The Cuckoo's Calling

“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.

“They all said I was deluded,” he almost shouted. “But I wasn’t bloody deluded at all!”

“No, John, you weren’t deluded,” said Strike. “Not deluded. More like bat-shit insane.”

Through the shaded window came the sounds of London, alive at all hours, rumbling and growling, part man, part machine. There was no noise inside the room but Bristow’s ragged breathing.

“Excuse me?” he said, ludicrously polite. “What did you call me?”

Strike smiled.

“I said you’re bat-shit insane. You killed your sister, got away with it, and then asked me to reinvestigate her death.”

“You—you cannot be serious.”

“Oh yeah, I can. It’s been obvious to me from the start that the person who benefits most from Lula’s death is you, John. Ten million quid, once your mother gives up the ghost. Not to be sniffed at, is it? Especially as I don’t think you’ve got much more than your salary, however much you bang on about your trust fund. Albris shares are hardly worth the paper they’re written on these days, are they?”

Bristow gaped at him for several long moments; then, sitting up a little straighter, he glanced at the camp bed propped in the corner.

“Coming from a virtual down-and-out who sleeps in his office, I find that a laughable assertion.” Bristow’s voice was calm and derisory, but his breathing was abnormally fast.

“I know you’ve got much more money than I have,” said Strike. “But, as you rightly point out, that’s not saying much. And I will say for myself that I haven’t yet stooped to embezzling from clients. How much of Conway Oates’s money did you steal before Tony realized what you were up to?”

“Oh, I’m an embezzler too, am I?” said Bristow, with an artificial laugh.

“Yeah, I think so,” said Strike. “Not that it matters to me. I don’t care whether you killed Lula because you needed to replace the money you’d nicked, or because you wanted her millions, or because you hated her guts. The jury will want to know, though. They’re always suckers for motive.”

Bristow’s knee had begun jiggling up and down again.

“You’re unhinged,” he said, with another forced laugh. “You’ve found a will in which she leaves everything not to me, but to that man.” He pointed towards the outer room, where he had viewed Jonah’s picture. “You tell me that it was that same man who was walking towards Lula’s flat, on camera, the night she fell to her death, and who was seen sprinting back past the camera ten minutes later. And yet you accuse me. Me.”