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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

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 travelling 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.

Epilogue

Nihil est ab omni

Parte beatum.

Nothing is an unmixed blessing.

Horace, Odes, Book 2

Ten Days Later

The British Army requires of its soldiers a subjugation of individual needs and ties that is almost incomprehensible to the civilian mind. It recognises virtually no claims higher than its own; and the unpredictable crises of human life – births and deaths, weddings, divorces and illness – generally cause no more deviation to the military’s plans than pebbles pinging on the underbelly of a tank. Nevertheless, there are exceptional circumstances, and it was due to one such circumstance that Lieutenant Jonah Agyeman’s second tour of duty in Afghanistan was cut short.

His presence in Britain was urgently required by the Metropolitan Police, and while the army does not generally rate the claims of the Met higher than its own, in this case it was prepared to be helpful. The circumstances surrounding the death of Agyeman’s sister were garnering international attention, and a media storm around a hitherto obscure Sapper was deemed unhelpful both to the individual and the army he served. And so Jonah was put on a plane back to Britain, where the army did its impressive best to shield him from the ravenous press.