The Cuckoo's Calling(39)

An emaciated young girl with a sore at the corner of her mouth stood smoking outside the front door, wearing a dirty man’s jumper that swamped her. She was leaning up against the wall, staring blankly towards the commercial center barely five minutes’ walk away, and when Strike pressed the buzzer for admission to the hostel, she gave him a look of deep calculation, apparently assessing his potentialities.

A small, fusty, grimy-floored lobby with shabby wooden paneling lay just inside the door. Two locked glass-paneled doors stood to left and right, affording him glimpses of a bare hall and a depressed-looking side room with a table full of leaflets, an old dartboard and a wall liberally peppered with holes. Straight ahead was a kiosk-like front desk, protected by another metal grille.

A gum-chewing woman behind the desk was reading a newspaper. She seemed suspicious and ill-disposed when Strike asked whether he could speak to a girl whose name was something like Rachel, and who had been a friend of Lula Landry’s.

“You a journalist?”

“No, I’m not; I’m a friend of a friend.”

“Should know her name, then, shouldn’t you?”

“Rachel? Raquelle? Something like that.”

A balding man strode into the kiosk behind the suspicious woman.

“I’m a private detective,” said Strike, raising his voice, and the bald man looked around, interested. “Here’s my card. I’ve been hired by Lula Landry’s brother, and I need to talk to—”

“Oh, you looking for Rochelle?” asked the bald man, approaching the grille. “She’s not here, pal. She left.”

His colleague, evincing some irritation at his willingness to talk to Strike, ceded her place at the counter and vanished from sight.

“When was this?”

“It’d be weeks now. Coupla months, even.”

“Any idea where she went?”

“No idea, mate. Probably sleeping rough again. She’s come and gone a good few times. She’s a difficult character. Mental health problems. Carrianne might know something though, hang on. Carrianne! Hey! Carrianne!”

The bloodless young girl with the scabbed lip came in out of the sunshine, her eyes narrowed.

“Wha’?”

“Rochelle, have you seen her?”

“Why would I wanna see that f*ckin’ bitch?”

“So you haven’t seen her?” asked the bald man.

“No. Gorra fag?”

Strike gave her one; she put it behind her ear.

“She’s still round ’ere somewhere. Janine said she seen ’er,” said Carrianne. “Rochelle reckoned she’d gorra flat or some’t. Lying f*ckin’ bitch. An’ Lula Landry left her ev’rything. Not. Whadd’ya want Rochelle for?” she asked Strike, and it was clear that she was wondering whether there was money in it, and whether she might do instead.

“Just to ask some questions.”

“Warrabout?”

“Lula Landry.”

“Oh,” said Carrianne, and her card-counting eyes flickered. “They weren’t such big f*ckin’ mates. You don’t wanna believe everything Rochelle says, the lying bitch.”

“What did she lie about?” asked Strike.

“Fuckin’ everything. I reckon she stole half the stuff she pretended Landry bought ’er.”

“Come on, Carrianne,” said the bald man gently. “They were friends,” he told Strike. “Landry used to come and pick her up in her car. It caused,” he said, with a glance at Carrianne, “a bit of tension.”

“Not from me it f*ckin’ didn’t,” snapped Carrianne. “I thought Landry was a f*ckin’ jumped-up bitch. She weren’t even that good-lookin’.”

“Rochelle told me she’s got an aunt in Kilburn,” said the bald man.

“She dun gerron with ’er, though,” said the girl.

“Have you got a name or an address for the aunt?” asked Strike, but both shook their heads. “What’s Rochelle’s surname?”

“I don’t know; do you, Carrianne? We often know people just by their Christian names,” he told Strike.

There was little more to be gleaned from them. Rochelle had last stayed at the hostel more than two months previously. The bald man knew that she had attended an outpatients’ clinic at St. Thomas’s for a while, though he had no idea whether she still went.

“She’s had psychotic episodes. She’s on a lot of medication.”

“She didn’t give a shit when Lula died,” said Carrianne, suddenly. “She didn’t give a flying f*ck.”

Both men looked at her. She shrugged, as one who has simply expressed an unpalatable truth.

“Listen, if Rochelle turns up again, will you give her my details and ask her to call me?”

Strike gave both of them cards, which they examined with interest. While their attention was thus engaged, he deftly twitched the gum-chewing woman’s News of the World out of the small opening at the bottom of the grille and stowed it under his arm. He then bade them both a cheerful goodbye, and left.

It was a warm spring afternoon. Strike strode on down towards Hammersmith Bridge, its pale sage-green paint and ornate gilding picturesque in the sun. A single swan bobbed along the Thames beside the far bank. The offices and shops seemed a hundred miles away. Turning right, he headed along the walkway beside the river wall and a line of low, riverside terraced buildings, some balconied or draped in wisteria.