Lula Landry’s laptop

Lula Landry’s laptop becomes both a record of the person behind a famous face and a source of investigative leads. The emails on it make Lula’s everyday warmth and friendships tangible to Cormoran Strike, while the computer’s changing password, research into the Agyeman name, and the later deletion of a large photo file turn a personal device into evidence whose significance remains unresolved.

The laptop as a record of a person

Near midnight, Strike turns to the police report on the laptop’s contents. Police had concentrated on messages that might indicate suicidal mood or intent, without finding evidence of that kind. Reading emails exchanged during the last two weeks of Lula’s life, Strike finds something the abundance of photographs had not provided: a sense of her as a living person rather than a familiar, abstract image. Her informally written messages, full of nicknames and private jokes, bring into focus a sociable, impulsive woman who was busy with work and looking forward to a trip to Morocco.

That effect changes the emotional as well as the evidential force of the laptop. Strike had hoped that a paper trail might disclose a murderer; instead, the messages make Lula herself more present to him. The evidence does not establish what she intended at every point, but it complicates any attempt to reduce her life to the question of whether she was suicidal. Her correspondence presents activity, affection, and anticipation alongside the investigation’s attention to her death.

Correspondence and friendship

Many of Lula’s emails were sent to Guy Somé. Their tone is cheerfully confidential, and one message asks Somé to make something for Rochelle Onifade’s birthday, promising that Lula will pay and urging him to make something nice. The request is a concrete sign of Lula’s concern for Rochelle and of the friendship Strike had heard described as close. It also shows the laptop preserving the unremarkable, practical texture of that connection: a birthday, a gift, and a familiar appeal to a friend.

The messages do not themselves identify a suspect or explain Lula’s death. Their importance lies partly in what they restore. Where public images made Lula seem almost generic through repetition, her emails preserve a distinctive voice and her ties to people around her. Strike’s reading therefore moves between investigative scrutiny and personal recognition: the device matters not only for what data it might conceal, but for the ordinary life its surviving messages record.

Strike’s examination of the device

John Bristow agrees to bring the laptop to Strike after Strike asks to inspect it. When Strike later examines it over dinner at Wong Kei, the computer’s dark-pink casing is patterned with cherry blossom. The setting and object sharpen the contrast between Lula’s polished public visibility and the private material evidence now being handled by an investigator. Strike asks Spanner to examine activity on or leading up to 8 January, especially recent internet searches, because the police had mainly focused on recent emails and Strike does not yet have the password.

Spanner’s examination yields a more specific line of inquiry. The password is Agyeman, and it had been reset five days before Lula died. Lula had bookmarked the homepage of SOAS, where the surname appeared, and saved a version of the page featuring an obituary for Professor J. P. Agyeman, an emeritus professor of African politics. Her internet history also shows that, during the month before her death, she browsed for his books and looked at other books on African history and politics. These traces establish a sustained interest in the subject and the name, though they do not establish whether she applied to SOAS or what personal purpose the research served.

Deleted material and unresolved evidence

Spanner finds one further discrepancy: a large photo file had been deleted from the laptop on 17 March. His recovery software can retrieve material that users may believe has been removed, but the evidence presented here does not identify the photographs or explain who deleted them. The date places the deletion after Lula’s death, making the file’s disappearance a distinct investigative question rather than part of her ordinary browsing history.

The laptop consequently holds evidence of different kinds and degrees of certainty. The emails provide a vivid record of friendship and daily concerns; the browsing history documents research into African politics and the Agyeman name; the password change gives that research a striking point of access; and the deleted photo file indicates posthumous alteration of the device’s contents. Together, these details widen Strike’s inquiry beyond the police search for indications of suicidal intent, while leaving the most consequential questions open.