The Cuckoo's Calling

“John was supposed to be at a meeting with Conway Oates’s executors this morning. He’s left Tony to meet them on his own. Tony’s absolutely furious.”

Her tone implied that Strike was in some way responsible for this, and that he deserved to know what trouble he had caused. She took a sip of port. Her hair hung limply to her shoulders and her big hands dwarfed the glass. In spite of a plainness that would have made wallflowers of other women, she radiated a great sense of self-importance.

“You don’t think it was a nice gesture for John to come to the funeral?” asked Strike.

Alison gave a scathing little “huh,” a token laugh.

“It’s not as though he knew this girl.”

“Why did you come along, then?”

“Tony wanted me to.”

Strike noted the pleasurable self-consciousness with which she pronounced her boss’s name.

“Why?”

“To keep an eye on John.”

“Tony thinks John needs watching, does he?”

She did not answer.

“They share you, John and Tony, don’t they?”

“What?” she said sharply.

He was glad to have discomposed her.

“They share your services? As a secretary?”

“Oh—oh, no. I work for Tony and Cyprian; I’m the senior partners’ secretary.”

“Ah. I wonder why I thought you were John’s too?”

“I work on a completely different level,” said Alison. “John uses the typing pool. I have nothing to do with him at work.”

“Yet romance blossomed across secretarial rank and floors?”

She met his facetiousness with more disdainful silence. She seemed to see Strike as intrinsically offensive, somebody undeserving of manners, beyond the pale.

The hostel worker stood alone in a corner, helping himself to sandwiches, palpably killing time until he could decently leave. Robin emerged from the Ladies, and was instantly suborned by Bristow, who seemed eager for assistance in coping with Aunt Winifred.

“So, how long have you and John been together?” asked Strike.

“A few months.”

“You got together before Lula died, did you?”

“He asked me out not long afterwards,” she said.

“He must have been in a pretty bad way, was he?”

“He was a complete mess.”

She did not sound sympathetic, but slightly contemptuous.

“Had he been flirting for a while?”

He expected her to refuse to answer; but he was wrong. Though she tried to pretend otherwise, there was unmistakable self-satisfaction and pride in her answer.

“He came upstairs to see Tony. Tony was busy, so John came to wait in my office. He started talking about his sister, and he got emotional. I gave him tissues, and he ended up asking me out to dinner.”

In spite of what seemed to be lukewarm feelings for Bristow, he thought that she was proud of his overtures; they were a kind of trophy. Strike wondered whether Alison had ever, before desperate John Bristow came along, been asked out to dinner. It had been the collision of two people with an unhealthy need: I gave him tissues, and he asked me out to dinner.

The hostel worker was buttoning up his jacket. Catching Strike’s eye, he gave a farewell wave, and departed without speaking to anyone.

“So how does the big boss feel about his secretary dating his nephew?”

“It’s not up to Tony what I do in my private life,” she said.

“True enough,” said Strike. “Anyway, he can’t talk about mixing business with pleasure, can he? Sleeping with Cyprian May’s wife as he is.”

Momentarily fooled by his casual tone, Alison opened her mouth to respond; then the meaning of his words hit her, and her self-assurance shattered.

“That’s not true!” she said fiercely, her face burning. “Who said that to you? It’s a lie. It’s a complete lie. It’s not true. It isn’t.”

He heard a terrified child behind the woman’s protest.

“Really? Why did Cyprian May send you to Oxford to find Tony on the seventh of January then?”

“That—it was only—he’d forgotten to get Tony to sign some documents, that’s all.”

“And he didn’t use a fax machine or a courier because…?”

“They were sensitive documents.”

“Alison,” said Strike, enjoying her agitation, “we both know that’s balls. Cyprian thought Tony had sloped off somewhere with Ursula for the day, didn’t he?”

“He didn’t! He hadn’t!”

Up at the bar, Aunt Winifred was waving her arms, windmill-like, at Bristow and Robin, who were wearing frozen smiles.

“You found him in Oxford, did you?”

“No, because—”

“What time did you get there?”

“About eleven, but he’d—”

“Cyprian must’ve sent you out the moment you got to work, did he?”

“The documents were urgent.”

“But you didn’t find Tony at his hotel or in the conference center?”

“I missed him,” she said, in furious desperation, “because he’d gone back to London to visit Lady Bristow.”

“Ah,” said Strike. “Right. Bit odd that he didn’t let you or Cyprian know that he was going back to London, isn’t it?”

“No,” she said, with a valiant attempt at regaining her vanished superiority. “He was contactable. He was still on his mobile. It didn’t matter.”

“Did you call his mobile?”

She did not answer.

“Did you call it, and not get an answer?”

She sipped her port in simmering silence.