The Cuckoo's Calling

mail.
    Strike got up off the floor, replaced the cardboard box in a corner of the inner office and returned to Robin.
    “What’s that?” he asked, seeing a sheet of photocopied newsprint on the desk.
    “I kept it for you,” she said diffidently. “You said you were glad you’d seen that story about Evan Duffield…I thought you might be interested in this, if you haven’t already seen it.”
    It was a neatly clipped article about film producer Freddie Bestigui, taken from the previous day’s Evening Standard.
    “Excellent; I’ll read that on the way to lunch with his wife.”
    “Soon to be ex,” said Robin. “It’s all in that article. He’s not very lucky in love, Mr. Bestigui.”
    “From what Wardle told me, he’s not a very lovable man,” said Strike.
    “How did you get that policeman to talk to you?” Robin said, unable to hold back her curiosity on this point. She was desperate to learn more about the process and progress of the investigation.
    “We’ve got a mutual friend,” said Strike. “Bloke I knew in Afghanistan; Met officer in the TA.”
    “You were in Afghanistan?”
    “Yeah.” Strike was pulling on his overcoat, the folded article on Freddie Bestigui and the invitation to Jack’s party between his teeth.
    “What were you doing in Afghanistan?”
    “Investigating a Killed In Action,” said Strike. “Military police.”
    “Oh,” said Robin.
    Military police did not tally with Matthew’s impression of a charlatan, or a waster.
    “Why did you leave?”
    “Injured,” said Strike.
    He had described that injury to Wilson in the starkest of terms, but he was wary of being equally frank with Robin. He could imagine her shocked expression, and he stood in no need of her sympathy.
    “Don’t forget to call Peter Gillespie,” Robin reminded him, as he headed out of the door.
    Strike read the photocopied article as he rode the Tube to Bond Street. Freddie Bestigui had inherited his first fortune from a father who had made a great deal of money in haulage; he had made his second by producing highly commercial films that serious critics treated with derision. The producer was currently going to court to refute claims, by two newspapers, that he had behaved with gross impropriety towards a young female employee, whose silence he had subsequently bought. The accusations, carefully hedged around with many “alleged”s and “reported”s, included aggressive sexual advances and a degree of physical bullying. They had been made “by a source close to the alleged victim,” the girl herself having refused either to press charges or to speak to the press. The fact that Freddie was currently divorcing his latest wife, Tansy, was mentioned in the concluding paragraph, which ended with a reminder that the unhappy couple had been in the building on the night that Lula Landry took her own life. The reader was left with the odd impression that the Bestiguis’ mutual unhappiness might have influenced Landry in her decision to jump.
    Strike had never moved in the kinds of circles that dined at Cipriani. It was only as he walked up Davies Street, the sun warm on his back and imparting a ruddy glow to the red-brick building ahead, that he thought how odd it would be, yet not unlikely, if he ran into one of his half-siblings there. Restaurants like Cipriani were part of the regular lives of Strike’s father’s legitimate children. He had last heard from three of them while in Selly Oak Hospital, undergoing physiotherapy. Gabi and Danni had jointly sent flowers; Al had visited once, laughing too loudly and scared of looking at the lower end of the bed. Afterwards, Charlotte had imitated Al braying and wincing. She was a good mimic. Nobody ever expected a girl that beautiful to be funny, yet she was.
    The interior of the restaurant had an art deco feeling, the bar and chairs of mellow polished wood, with pale yellow tablecloths on the circular tables and white-jacketed, bow-tied waiters and waitresses. Strike spotted his client immediately among the clattering, jabbering diners, sitting at a table set for four and talking, to Strike’s surprise, to two women instead of one, both with long, glossy brown hair. Bristow’s rabbity face was full of the desire to please, or perhaps placate.
    The lawyer jumped up to greet Strike when he saw him, and introduced Tansy Bestigui, who held out a thin, cool hand, but did not smile, and her sister, Ursula May, who did not hold out a hand at all. While