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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

‘Anyone find it strange that he was upset about a bunch of flowers, when his neighbour’s lying in the street with her head smashed in?’

‘He’s one obnoxious fucker, Bestigui,’ said Wardle, with feeling. ‘Used to people jumping to attention when he speaks. He tried treating all of us like staff, till he realised that wasn’t clever.

‘But the shouting wasn’t really about the flowers. He was trying to drown out his wife, give her a chance to pull herself together. He kept forcing his way in between her and anyone who wanted to question her. Big guy as well, old Freddie.’

‘What was he worried about?’

‘That the longer she bawled and shook like a frozen whippet, the more bloody obvious it became that she’d been doing coke. He must’ve known it was lying around somewhere in the flat. He can’t have been delighted to have the Met come bursting in. So he tried to distract everyone with a tantrum about his five-hundred-quid floral arrangement.

‘I read somewhere that he’s divorcing her. I’m not surprised. He’s used to the press tiptoeing around him, because he’s such a litigious bastard; he can’t have enjoyed all the attention he got after Tansy shot her mouth off. The press made hay while they could. Rehashed old stories about him throwing plates at underlings. Punches in meetings. They say he paid his last wife a massive lump sum to stop her talking about his sex life in court. He’s pretty well known as a prize shit.’

‘You didn’t fancy him as a suspect?’

‘Oh, we fancied him a lot; he was on the spot and he’s got a rep for violence. It never looked likely, though. If his wife knew that he’d done it, or that he’d been out of the flat at the moment Landry fell, I’m betting she’d have told us so: she was out of control when we got there. But she said he’d been in bed, and the bedclothes were disarranged and looked slept in.

‘Plus, if he’d managed to sneak out of the flat without her realising it, and gone up to Landry’s place, we’re left with the problem of how he got past Wilson. He can’t have taken the lift, so he’d have passed Wilson in the stairwell, coming down.’

‘So the timings rule him out?’

Wardle hesitated.