The Cuckoo's Calling(116)

“And what’ll they say Cormoran’s here for?” asked Ciara, with a sidelong glance at Strike. “A threesome?”

“Security,” said Duffield, appraising Strike through narrowed eyes. “He looks like a boxer. Or a cage fighter. Don’t you want a proper drink, Cormoran?”

“No, thanks,” said Strike.

“What’s that, AA or being on duty?”

“Duty.”

Duffield raised his eyebrows and sniggered. He seemed nervous, shooting Strike darting looks, drumming his fingers on the glass table. When Ciara asked him whether he had visited Lady Bristow again, he seemed relieved to be offered a subject.

“Fuck, no. Once was enough. It was f*cking horrible. Poor bitch. On her f*cking deathbed.”

“It was beyond nice of you to go, though, Evan.”

Strike knew that she was trying to show Duffield off in his best light.

“Do you know Lula’s mother well?” he asked Duffield.

“No. I only met her once before Lu died. She didn’t approve of me. None of Lu’s family approved of me. I dunno,” he fidgeted, “I just wanted to talk to someone who really gives a shit that she’s dead.”

“Evan!” Ciara pouted. “I care she’s dead, excuse me!”

“Yeah, well…”

With one of his oddly feminine, fluid movements, Duffield curled up in the chair so that he was almost fetal, and sucked hard on his cigarette. On a table behind his head, illuminated by a cone of lamplight, was a large, stagey photograph of him with Lula Landry, clearly taken from a fashion shoot. They were mock-wrestling against a backdrop of fake trees; she was wearing a floor-length red dress, and he was in a slim black suit, with a hairy wolf’s mask pushed up on top of his forehead.

“I wonder what my mum would say if I carked it? My parents’ve got an injunction out against me,” Duffield informed Strike. “Well, it was mainly my f*cking father. Because I nicked their telly a couple of years ago. D’you know what?” he added, craning his neck to look at Ciara, “I’ve been clean five weeks, two days.”

“That’s so fabulous, baby! That’s fantastic!”

“Yeah,” he said. He swiveled upright again. “Aren’t you gonna ask me any questions?” he demanded of Strike. “I thought you were investigating Lu’s murder?”

The bravado was undermined by the tremor in his fingers. His knees began bouncing up and down, just like John Bristow’s.

“D’you think it was murder?” Strike asked.

“No.” Duffield dragged on his cigarette. “Yeah. Maybe. I dunno. Murder makes more sense than f*cking suicide, anyway. Because she wouldn’ta gone without leaving me a note. I keep waiting for a note to turn up, y’know, and then I’ll know it’s real. It don’t feel real. I can’t even remember the funeral. I was out of my f*cking head. I took so much stuff I couldn’t f*cking walk. I think, if I could just remember the funeral, it’d be easier to get my head round.”

He jammed his cigarette between his lips and began drumming with his fingers on the edge of the glass table. After a while, apparently discomforted by Strike’s silent observation, he demanded:

“Ask me something, then. Who’s hired you, anyway?”

“Lula’s brother John.”

Duffield stopped drumming.

“That money-grabbing, poker-arsed wanker?”

“Money-grabbing?”

“He was f*cking obsessed with how she spent her f*cking money, like it was any of his f*cking business. Rich people always think everyone else is a f*cking freeloader, have you noticed that? Her whole frigging family thought I was gold-digging, and after a bit,” he raised a finger to his temple and made a boring motion, “it went in, it planted doubts, y’know?”

He snatched one of the Zippos from the table and began flicking at it, trying to make it ignite. Strike watched tiny blue sparks erupt and die as Duffield talked.

“I expect he thought she’d be better off with some rich f*cking accountant, like him.”

“He’s a lawyer.”

“Whatever. What’s the difference, it’s all about helping rich people keep their mitts on as much money as they can, innit? He’s got his f*cking trust fund from Daddy, what skin is it off his nose what his sister did with her own money?”

“What was it that he objected to her buying, specifically?”

“Shit for me. The whole f*cking family was the same; they didn’t mind if she chucked it their way, keep it in the f*cking family, that was OK. Lu knew they were a mercenary load of f*ckers, but, like I say, it still left its f*cking mark. Planted ideas in her head.”

He threw the dead Zippo back on to the table, drew his knees up to his chest and glared at Strike with his disconcerting turquoise eyes.

“So he still thinks I did it, does he? Your client?”

“No, I don’t think he does,” said Strike.

“He’s changed his narrow f*ckwitted mind, then, because I heard he was going round telling everyone it was me, before they ruled it as suicide. Only, I’ve got a cast-iron f*cking alibi, so f*ck him. Fuck. Them. All.”

Restless and nervy, he got to his feet, added wine to his almost untouched glass, then lit another cigarette.