. “You were trying to pretend that there was never any room for anyone to squat on that balcony, weren’t you? But you can’t go back and Photoshop reality. Your wife was perfectly positioned to hear what happened up on the third-floor balcony just before Lula Landry died.
    “Here’s what I think happened,” Strike went on, while Bestigui continued to squint through the smoke rising from his cigarillo. “You and your wife had a row while she was undressing for bed. Perhaps you found her stash in the bathroom, or you interrupted her doing a couple of lines. So you decided an appropriate punishment would be to shut her outside on the sub-zero balcony.
    “People might ask how a street full of paps didn’t notice a part-naked woman being shoved out on a balcony over their heads, but the snow was falling very thickly, and they’ll have been stamping their feet trying to keep the circulation going, and their attention was focused on the ends of the street, while they were waiting for Lula and Deeby Macc. And Tansy didn’t make any noise, did she? She ducked down and hid; she didn’t want to show herself, half naked, in front of thirty photographers. You might even have shoved her out there at the same time that Lula’s car came round the corner. Nobody would have been looking at your windows if Lula Landry had just appeared in a skimpy little dress.”
    “You’re full of shit,” said Bestigui. “You haven’t got any photographs.”
    “I never said I had them. I said I’d been shown them.”
    Bestigui took the cigarillo from his lips, changed his mind about talking, and replaced it. Strike allowed several moments to elapse, but when it became clear that Bestigui was not going to avail himself of the opportunity to speak, he continued:
    “Tansy must’ve started hammering on the window immediately after Landry fell past her. You weren’t expecting your wife to start screaming and banging on the glass, were you? Understandably averse to anyone witnessing your bit of domestic abuse, you opened up. She ran straight past you, screaming her head off, out of the flat, and downstairs to Derrick Wilson.
    “At which point you looked down over the balustrade and saw Lula Landry lying dead in the street below.”
    Bestigui puffed smoke slowly, without taking his eyes off Strike’s face.
    “What you did next might seem quite