The Cuckoo's Calling(42)

“Cormoran Strike,” he said, reaching Wardle’s table. Wardle had the kind of hair Strike envied in other men; nobody would ever have called Wardle “pubehead.”

“Yeah, I thought it might be you,” said the policeman, shaking hands. “Anstis said you were a big bloke.”

Strike pulled up a bar stool, and Wardle said, without preamble:

“What’ve you got for me, then?”

“There was a fatal stabbing just off Ealing Broadway last month. Guy called Liam Yates? Police informant, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah, he got a knife in the neck. But we know who did it,” said Wardle, with a patronizing laugh. “Half the crooks in London know. If that’s your information—”

“Don’t know where he is, though, do you?”

With a quick glance at the determinedly unconscious girls, Wardle slid a notebook out of his pocket.

“Go on.”

“There’s a girl who works in Betbusters on the Hackney Road called Shona Holland. She lives in a rented flat two streets away from the bookie’s. She’s got an unwelcome house guest at the moment called Brett Fearney, who used to beat up her sister. Apparently he’s not the sort of bloke you refuse a favor.”

“Got the full address?” asked Wardle, who was scribbling hard.

“I’ve just given you the name of the tenant and half the postcode. How about trying a bit of detective work?”

“And where did you say you got this?” asked Wardle, still jotting rapidly with the notebook balanced under the table on his knee.

“I didn’t,” replied Strike equably, sipping his beer.

“Got some interesting friends, haven’t you?”

“Very. Now, in a spirit of fair exchange…”

Wardle, replacing his notebook in his pocket, laughed.

“What you’ve just given me might be a crock of shit.”

“It isn’t. Play fair, Wardle.”

The policeman eyed Strike for a moment, apparently torn between amusement and suspicion.

“What are you after, then?”

“I told you on the phone: bit of inside information on Lula Landry.”

“Don’t you read the papers?”

“Inside information, I said. My client thinks there was foul play.”

Wardle’s expression hardened.

“Hooked up with a tabloid, have we?”

“No,” said Strike. “Her brother.”

“John Bristow?”

Wardle took a long pull on his pint, his eyes on the upper thighs of the nearest girl, his wedding ring reflecting red lights from the pinball machine.

“Is he still fixated on the CCTV footage?”

“He mentioned it,” admitted Strike.

“We tried to trace them,” said Wardle, “those two black guys. We put out an appeal. Neither of them turned up. No big surprise—a car alarm went off just about the time they would have been passing it—or trying to get into it. Maserati. Very tasty.”

“Reckon they were nicking cars, do you?”

“I don’t say they went there specifically to nick cars; they might have spotted an opportunity, seeing it parked there—what kind of tosser leaves a Maserati parked on the street? But it was nearly two in the morning, the temperature was below zero, and I can’t think of many innocent reasons why two men would choose to meet at that time, in a Mayfair street where neither of them, as far as we could find out, lived.”

“No idea where they came from, or where they went afterwards?”

“We’re pretty sure the one Bristow’s obsessed with, the one who was walking towards her flat just before she fell, got off the number thirty-eight bus in Wilton Street at a quarter past eleven. There’s no saying what he did before he passed the camera at the end of Bellamy Road an hour and a half later. He tanked back past it about ten minutes after Landry jumped, sprinted up Bellamy Road and most probably turned right down Weldon Street. There’s some footage of a guy more or less meeting his description—tall, black, hoodie, scarf round the face—caught on Theobalds Road about twenty minutes later.”

“He made good time if he got to Theobalds Road in twenty minutes,” commented Strike. “That’s out towards Clerkenwell, isn’t it? Must be two, two and a half miles. And the pavements were frozen.”

“Yeah, well, it might not’ve been him. The footage was shit. Bristow thought it was very suspicious that he had his face covered, but it was minus ten that night, and I was wearing a balaclava to work myself. Anyway, whether he was in Theobalds Road or not, nobody ever came forward to say they’d recognized him.”

“And the other one?”

“Sprinted off down Halliwell Street, about two hundred yards down; no idea where he went after that.”

“Or when he entered the area?”

“Could’ve come from anywhere. We haven’t got any other footage of him.”

“Aren’t there supposed to be ten thousand CCTV cameras in London?”

“They aren’t everywhere yet. Cameras aren’t the answer to our problems, unless they’re maintained and monitored. The one in Garriman Street was out, and there aren’t any in Meadowfield Road or Hartley Street. You’re like everyone else, Strike; you want your civil liberties when you’ve told the missus you’re at the office and you’re at a lap-dancing club, but you want twenty-four-hour surveillance on your house when someone’s trying to force your bathroom window open. Can’t have it both ways.”