The Cuckoo's Calling(57)
Most of the emails had been sent to the designer Guy Somé. They held nothing of interest except a tone of cheery confidentiality, and, once, a mention of her most incongruous friendship:
Geegee, will you pleeeeeze make Rochelle something for her birthday, please please? I’ll pay. Something nice (don’t be horrible). For Feb 21st? Pleezy please. Love ya. Cuckoo.
Strike remembered the assertion of LulaMyInspirationForeva that Lula had loved Guy Somé “like a brother.” His statement to the police was the shortest in the file. He had been in Japan for a week and had arrived home on the night of her death. Strike knew that Somé lived within easy walking distance of Kentigern Gardens, but the police appeared to have been satisfied with his assertion that, once home, he had simply gone to bed. Strike had already noted the fact that anyone walking from Charles Street would have approached Kentigern Gardens from the opposite direction to the CCTV camera on Alderbrook Road.
Strike closed the file at last. As he moved laboriously through his office, undressing, removing the prosthesis and unfolding the camp bed, he thought of nothing but his own exhaustion. He fell asleep quickly, lulled by the sounds of humming traffic, the pattering rain and the deathless breath of the city.
2
A LARGE MAGNOLIA TREE STOOD in the front garden of Lucy’s house in Bromley. Later in the spring it would cover the front lawn in what looked like crumpled tissues; now, in April, it was a frothy cloud of white, its petals waxy as coconut shavings. Strike had only visited this house a few times, because he preferred to meet Lucy away from her home, where she always seemed most harried, and to avoid encounters with his brother-in-law, for whom his feelings were on the cooler side of tepid.
Helium-filled balloons, tied to the gate, bobbled in the light breeze. As Strike walked down the steeply sloping front path to the door, the package Robin had wrapped under his arm, he told himself that it would soon be over.
“Where’s Charlotte?” demanded Lucy, short, blonde and round-faced, immediately upon opening the front door.
More big golden foil balloons, this time in the shape of the number seven, filled the hall behind her. Screams that might have denoted excitement or pain were issuing from some unseen region of the house, disturbing the suburban peace.
“She had to go back to Ayr for the weekend,” lied Strike.
“Why?” asked Lucy, standing back to let him in.
“Another crisis with her sister. Where’s Jack?”
“They’re all through here. Thank God it’s stopped raining, or we’d have had to have them in the house,” said Lucy, leading him out into the back garden.
They found his three nephews tearing around the large back lawn with twenty assorted boys and girls in party clothes, who were shrieking their way through some game that involved running to various cricket stumps on which pictures of pieces of fruit had been taped. Parent helpers stood around in the weak sunlight, drinking wine out of plastic cups, while Lucy’s husband, Greg, manned an iPod standing in a dock on a trestle table. Lucy handed Strike a lager, then dashed away from him almost immediately, to pick up the youngest of her three sons, who had fallen hard and was bawling with gusto.
Strike had never wanted children; it was one of the things on which he and Charlotte had always agreed, and it had been one of the reasons other relationships over the years had foundered. Lucy deplored his attitude, and the reasons he gave for it; she was always miffed when he stated life aims that differed from hers, as though he were attacking her decisions and choices.
“All right, there, Corm?” said Greg, who had handed over the control of the music to another father. Strike’s brother-in-law was a quantity surveyor, who never seemed quite sure what tone to take with Strike, and usually settled for a combination of chippiness and aggression that Strike found irksome. “Where’s that gorgeous Charlotte? Not split up again, have you? Ha ha ha. I can’t keep track.”
One of the little girls had been pushed over: Greg hurried off to help one of the other mothers deal with more tears and grass stains. The game roared on in chaos. At last, a winner was declared; there were more tears from the runner-up, who had to be placated with a consolation prize from the black bin bag sitting beside the hydrangeas. A second round of the same game was then announced.
“Hi there!” said a middle-aged matron, sidling up to Strike. “You must be Lucy’s brother!”
“Yeah,” he said.
“We heard all about your poor leg,” she said, staring down at his shoes. “Lucy kept us all posted. Gosh, you wouldn’t even know, would you? I couldn’t even see you limping when you arrived. Isn’t it amazing what they can do these days? I expect you can run faster now than you could before!”
Perhaps she imagined that he had a single carbon-fiber prosthetic blade under his trousers, like a Paralympian. He sipped his lager, and forced a humorless smile.
“Is it true?” she asked, ogling him, her face suddenly full of naked curiosity. “Are you really Jonny Rokeby’s son?”
Some thread of patience, which Strike had not realized was strained to breaking point, snapped.
“Fucked if I know,” he said. “Why don’t you call him and ask?”
She looked stunned. After a few seconds, she walked away from him in silence. He saw her talking to another woman, who glanced towards Strike. Another child fell over, crashing its head on to the cricket stump decorated with a giant strawberry, and emitting an ear-splitting shriek. With all attention focused on the fresh casualty, Strike slipped back inside the house.