The Cuckoo's Calling

said Spanner, and then, with the incuriosity towards human pain versus technological challenges that was characteristic of him, he pointed a spatulate fingertip at the Dell and asked: “What d’you want doing with this, then?”
    “The police have already had a look at it,” said Strike, lowering his voice even though he and Spanner were the only people nearby not speaking Cantonese, “but I want a second opinion.”
    “Police’ve got good techie people. I doubt I’m gonna find anything they haven’t.”
    “They might not have been looking for the right stuff,” said Strike, “and they might not’ve realized what it meant even if they found it. They seemed mostly interested in her recent emails, and I’ve already seen them.”
    “What am I looking for, then?”
    “All activity on or leading up to the eighth of January. The most recent internet searches, stuff like that. I haven’t got the password, and I’d rather not go back to the police and ask unless I have to.”
    “Shouldn’t be a problem,” said Spanner. He was not writing these instructions down, but typing them on to his mobile phone; Spanner was ten years younger than Strike, and he rarely wielded a pen by choice. “Who’s it belong to, anyway?”
    When Strike told him, Spanner said:
    “The model? Whoa.”
    But Spanner’s interest in human beings, even when dead or famous, was still secondary to his fondness for rare comics, technological innovation and bands of which Strike had never heard. After eating several spoonfuls of soup, Spanner broke the silence to inquire brightly how much Strike was planning to pay him for the work.
    When Spanner had left with the pink laptop under his arm, Strike limped back to his office. He washed the end of his right leg carefully that night and then applied cream to the irritated and inflamed scar tissue. For the first time in many months, he took painkillers before easing himself into his sleeping bag. Lying there waiting for the raw ache to deaden, he wondered whether he ought to make an appointment to see the consultant in rehabilitation medicine under whose care he was supposed to fall. The symptoms of choke syndrome, the nemesis of amputees, had been described to him repeatedly: suppurating skin and swelling. He was wondering whether he might be showing the early signs, but he dreaded the prospect of returning to corridors stinking of disinfectant; of doctors with their detached interest in this one small mutilated portion of his body; of further minute adjustments to the prosthesis necessitating still more visits to that white-coated, confined world he had hoped he had left forever. He feared advice to rest the leg, to desist from normal ambulation; a forced return to crutches, the stares of passersby at his pinned-up trouser leg and the shrill inquiries of small children.
    His mobile, charging as usual on the floor beside the camp bed, made the buzzing noise that announced the arrival of a text. Glad for any minor distraction from his throbbing leg, Strike groped in the dark and picked up the telephone from the floor.
Please could you give me a quick call when convenient? Charlotte
    Strike did not believe in clairvoyance or psychic ability, yet his immediate irrational thought was that Charlotte had somehow sensed what he had just told Spanner; that he had twitched the taut, invisible rope still binding them, by placing their breakup on an official footing.
    He stared at the message as though it was her face, as though he could read her expression on the tiny gray screen.
    Please. (I know you don’t have to: I’m asking you to, nicely.) A quick call. (I have a legitimate reason for desiring speech with you, so we can do it swiftly and easily; no rows.) When convenient. (I do you the courtesy of assuming that you have a busy life without me.)
    Or, perhaps: Please. (To refuse is to be a bastard, Strike, and you’ve hurt me enough.) A quick call. (I know you’re expecting a scene; well, don’t worry, that last one, when you were such an unbelievable shit, has finished me with you forever.) When convenient. (Because, let’s be honest, I always had to slot in around the army and every other damn thing that came first.)
    Was it convenient now? he asked himself, lying in pain that the pills had yet to touch. He glanced at the time: ten past eleven. She was clearly still awake.
    He put the mobile back on the floor beside him, where it lay silently charging, and raised a large hairy arm over