The Cuckoo's Calling

what really happened, you’re putting yourself in the clear for the actual murder.”
    He had Bestigui’s attention now.
    “You couldn’t have done it,” said Strike, “because if you’d been the one who threw Landry off the balcony two floors above, you wouldn’t have been able to let Tansy back inside within seconds of the body falling. I think you shut your wife outside, headed off into the bedroom, got into bed, got comfy—the police said the bed looked disarranged and slept in—and kept an eye on the clock. I don’t think you wanted to fall asleep. If you’d left her too long on that balcony, you’d have been up for manslaughter. No wonder Wilson said she was shaking like a whippet. Probably in the early stages of hypothermia.”
    Another silence, except for Bestigui’s fat fingers drumming lightly on the edge of the desk. Strike took out his notebook.
    “Are you ready to answer a few questions now?”
    “Fuck you!”
    The producer was suddenly consumed by the rage he had so far suppressed, his jaw jutting and his shoulders hunched, level with his ears. Strike could imagine him looking thus as he bore down on his emaciated, coked-up wife, hands outstretched.
    “You’re in the shit here,” said Strike calmly, “but it’s entirely up to you how deep you sink. You can deny everything, battle it out with your wife in the court and the papers, end up in jail for perjury and obstructing the police. Or you can start cooperating, right now, and earn Lula’s family’s gratitude and good will. That’d go a long way to demonstrating remorse, and it’ll help when it comes to pleas for clemency. If your information helps catch Lula’s killer, I can’t see you getting much worse than a reprimand from the bench. It’s going to be the police who’ll get the real going-over from the public and the press.”
    Bestigui was breathing noisily, but seemed to be pondering Strike’s words. At last he snarled:
    “There wasn’t any fucking killer. Wilson never found anyone up there. Landry jumped,” he said, with a small, dismissive jerk of his head. “She was a fucked-up little druggie, like my fucking wife.”
    “There was a killer,” said Strike simply, “and you helped him get away with it.”
    Something in Strike’s expression stifled Bestigui’s clear urge to jeer. His eyes were slits of onyx as he mulled over what Strike had said.
    “I’ve heard you were keen to put Lula in a film?”
    Bestigui seemed disconcerted by the change of subject.
    “It was just an idea,” he muttered. “She was a flake but she was fucking gorgeous.”
    “You fancied getting her and Deeby Macc into a film together?”
    “License to print money, those two together.”
    “What about this film you’ve been thinking of making since she died—what do they call it, a biopic? I hear Tony Landry wasn’t happy about it?”
    To Strike’s surprise, a satyr’s grin impressed itself on Bestigui’s pouchy face.
    “Who told you that?”
    “Isn’t it true?”
    For the first time, Bestigui seemed to feel he had the upper hand in the conversation.
    “No, it’s not true. Anthony Landry has given me a pretty broad hint that once Lady Bristow’s dead, he’ll be happy to talk about it.”
    “He wasn’t angry, then, when he called you to talk about it?”
    “As long as it’s tastefully handled, yadda yadda…”
    “D’you know Tony Landry well?”
    “I know of him.”
    “In what context?”
    Bestigui scratched his chin, smiling to himself.
    “He’s your wife’s divorce lawyer, of course.”
    “For now he is,” said Bestigui.
    “You think she’s going to sack him?”
    “She might have to,” said Bestigui, and the smile became a self-satisfied leer. “Conflict of interest. We’ll see.”
    Strike glanced down at his notebook, considering, with the gifted poker player’s dispassionate calculation of the odds, how much risk there was in pushing this line of questioning to the limit, on no proof.
    “Do I take it,” he said, looking back up, “that you’ve told Landry you know he’s sleeping with his business partner’s wife?”
    One moment’s stunned surprise, and then Bestigui laughed out loud, a boorish, aggressive blast of glee.
    “Know that, do you?”
    “How did you find out?”
    “I hired one of your lot. I thought Tansy was doing the dirty, but it turned out she was giving alibis to her bloody sister, while Ursula was having it away with Tony Landry. It’ll be a shitload of fun to watch