The Cuckoo's Calling: List 5

Had she learned how to compose her face into its most photogenic arrangement, to project emotion so beautifully? Or had she simply been a pellucid surface through which her feelings naturally shone?

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.

Somé twitched his head very slightly, a gesture of repudiation and irritation.

But Somé threw up his arm in an involuntary gesture of refutation, of self-protection, then got to his feet, breathing hard, and walked to the photograph wall, where Lula stared out of several pictures, smiling, wistful or serene.

There had been no further calls or texts; she was maintaining the pretense that their last, filthy, volcanic row had changed her irrevocably, stripped away her love and purged her of fury.

Directly opposite the entrance was a handsome built-in mahogany desk, to the right of which was the staircase, which turned immediately out of sight (marble steps, with a brass and wood handrail); the entrance to the lift, with its burnished gold doors, and a solid dark-wood door set into the white- painted wall.

One showed footage from the camera over the front door, affording a circumscribed view of the street; another displayed a similarly deserted view of an underground car park; a third the empty back garden of number 18, which comprised lawn, some fancy planting and the high back wall Strike had hoisted himself up on; and the fourth the interior of the stationary lift.

She was short and very pretty in a pert, girlish way, with a rather flat face, a snub nose and Slavic eyes.

Robin felt a frisson of something—fear, excitement—as Wilson opened the third smoothly painted white front door, with its glassy bullet-sized peephole.

The carpet here was not lush and woolen as in Bestigui’s flat, but made of rough sand-colored jute.

Strike was looking down into the street, and Robin might have been surprised to know that his thoughts were not as clinical or dispassionate as she supposed.

She had flailed, trying to find handholds in the merciless empty air; and then, without time to make amends, to explain, to bequeath or to apologize, without any of the luxuries permitted those who are given notice of their impending demise, she had broken on the road.

Now that he came to think about it, he said, if she was unable to help, it might be just as well for her to be protected from another deluge of press inquiry.

The way she bent her body towards him, the way she pushed straw-like strands of hair out of her pouchy eyes, even the way she held her cigarette; all were grotesquely coquettish.

“You can see it in photos of me when I were younger,” she said, with a hint of pique.

Her bloodshot eyes squinted at nothing; she seemed momentarily mesmerized, lost in contemplation of sums so vast and dazzling that they were beyond her ken, like an image of infinity.

The scale of him, with his drooping eyelids and his bellicose expression, had ensured a small no-go zone around him; people skirted his table on the way to the bathrooms as though it was three times the size.

Perhaps that had been too easy, and certainly too expected, because she had then dumped him for Strike, who, for all his brains, was anathema to Charlotte's family; an uncategorizable mongrel.

They had been gifts from Charlotte on his last birthday: raiment suitable for her fiance; he remembered her beaming at him as he stared at his unfamiliarly well-styled self in a full-length mirror.

Soon afterwards, the relationship had begun to stagger back into the old familiar grievances, into the same mire in which it had foundered before, but which, this time, they had sworn to avoid.

To the left, a small knot of people, all of whom seemed to be dressed in black, were staring in the direction of some powerful light source that Strike could not see, but which illuminated their rapt faces.

The room was long and almost bare, but its ornate cornices, pale blank walls and curtainless windows gave it an atmosphere of mournful grandeur.

She was wearing tight jeans on long, slightly bandy legs, a black vest, several fine gold chains around her neck, rings on her fingers and thumbs, and also what looked like black leather ballet shoes.

Bryony Radford had shown herself a highly unreliable witness, suggestible and mendacious, but she had told him much more than she knew.

Attenuated and angular, with milk-white skin, hair almost as fair, and pale blue eyes set very wide apart, she stretched out her endless legs, in platform shoes that were tied with long silver threads up her calves, and lit a Marlboro Light.

It was hard to tell how big the club was, because of judiciously placed mirrors; at one point, Strike caught a glimpse of himself, head-on, looking like a sharply dressed heavy behind the silvery sylph that was Ciara.

Duffield and his cohorts’ apparent unselfconsciousness was, Strike recognized, nothing but expert artifice; they had, all of them, the hyper-alertness of the prey animal combined with the casual arrogance of predators.

Duffield and his cohorts’ apparent unselfconsciousness was, Strike recognized, nothing but expert artifice; they had, all of them, the hyper-alertness of the prey animal combined with the casual arrogance of predators.

Like other inveterate womanizers Strike had encountered, Duffield’s voice and mannerisms were slightly camp.

The group around him permitted themselves wry, or nervous, smiles, but Ciara said: “Don’t joke, Evan.”

Kolovas-Jones seemed to take an unconscionable amount of time to return to the car; Strike felt as though the Mercedes’ interior was a test tube, simultaneously enclosed and exposed as more and more flashes fired.

Beyond the long windows, with their gauzy gray curtains, Strike could make out the shapes of the photographers still prowling beneath the street light.

“I wonder what my mum would say if I carked it? My parents’ve got an injunction out against me,” Duffield informed Strike.

“Oh, yeah. He thought her mental problems were just attention-seeking, bad behavior. Put on. Burden on her mother. He got a bit smarmier when she started making money, but she didn’t forget.”

And as Strike watched, he thought he saw realization wash over Duffield that the girl of whom he spoke so flippantly, and who he had, by his own account, provoked, taunted and loved, was really and definitely never coming back; that she had been smashed into pulp on snow-covered asphalt, and that she and their relationship were now beyond the possibility of repair.