The Cuckoo's Calling

1

“I’D HAVE THOUGHT,” SAID ERIC Wardle slowly, looking down at the will in its plastic pocket, “you’d have wanted to show this to your client first.”

“I would, but he’s in Rye,” said Strike, “and this is urgent. I’ve told you, I’m trying to prevent two more murders. We’re dealing with a maniac here, Wardle.”

He was sweating with pain. Even as he sat here, in the sunlit window of the Feathers, urging the policeman to action, Strike was wondering whether he might have dislocated his knee or fractured the small amount of tibia left to him in the fall down Yvette Bristow’s stairwell. He had not wanted to start fiddling with his leg in the taxi, which was now waiting for him at the curb outside. The meter was eating steadily away at the advance Bristow had paid him, of which he would never receive another installment, for today would see an arrest, if only Wardle would rouse himself.

“I grant you, this might show motive…”

“Might?” repeated Strike. “Might? Ten million might constitute a motive? For fuck’s—”

“…but I need evidence that’ll stand up in court, and you haven’t brought me any of that.”

“I’ve just told you where you can find it! Have I been wrong yet? I told you it was a fucking will, and there,” Strike jabbed the plastic sleeve, “it fucking is. Get a warrant!”

Wardle rubbed the side of his handsome face as though he had toothache, frowning at the will.

“Jesus Christ,” said Strike, “how many more times? Tansy Bestigui was on the balcony, she heard Landry say ‘I’ve already done it’…”

“You put yourself on very thin ice there, mate,” said Wardle. “Defense makes mincemeat of lying to suspects. When Bestigui finds out there aren’t any photos, he’s going to deny everything.”

“Let him. She won’t. She’s ripe to tell anyway. But if you’re too much of a pussy to do anything about this, Wardle,” said Strike, who could feel cold sweat on his back and a fiery pain in what remained of his right leg, “and anyone else who was close to Landry turns up dead, I’m gonna go straight to the fucking press. I’ll tell them I gave you every bit of information I had, and that you had every fucking chance to bring this killer in. I’ll make up my fee in selling the rights to my story, and you can pass that message on to Carver for me.

“Here,” he said, pushing across the table a piece of torn paper, on which he had scribbled several six-figure numbers. “Try them first. Now get a fucking warrant.”

He pushed the will across the table to Wardle and slid off the high bar stool. The walk from the pub to the taxi was agony. The more pressure he put on his right leg, the more excruciating the pain became.

Robin had been calling Strike every ten minutes since one o’clock, but he had not picked up. She rang again as he was climbing, with enormous difficulty, up the metal stairs towards the office, heaving himself up with the use of his arms. She heard his ringtone echoing up the stairwell, and hurried out on to the top landing.

“There you are! I’ve been calling and calling, there’s been loads…What’s the matter, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he lied.

“No you’re…What’s happened to you?”

She hastened down the stairs towards him. He was white, and sweaty, and looked, in Robin’s opinion, as though he might be sick.

“Have you been drinking?”

“No I haven’t been bloody drinking!” he snapped. “I’ve—sorry, Robin. In a bit of pain here. I just need to sit down.”

“What’s happened? Let me…”

“I’ve got it. No problem. I can manage.”

Slowly he pulled himself to the top landing and limped very heavily to the old sofa. When he dropped his weight into it, Robin thought she heard something deep in the structure crack, and noted, We’ll need a new one, and then, But I’m leaving.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I fell down some stairs,” said Strike, panting a little, still wearing his coat. “Like a complete tit.”

“What stairs? What happened?”

From the depths of his agony he grinned at her expression, which was part horrified, part excited.

“I wasn’t wrestling anyone, Robin. I just slipped.”

“Oh, I see. You’re a bit—you look a bit pale. You don’t think you could have done something serious, do you? I could get a cab—maybe you should see a doctor.”

“No need for that. Have we still got any of those painkillers lying around?”

She brought him water and paracetamol. He took them, then stretched out his legs, flinched and asked:

“What’s been going on here? Did Graham Hardacre send you a picture?”

“Yes,” she said, hurrying to her computer monitor. “Here.”

With a shunt of her mouse and a click, the picture of Lieutenant Jonah Agyeman filled the monitor.

In silence, they contemplated the face of a young man whose irrefutable handsomeness was not diminished by the overlarge ears he had inherited from his father. The scarlet, black and gold uniform suited him. His grin was slightly lopsided, his cheekbones high, his jaw square and his skin dark with an undertone of red, like freshly brewed tea. He conveyed the careless charm that Lula Landry had had too; the indefinable quality that made the viewer linger over her image.

“He looks like her,” said Robin in a hushed voice.

“Yeah, he does. Anything else been going on?”

Robin seemed to snap back to attention.

“Oh God, yes…John Bristow called half an hour ago, to say he couldn’t get hold of you, and Tony Landry’s called three times.”

“I thought he might. What did he say?”

“He was absolutely—well, the first time, he asked to speak to you, and when I said you weren’t here, he hung up before I could give him your mobile number. The second time, he told me you had to call him straightaway, but slammed down the phone before I could tell him you still weren’t back. But the third time, he was just—well—he was incredibly angry. Screaming at me.”

“He’d better not have been offensive,” said Strike, scowling.

“He wasn’t really. Well, not to me—it was all about you.”

“What did he say?”

“He didn’t make a lot of sense, but he called John Bristow a ‘stupid prick,’ and then he was bawling something about Alison walking out, which he seemed to think had something to do with you, because he was yelling about suing you, and defamation, and all kinds of things.”

“Alison’s left her job?”

“Yes.”

“Did he say where she—no, of course he didn’t, why would he know?” he finished, more to himself than to Robin.

He looked down at his wrist. His cheap watch seemed to have hit something when he had fallen downstairs, because it had stopped at a quarter to one.

“What’s the time?”

“Ten to five.”

“Already?”

“Yes. Do you need anything? I can hang around a bit.”

“No, I want you out of here.”

His tone was such that instead of going to fetch her coat and handbag, Robin remained exactly where she was.

“What are you expecting to happen?”

Strike was busy fiddling with his leg, just below the knee.

“Nothing. You’ve just worked a lot of overtime lately. I’ll bet Matthew will be glad to see you back early for once.”

There was no adjusting the prosthesis through his trouser leg.

“Please, Robin, go,” he said, looking up.

She hesitated, then went to fetch her trench coat and bag.

“Thanks,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”

She left. He waited for the sound of her footsteps on the stairs before rolling up his trouser leg, but heard nothing. The glass door opened, and she reappeared.

“You’re expecting someone to come,” she said, clutching the edge of the door. “Aren’t you?”

“Maybe,” said Strike, “but it doesn’t matter.”

He mustered a smile at her tight, anxious expression.

“Don’t worry about me.” When her expression did not change, he added: “I boxed a bit, in the army, you know.”

Robin half laughed.

“Yes, you mentioned that.”

“Did I?”

“Repeatedly. That night you…you know.”

“Oh. Right. Well, it’s true.”

“But who are you…?”

“Matthew wouldn’t thank me for telling you. Go home, Robin, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

And this time, albeit reluctantly, she left. He waited until he heard the door on to Denmark Street bang shut, then rolled up his trouser leg, detached the prosthesis and examined his swollen knee, and the end of his leg, which was inflamed and bruised. He wondered exactly what he had done to himself, but there was no time to take the problem to an expert tonight.

He half wished, now, that he had asked Robin to fetch him something to eat before she left. Clumsily, hopping from spot to spot, holding on to the desk, the top of the filing cabinet and the arm of the sofa to balance, he managed to make himself a cup of tea. He drank it sitting in Robin’s chair, and ate half a packet of digestives, spending most of the time in contemplation of the face of Jonah Agyeman. The paracetamol had barely touched the pain in his leg.

When he had finished all the biscuits, he checked his mobile. There were many missed calls from Robin, and two from John Bristow.

Of the three people who Strike thought might present themselves at his office this evening, it was Bristow he hoped would make it there first. If the police wanted concrete evidence of murder, his client alone (though he might not realize it) could provide it. If either Tony Landry or Alison Cresswell turned up at his offices, I’ll just have to…then Strike snorted a little in his empty office, because the expression that had occurred to him was “think on my feet.”

But six o’clock came, and then half past, and nobody rang the bell. Strike rubbed more cream into the end of his leg, and reattached the prosthesis, which was agony. He limped through into the inner office, emitting grunts of pain, slumped down in his chair and, giving up, took the false leg off again and slid down, to lay his head on his arms, intending to do no more than rest his tired eyes.

2

FOOTSTEPS ON THE METAL STAIRS. Strike sat bolt upright, not knowing whether he had been asleep five minutes or fifty. Somebody rapped on the glass door.

“Come in, it’s open!” he shouted, and checked that the unattached prosthesis was covered by his trouser leg.

To Strike’s immense relief, it was John Bristow who entered the room, blinking through his thick-lensed glasses and looking agitated.

“Hi, John. Come and sit down.”

But Bristow strode towards him, blotchy-faced, as full of rage as he had been the day that Strike had refused to take the case, and gripped the back of the offered chair instead.

“I told you,” he said, the color waxing and waning in his thin face as he pointed a bony finger at Strike, “I told you quite clearly that I didn’t want you to see my mother without me present!”

“I know you did, John, but—”

“She’s unbelievably upset. I don’t know what you said to her, but I’ve had her crying and sobbing down the phone to me this afternoon!”

“I’m sorry to hear that; she didn’t seem to mind my questions when—”

“She’s in a dreadful state!” shouted Bristow, his buck teeth glinting. “How dared you go and see her without me? How dared you?”

“Because, John, as I told you after Rochelle’s funeral, I think we’re dealing with a murderer who might kill again,” said Strike. “The situation’s dangerous, and I want an end to it.”

“You want an end to it? How do you think I feel?” shouted Bristow, and his voice cracked and became a falsetto. “Do you have any idea of how much damage you’ve done? My mother’s devastated, and now my girlfriend seems to have vanished into thin air, which Tony is blaming on you! What have you done to Alison? Where is she?”

“I don’t know. Have you tried calling her?”

“She’s not picking up. What the hell’s been going on? I’ve been on a wild goose chase all day, and I come back—”

“Wild goose chase?” repeated Strike, surreptitiously shifting his leg to keep the prosthesis upright.

Bristow threw himself into the seat opposite, breathing hard and squinting at Strike in the bright evening sun streaming in through the window behind him.

“Somebody,” he said furiously, “called my secretary up this morning, purporting to be a very important client of ours in Rye, who was requesting an urgent meeting. I traveled all the way there to find that he’s out of the country, and nobody had called me at all. Would you mind,” he added, raising a hand to shield his eyes, “pulling down that blind? I can’t see a thing.”

Strike tugged the cord, and the blind fell with a clatter, casting them both into a cool, faintly striped gloom.

“That’s a very strange story,” said Strike. “It’s almost as though somebody wanted to lure you away from town.”

Bristow did not reply. He was glaring at Strike, his chest heaving.

“I’ve had enough,” he said abruptly. “I’m terminating this investigation. You can keep all the money I’ve given you. I’ve got to think of my mother.”

Strike slid his mobile out of his pocket, pressed a couple of buttons and laid it on his lap.

“Don’t you even want to know what I found today in your mother’s wardrobe?”

“You went—you went inside my mother’s wardrobe?”

“Yeah. I wanted to have a look inside those brand-new handbags Lula got, the day she died.”

Bristow began to stutter:

“You—you…”

“The bags have got detachable linings. Bizarre idea, isn’t it? Hidden under the lining of the white bag was a will, handwritten by Lula on your mother’s blue notepaper, and witnessed by Rochelle Onifade. I’ve given it to the police.”

Bristow’s mouth fell open. For several seconds he seemed unable to speak. Finally he whispered:

“But…what did it say?”

“That she was leaving everything, her entire estate, to her brother, Lieutenant Jonah Agyeman of the Royal Engineers.”

“Jonah…who?”

“Go and look on the computer monitor outside. You’ll find a picture there.”

Bristow got up and moved like a sleepwalker towards the computer in the next room. Strike watched the screen illuminate as Bristow shifted the mouse. Agyeman’s handsome face shone out of the monitor, with his sardonic smile, pristine in his dress uniform.

“Oh my God,” said Bristow.

He returned to Strike and lowered himself back into the chair, gaping at the detective.

“I—I can’t believe it.”

“That’s the man who was on the CCTV footage,” said Strike, “running away from the scene the night that Lula died. He was staying in Clerkenwell with his widowed mother while he was on leave. That’s why he was hotfooting it along Theobalds Road twenty minutes later. He was heading home.”

Bristow drew breath in a loud gasp.

“They all said I was deluded,” he almost shouted. “But I wasn’t bloody deluded at all!”

“No, John, you weren’t deluded,” said Strike. “Not deluded. More like bat-shit insane.”

Through the shaded window came the sounds of London, alive at all hours, rumbling and growling, part man, part machine. There was no noise inside the room but Bristow’s ragged breathing.

“Excuse me?” he said, ludicrously polite. “What did you call me?”

Strike smiled.

“I said you’re bat-shit insane. You killed your sister, got away with it, and then asked me to reinvestigate her death.”

“You—you cannot be serious.”

“Oh yeah, I can. It’s been obvious to me from the start that the person who benefits most from Lula’s death is you, John. Ten million quid, once your mother gives up the ghost. Not to be sniffed at, is it? Especially as I don’t think you’ve got much more than your salary, however much you bang on about your trust fund. Albris shares are hardly worth the paper they’re written on these days, are they?”

Bristow gaped at him for several long moments; then, sitting up a little straighter, he glanced at the camp bed propped in the corner.

“Coming from a virtual down-and-out who sleeps in his office, I find that a laughable assertion.” Bristow’s voice was calm and derisory, but his breathing was abnormally fast.

“I know you’ve got much more money than I have,” said Strike. “But, as you rightly point out, that’s not saying much. And I will say for myself that I haven’t yet stooped to embezzling from clients. How much of Conway Oates’s money did you steal before Tony realized what you were up to?”

“Oh, I’m an embezzler too, am I?” said Bristow, with an artificial laugh.

“Yeah, I think so,” said Strike. “Not that it matters to me. I don’t care whether you killed Lula because you needed to replace the money you’d nicked, or because you wanted her millions, or because you hated her guts. The jury will want to know, though. They’re always suckers for motive.”

Bristow’s knee had begun jiggling up and down again.

“You’re unhinged,” he said, with another forced laugh. “You’ve found a will in which she leaves everything not to me, but to that man.” He pointed towards the outer room, where he had viewed Jonah’s picture. “You tell me that it was that same man who was walking towards Lula’s flat, on camera, the night she fell to her death, and who was seen sprinting back past the camera ten minutes later. And yet you accuse me. Me.”

“John, you knew before you ever came to see me that it was Jonah on that CCTV footage. Rochelle told you. She was there in Vashti when Lula called Jonah and arranged to meet him that night, and she witnessed a will leaving him everything. She came to you, told you everything and started blackmailing you. She wanted money for a flat and some expensive clothes, and in return she promised to keep her mouth shut about the fact that you weren’t Lula’s heir.

“Rochelle didn’t realize you were the killer. She thought Jonah pushed Lula out of the window. And she was bitter enough, after seeing a will in which she didn’t feature, and being dumped in that shop on the last day of Lula’s life, not to care about the killer walking free as long as she got the money.”

“This is utter rubbish. You’re out of your mind.”

“You put every obstacle you could in the way of me finding Rochelle,” Strike went on, as though he had not heard Bristow. “You pretended you didn’t know her name, or where she lived; you acted incredulous that I thought she might be useful to the inquiry and you took photos off Lula’s laptop so that I couldn’t see what she looked like. True, she could have pointed me directly to the man you were trying to frame for murder, but on the other hand, she knew that there was a will that would deprive you of your inheritance, and your number one objective was to keep that will quiet while you tried to find and destroy it. Bit of a joke, really, it being in your mother’s wardrobe all along.

“But even if you’d destroyed it, John, what then? For all you knew, Jonah himself knew that he was Lula’s heir. And there was another witness to the fact that there was a will, though you didn’t know it: Bryony Radford, the makeup artist.”

Strike saw Bristow’s tongue flick around his mouth, moistening his lips. He could feel the lawyer’s fear.

“Bryony doesn’t want to admit that she went snooping through Lula’s things, but she saw that will at Lula’s place, before Lula had time to hide it. Bryony’s dyslexic, though. She thought ‘Jonah’ said ‘John.’ She tied that in with Ciara saying that Lula was leaving her brother everything, and concluded that she needn’t tell anybody what she’d read on the sly, because you were getting the money anyway. You’ve had the luck of the devil at times, John.

“But I can see how—to a twisted mind like yours—the best solution to your predicament was to fit Jonah up for murder. If he was doing life, it wouldn’t matter whether or not the will ever surfaced—or whether he, or anyone else, knew about it—because the money would come to you in any case.”

“Ridiculous,” said Bristow breathlessly. “You ought to give up detecting and try fantasy writing, Strike. You haven’t got a shred of proof for anything you’re saying—”

“Yes I have.” Strike cut across him, and Bristow stopped talking immediately, his pallor visible through the gloom. “The CCTV footage.”

“That footage shows Jonah Agyeman running from the scene of the killing, as you’ve just acknowledged!”

“There was another man caught on camera.”

“So he had an accomplice—a lookout.”

“I wonder what defending counsel will say is wrong with you, John?” asked Strike softly. “Narcissism? Some kind of God complex? You think you’re completely untouchable, don’t you, a genius who makes the rest of us look like chimps? The second man running from the scene wasn’t Jonah’s accomplice, or his lookout, or a car thief. He wasn’t even black. He was a white man in black gloves. He was you.”

“No,” said Bristow. The one word throbbed with panic; but then, with an almost visible effort, he hitched a contemptuous smile back on to his face. “How can it be me? I was in Chelsea with my mother. She told you so. Tony saw me there. I was in Chelsea.”

“Your mother is a Valium-addicted invalid who was asleep most of that day. You didn’t get back to Chelsea until after you’d killed Lula. I think you went into your mother’s room in the small hours, reset her clock and then woke her up, pretending it was dinnertime. You think you’re a criminal genius, John, but that’s been done a million times before, though rarely with such an easy mark. Your mother hardly knows what day it is, the amount of opiates she’s got in her system.”

“I was in Chelsea all day,” repeated Bristow, his knee jiggling up and down. “All day, except for when I nipped into the office for files.”

“You took a hoodie and gloves out of the flat beneath Lula’s. You’re wearing them in the CCTV footage,” said Strike, ignoring the interruption, “and that was a big mistake. That hoodie was unique. There was only one of them in the world; it had been customized for Deeby Macc by Guy Somé. It could only have come out of the flat beneath Lula’s, so we know that’s where you’d been.”

“You have absolutely no proof,” said Bristow. “I am waiting for proof.”

“Of course you are,” said Strike, simply. “An innocent man wouldn’t be sitting here listening to me. He’d have stormed out by now. But don’t worry. I’ve got proof.”

“You can’t have,” said Bristow hoarsely.

“Motive, means and opportunity, John. You had the lot.

“Let’s start at the beginning. You don’t deny that you went to Lula’s first thing in the morning…”

“No, of course not.”

“…because people saw you there. But I don’t think Lula ever gave you the contract with Somé that you used to get upstairs to see her. I think you’d swiped that at some point previously. Wilson waved you up, and minutes later you were having a shouting match with Lula on her doorstep. You couldn’t pretend that didn’t happen, because the cleaner overheard it. Fortunately for you, Lechsinka’s English is so bad that she confirmed your version of the row: that you were furious that Lula had reunited with her freeloading druggie boyfriend.

“But I think that row was really about Lula’s refusal to give you money. All her sharper friends have told me you had quite the reputation for coveting her fortune, but you must have been particularly desperate for a handout that day, to force your way in and start shouting like that. Had Tony noticed a lack of funds in Conway Oates’s account? Did you need to replace it urgently?”

“Baseless speculation,” said Bristow, his knee still jerking up and down.

“We’ll see whether it’s baseless or not once we get to court,” said Strike.

“I’ve never denied that Lula and I argued.”

“After she refused to hand over a check, and slammed the door in your face, you went back down the stairs, and there was the door to Flat Two standing open. Wilson and the alarm repairman were busy looking at the keypad, and Lechsinka was somewhere in there by then—maybe vacuuming, because that would have helped mask the noise of you creeping into the hall behind the two men.

“It wasn’t that much of a risk, really. If they’d turned and seen you, you could have pretended you’d come in to thank Wilson for letting you up. You crossed the hall while they were busy with the alarm fuse box, and you hid somewhere in that big flat. There’s loads of space. Empty cupboards. Under the bed.”

Bristow was shaking his head in silent denial. Strike continued in the same matter-of-fact tone:

“You must have heard Wilson telling Lechsinka to set the alarm to 1966. Finally, Lechsinka, Wilson and the Securibell guy left, and you had sole possession of the flat. Unfortunately for you, however, Lula had now left the building, so you couldn’t go back upstairs and try and bully her into coughing up.”

“Total fantasy,” said the lawyer. “I never set foot in Flat Two in my life. I left Lula’s and went in to the office to pick up files—”

“From Alison, isn’t that what you said, the first time we went through your movements that day?” asked Strike.

Patches of pink blossomed again up Bristow’s stringy neck. After a small hesitation, he cleared his throat and said:

“I don’t remember whether—I just know that I was very quick; I wanted to get back to my mother.”

“What effect do you think it’s going to have in court, John, when Alison takes the stand and tells the jury how you asked her to lie for you? You played the devastated bereaved brother in front of her, and then asked her out to dinner, and the poor bitch was so delighted to have a chance to look like a desirable female in front of Tony that she agreed. A couple of dates later, you persuaded her to say she saw you at the office on the morning before Lula died. She thought you were just overanxious and paranoid, didn’t she? She believed that you already had a cast-iron alibi from her adored Tony, later in the day. She didn’t think it mattered if she told a little white lie to calm you down.

“But Alison wasn’t there that day, John, to give you any files. Cyprian sent her off to Oxford the moment she got to work, to look for Tony. You became a bit nervous, after Rochelle’s funeral, when you realized I knew all about that, didn’t you?”

“Alison isn’t very bright,” said Bristow slowly, his hands washing themselves in dumb show, and his knee jiggling up and down. “She must have confused the days. She clearly misunderstood me. I never asked her to say she saw me at the office. It’s her word against mine. Maybe she’s trying to revenge herself on me, because we’ve split up.”

Strike laughed.

“Oh, you’re definitely dumped, John. After my assistant rang you this morning to lure you to Rye—”

“Your assistant?”

“Yeah, of course; I didn’t want you around while I searched your mother’s flat, did I? Alison helped us out with the name of the client. I rang her, you see, and told her everything, including the fact that I’ve got proof that Tony’s sleeping with Ursula May, and that you’re about to be arrested for murder. That seemed to convince her that she ought to look for a new boyfriend and a new job. I hope she’s gone to her mother’s place in Sussex—that’s what I told her to do. You’ve been keeping Alison close because you thought she was your fail-safe alibi, and because she’s a conduit to knowing what Tony, whom you fear, is thinking. But lately, I’ve been getting worried that she might outlive her usefulness to you, and fall off something high.”

Bristow tried for another scathing laugh, but the sound was artificial and hollow.

“So it turns out that nobody saw you nip into your office for files that morning,” continued Strike. “You were still hiding out in the middle flat at number eighteen, Kentigern Gardens.”

“I wasn’t there. I was in Chelsea, at my mother’s,” said Bristow.

“I don’t think you were planning to murder Lula at that point,” Strike continued regardless. You probably just had some idea of waylaying her again when she came back. Nobody was expecting you at the office that day, because you were supposed to be working from home, to keep your sick mother company. There was a full fridge and you knew how to get in and out without setting off the alarm. You had a clear view of the street, so if Deeby Macc and entourage were to appear, you had plenty of time to get out of there, and walk downstairs with some cock-and-bull story about having been waiting for your sister at her place. The only remote risk was the possibility of deliveries into the flat; but that massive vase of roses arrived without anyone noticing you hiding in there, didn’t it?

“I expect the idea of the murder started to germinate then, all those hours you were alone, in all that luxury. Did you start to imagine how wonderful it would be if Lula, who you were sure was intestate, died? You must’ve known your sick mother would be a much softer touch, especially once you were her only remaining child. And that in itself must have felt great, John, didn’t it? The idea of being the only child, at long last? And never losing out again to a better-looking, more lovable sibling?”

Even in the thickening gloom, he could see Bristow’s jutting teeth, and the intense stare of the weak eyes.

“No matter how much you’ve fawned over your mother, and played the devoted son, you’ve never come first with her, have you? She always loved Charlie most, didn’t she? Everyone did, even Uncle Tony. And the moment Charlie had gone, when you might have expected to be the center of attention at last, what happens? Lula arrives, and everyone starts worrying about Lula, looking after Lula, adoring Lula. Your mother hasn’t even got a picture of you by her deathbed. Just Charlie and Lula. Just the two she loved.”

“Fuck you,” snarled Bristow. “Fuck you, Strike. What do you know about anything, with your whore of a mother? What was it she died of, the clap?”

“Nice,” said Strike, appreciatively. “I was going to ask you whether you looked into my personal life when you were trying to find some patsy to manipulate. I bet you thought I’d be particularly sympathetic to poor bereaved John Bristow, didn’t you, what with my own mother having died young, in suspicious circumstances? You thought you’d be able to play me like a fucking violin…

“But never mind, John. If your defense team can’t find a personality disorder for you, I expect they’ll argue that your upbringing’s to blame. Unloved. Neglected. Overshadowed. Always felt hard done by, haven’t you? I noticed it the first day I met you, when you burst into those moving tears at the memory of Lula being carried up the drive into your home, into your life. Your parents hadn’t even taken you with them to get her, had they? They left you at home like a pet dog, the son who wasn’t enough for them once Charlie had died; the son who was about to come a poor second all over again.”

“I don’t have to listen to this,” whispered Bristow.

“You’re free to leave,” said Strike, watching the place where he could no longer make out eyes in the deepening shadows behind Bristow’s glasses. “Why not leave?”

But the lawyer merely sat there, one knee still jiggling up and down, his hands sliding over each other, waiting to hear Strike’s proof.

“Was it easier the second time?” the detective asked quietly. “Was it easier killing Lula than killing Charlie?”

He saw the pale teeth, bared as Bristow opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

“Tony knows you did it, doesn’t he? All that bullshit about the hard, cruel things he said after Charlie died. Tony was there; he saw you cycling away from the place where you’d pushed Charlie over. Did you dare him to ride close to the edge? I knew Charlie: he couldn’t resist a dare. Tony saw Charlie dead at the bottom of that quarry, and he told your parents that he thought you’d done it, didn’t he? That’s why your father hit him. That’s why your mother fainted. That’s why Tony was thrown out of the house after Charlie died: not because Tony said that your mother had raised delinquents, but because he told her she was raising a psychopath.”

“This is—No,” croaked Bristow. “No!”

“But Tony couldn’t face a family scandal. He kept quiet. Panicked a bit when he heard they were adopting a little girl, though, didn’t he? He called them and tried to stop it happening. He was right to be worried, wasn’t he? I think you’ve always been a bit scared of Tony. What a fucking irony that he backed himself into a corner where he had to give you an alibi for Lula’s murder.”

Bristow said nothing at all. He was breathing very fast.

“Tony needed to pretend he was somewhere, anywhere, other than shacked up in a hotel with Cyprian May’s wife that day, so he said he doubled back to London to go and visit his sick sister. Then he realized that both you and Lula were supposed to have been there at the same time.

“His niece was dead, so she couldn’t contradict him; but he had no choice but to pretend he saw you through the study door, and didn’t talk to you. And you backed him up. Both of you, lying through your teeth, wondering what the other one was up to, but too scared to question each other. I think Tony kept telling himself he’d wait until your mother died before he confronted you. Perhaps that’s how he kept his conscience quiet. But he’s still been worried enough to ask Alison to keep an eye on you. And meanwhile, you’ve been feeding me that bullshit about Lula hugging you, and the touching reconciliation before she returned home.”

“I was there,” said Bristow, in a rasping whisper. “I was in my mother’s flat. If Tony wasn’t there, that’s his affair. You can’t prove I wasn’t.”

“I’m not in the business of proving negatives, John. All I’m saying is, you’ve now lost every alibi except your Valium-addled mother.

“But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that while Lula’s visiting your groggy mother, and Tony’s off fucking Ursula in a hotel somewhere, you’re still hiding out in Flat Two, and starting to think out a much more daring solution to your cash-flow problem. You wait. At some point you put on the black leather gloves that have been left in the wardrobe for Deeby, as a precaution against fingerprints. That looks fishy. Almost as though you’re starting to contemplate violence.

“Finally, in the early afternoon, Lula comes back home, but unfortunately for you—as you no doubt saw through the peephole of the flat—she’s with friends.

“And now,” said Strike, his voice hardening, “I think the case against you starts to become serious. A defense of manslaughter—it was an accident, we tussled a bit and she fell over the balcony—might have held water if you hadn’t stayed downstairs all that time, while you knew she had visitors. A man with nothing worse on his mind than bullying his sister into giving him a large check might, just might, wait until she was alone again; but you’d already tried that and it hadn’t worked. So why not go up there when she was, perhaps, in a better mood, and have a go with the restraining presence of her friends in the next room? Maybe she’d have given you something just to get rid of you?”

Strike could almost feel the waves of fear and hatred emanating from the figure fading into the shadows across the desk.

“But instead,” he said, “you waited. You waited all that evening, having watched her leave the building. You must have been pretty tightly wound by then. You’d had time to formulate a rough plan. You’d been watching the street; you knew exactly who was in the building, and who wasn’t; you’d worked out that there might just be a means of getting clean away, without anyone being the wiser. And let’s not forget—you’d killed before. That makes a difference.”

Bristow made a sharp movement, little more than a jerk; Strike tensed, but Bristow remained stationary, and Strike was acutely aware of the unattached prosthesis merely resting against his leg.

“You were watching out of the window and you saw Lula come home alone, but the paparazzi were still out there. You must have despaired at that point, did you?

“But then, miraculously, as though the universe really did want nothing more than to help John Bristow get what he wanted, they all left. I’m pretty sure that Lula’s regular driver tipped them off. He’s a man who’s keen to forge good contacts with the press.

“So now the street’s empty. The moment has arrived. You pulled on Deeby’s hoodie. Big mistake. But you must admit, with all the lucky breaks you got that night, something had to go wrong.

“And then—and I’m going to give you full marks for this, because it puzzled me for a long time—you took a few of those white roses out of their vase, didn’t you? You wiped the ends dry—not quite as thoroughly as you should have done, but pretty well—and you carried them out of Flat Two, leaving the door ajar again, and climbed the stairs to your sister’s flat.

“You didn’t notice that you’d left a few little drops of water from the roses, by the way. Wilson slipped on them, later.

“You got up to Lula’s flat, and you knocked. When she looked through the peephole, what did she see? White roses. She’d been standing on her balcony, with the windows wide open, watching and waiting for her long-lost brother to come down the street, but somehow he seems to have got in without her seeing him! In her excitement, she throws open the door—and you’re in.”

Bristow was completely still. Even his knee had stopped jiggling.

“And you killed her, just the same way you killed Charlie, just the same way you later killed Rochelle: you pushed her, hard and fast—maybe you lifted her—but she was caught by surprise, wasn’t she, just like the others?

“You were yelling at her for not giving you money, for depriving you, just as you’ve always been deprived, haven’t you, John, of your portion of parental love.

“She yelled at you that you wouldn’t get a penny, even if you killed her. As you fought, and you forced her across her sitting room towards that balcony and the drop, she told you she had another brother, a real brother, and that he was on his way, and that she’d made a will in his favor.

“‘It’s too late, I’ve already done it!’ she screamed. And you called her a lying fucking bitch, and you threw her down into the street to her death.”

Bristow was barely breathing.

“I think you must have dropped the roses at her front door. You ran back out, picked them up, sprinted down the stairs and back into Flat Two, where you rammed them back into their vase. Fuck me, you were lucky. That vase got smashed accidentally by a copper, and those roses were the one clue to show that someone had been in that flat; you can’t have replaced them the way the florist had arranged them, not when you knew you had minutes to get clear of that building.

“The next bit took nerve. I doubt you expected anyone to raise the alarm straight away, but Tansy Bestigui had been on the balcony below you. You heard her screaming, and realized you had even less time to get out of there than you’d been counting on. Wilson ran out to the street to check Lula, and then, waiting at the door, staring through the peephole, you saw him run upstairs to the top floor.

“You reset the alarm, let yourself out of the flat and edge down the stairwell. The Bestiguis are bellowing at each other in their own flat. You run downstairs—heard by Freddie Bestigui, though he had other preoccupations at the time—the lobby’s empty—you run through it and out on to the street, where it’s snowing thick and fast.

“And you ran, didn’t you; hoodie up, face covered, gloved hands pumping. And at the end of the street, you saw another man running, running for his life, away from the corner where he’d just seen his sister fall to her death. You didn’t know each other. I don’t think you had a thought to spare for who he was, not then. You ran as fast as you could, in Deeby Macc’s borrowed clothes, past the CCTV camera that caught you both on film, and off down Halliwell Street, where your luck caught up with you again, and there were no more cameras.

“I expect you chucked the hoodie and the gloves in a bin and grabbed a taxi, did you? The police never bothered looking for a suited white man who was out and about that night. You went home to your mother’s, you made food for her, you changed the time on her clock and you woke her up. She’s still convinced that the two of you were talking about Charlie—nice touch, John—at the precise moment that Lula plunged to her death.

“You got away with it, John. You could have afforded to keep paying Rochelle for life. With your luck, Jonah Agyeman might even have died in Afghanistan; you’ve been getting your hopes up every time you’ve seen a picture of a black soldier in the paper, haven’t you? But you didn’t want to trust to luck. You’re a twisted, arrogant fucker, and you thought you could arrange things better.”

There was a long silence.

“No proof,” said Bristow, at last. It was so dark in the office now that he was barely more than a silhouette to Strike. “No proof at all.”

“I’m afraid you’re wrong there,” said Strike. “The police should have got a warrant by now.”

“For what?” asked Bristow, and he finally felt confident enough to laugh. “To search the bins of London for a hoodie that you say was thrown away three months ago?”

“No, to look in your mother’s safe, of course.”

Strike was wondering whether he could raise the blind quickly enough. He was a long way from a light switch, and the office was very dark, but he did not want to take his eyes off Bristow’s shadowy figure. He was sure that this triple murderer would not have come unprepared.

“I’ve given them a few combinations to try,” Strike went on. “If they don’t work, I suppose they’ll have to call in an expert to open it. But if I were a betting man, I’d put my money on 030483.”

A rustle, the blur of a pale hand, and Bristow lunged. The knife point grazed Strike’s chest as he slammed Bristow sideways; the lawyer slid off the desk, rolled over and attacked again, and this time Strike fell over backwards in his chair, with Bristow on top of him, trapped between the wall and the desk.

Strike had one of Bristow’s wrists, but he couldn’t see where the knife was: all was darkness, and he threw a punch that hit Bristow hard under the chin, knocking his head back and sending his glasses flying; Strike punched again, and Bristow hit the wall; Strike tried to sit up, with Bristow’s lower body pinning his agonizing half-leg to the ground, and the knife struck him hard in the upper arm: he felt it pierce the flesh, and the flow of warm blood, and the white-hot stinging pain.

He saw Bristow raise his arm in dim silhouette against the faint window; forcing himself up against the lawyer’s weight, he deflected the second knife blow, and with an almighty effort managed to throw the lawyer off, and the prosthesis slid out of his trouser leg as he tried to pin Bristow down, with his hot blood spattering over everything, and no knowledge of where the knife was now.

The desk was knocked over by Strike’s wrestling weight, and then, as he knelt with his good knee on Bristow’s thin chest, groping with his good hand to find the knife, light split his retinas in two, and a woman was screaming.

Dazzled, Strike glimpsed the knife rising to his stomach; he seized the prosthetic leg beside him and brought it down like a club on Bristow’s face, once, twice—

“Stop! Cormoran, STOP! YOU’RE GOING TO KILL HIM!”

Strike rolled off Bristow, who was no longer moving, dropped the prosthetic leg and lay on his back, clutching his bleeding arm beside the overturned desk.

“I thought,” he panted, unable to see Robin, “I told you to go home?”

But she was already on the telephone.

“Police and ambulance!”

“And get a taxi,” Strike croaked from the floor, his throat dry from so much talking. “I’m not traveling to hospital with this piece of shit.”

He stretched out an arm and retrieved the mobile that lay several feet away. The face was smashed, but it was still recording.