The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1)(74)
Author: J.K. Rowling

With a shunt of her mouse and a click, the picture of Lieutenant Jonah Agyeman filled the monitor.

In silence, they contemplated the face of a young man whose irrefutable handsomeness was not diminished by the overlarge ears he had inherited from his father. The scarlet, black and gold uniform suited him. His grin was slightly lopsided, his cheekbones high, his jaw square and his skin dark with an undertone of red, like freshly brewed tea. He conveyed the careless charm that Lula Landry had had too; the indefinable quality that made the viewer linger over her image.

“He looks like her,” said Robin in a hushed voice.

“Yeah, he does. Anything else been going on?”

Robin seemed to snap back to attention.

“Oh God, yes…John Bristow called half an hour ago, to say he couldn’t get hold of you, and Tony Landry’s called three times.”

“I thought he might. What did he say?”

“He was absolutely—well, the first time, he asked to speak to you, and when I said you weren’t here, he hung up before I could give him your mobile number. The second time, he told me you had to call him straightaway, but slammed down the phone before I could tell him you still weren’t back. But the third time, he was just—well—he was incredibly angry. Screaming at me.”

“He’d better not have been offensive,” said Strike, scowling.

“He wasn’t really. Well, not to me—it was all about you.”

“What did he say?”

“He didn’t make a lot of sense, but he called John Bristow a ‘stupid prick,’ and then he was bawling something about Alison walking out, which he seemed to think had something to do with you, because he was yelling about suing you, and defamation, and all kinds of things.”

“Alison’s left her job?”

“Yes.”

“Did he say where she—no, of course he didn’t, why would he know?” he finished, more to himself than to Robin.

He looked down at his wrist. His cheap watch seemed to have hit something when he had fallen downstairs, because it had stopped at a quarter to one.

“What’s the time?”

“Ten to five.”

“Already?”

“Yes. Do you need anything? I can hang around a bit.”

“No, I want you out of here.”

His tone was such that instead of going to fetch her coat and handbag, Robin remained exactly where she was.

“What are you expecting to happen?”

Strike was busy fiddling with his leg, just below the knee.

“Nothing. You’ve just worked a lot of overtime lately. I’ll bet Matthew will be glad to see you back early for once.”

There was no adjusting the prosthesis through his trouser leg.

“Please, Robin, go,” he said, looking up.

She hesitated, then went to fetch her trench coat and bag.

“Thanks,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”

She left. He waited for the sound of her footsteps on the stairs before rolling up his trouser leg, but heard nothing. The glass door opened, and she reappeared.

“You’re expecting someone to come,” she said, clutching the edge of the door. “Aren’t you?”

“Maybe,” said Strike, “but it doesn’t matter.”

He mustered a smile at her tight, anxious expression.

“Don’t worry about me.” When her expression did not change, he added: “I boxed a bit, in the army, you know.”

Robin half laughed.

“Yes, you mentioned that.”

“Did I?”

“Repeatedly. That night you…you know.”

“Oh. Right. Well, it’s true.”

“But who are you…?”

“Matthew wouldn’t thank me for telling you. Go home, Robin, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

And this time, albeit reluctantly, she left. He waited until he heard the door on to Denmark Street bang shut, then rolled up his trouser leg, detached the prosthesis and examined his swollen knee, and the end of his leg, which was inflamed and bruised. He wondered exactly what he had done to himself, but there was no time to take the problem to an expert tonight.

He half wished, now, that he had asked Robin to fetch him something to eat before she left. Clumsily, hopping from spot to spot, holding on to the desk, the top of the filing cabinet and the arm of the sofa to balance, he managed to make himself a cup of tea. He drank it sitting in Robin’s chair, and ate half a packet of digestives, spending most of the time in contemplation of the face of Jonah Agyeman. The paracetamol had barely touched the pain in his leg.

When he had finished all the biscuits, he checked his mobile. There were many missed calls from Robin, and two from John Bristow.

Of the three people who Strike thought might present themselves at his office this evening, it was Bristow he hoped would make it there first. If the police wanted concrete evidence of murder, his client alone (though he might not realize it) could provide it. If either Tony Landry or Alison Cresswell turned up at his offices, I’ll just have to…then Strike snorted a little in his empty office, because the expression that had occurred to him was “think on my feet.”

But six o’clock came, and then half past, and nobody rang the bell. Strike rubbed more cream into the end of his leg, and reattached the prosthesis, which was agony. He limped through into the inner office, emitting grunts of pain, slumped down in his chair and, giving up, took the false leg off again and slid down, to lay his head on his arms, intending to do no more than rest his tired eyes.

2

FOOTSTEPS ON THE METAL STAIRS. Strike sat bolt upright, not knowing whether he had been asleep five minutes or fifty. Somebody rapped on the glass door.

“Come in, it’s open!” he shouted, and checked that the unattached prosthesis was covered by his trouser leg.

To Strike’s immense relief, it was John Bristow who entered the room, blinking through his thick-lensed glasses and looking agitated.

“Hi, John. Come and sit down.”

But Bristow strode towards him, blotchy-faced, as full of rage as he had been the day that Strike had refused to take the case, and gripped the back of the offered chair instead.

“I told you,” he said, the color waxing and waning in his thin face as he pointed a bony finger at Strike, “I told you quite clearly that I didn’t want you to see my mother without me present!”

“I know you did, John, but—”

“She’s unbelievably upset. I don’t know what you said to her, but I’ve had her crying and sobbing down the phone to me this afternoon!”

“I’m sorry to hear that; she didn’t seem to mind my questions when—”

“She’s in a dreadful state!” shouted Bristow, his buck teeth glinting. “How dared you go and see her without me? How dared you?”

“Because, John, as I told you after Rochelle’s funeral, I think we’re dealing with a murderer who might kill again,” said Strike. “The situation’s dangerous, and I want an end to it.”

“You want an end to it? How do you think I feel?” shouted Bristow, and his voice cracked and became a falsetto. “Do you have any idea of how much damage you’ve done? My mother’s devastated, and now my girlfriend seems to have vanished into thin air, which Tony is blaming on you! What have you done to Alison? Where is she?”

“I don’t know. Have you tried calling her?”

“She’s not picking up. What the hell’s been going on? I’ve been on a wild goose chase all day, and I come back—”

“Wild goose chase?” repeated Strike, surreptitiously shifting his leg to keep the prosthesis upright.

Bristow threw himself into the seat opposite, breathing hard and squinting at Strike in the bright evening sun streaming in through the window behind him.

“Somebody,” he said furiously, “called my secretary up this morning, purporting to be a very important client of ours in Rye, who was requesting an urgent meeting. I traveled all the way there to find that he’s out of the country, and nobody had called me at all. Would you mind,” he added, raising a hand to shield his eyes, “pulling down that blind? I can’t see a thing.”

Strike tugged the cord, and the blind fell with a clatter, casting them both into a cool, faintly striped gloom.

“That’s a very strange story,” said Strike. “It’s almost as though somebody wanted to lure you away from town.”

Bristow did not reply. He was glaring at Strike, his chest heaving.

“I’ve had enough,” he said abruptly. “I’m terminating this investigation. You can keep all the money I’ve given you. I’ve got to think of my mother.”

Strike slid his mobile out of his pocket, pressed a couple of buttons and laid it on his lap.

“Don’t you even want to know what I found today in your mother’s wardrobe?”

“You went—you went inside my mother’s wardrobe?”

“Yeah. I wanted to have a look inside those brand-new handbags Lula got, the day she died.”

Bristow began to stutter:

“You—you…”

“The bags have got detachable linings. Bizarre idea, isn’t it? Hidden under the lining of the white bag was a will, handwritten by Lula on your mother’s blue notepaper, and witnessed by Rochelle Onifade. I’ve given it to the police.”

Bristow’s mouth fell open. For several seconds he seemed unable to speak. Finally he whispered:

“But…what did it say?”

“That she was leaving everything, her entire estate, to her brother, Lieutenant Jonah Agyeman of the Royal Engineers.”

“Jonah…who?”

“Go and look on the computer monitor outside. You’ll find a picture there.”

Bristow got up and moved like a sleepwalker towards the computer in the next room. Strike watched the screen illuminate as Bristow shifted the mouse. Agyeman’s handsome face shone out of the monitor, with his sardonic smile, pristine in his dress uniform.

“Oh my God,” said Bristow.

He returned to Strike and lowered himself back into the chair, gaping at the detective.

“I—I can’t believe it.”

“That’s the man who was on the CCTV footage,” said Strike, “running away from the scene the night that Lula died. He was staying in Clerkenwell with his widowed mother while he was on leave. That’s why he was hotfooting it along Theobalds Road twenty minutes later. He was heading home.”

Bristow drew breath in a loud gasp.