The Cuckoo's Calling

the Mays divorcing. High-powered lawyers on both sides. Old family firm broken up. Cyprian May’s not as limp as he looks. He represented my second wife. I’m going to have a fucking blast watching that one play out. Watching the lawyers screw each other for a change.”
    “That’s a nice bit of leverage you’ve got with your wife’s divorce lawyer, then?”
    Bestigui smiled nastily through the smoke.
    “Neither of them know I know yet. I’ve been waiting for a good moment to tell them.”
    But Bestigui seemed to remember, suddenly, that Tansy might now be in possession of an even more powerful weapon in their divorce battle, and the smile faded from his crumpled face, leaving it bitter.
    “One last thing,” said Strike. “The night that Lula died: after you’d followed your wife down into the lobby, and brought her back upstairs, did you hear anything outside the flat?”
    “I thought your whole fucking point is that you can’t hear anything inside my flat with the windows closed?” snapped Bestigui.
    “I’m not talking about outside in the street; I’m talking about outside your front door. Tansy might’ve been making too much noise to hear anything, but I’m wondering whether, when the pair of you were in your own hall—perhaps you stayed there, trying to calm her down, once you’d got her inside?—you heard any movement on the other side of the door? Or was Tansy screaming too much?”
    “She was making a fuck of a lot of noise,” said Bestigui. “I didn’t hear anything.”
    “Nothing at all?”
    “Nothing suspicious. Just Wilson, running past the door.”
    “Wilson.”
    “Yeah.”
    “When was this?”
    “When you’re talking about. When we’d got back inside our flat.”
    “Immediately after you’d shut the door?”
    “Yeah.”
    “But Wilson had already run upstairs while you were still in the lobby, hadn’t he?”
    “Yeah.”
    The crevices in Bestigui’s forehead and around his mouth deepened.
    “So when you got to your flat on the first floor, Wilson must’ve been out of sight and earshot already?”
    “Yeah…”
    “But you heard footsteps on the stairs, immediately after closing your front door?”
    Bestigui did not answer. Strike could see him putting it all together in his own mind for the very first time.
    “I heard…yeah…footsteps. Running past. On the stairs.”
    “Yes,” said Strike. “And could you make out whether there was one set, or two?”
    Bestigui frowned, his eyes unfocused, looking beyond the detective into the treacherous past. “There was…one. So I thought it was Wilson. But it couldn’t…Wilson was still up on the third floor, searching her flat…because I heard him coming down again, afterwards…after I’d called the police, I heard him go running past the door…
    “I forgot that,” said Bestigui, and for a fraction of a second he seemed almost vulnerable. “I forgot. There was a lot going on. Tansy screaming.”
    “And, of course, you were thinking about your own skin,” said Strike briskly, inserting notepad and pen back in his pocket and hoisting himself out of the leather chair. “Well, I won’t keep you; you’ll be wanting to call your lawyer. You’ve been very helpful. I expect we’ll see each other again in court.”

13
    ERIC WARDLE CALLED STRIKE THE following day.
    “I phoned Deeby,” he said curtly.
    “And?” said Strike, motioning to Robin to pass him pen and paper. They had been sitting together at her desk, enjoying tea and biscuits while discussing the latest death threat from Brian Mathers, in which he promised, not for the first time, to slit open Strike’s guts and piss on his entrails.
    “He got sent a customized hoodie by Somé. Handgun in studs on the front and a couple of lines of Deeby’s own lyrics on the back.”
    “Just the one?”
    “Yeah.”
    “What else?” asked Strike.
    “He remembers a belt, a beanie hat and a pair of cufflinks.”
    “No gloves?”
    Wardle paused, perhaps checking his notes.
    “No, he didn’t mention gloves.”
    “Well, that clears that up,” said Strike.
    Wardle said nothing at all. Strike waited for the policeman to either hang up or impart more information.
    “The inquest is on Thursday,” said Wardle abruptly. “On Rochelle Onifade.”
    “Right,” said Strike.
    “You don’t sound that interested.”
    “I’m not.”
    “I thought you were sure it was murder?”
    “I am, but the inquest won’t prove that one way or the other. Any idea when