The Cuckoo's Calling(85)

“He’s paying me a double wage, actually.”

“Oh. Well he’s probably a bit more generous now he’s got Cuckoo’s money to play with.”

Somé chewed on a fingernail, and Strike was reminded of Kieran Kolovas-Jones; the designer and driver were similar in build, too, small but well proportioned.

“All right, I’m being a bitch,” said Somé, taking his nail out of his mouth. “I never liked John Bristow. He was always on Cuckoo’s case about something. Get a life. Get out of the closet. Have you heard him rhapsodizing about his mummy? Have you met his girlfriend? Talk about a beard: I think she’s got one.”

He rattled out the words in one nervy, spiteful stream, pausing to open a hidden drawer in the desk, from which he took out a packet of menthol cigarettes. Strike had already noticed that Somé’s nails were bitten to their quicks.

“Her family was the whole reason she was so f*cked up. I used to tell her, ‘Drop them, sweetie, move on.’ But she wouldn’t. That was Cuckoo for you, always flogging a dead horse.”

He offered Strike one of the pure white cigarettes, which the detective declined, before lighting one with an engraved Zippo. As he flipped the lid of the lighter shut, Somé said:

“I wish I’d thought of calling in a private detective. It never occurred to me. I’m glad someone’s done it. I just cannot believe she committed suicide. My therapist says that’s denial. I’m having therapy twice a week, not that it makes any f*cking difference. I’d be snaffling Valium like Lady Bristow if I could still design when I’m on it, but I tried it the week after Cuckoo died and I was like a zombie. I suppose it got me through the funeral.”

Jingling and rattling from the spiral staircase announced the reappearance of Trudie, who emerged through the floor in jerky stages. She laid upon the desk a black lacquered tray, on which stood two silver filigree Russian tea glasses, in each of which was a pale green steaming concoction with wilted leaves floating in it. There was also a plate of wafer-thin biscuits that looked as though they might be made of charcoal. Strike remembered his pie and mash and his mahogany-colored tea at the Phoenix with nostalgia.

“Thanks, Trudie. And get me an ashtray, darling.”

The girl hesitated, clearly on the verge of protesting.

“Just do it,” snarled Somé. “I’m the f*cking boss, I’ll burn the building down if I want to. Pull the f*cking batteries out of the fire alarms. But get the ashtray first.

“The alarm went off last week, and set off all the sprinklers downstairs,” Somé explained to Strike. “So now the backers don’t want anyone smoking in the building. They can stick that one right up their tight little bumholes.”

He inhaled deeply, then exhaled through his nostrils.

“Don’t you ask questions? Or do you just sit there looking scary until someone blurts out a confession?”

“We can do questions,” said Strike, pulling out his notebook and pen. “You were abroad when Lula died, weren’t you?”

“I’d just got back, a couple of hours before.” Somé’s fingers twitched a little on the cigarette. “I’d been in Tokyo, hardly any sleep for eight days. Touched down at Heathrow at about ten thirty with the most f*cking appalling jet lag. I can’t sleep on planes. I wanna be awake if I’m going to crash.”

“How did you get home from the airport?”

“Cab. Elsa had f*cked up my car booking. There should’ve been a driver there to meet me.”

“Who’s Elsa?”

“The girl I sacked for f*cking up my car booking. It was the last thing I f*cking wanted, to have to find a cab at that time of night.”

“Do you live alone?”

“No. By midnight I was tucked up in bed with Viktor and Rolf. My cats,” he added with a flicker of a grin. “I took an Ambien, slept for a few hours, then woke up at five in the morning. I switched on Sky News from the bed, and there was a man in a horrible sheepskin hat, standing in the snow in Cuckoo’s street, saying she was dead. The ticker-tape across the bottom of the screen was saying it too.”

Somé inhaled heavily on the cigarette, and white smoke curled out of his mouth with his next words.

“I nearly f*cking died. I thought I was still asleep, or that I’d woken up in the wrong f*cking dimension or something…I started calling everyone…Ciara, Bryony…all their phones were engaged. And all the time I was watching the screen, thinking they’d flash up something saying there had been a mistake, that it wasn’t her. I kept praying it was the bag lady. Rochelle.”

He paused, as though he expected some comment from Strike. The latter, who had been making notes as Somé spoke, asked, still writing:

“You know Rochelle, do you?”

“Yeah. Cuckoo brought her in here once. In it for all she could get.”

“What makes you say that?”

“She hated Cuckoo. Jealous as f*ck; I could see it, even if Cuckoo couldn’t. She was in it for the freebies, she didn’t give a monkey’s whether Cuckoo lived or died. Lucky for her, as it turned out…

“So, the longer I watched the news, I knew there wasn’t a mistake. I fell a-f*cking-part.”

His fingers trembled a little on the snow-white stick he was sucking.