The Cuckoo's Calling(46)

“It’s only about fifteen minutes to her flat from Uzi. No, he didn’t take it off. He’s a childish little prick.

“So then, by Duffield’s own account, he saw the paps outside her flat and decided not to go in after all. He told the driver to take him off to Soho, where he let him out. Duffield walked round the corner to his dealer’s flat in d’Arblay Street, where he shot up.”

“Still wearing the wolf’s head?”

“No, he took it off there,” said Wardle. “The dealer, name of Whycliff, is an ex-public schoolboy with a habit way worse than Duffield’s. He gave a full statement agreeing that Duffield had come round at about half past two. It was only the pair of them there, and yeah, I’d take long odds that Whycliff would lie for Duffield, but a woman on the ground floor heard the doorbell ring and says she saw Duffield on the stair.

“Anyway, Duffield left Whycliff’s around four, with the bloody wolf’s head back on, and rambled off towards the place where he thought his car and driver were waiting; except that the driver was gone. The driver claimed a misunderstanding. He thought Duffield was an arsehole; he made that clear when we took his statement. Duffield wasn’t paying him; the car was on Landry’s account.

“So then Duffield, who’s got no money on him, walks all the way to Ciara Porter’s place in Notting Hill. We found a few people who’d seen a man wearing a wolf’s head strolling along relevant streets, and there’s footage of him cadging a free box of matches from a woman in an all-night garage.”

“Can you make out his face?”

“No, because he only shoved the wolf head up to speak to her, and all you can see is its snout. She said it was Duffield, though.

“He got to Porter’s around half four. She let him sleep on the sofa, and about an hour later she got the news about Landry being dead, and woke him up to tell him. Cue histrionics and rehab.”

“You checked for a suicide note?” asked Strike.

“Yeah. There was nothing in the flat, nothing on her laptop, but that wasn’t a surprise. She did it on the spur of the moment, didn’t she? She was bipolar, she’d just argued with that little tosser and it pushed her over—well, you know what I mean.”

Wardle checked his watch, and drained the last of his pint.

“I’m gonna have to go. The wife’ll be pissed off, I told her I’d only be half an hour.”

The over-tanned girls had left without either man noticing. Out on the pavement, both lit up cigarettes.

“I hate this f*cking smoking ban,” said Wardle, zipping his leather jacket up to the neck.

“Have we got a deal, then?” asked Strike.

Cigarette between his lips, Wardle pulled on a pair of gloves.

“I dunno about that.”

“C’mon, Wardle,” said Strike, handing the policeman a card, which Wardle accepted as though it were a joke item. “I’ve given you Brett Fearney.”

Wardle laughed outright.

“Not yet you haven’t.”

He slipped Strike’s card into a pocket, inhaled, blew smoke skywards, then shot the larger man a look compounded of curiosity and appraisal.

“Yeah, all right. If we get Fearney, you can have the file.”





11



“EVAN DUFFIELD’S AGENT SAYS HIS client isn’t taking any further calls or giving any interviews about Lula Landry,” said Robin next morning. “I did make it clear that you’re not a journalist, but he was adamant. And the people in Guy Somé’s office are ruder than Freddie Bestigui’s. You’d think I was trying to get an audience with the Pope.”

“OK,” said Strike. “I’ll see whether I can get at him through Bristow.”

It was the first time that Robin had seen Strike in a suit. He looked, she thought, like a rugby player en route to an international: large, conventionally smart in his dark jacket and subdued tie. He was on his knees, searching through one of the cardboard boxes he had brought from Charlotte’s flat. Robin was averting her gaze from his boxed-up possessions. They were still avoiding any mention of the fact that Strike was living in his office.

“Aha,” he said, finally locating, from amid a pile of his mail, a bright blue envelope: the invitation to his nephew’s party. “Bollocks,” he added, on opening it.

“What’s the matter?”

“It doesn’t say how old he is,” said Strike. “My nephew.”

Robin was curious about Strike’s relations with his family. As she had never been officially informed, however, that Strike had numerous half-brothers and -sisters, a famous father and a mildly infamous mother, she bit back all questions and continued to open the day’s paltry mail.

Strike got up off the floor, replaced the cardboard box in a corner of the inner office and returned to Robin.

“What’s that?” he asked, seeing a sheet of photocopied newsprint on the desk.

“I kept it for you,” she said diffidently. “You said you were glad you’d seen that story about Evan Duffield…I thought you might be interested in this, if you haven’t already seen it.”

It was a neatly clipped article about film producer Freddie Bestigui, taken from the previous day’s Evening Standard.