Born blood relation and identity pursuit

Biological parentage and identity are a persistent, unfinished pursuit in Lula Landry’s life. She longs to find her birth father, but the evidence available to her—her birth mother’s uncertain account, a possible clue to a college, and a search that ends without confirmation—never yields a name or a meeting. The search nevertheless shapes her imagination and choices: after the trail goes cold, she considers African studies as a way of turning an unknowable father into a wider cultural and intellectual connection.

The father Lula hopes to find

Lula’s desire to discover her biological father is described as an abiding dream, not a passing curiosity. In conversation with Strike, Kieran Kolovas-Jones recalls that she used to talk about finding him all the time. Her excitement intensified after her birth mother told her that he was African. The information was striking but limited: it offered a broad possibility rather than an identity Lula could verify.

Guy Somé, according to Kieran, distrusted the birth mother’s account and disliked her. He believed Lula was becoming excited by a story that might end in disappointment, and Kieran characterizes his response as an effort to protect her from that prospect. Strike’s inward question about whether Lula had really been so fragile places that protection under scrutiny. The reported disagreement leaves the account of her father uncertain, while showing how concern for Lula could also mean discouraging her from pursuing the question.

A clue, a search, and a dead end

Kieran remembers Lula later believing that she had found a lead on her father, only for it to come to nothing. The clue concerned the location of a college mentioned by her birth mother. Lula thought she had identified the place and went to look through records, apparently with her friend Rochelle Onifade. Kieran cannot recall the details securely: he is unsure whether they searched the wrong place or simply failed to find the relevant information. What he does remember is the emotional reversal—from Lula’s belief that she had found a route to her father to the sense that the possibility had slipped away.

Evan Duffield independently confirms that Lula tried to trace her father and did not get anywhere. He says her birth mother did not know who the man was, underscoring the limits of the family information available to Lula. His recollection also connects the failed search to her next response: she decided to take a course in African studies. In Evan’s dismissive description, Africa became a substitute for a father she could not identify. That phrasing is his interpretation, not proof that Lula herself saw the course only as a replacement; the evidence establishes the decision and its timing, while leaving her full reasons open.

The search beyond family testimony

The search becomes legible to Strike through several imperfect accounts. Kieran recalls Lula’s excitement, the supposed college lead, and Rochelle’s involvement, but admits that he cannot remember exactly what happened. Evan supplies the clearer outline that Lula’s efforts failed and that she then planned to study African studies, though his account is colored by hostility toward Somé and by his belief that Somé encouraged anything that might draw Lula away from him. The discrepancies make the search a story reconstructed after Lula’s death rather than a complete record of what she did or discovered.

Lady Bristow offers a different kind of testimony. Asked how Lula came into the family, she says she knew nothing of Lula’s background at the time of the adoption; Alec might have known more, but he never told her. She confirms that Lula later found her birth mother and continued seeing her despite Lady Bristow’s distress about the woman and the publicity around the discovery. But when Strike asks whether Lula had learned anything about her biological father, Lady Bristow says she does not know. She had assumed Lula abandoned the subject after meeting her birth mother and admits she did not want to discuss it. Her silence is therefore not evidence that the search ended; it marks a painful gap between Lula’s private pursuit and what her adoptive mother could bear to hear.

From ancestry to study

Robin Ellacott’s investigation supplies a concrete institutional connection to Africa. Following Strike’s notes, she goes to the School of Oriental and African Studies in Russell Square and pretends to be writing a dissertation on African politics in order to ask about Professor Agyeman. A secretary in the politics department, who had worked for him, gives her biographical information and a bibliography. Robin learns that he studied at the school as an undergraduate and obtains a picture.

This discovery shows that the investigation has moved from scattered memories toward a verifiable person and a documented academic history. It does not, by itself, establish that Professor Agyeman is Lula’s father. The distinction matters: Lula’s reported pursuit of an African father and her decision to study African affairs illuminate the emotional force of the search, while Robin’s later archival lead belongs to Strike’s investigation and must not be mistaken for a conclusion Lula reached. Across these strands, biological origin remains both a concrete question and an imagined route to belonging, one the available evidence can approach without fully resolving.