8
STRIKE, FOREWARNED, WAS NOWHERE NEAR as surprised to see Kieran Kolovas-Jones as the driver was to see him. Kolovas-Jones was holding open the left-hand passenger door, faintly lit by the car’s interior light, but Strike spotted his momentary change of expression when he laid eyes on Ciara’s companion.
“Evening,” said Strike, moving around the car to open his own door and get in beside Ciara.
“Kieran, you’ve met Cormoran, haven’t you?” said Ciara, buckling herself in. Her dress had ridden up to the very top of her long legs. Strike could not be absolutely certain that she was wearing anything beneath it. She had certainly been braless in the white jumpsuit.
“Hi, Kieran,” said Strike.
The driver nodded at Strike in the rearview mirror, but did not speak. He had assumed a strictly professional demeanor that Strike doubted was habitual in the absence of detectives.
The car pulled away from the curb. Ciara started rummaging again in her bag; she removed a perfume spray and squirted herself liberally in a wide circle around her face and shoulders; then dabbed lip gloss over her lips, talking all the while.
“What am I going to need? Money. Cormoran, could you be a total darling and keep this in your pocket? I’m not going to take this massive thing in.” She handed him a crumpled wad of twenties. “You’re a sweetheart. Oh, and I’ll need my phone. Have you got a pocket for my phone? God, this bag’s a mess.”
She dropped it on the car floor.
“When you said that it would have been the dream of Lula’s life to find her real father…”
“Oh God, it would have been. She used to talk about that all the time. She got really excited when that bitch—her birth mother—told her he was African. Guy always said that was bullshit, but he hated the woman.”
“He met Marlene Higson, did he?”
“Oh no, he just hated the whole, like, idea of her. He could see how excited Looly got, and he just wanted to protect her from being disappointed.”
So much protection, Strike thought, as the car turned a corner in the dark. Had Lula been that fragile? The back of Kolovas-Jones’s head was rigid, correct; his eyes flickering more often than was necessary to rest upon Strike’s face.
“And then Looly thought she had a lead on him—her real father—but that went completely cold on her. Dead end. Yeah, it was so sad. She really thought she’d found him and then it all just fell through her fingers.”
“What lead was this?”
“It was something about where the college was. Something her mother said. Looly thought she’d found the place it must have been, and she went to look at the records, or something, with this funny friend of hers called…”
“Rochelle?” suggested Strike. The Mercedes was now purring up Oxford Street.
“Yeah, Rochelle, that’s right. Looly met her in rehab or something, poor little thing. Looly was, like, unbelievably sweet to her. Used to take her shopping and stuff. Anyway, they never found him, or it was the wrong place, or something. I can’t remember.”
“Was she looking for a man called Agyeman?”
“I don’t think she ever told me the name.”
“Or Owusu?”
Ciara turned her beautiful light eyes upon him in astonishment.
“That’s Guy’s real name!”
“I know.”
“Oh my God,” Ciara giggled. “Guy’s dad never went to college. He was a bus driver. He used to beat Guy up for sketching dresses all the time. That’s why Guy changed his name.”
The car was slowing down. The long queue, four people wide, stretching along the block, led to a discreet entrance that might have been to a private house. A gaggle of dark figures was gathered around a white-pillared doorway.
“Paps,” said Kolovas-Jones, speaking for the first time. “Careful how you get out of the car, Ciara.”
He slid out of the driver’s seat and walked around to the left-hand back door; but the paparazzi were already running; ominous, darkly clad men, raising their long-nosed cameras as they closed in.
Ciara and Strike emerged into flashes like gunfire; Strike’s retinas were in sudden, dazzling whiteout; he ducked his head, his hand closed instinctively around Ciara Porter’s slender upper arm, and he steered her ahead of him through the black oblong that represented sanctuary, as the doors opened magically to admit them. The queuing hordes were shouting, protesting at their easy entry, yelping with excitement; and then the flashes stopped, and they were inside, where there was an industrial roar of noises, and a loud insistent bass line.
“Wow, you’ve got a great sense of direction,” said Ciara. “I usually, like, ricochet off the bouncers and they have to push me in.”
Streaks and blazes of purple and yellow light were still burned across Strike’s field of vision. He dropped her arm. She was so pale that she looked almost luminous in the gloom. Then they were jostled further inside the club by the entry of another dozen people behind them.
“C’mon,” said Ciara, and she slipped a soft, long-fingered hand inside his and tugged him along behind her.
Faces turned as they walked through the packed crowd, both of them taller by far than the majority of clubbers. Strike could see what looked like long glass fish tanks set into the walls, containing what seemed to be great floating blobs of wax, reminding him of his mother’s old lava lamps. There were long black leather banquettes along the walls, and, further in, nearer the dance floor, booths. 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. The music pounded through every part of him, vibrating through his head and body; the crowd on the dance floor was so dense that it seemed miraculous that they were managing even to stamp and sway.
They had reached a padded doorway, guarded by a bald bouncer who grinned at Ciara, revealing two gold teeth, and pushed open the concealed entrance.
They entered a quieter, though hardly less crowded bar area that was evidently reserved for the famous and their friends. Strike noticed a miniskirted television presenter, a soap actor, a comedian primarily famous for his sexual appetite; and then, in a distant corner, Evan Duffield.
He was wearing a skull-patterned scarf wound around his neck and skintight black jeans, sitting at the join of two black leather banquettes with arms stretched at right angles along the backs of the benches on either side, where his companions, mostly women, were crammed. His dark shoulder-length hair had been dyed blonde; he was pallid and bony-faced, and the smudges around his bright turquoise eyes were dark purple.
The group containing Duffield was emanating an almost magnetic force over the room. Strike saw it in the sneaking sidelong glances other occupants were shooting them; in the respectful space left around them, a wider orbit than anybody else had been granted. 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. In the inverted food chain of fame, it was the big beasts who were stalked and hunted; they were receiving their due.
Duffield was talking to a sexy brunette. Her lips were parted as she listened, almost ludicrously immersed in him. As Ciara and Strike drew nearer, Strike saw Duffield glance away from the brunette for a fraction of a second, making, Strike thought, a lightning-fast recce of the bar, taking the measure of the room’s attention, and of other possibilities it might offer.
“Ciara!” he yelled hoarsely.
The brunette looked deflated as Duffield jumped nimbly to his feet; thin and yet well muscled, he slid out from behind the table to embrace Ciara, who was eight inches taller than he in her platform shoes; she dropped Strike’s hand to return the hug. The whole bar seemed, for a few shining moments, to be watching; then they remembered themselves, and returned to their chat and their cocktails.
“Evan, this is Cormoran Strike,” said Ciara. She moved her mouth close to Duffield’s ear and Strike saw rather than heard her say, “He’s Jonny Rokeby’s son!”
“All right, mate?” asked Duffield, holding out a hand, which Strike shook.
Like other inveterate womanizers Strike had encountered, Duffield’s voice and mannerisms were slightly camp. Perhaps such men became feminized by prolonged immersion in women’s company, or perhaps it was a way of disarming their quarry. Duffield indicated with a flutter of the hand that the others should move along the bench to make room for Ciara; the brunette looked crestfallen. Strike was left to find himself a low stool, drag it alongside the table and ask Ciara what she wanted to drink.
“Oooh, get me a Boozy-Uzi,” she said, “and use my money, sweetie.”
Her cocktail smelled strongly of Pernod. Strike bought himself water, and returned to the table. Ciara and Duffield were now almost nose to nose, talking; but when Strike set down the drinks, Duffield looked around.
“So what d’you do, Cormoran? Music biz?”
“No,” said Strike. “I’m a detective.”
“No shit,” said Duffield. “Who’m I supposed to have killed this time?”
The group around him permitted themselves wry, or nervous, smiles, but Ciara said:
“Don’t joke, Evan.”
“I’m not joking, Ciara. You’ll notice when I am, because it’ll be fucking funny.”
The brunette giggled.
“I said I’m not joking,” snapped Duffield.
The brunette looked as though she had been slapped. The rest of the group seemed imperceptibly to withdraw, even in the cramped space; they began their own conversation, temporarily excluding Ciara, Strike and Duffield.
“Evan, not nice,” said Ciara, but her reproach seemed to caress rather than sting, and Strike noticed that the glance she threw the brunette held no pity.
Duffield drummed his fingers on the edge of the table.
“So, what kind of a detective are you, Cormoran?”
“A private one.”
“Evan, darling, Cormoran’s been hired by Looly’s brother…”
But Duffield had apparently spotted someone or something of interest up at the bar, for he leapt to his feet and disappeared into the crowd there.
“He’s always a bit ADHD,” said Ciara apologetically. “Plus, he’s still really, really fucked up about Looly. He is,” she insisted, half cross, half amused, as Strike raised his eyebrows and looked pointedly in the direction of the voluptuous brunette, who was now cradling an empty mojito glass and looking morose. “You’ve got something on your smart jacket,” Ciara added, and she leaned forwards to brush off what Strike thought were pizza crumbs. He caught a strong whiff of her sweet, spicy perfume. The silver material of her dress was so stiff that it gaped, like armor, away from her body, affording him an unhampered view of small white breasts and pointed shell-pink nipples.
“What’s that perfume you’re wearing?”
She thrust a wrist under his nose.
“It’s Guy’s new one,” she said. “It’s called éprise—it’s French for ‘smitten,’ you know?”
“Yeah,” he said.
Duffield had returned, holding another drink, cleaving his way back through the crowd, whose faces revolved after him, tugged by his aura. His legs in their tight jeans were like black pipe cleaners, and with his darkly smudged eyes he looked like a Pierrot gone bad.
“Evan, babes,” said Ciara, when Duffield had reseated himself, “Cormoran’s investigating—”
“He heard you the first time,” Strike interrupted her. “There’s no need.”
He thought that the actor had heard that, too. Duffield drank his drink quickly, and tossed a few comments into the group beside them. Ciara sipped her cocktail, then nudged Duffield.
“How’s the film going, sweetie?”
“Great. Well. Suicidal drug dealer. It’s not a stretch, y’know.”
Everyone smiled, except Duffield himself. He drummed his fingers on the table, his legs jerking in time.
“Bored now,” he announced.
He was squinting towards the door, and the group was watching him, openly yearning, Strike thought, to be scooped up and taken along.
Duffield looked from Ciara to Strike.
“Wanna come back to mine?”
“Fabby,” squeaked Ciara, and with a feline glance of triumph at the brunette, she downed her drink in one.
Just outside the VIP area, two drunk girls ran at Duffield; one of them pulled up her top and begged him to sign her breasts.
“Don’t be dirty, love,” said Duffield, pushing past her. “You gotta car, Cici?” he yelled over his shoulder, as he plowed his way through the crowds, ignoring shouts and pointing fingers.
“Yes, sweetie,” she shouted. “I’ll call him. Cormoran, darling, have you got my phone?”
Strike wondered what the paparazzi outside would make of Ciara and Duffield leaving the club together. She was shouting into her iPhone. They reached the entrance; Ciara said, “Wait—he’s going to text when he’s right outside.”
Both she and Duffield looked slightly nervy; watchful, self-aware, like competitors waiting to enter a stadium. Then Ciara’s phone gave a little buzz.
“OK, he’s there,” she said.
Strike stood back to let her and Duffield out first, then walked rapidly to the front passenger seat as Duffield ran around the back of the car in the blinding popping lights, to screams from the queue, and threw himself into the backseat with Ciara, whom Kolovas-Jones had helped inside. Strike slammed the front passenger door, forcing the two men who had leaned in to take shot after shot of Duffield and Ciara to jump backwards out of the way.
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. Lenses were pressed to the windows and windscreen; unfriendly faces floated in the darkness, and black figures darted back and forth in front of the stationary car. Beyond the explosions of light, the shadowy crowd-queue surged, curious and excited.
“Put your foot down, for fuck’s sake!” Strike growled at Kolovas-Jones, who revved the engine. The paparazzi blocking the road moved backwards, still taking pictures.
“Bye-bye, you cunts,” said Evan Duffield from the backseat as the car pulled away from the curb.
But the photographers ran alongside the vehicle, flashes erupting on either side; and Strike’s whole body was bathed in sweat: he was suddenly back on a yellow dirt road in the juddering Viking, with a sound like firecrackers popping in the Afghanistan air; he had glimpsed a youth running away from the road ahead, dragging a small boy. Without conscious thought he had bellowed “Brake!” lunged forwards and seized Anstis, a new father of two days’ standing, who was sitting right behind the driver; the last thing he remembered was Anstis’s shouted protest, and the low metallic boom of him hitting the back doors, before the Viking disintegrated with an ear-splitting bang, and the world became a hazy blur of pain and terror.
The Mercedes had rounded the corner on to an almost deserted road; Strike realized that he had been holding himself so tensely that his remaining calf muscles were sore. In the wing mirror he could see two motorbikes, each being ridden pillion, following them. Princess Diana and the Parisian underpass; the ambulance bearing Lula Landry’s body, with cameras held high to the darkened glass as it passed; both careered through his thoughts as the car sped through the dark streets.
Duffield lit a cigarette. Out of the corner of his eye, Strike saw Kolovas-Jones scowl at his passenger in the rearview mirror, though he made no protest. After a moment or two, Ciara began whispering to Duffield. Strike thought he heard his own name.
Five minutes later, they turned another corner and saw, ahead of them, another small crowd of black-clad photographers, who began flashing and running towards the car the moment it appeared. The motorbikes were pulling up right behind them; Strike saw the four men running to catch the moment when the car doors opened. Adrenalin erupted: Strike imagined himself exploding out of the car, punching, sending expensive cameras crashing on to concrete as their holders crumpled. And as if he had read Strike’s mind, Duffield said, with his hand poised on the door handle:
“Knock their fucking lights out, Cormoran, you’re built for it.”
The open doors, the night air and more maddening flashes; bull-like, Strike walked fast with his big head bowed, his eyes on Ciara’s tottering heels, refusing to be blinded. Up three steps they ran, Strike at the rear; and it was he who slammed the front door of the building in the faces of the photographers.
Strike felt himself momentarily allied with the other two by the experience of being hunted. The tiny, dimly lit lobby felt safe and friendly. The paparazzi were still yelling to each other on the other side of the door, and their terse shouts recalled soldiers recceing a building. Duffield was fiddling at an inner door, trying a succession of keys in the lock.
“I’ve only been here a couple of weeks,” he explained, finally opening it with a barging shoulder. Once over the threshold, he wriggled out of his tight jacket, threw it on to the floor by the door and then led the way, his narrow hips swinging in only slightly less exaggerated fashion than Guy Somé’s, down a short corridor into a sitting room, where he switched on lamps.
The spare, elegant gray and black decor had been overlaid by clutter and stank of cigarette smoke, cannabis and alcohol fumes. Strike was reminded vividly of his childhood.
“Need a slash,” announced Duffield, and called over his shoulder as he disappeared, with a directive jab of the thumb, “Drinks are in the kitchen, Cici.”
She threw a smile at Strike, then left through the door Duffield had indicated.
Strike glanced around the room, which looked as though it had been left, by parents of impeccable taste, in the care of a teenager. Every surface was covered in debris, much of it in the form of scribbled notes. Three guitars stood propped against the walls. A cluttered glass coffee table was surrounded by black-and-white seats, angled towards an enormous plasma TV. Bits of debris had overflowed from the coffee table on to the black fur rug below. Beyond the long windows, with their gauzy gray curtains, Strike could make out the shapes of the photographers still prowling beneath the street light.
Duffield had returned, tugging up his fly. On finding himself alone with Strike, he gave a nervous giggle.
“Make yourself at home, big fella. Hey, I know your old man, actually.”
“Yeah?” said Strike, sitting down in one of the squashy ponyskin cube-shaped armchairs.
“Yeah. Met him a couple of times,” said Duffield. “Cool dude.”
He picked up a guitar, began to pick out a twiddling tune on it, thought better of it and put the instrument back against the wall.
Ciara returned, carrying a bottle of wine and three glasses.
“Couldn’t you get a cleaner, dearie?” she asked Duffield reprovingly.
“They give up,” said Duffield. He vaulted over the back of a chair and landed with his legs sprawled over the side. “No fucking stamina.”
Strike pushed aside the mess on the coffee table so that Ciara could set down the bottle and glasses.
“I thought you’d moved in with Mo Innes,” she said, pouring out wine.
“Yeah, that didn’t work out,” said Duffield, raking through the detritus on the table for cigarettes. “Ol’ Freddie’s rented me this place just for a month, while I’m going out to Pinewood. He wants to keep me away from me old haunts.”
His grubby fingers passed over a string of what seemed to be rosary beads; numerous empty cigarette packets with bits of card torn out of them; three lighters, one of them an engraved Zippo; Rizla papers; tangled leads unattached to appliances; a pack of cards; a sordid stained handkerchief; sundry crumpled pieces of grubby paper; a music magazine featuring a picture of Duffield in moody black and white on the cover; opened and unopened mail; a pair of crumpled black leather gloves; a quantity of loose change and, in a clean china ashtray on the edge of the debris, a single cufflink in the form of a tiny silver gun. At last he unearthed a soft packet of Gitanes from under the sofa; lit up, blew a long jet of smoke at the ceiling, then addressed Ciara, who had placed herself on the sofa at right angles to the two men, sipping her wine.
“They’ll say we’re fucking each other, again, Ci,” he said, pointing out of the window at the prowling shadows of the waiting photographers.
“And what’ll they say Cormoran’s here for?” asked Ciara, with a sidelong glance at Strike. “A threesome?”
“Security,” said Duffield, appraising Strike through narrowed eyes. “He looks like a boxer. Or a cage fighter. Don’t you want a proper drink, Cormoran?”
“No, thanks,” said Strike.
“What’s that, AA or being on duty?”
“Duty.”
Duffield raised his eyebrows and sniggered. He seemed nervous, shooting Strike darting looks, drumming his fingers on the glass table. When Ciara asked him whether he had visited Lady Bristow again, he seemed relieved to be offered a subject.
“Fuck, no. Once was enough. It was fucking horrible. Poor bitch. On her fucking deathbed.”
“It was beyond nice of you to go, though, Evan.”
Strike knew that she was trying to show Duffield off in his best light.
“Do you know Lula’s mother well?” he asked Duffield.
“No. I only met her once before Lu died. She didn’t approve of me. None of Lu’s family approved of me. I dunno,” he fidgeted, “I just wanted to talk to someone who really gives a shit that she’s dead.”
“Evan!” Ciara pouted. “I care she’s dead, excuse me!”
“Yeah, well…”
With one of his oddly feminine, fluid movements, Duffield curled up in the chair so that he was almost fetal, and sucked hard on his cigarette. On a table behind his head, illuminated by a cone of lamplight, was a large, stagey photograph of him with Lula Landry, clearly taken from a fashion shoot. They were mock-wrestling against a backdrop of fake trees; she was wearing a floor-length red dress, and he was in a slim black suit, with a hairy wolf’s mask pushed up on top of his forehead.
“I wonder what my mum would say if I carked it? My parents’ve got an injunction out against me,” Duffield informed Strike. “Well, it was mainly my fucking father. Because I nicked their telly a couple of years ago. D’you know what?” he added, craning his neck to look at Ciara, “I’ve been clean five weeks, two days.”
“That’s so fabulous, baby! That’s fantastic!”
“Yeah,” he said. He swiveled upright again. “Aren’t you gonna ask me any questions?” he demanded of Strike. “I thought you were investigating Lu’s murder?”
The bravado was undermined by the tremor in his fingers. His knees began bouncing up and down, just like John Bristow’s.
“D’you think it was murder?” Strike asked.
“No.” Duffield dragged on his cigarette. “Yeah. Maybe. I dunno. Murder makes more sense than fucking suicide, anyway. Because she wouldn’ta gone without leaving me a note. I keep waiting for a note to turn up, y’know, and then I’ll know it’s real. It don’t feel real. I can’t even remember the funeral. I was out of my fucking head. I took so much stuff I couldn’t fucking walk. I think, if I could just remember the funeral, it’d be easier to get my head round.”
He jammed his cigarette between his lips and began drumming with his fingers on the edge of the glass table. After a while, apparently discomforted by Strike’s silent observation, he demanded:
“Ask me something, then. Who’s hired you, anyway?”
“Lula’s brother John.”
Duffield stopped drumming.
“That money-grabbing, poker-arsed wanker?”
“Money-grabbing?”
“He was fucking obsessed with how she spent her fucking money, like it was any of his fucking business. Rich people always think everyone else is a fucking freeloader, have you noticed that? Her whole frigging family thought I was gold-digging, and after a bit,” he raised a finger to his temple and made a boring motion, “it went in, it planted doubts, y’know?”
He snatched one of the Zippos from the table and began flicking at it, trying to make it ignite. Strike watched tiny blue sparks erupt and die as Duffield talked.
“I expect he thought she’d be better off with some rich fucking accountant, like him.”
“He’s a lawyer.”
“Whatever. What’s the difference, it’s all about helping rich people keep their mitts on as much money as they can, innit? He’s got his fucking trust fund from Daddy, what skin is it off his nose what his sister did with her own money?”
“What was it that he objected to her buying, specifically?”
“Shit for me. The whole fucking family was the same; they didn’t mind if she chucked it their way, keep it in the fucking family, that was OK. Lu knew they were a mercenary load of fuckers, but, like I say, it still left its fucking mark. Planted ideas in her head.”
He threw the dead Zippo back on to the table, drew his knees up to his chest and glared at Strike with his disconcerting turquoise eyes.
“So he still thinks I did it, does he? Your client?”
“No, I don’t think he does,” said Strike.
“He’s changed his narrow fuckwitted mind, then, because I heard he was going round telling everyone it was me, before they ruled it as suicide. Only, I’ve got a cast-iron fucking alibi, so fuck him. Fuck. Them. All.”
Restless and nervy, he got to his feet, added wine to his almost untouched glass, then lit another cigarette.
“What can you tell me about the day Lula died?” Strike asked.
“The night, you mean.”
“The day leading up to it might be quite important too. There are a few things I’d like to clear up.”
“Yeah? Go on, then.”
Duffield dropped back down into the chair, and pulled his knees up to his chest again.
“Lula called you repeatedly between around midday and six in the evening, but you didn’t answer your phone.”
“No,” said Duffield. He began picking, childishly, at a small hole in the knee of his jeans. “Well, I was busy. I was working. On a song. Didn’t want to stem the flow. The old inspiration.”
“So you didn’t know she was calling you?”
“Well, yeah. I saw her number coming up.” He rubbed his nose, stretched his legs out on to the glass table, folded his arms and said, “I felt like teaching her a little lesson. Let her wonder what I was up to.”
“Why did you think she needed a lesson?”
“That fucking rapper. I wanted her to move in with me while he was staying in her building. ‘Don’t be silly, don’t you trust me?’ ” His imitation of Lula’s voice and expression was disingenuously girlish. “I said to her, ‘Don’t you be fucking silly. Show me I got nothing to worry about, and come and stay with me.’ But she wouldn’t. So then I thought, two can play at that fucking game, darling. Let’s see how you like it. So I got Ellie Carreira over to my place, and we did a bit of writing together, and then I brought Ellie along to Uzi with me. Lu couldn’t fucking complain. Just business. Just songwriting. Just friends, like her and that rapper-gangster.”
“I didn’t think she’d ever met Deeby Macc.”
“She hadn’t, but he’d made his intentions pretty fucking public, hadn’t he? Have you heard that song he wrote? She was creaming her panties over it.”
“ ‘Bitch you ain’t all that…’ ” Ciara began to quote obligingly, but a filthy look from Duffield silenced her.
“Did she leave you voicemail messages?”
“Yeah, a couple. ‘Evan, will you call me, please. It’s urgent. I don’t want to say it on the phone.’ It was always fucking urgent when she wanted to find out what I was up to. She knew I was pissed off. She was worried I might’ve called Ellie. She had a real hang-up about Ellie, because she knew we’d fucked.”
“She said it was urgent, and that she didn’t want to say it on the phone?”
“Yeah, but that was just to try and make me call. One of her little games. She could be fucking jealous, Lu. And pretty fucking manipulative.”
“Can you think why she’d be calling her uncle repeatedly that day as well?”
“What uncle?”
“His name’s Tony Landry; he’s another lawyer.”
“Him? She wouldn’t be calling him, she fucking hated him worse than her brother.”
“She called him, repeatedly, over the same period that she was calling you. Leaving more or less the same message.”
Duffield raked his unshaven chin with dirty nails, staring at Strike.
“I dunno what that was about. Her mum, maybe. Old Lady B going into hospital or something.”
“You don’t think something might have happened that morning which she thought was either relevant to or of interest to both you and her uncle?”
“There isn’t any subject that could interest me and her fucking uncle at the same time,” said Duffield. “I’ve met him. Share prices and shit are all he’d be interested in.”
“Maybe it was something about her, something personal?”
“If it was, she wouldn’t call that fucker. They didn’t like each other.”
“What makes you say that?”
“She felt about him like I feel about my fucking father. Neither of them thought we were worth shit.”
“Did she talk to you about that?”
“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 she didn’t tell you why she’d been calling you, once she got to Uzi?”
“Nope,” said Duffield. He lit another cigarette. “She was fucked off from the moment she arrived, because Ellie was there. Didn’t like that at all. In a right fucking mood, wasn’t she?”
For the first time he appealed to Ciara, who nodded sadly.
“She didn’t really talk to me,” said Duffield. “She was mostly talking to you, wasn’t she?”
“Yes,” said Ciara. “And she didn’t tell me there was anything, like, upsetting her or anything.”
“A couple of people have told me her phone was hacked…” began Strike; Duffield talked over him.
“Oh yeah, they were listening in on our messages for fucking weeks. They knew everywhere we were meeting and everything. Fucking bastards. We changed our phone numbers when we found out what was going on and we were fucking careful what messages we left after that.”
“So you wouldn’t be surprised, if Lula had had something important or upsetting to tell you, that she didn’t want to be explicit over the phone?”
“Yeah, but if it was that fucking important, she woulda told me at the club.”
“But she didn’t?”
“No, like I say, she never spoke to me all night.” A muscle was jumping in Duffield’s chiseled jaw. “She kept checking the time on her fucking phone. I knew what she was doing; trying to wind me up. Showing me she couldn’t wait to get home and meet fucking Deeby Macc. She waited until Ellie went off to the bog; then got up, came over to tell me she was leaving, and said I could have my bangle back; the one I gave her when we had our commitment ceremony. She chucked it down on the table in front of me, with everyone fucking gawping. So I picked it up and said, ‘Anyone fancy this, it’s going spare?’ and she fucked off.”
He did not speak as though Lula had died three months previously, but as though it had all happened the day before, and there was still a possibility of reconciliation.
“You tried to restrain her, though, right?” asked Strike.
Duffield’s eyes narrowed.
“Restrain her?”
“You grabbed her arms, according to witnesses.”
“Did I? I can’t remember.”
“But she pulled free, and you stayed behind, is that right?”
“I waited ten minutes, because I wasn’t gonna give her the satisfaction of chasing her in front of all those people, and then I left the club and got my driver to take me to Kentigern Gardens.”
“Wearing the wolf mask,” said Strike.
“Yeah, to stop those fucking scumbags,” he nodded towards the window, “selling pictures of me looking wasted or pissed off. They hate it when you cover your face. Depriving them of making their fucking parasitic living. One of them tried to pull Wolfie off me, but I held on. I got in the car and gave ’em a few pictures of the Wolf giving them the finger, out the back window. Got to the corner of Kentigern Gardens and there were more paps everywhere. I knew she must’ve got in already.”
“Did you know the key code?”
“Nineteen sixty-six, yeah. But I knew she’d’ve told security not to let me up. I wasn’t gonna walk in in front of all of them and then get chucked out on me arse five minutes later. I tried to phone her from the car, but she wouldn’t pick up. I thought she’d probably gone downstairs to welcome Deeby fucking Macc to London. So I went off to see a man about pain relief.”
He ground out his cigarette on a loose playing card on the edge of the table and began hunting for more tobacco. Strike, who wanted to oil the flow of conversation, offered him one of his own.
“Oh, cheers. Cheers. Yeah. Well, I got the driver to drop me off and I went to visit my friend, who has since given the police a full statement to that effect, as Uncle Tony might say. Then I wandered around a bit, and there’s camera footage in that station to prove that, and then about, I dunno…threeish? Fourish?”
“Half past four,” said Ciara.
“Yeah, I went to crash at Ciara’s.”
Duffield sucked on the cigarette, watching the tip burn, then, exhaling, said cheerfully:
“So my arse is covered, is it not?”
Strike did not find his satisfaction likeable.
“And when did you find out that Lula was dead?”
Duffield drew his legs up to his chest again.
“Ciara woke me up and told me. I couldn’t—I was fucking—yeah, well. Fucking hell.”
He put his arms over the top of his head and stared at the ceiling.
“I couldn’t fucking…I couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t fucking believe it.”
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. For a moment, staring at the blank white ceiling, Duffield’s face became grotesque as he appeared to grin from ear to ear; it was a grimace of pain, of the exertion necessary to beat back tears. His arms slipped down, and he buried his face in them, his forehead on his knees.
“Oh, sweetie,” said Ciara, putting her wine down on the table with a clunk, and reaching forward to place a hand on his bony knee.
“This has fucked me up proper,” said Duffield thickly from behind his arms. “This has fucked me up good. I wanted to marry her. I fucking loved her, I did. Fuck, I don’t wanna talk about it anymore.”
He jumped up and left the room, sniffing ostentatiously and wiping his nose on his sleeve.
“Didn’t I tell you?” Ciara whispered to Strike. “He’s a mess.”
“Oh, I don’t know. He seems to have cleaned up his act. Off heroin for a month.”
“I know, and I don’t want him to fall off the wagon.”
“This is a lot gentler than he would have had from the police. This is polite.”
“You’ve got an awful look on your face, though. Really, like, stern and as if you don’t believe a word he’s saying.”
“D’you think he’s going to come back?”
“Yes, of course he is. Please be a bit nicer…”
She sat quickly back in her seat as Duffield walked back in; he was grim-faced and his camp strut was very slightly subdued. He flung himself into the chair he had previously occupied and said to Strike:
“I’m out of fags. Can I have another one of yours?”
Reluctantly, because he was down to three, Strike handed it across, lit it for him, then said:
“All right to keep talking?”
“About Lula? You can talk, if you want. I dunno what else I can tell you. I ain’t got any more information.”
“Why did you split up? The first time, I mean; I’m clear on why she ditched you in Uzi.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ciara make an indignant little gesture; apparently this did not qualify as “nicer.”
“What the fuck’s that got to do with anything?”
“It’s all relevant,” said Strike. “It all gives a picture of what was going on in her life. It all helps explain why she might’ve killed herself.”
“I thought you were looking for a murderer?”
“I’m looking for the truth. So why did you break up, the first time?”
“Fuck, how’s this fucking important?” exploded Duffield. His temper, as Strike had expected, was violent and short-fused. “What, are you trying to make out it’s my fault she fucking jumped off a balcony? How can us splitting up the first time have anything to do with it, knucklehead? That was two fucking months before she died. Fuck, I could call meself a detective and ask a lot of fuckass questions. Bet it pays all right, dunnit, if you can find some fuckwit rich client?”
“Evan, don’t,” said Ciara, distressed. “You said you wanted to help…”
“Yeah, I wanna help, but how’s this fucking fair?”
“No problem, if you don’t want to answer,” said Strike. “You’re under no obligation here.”
“I ain’t got nothing to hide, it’s just fucking personal stuff, innit? We split up,” he shouted, “because of drugs, and her family and her friends putting down poison about me, and because she didn’t trust nobody because of the fucking press, all right? Because of all the pressure.”
And Duffield made his hands into trembling claws and pressed them, like earphones, over his ears, making a compressing movement.
“Pressure, fucking pressure, that’s why we split up.”
“You were taking a lot of drugs at the time, were you?”
“Yeah.”
“And Lula didn’t like it?”
“Well, people round her were telling her she didn’t like it, you know?”
“Like who?”
“Like her family, like fucking Guy Somé. That little pansy twat.”
“When you say that she didn’t trust anybody because of the press, what do you mean by that?”
“Fuck, innit obvious? Don’t you know all this, from your old man?”
“I know jack shit about my father,” said Strike coolly.
“Well, they were tapping her fucking phone, man, and that gives you a weird fucking feeling; haven’t you got any imagination? She started getting paranoid about people selling stuff on her. Trying to work out what she’d said on the phone, and what she hadn’t, and who mighta given stuff to the papers and that. It fucked with her head.”
“Was she accusing you of selling stories?”
“No,” snapped Duffield, and then, just as vehemently, “Yeah, sometimes. How did they know we were coming here, how did they know I said that to you, yadda yadda yadda…I said to her, it’s all part and fucking parcel of fame, innit, but she thought she could have her cake and eat it.”
“But you didn’t ever sell stories about her to the press?”
He heard Ciara’s hissing intake of breath.
“No I fucking didn’t,” said Duffield quietly, holding Strike’s gaze without blinking. “No I fucking did not. All right?”
“And you split up for how long?”
“Two months, give or take.”
“But you got back together, what, a week before she died?”
“Yeah. At Mo Innes’s party.”
“And you had this commitment ceremony forty-eight hours later? At Carbury’s house in the Cotswolds?”
“Yeah.”
“And who knew that was going to happen?”
“It was a spontaneous thing. I bought the bangles and we just did it. It was beautiful, man.”
“It really was,” echoed Ciara sadly.
“So, for the press to have found out so quickly, someone who was there must have told them?”
“Yeah, I s’pose so.”
“Because your phones weren’t being tapped then, were they? You’d changed your numbers.”
“I don’t fucking know if they were being tapped. Ask the shits at the rags who do it.”
“Did she talk to you at all about trying to trace her father?”
“He was dead…what, you mean the real one? Yeah, she was interested, but it was no go, wannit? Her mother didn’t know who he was.”
“She never told you whether she’d managed to find out anything about him?”
“She tried, but she didn’t get anywhere, so she decided that she was gonna to do a course in African studies. That was gonna be Daddy, the whole fucking continent of Africa. Fucking Somé was behind that, shit-stirring as usual.”
“In what way?”
“Anything that took her away from me was good. Anything that bracketed them together. He was one possessive bastard where she was concerned. He was in love with her. I know he’s a poof,” Duffield added impatiently, as Ciara began to protest, “but he’s not the first one I’ve known who’s gone funny over a girlfriend. He’ll fuck anything, man-wise, but he didn’t want to let her out of his sight. He threw hissy fits if she didn’t see him, he didn’t like her working for anyone else.
“He hates my fucking guts. Right back atcha, you little shit. Egging Lu on with Deeby Macc. He’d’ve got a real kick out of her fucking him. Doing me over. Hearing all the fucking details. Getting her to introduce him, get his fucking clothes photographed on a gangster. He’s no fucking fool, Somé. He used her for his business all the time. Tried to get her cheap and for free, and she was dumb enough to let him.”
“Did Somé give you these?” asked Strike, pointing at the black leather gloves on the coffee table. He had recognized the tiny gold GS logo on the cuff.
“You what?”
Duffield leaned over and hooked one of the gloves on to an index finger; he dangled it in front of his eyes, examining it.
“Fuck, you’re right. They’re going in the bin, then,” and he threw the glove into a corner; it hit the abandoned guitar, which let out a hollow, echoing chord. “I kept them from that shoot,” said Duffield, pointing at the black-and-white magazine cover. “Somé wouldn’t give me the steam off his piss. Have you got another fag?”
“I’m all out,” lied Strike. “Are you going to tell me why you invited me home, Evan?”
There was a long silence. Duffield glared at Strike, who intuited that the actor knew he was lying about having no cigarettes. Ciara was gazing at him too, her lips slightly parted, the epitome of beautiful bewilderment.
“What makes you think I’ve got anything to tell you?” sneered Duffield.
“I don’t think you asked me back here for the pleasure of my company.”
“I dunno,” said Duffield, with a distinct overtone of malice. “Maybe I hoped you were a laugh, like your old man?”
“Evan,” snapped Ciara.
“OK, if you haven’t got anything to tell me…” said Strike, and he pushed himself up out of the armchair. To his slight surprise, and Duffield’s evident displeasure, Ciara set her empty wineglass down and began to unfold her long legs, preparatory to standing.
“All right,” said Duffield sharply. “There’s one thing.”
Strike sank back into his chair. Ciara thrust one of her own cigarettes at Duffield, who took it with muttered thanks, then she too sat down, watching Strike.
“Go on,” said the latter, while Duffield fiddled with his lighter.
“All right. I dunno whether it matters,” said the actor. “But I don’t want you to say where you got the information.”
“I can’t guarantee that,” said Strike.
Duffield scowled, his knees jumping up and down, smoking with his eyes on the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, Strike saw Ciara open her mouth to speak, and forestalled her, one hand in the air.
“Well,” said Duffield, “two days ago I was having lunch with Freddie Bestigui. He left his BlackBerry on the table when he went up to the bar.” Duffield puffed and jiggled. “I don’t wanna be fired,” he said, glaring at Strike. “I need this fucking job.”
“Go on,” said Strike.
“He got an email. I saw Lula’s name. I read it.”
“OK.”
“It was from his wife. It said something like, ‘I know we’re supposed to be talking through lawyers, but unless you can do better than ￡1.5 million, I will tell everyone exactly where I was when Lula Landry died, and exactly how I got there, because I’m sick of taking shit for you. This is not an empty threat. I’m starting to think I should tell the police anyway.’ Or something like that,” said Duffield.
Dimly, through the curtained window, came the sound of a couple of the paparazzi outside laughing together.
“That’s very useful information,” Strike told Duffield. “Thank you.”
“I don’t want Bestigui to know it was me who told you.”
“I don’t think your name’ll need to come into it,” said Strike, standing up again. “Thanks for the water.”
“Hang on, sweetie, I’m coming,” said Ciara, her phone pressed to her ear. “Kieran? We’re coming out now, Cormoran and me. Right now. Bye-bye, Evan darling.”
She bent over and kissed him on both cheeks, while Duffield, halfway out of his chair, looked disconcerted.
“You can crash here if you—”
“No, sweetie, I’ve got a job tomorrow afternoon; need my beauty sleep,” she said.
More flashes blinded Strike as he stepped outside; but the paparazzi seemed confused this time. As he helped Ciara down the steps, and followed her into the back of the car, one of them shouted at Strike: “Who the fuck are you?”
Strike slammed the door, grinning. Kolovas-Jones was back in the driver’s seat; they were pulling away from the curb, and this time they were not pursued.
After a block or so of silence, Kolovas-Jones looked in the rear-view mirror and asked Ciara:
“Home?”
“I suppose so. Kieran, will you turn on the radio? I fancy a bit of music,” she said. “Louder than that, sweetie. Oh, I love this.”
“Telephone” by Lady Gaga filled the car.
She turned to Strike as the orange glow of street lights swept across her extraordinary face. Her breath smelled of alcohol, her skin of that sweet, peppery perfume.
“Don’t you want to ask me anything else?”
“You know what?” said Strike. “I do. Why would you have a detachable lining in a handbag?”
She stared at him for several seconds, then let out a great giggle, slumping sideways into his shoulder, nudging him. Lithe and slight, she continued to rest against him as she said:
“You are funny.”
“But why would you?”
“Well, it just makes the bag more, like, individual; you can customize them, you see; you can buy a couple of linings and swap them over; you can pull them out and use them as scarves; they’re beautiful. Silk with gorgeous patterns. The zip edging is very rock-and-roll.”
“Interesting,” said Strike, as her upper leg moved to rest lightly along his own, and she gave a second, deep-throated giggle.
Call all you want, but there’s no one home, sang Lady Gaga.
The music masked their conversation, but Kolovas-Jones’s eyes were moving with unnecessary regularity from road ahead to rear-view mirror. After another minute, Ciara said:
“Guy’s right, I do like them big. You’re very butch. And, like, stern. It’s sexy.”
A block later she whispered:
“Where do you live?” while rubbing her silky cheek against his, like a cat.
“I sleep on a camp bed in my office.”
She giggled again. She was definitely a little drunk.
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll go to mine, then, shall we?”
Her tongue was cool and sweet and tasted of Pernod.
“Have you slept with my father?” he managed to say, between the pressings of her full lips on to his.
“No…God, no…” A little giggle. “He dyes his hair…it’s, like, purple close up…I used to call him the rocking prune…”
And then, ten minutes later, a lucid voice in his mind urging him not to let desire lead on to humiliation, he surfaced for air to mutter:
“I’ve only got one leg.”
“Don’t be silly…”
“I’m not being silly…it got blown off in Afghanistan.”
“Poor baby…” she whispered. “I’ll rub it better.”
“Yeah—that’s not my leg…It’s helping, though…”