The Cuckoo's Calling

haunted him during his months in hospital. It lurked in the corners of his shabby office; he could hear it whispering to him whenever his attention on the task in hand grew slack. It urged him to consider how far he had fallen; his age; his penury; his shattered love life; his homelessness. Thirty-five, it whispered, and nothing to show for all your years of graft except a few cardboard boxes and a massive debt. The specter directed his eyes to cans of beer in the supermarket, where he bought more Pot Noodles; it mocked him as he ironed shirts on the floor. As the day wore on, it jeered at him for his self-imposed habit of smoking outside in the street, as though he were still in the army, as though this petty self-discipline could impose form and order on the amorphous, disastrous present. He began to smoke at his desk, with the butts mounting in a cheap tin ashtray he had swiped, long ago, from a bar in Germany.
    But he had a job, he kept reminding himself; a paid job. Arsenal beat Spurs, and Strike was cheered; he turned off the television and, defying the specter, moved straight to his desk and resumed work.
    At liberty, now, to collect and collate evidence in whatever way he chose, Strike continued to conform to the protocols of the Criminal Procedure and Investigation Act. The fact that he believed himself to be hunting a figment of John Bristow’s disturbed imagination made no difference to the thoroughness and accuracy with which he now wrote up the notes he had made during his interviews with Bristow, Wilson and Kolovas-Jones.
    Lucy telephoned him at six in the evening, while he was hard at work. Though his sister was younger than Strike by two years, she seemed to feel herself older. Weighed down, young, by a mortgage, a stolid husband, three children and an onerous job, Lucy seemed to crave responsibility, as though she could never have enough anchors. Strike had always suspected that she wanted to prove to herself and the world that she was nothing like their fly-by-night mother, who had dragged the two of them all over the country, from school to school, house to squat to camp, in pursuit of the next enthusiasm or man. Lucy was the only one of his eight half-siblings with whom Strike had shared a childhood; he was fonder of her than of almost anyone else in his life, and yet their interactions were often unsatisfactory, laden with familiar anxieties and arguments. Lucy could not disguise the fact that her brother worried and disappointed her. In consequence, Strike was less inclined to be honest with her about his present situation than he would have been with many a friend.
    “Yeah, it’s going great,” he told her, smoking at the open window, watching people drift in and out of the shops below. “Business has doubled lately.”
    “Where are you? I can hear traffic.”
    “At the office. I’ve got paperwork to do.”
    “On Saturday? How does Charlotte feel about that?”
    “She’s away; she’s gone to visit her mother.”
    “How are things going between you?”
    “Great,” he said.
    “Are you sure?”
    “Yeah, I’m sure. How’s Greg?”
    She gave him a brief precis of her husband’s workload, then returned to the attack.
    “Is Gillespie still on your back for repayment?”
    “No.”
    “Because you know what, Stick”—the childhood nickname boded ill: she was trying to soften him up—“I’ve been looking into this, and you could apply to the British Legion for—”
    “Fucking hell, Lucy,” he said, before he could stop himself.
    “What?”
    The hurt and indignation in her voice were only too familiar: he closed his eyes.
    “I don’t need help from the British Legion, Luce, all right?”
    “There’s no need to be so proud …”
    “How are the boys?”
    “They’re fine. Look, Stick, I just think it’s outrageous that Rokeby’s getting his lawyer to hassle you, when he’s never given you a penny in his life. He ought to have made it a gift, seeing what you’ve been through and how much he’s—”
    “Business is good. I’m going to pay off the loan,” said Strike. A teenaged couple on the corner of the street were having an argument.
    “Are you sure everything’s all right between you and Charlotte? Why’s she visiting her mother? I thought they hated each other?”
    “They’re getting on better these days,” he said, as the teenage girl gesticulated wildly, stamped her foot and walked away.
    “Have you bought her a ring yet?” asked Lucy.
    “I thought