The Cuckoo's Calling

to the copies of security logbook pages showing the entrances and exits of visitors to number 18 on the day preceding Lula Landry’s death. A careful perusal of signatures and initials revealed that Wilson had not been as meticulous in his record-keeping as his employers might have hoped. As Wilson had already told Strike, the movements of the building’s residents were not recorded in the book; so the comings and goings of Landry and the Bestiguis were missing. The first entry Wilson had made was for the postman, at 9:10; next, at 9:22, came Florist delivery Flat 2; finally, at 9:50, Securibell. No time of departure was marked for the alarm checker.
    Otherwise it had been (as Wilson had said) a quiet day. Ciara Porter had arrived at 12:50; Bryony Radford at 1:20. While Radford’s departure was recorded with her own signature at 4:40, Wilson had added the entrance of caterers to the Bestiguis’ flat at 7, Ciara’s exit with Lula at 7:15 and the departure of the caterers at 9:15.
    It frustrated Strike that the only page that the police had photocopied was the day before Landry’s death, because he had hoped that he might find the surname of the elusive Rochelle somewhere in the entrance log’s pages.
    It was nearly midnight when Strike turned his attention to the police report on the contents of Landry’s laptop. They appeared to have been searching, principally, for emails indicating suicidal mood or intent, and in this respect they had been unsuccessful. Strike scanned the emails Landry had sent and received in the last two weeks of her life.
    It was strange, but nevertheless true, that the countless photographs of her otherworldly beauty had made it harder rather than easier for Strike to believe that Landry had ever really existed. The ubiquity of her features had made them seem abstract, generic, even if the face itself had been uniquely beautiful.
    Now, however, out of these dry black marks on paper, out of erratically spelled messages littered with in-jokes and nicknames, the wraith of the dead girl rose before him in the dark office. Her emails gave him what the multitude of photographs had not: a realization in the gut, rather than the brain, that a real, living, laughing and crying human being had been smashed to death on that snowy London street. He had hoped to spot the flickering shadow of a murderer as he turned the file’s pages, but instead it was the ghost of Lula herself who emerged, gazing up at him, as victims of violent crimes sometimes did, through the detritus of their interrupted lives.
    He saw, now, why John Bristow insisted that his sister had had no thought of death. The girl who had typed out these words emerged as a warmhearted friend, sociable, impulsive, busy and glad to be so; enthusiastic about her job, excited, as Bristow had said, about the prospect of a trip to Morocco.
    Most of the emails had been sent to the designer Guy Somé. They held nothing of interest except a tone of cheery confidentiality, and, once, a mention of her most incongruous friendship:
Geegee, will you pleeeeeze make Rochelle something for her birthday, please please? I’ll pay. Something nice (don’t be horrible). For Feb 21st? Pleezy please. Love ya. Cuckoo.
    Strike remembered the assertion of LulaMyInspirationForeva that Lula had loved Guy Somé “like a brother.” His statement to the police was the shortest in the file. He had been in Japan for a week and had arrived home on the night of her death. Strike knew that Somé lived within easy walking distance of Kentigern Gardens, but the police appeared to have been satisfied with his assertion that, once home, he had simply gone to bed. Strike had already noted the fact that anyone walking from Charles Street would have approached Kentigern Gardens from the opposite direction to the CCTV camera on Alderbrook Road.
    Strike closed the file at last. As he moved laboriously through his office, undressing, removing the prosthesis and unfolding the camp bed, he thought of nothing but his own exhaustion. He fell asleep quickly, lulled by the sounds of humming traffic, the pattering rain and the deathless breath of the city.

2
    A LARGE MAGNOLIA TREE STOOD in the front garden of Lucy’s house in Bromley. Later in the spring it would cover the front lawn in what looked like crumpled tissues; now, in April, it was a frothy cloud of white, its petals waxy as coconut shavings. Strike had only visited this house a few times, because he preferred to meet Lucy