The Cuckoo's Calling

you’ve never come first with her, have you? She always loved Charlie most, didn’t she? Everyone did, even Uncle Tony. And the moment Charlie had gone, when you might have expected to be the center of attention at last, what happens? Lula arrives, and everyone starts worrying about Lula, looking after Lula, adoring Lula. Your mother hasn’t even got a picture of you by her deathbed. Just Charlie and Lula. Just the two she loved.”
    “Fuck you,” snarled Bristow. “Fuck you, Strike. What do you know about anything, with your whore of a mother? What was it she died of, the clap?”
    “Nice,” said Strike, appreciatively. “I was going to ask you whether you looked into my personal life when you were trying to find some patsy to manipulate. I bet you thought I’d be particularly sympathetic to poor bereaved John Bristow, didn’t you, what with my own mother having died young, in suspicious circumstances? You thought you’d be able to play me like a fucking violin…
    “But never mind, John. If your defense team can’t find a personality disorder for you, I expect they’ll argue that your upbringing’s to blame. Unloved. Neglected. Overshadowed. Always felt hard done by, haven’t you? I noticed it the first day I met you, when you burst into those moving tears at the memory of Lula being carried up the drive into your home, into your life. Your parents hadn’t even taken you with them to get her, had they? They left you at home like a pet dog, the son who wasn’t enough for them once Charlie had died; the son who was about to come a poor second all over again.”
    “I don’t have to listen to this,” whispered Bristow.
    “You’re free to leave,” said Strike, watching the place where he could no longer make out eyes in the deepening shadows behind Bristow’s glasses. “Why not leave?”
    But the lawyer merely sat there, one knee still jiggling up and down, his hands sliding over each other, waiting to hear Strike’s proof.
    “Was it easier the second time?” the detective asked quietly. “Was it easier killing Lula than killing Charlie?”
    He saw the pale teeth, bared as Bristow opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
    “Tony knows you did it, doesn’t he? All that bullshit about the hard, cruel things he said after Charlie died. Tony was there; he saw you cycling away from the place where you’d pushed Charlie over. Did you dare him to ride close to the edge? I knew Charlie: he couldn’t resist a dare. Tony saw Charlie dead at the bottom of that quarry, and he told your parents that he thought you’d done it, didn’t he? That’s why your father hit him. That’s why your mother fainted. That’s why Tony was thrown out of the house after Charlie died: not because Tony said that your mother had raised delinquents, but because he told her she was raising a psychopath.”
    “This is—No,” croaked Bristow. “No!”
    “But Tony couldn’t face a family scandal. He kept quiet. Panicked a bit when he heard they were adopting a little girl, though, didn’t he? He called them and tried to stop it happening. He was right to be worried, wasn’t he? I think you’ve always been a bit scared of Tony. What a fucking irony that he backed himself into a corner where he had to give you an alibi for Lula’s murder.”
    Bristow said nothing at all. He was breathing very fast.
    “Tony needed to pretend he was somewhere, anywhere, other than shacked up in a hotel with Cyprian May’s wife that day, so he said he doubled back to London to go and visit his sick sister. Then he realized that both you and Lula were supposed to have been there at the same time.
    “His niece was dead, so she couldn’t contradict him; but he had no choice but to pretend he saw you through the study door, and didn’t talk to you. And you backed him up. Both of you, lying through your teeth, wondering what the other one was up to, but too scared to question each other. I think Tony kept telling himself he’d wait until your mother died before he confronted you. Perhaps that’s how he kept his conscience quiet. But he’s still been worried enough to ask Alison to keep an eye on you. And meanwhile, you’ve been feeding me that bullshit about Lula hugging you, and the touching reconciliation before she returned home.”
    “I was there,” said Bristow, in a rasping whisper. “I was in my mother’s flat. If Tony wasn’t there, that’s his affair. You can’t prove I wasn’t.”
    “I’m not in the