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Chapters (57)
  1. COPYRIGHT
  2. The Cuckoo’s Calling
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. Prologue
  6. Three Months Later
  7. Part One
  8. 1
  9. 2
  10. 3
  11. 4
  12. 5
  13. 6
  14. 7
  15. Part Two
  16. 1
  17. 2
  18. 3
  19. 4
  20. 5
  21. 6
  22. 7
  23. 8
  24. 9
  25. 10
  26. 11
  27. Part Three
  28. 1
  29. 2
  30. 3
  31. 4
  32. 5
  33. 6
  34. 7
  35. 8
  36. 9
  37. 10
  38. Part Four
  39. 1
  40. 2
  41. 3
  42. 4
  43. 5
  44. 6
  45. 7
  46. 8
  47. 9
  48. 10
  49. 11
  50. 12
  51. 13
  52. 14
  53. Part Five
  54. 1
  55. 2
  56. Epilogue
  57. Ten Days Later

‘Kieran asked me to get it,’ he lied. ‘I forgot. He thinks you left a pair of sunglasses in his car.’

He did not think she was convinced, but after a moment she dictated a number, which he wrote down on the back of one of his own cards.

‘That all?’ she asked aggressively, and she proceeded across the road as far as an island, where the lights changed again. Strike limped after her. She looked both angry and perturbed by his continuing presence.

‘What?’

‘I think you know something you’re not telling me, Rochelle.’

She glared at him.

‘Take this,’ said Strike, pulling a second card out of his overcoat pocket. ‘If you think of anything you’d like to tell me, call, all right? Call that mobile number.’

She did not answer.

‘If Lula was murdered,’ said Strike, while the cars whooshed by them, and rain glittered in the gutters at their feet, ‘and you know something, you could be in danger from the killer too.’

This evoked a tiny, complacent, scathing smile. Rochelle did not think she was in danger. She thought she was safe.

The green man had appeared. Rochelle gave a toss of her dry, wiry hair and moved away across the road, ordinary, squat and plain, still clutching her mobile in one hand and Strike’s card in the other. Strike stood alone on the island, watching her with a feeling of impotence and unease. She might never have sold her story to the newspapers, but he could not believe that she had bought that designer jacket, ugly though he found it, from the proceeds of a job in a shop.

9

The junction of Tottenham Court and Charing Cross Roads was still a scene of devastation, with wide gashes in the road, white hardboard tunnels and hard-hatted builders. Strike traversed the narrow walkways barricaded by metal fences, past the rumbling diggers full of rubble, bellowing workmen and more drills, smoking as he walked.

He felt weary and sore; very conscious of the pain in his leg, of his unwashed body, of the greasy food lying heavily in his stomach. On impulse, he took a detour right up Sutton Row, away from the clatter and grind of the roadworks, and called Rochelle. It went to voicemail, but it was her husky voice that answered: she had not given him a fake number. He left no message; he had already said everything he could think of saying; and yet he was worried. He half wished he had followed her, covertly, to find out where she was living.