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“Yeah, really”
She began eating fast Strike was afraid that she would leave the moment she had finished
“Was Lula depressed when you met her at Vashti, the day before she died?”
“Yeah, she wuz”
“Did she tell you why?”
“There don’t ’ave to be a reason why It’s uh nillness”
“But she told you she was feeling bad, did she?”
“Yeah,” she said, after a fractional hesitation
“You were supposed to be having lunch together, weren’t you?” he asked “Kieran told ht? Kieran Kolovas-Jones?”
Her expression softened; the corners of her mouth lifted
“Yeah, I know Kieran Yeah, she come to meet me at Vashti”
“But she didn’t stop for lunch?”
“No She wuz in a hurry,” said Rochelle
She bowed her head to drinkher face
“Why didn’t she just ring you? You’ve got a phone, have you?”
“Yeah, I gotta phone,” she snapped, bristling, and drew froaudy pink crystals
“So why d’you think she didn’t call to say she couldn’t see you?”
Rochelle glowered at him
“Because she didn’t like using the phone, because of them listenin’ in”
“Journalists?”
“Yeah”
She had almost finished her cookie
“Journalists wouldn’t have been very interested in her saying that she wasn’t coh, would they?”
“I dunno”
“Didn’t you think it was odd, at the time, that she drove all the way to tell you she couldn’t stay for lunch?”
“Yeah No,” said Rochelle And then, with a sudden burst of fluency:
“When ya gotta driver it don’t o wherever you want, don’t cost you nothing extra, you just get the, so she coet ’o Ciara Porter”
Rochelle looked as though she regretted the traitorous “fucking” as soon as it was out, and pursed her lips together as though to ensure no more sords escaped her
“And that was all she did, was it? She caet home and see Ciara’ and left?”
“Yeah More uh less,” said Rochelle
“Kieran says they usually gave you a lift hoether”
“Yeah,” she said “Well She wuz too busy that day, weren’ she?”
Rochelle did a poor job ofher resentment
“Talk h what happened in the shop Did either of you try anything on?”
“Yeah,” said Rochelle, after a pause “She did” Another hesitation “Long Alexander McQueen dress He killed hiself and all,” she added, in a distant voice
“Did you go into the changing room with her?”
“Yeah”
“What happened in the changing room?” prompted Strike
Her eyes reminded him of those of a bull he had once come face to face with as a small boy: deep-set, deceptively stoic, unfathomable
“She put on the dress,” said Rochelle
“She didn’t do anything else? Didn’t call anyone?”
“No Well, yeah She hta”
“D’you knoho she called?”
“I can’t remember”
She drank, obscuring her face again with the paper cup
“Was it Evan Duffield?”
“It hta bin”
“Can you remember what she said?”
“No”
“One of the shop assistants overheard her, while she was on the phone She see an appointment to meet someone at her flat ht”
“Yeah?”
“So that doesn’t see as she already had an arrangement to meet him at Uzi?”
“Know a lot, don’t you?” she said
“Everyone knows they ht,” said Strike “It was in all the papers”
The dilating or contracting of Rochelle’s pupils would be almost impossible to see, because of the virtually black irises surrounding them
“Yeah, I s’pose,” she conceded
“Was it Deeby Macc?”
“No!” She yelped it on a laugh “She din’ know his number”
“Faet each other’s numbers,” said Strike
Rochelle’s expression clouded She glanced down at the blank screen on her gaudy pink mobile
“I don’ think she had his,” she said
“But you heard her trying to ement to meet someone in the small hours?”
“No,” said Rochelle, avoiding his eyes, swilling the dregs of her coffee around the paper cup “I can’ remember nuthin’ like that”
“You understand how important this could be?” said Strike, careful to keep his tone unthreatening “If Lula ement to meet someone at the time she died? The police never knew about this, did they? You never told them?”
“I gotta go,” she said, throwing down the lastand glaring at him
Strike said:
“It’s nearly lunchti else?”
“No”
But she did not ularly or not There was so about her, beneath the surliness, that he found touching: a fierce pride, a vulnerability
“Yeah, all right then,” she said, dropping her handbag and slu Mac”
He was afraid she ht leave while he was at the counter, but when he returned with two trays, she was still there; she even thanked hily
Strike tried a different tack
“You know Kieran quite well, do you?” he asked, pursuing the glow that had illuminated her at the mention of his name
“Yeah,” she said, self-consciously “I’er”
“He says that Lula riting so in the back of the car, before she arrived at Vashti Did she show you, or give you, anything she’d written?”
“No,” she said She crammed fries into her mouth and then said, “I ain’t seen nuthin like that Why, as it?”
“I don’t know”
“Maybe it were a shopping list or so?”
“Yeah, that’s what the police thought You’re sure you didn’t notice her carrying a bit of paper, a letter, an envelope?”
“Yeah, I’ me?” asked Rochelle
“Yeah, I told him you were on my list He told me you used to live at St Elmo’s”
This seemed to please her
“Where are you living now?”
“What’s it to you?” she demanded, suddenly fierce
“It’s nothing topolite conversation”
This drew a small snort from Rochelle
“I got my own place in Hammersmith now”
She chewed for a while and then, for the first time, proffered unsolicited information
“We usedta listen to Deeby Macc in his car Me, Kieran and Lula”
And she began to rap:
No hydroquinone, black to the backbone,
Takin’ Deeby lightly, better buy an early tombstone,