Strike's reinvestigation of Lula Landry's death

Cormoran Strike’s reinvestigation of Lula Landry’s death is a process of revisiting what the first inquiry treated as settled: he asks whether the police examined the right evidence, distinguishes direct observation from unreliable accounts, and reconstructs the movements inside Kentigern Gardens. Its decisive method is physical and cumulative. The shifting testimony of Tansy Bestigui, the uncertain positions of her and Freddie when Lula fell, and a few drops of water on the stairs eventually converge in a reconstruction that exposes how John Bristow reached his sister.

Reopening the case

John Bristow’s doubts about whether Lula had committed suicide bring Strike back to the circumstances of her death. When Strike approaches Rochelle Onifade, he presents the renewed inquiry as a second look at that question, not as an accusation against her. His manner matters: Rochelle’s fear of what he might infer is markedly greater than his words or conduct warrant, illustrating how the investigation must work through the apprehensions and guarded accounts of people around Lula.

Strike also doubts that the police examination of Lula’s laptop addressed the questions his inquiry requires. He asks Spanner for a second opinion, explaining that investigators had concentrated largely on recent emails and might have missed activity that mattered, or failed to recognize its significance. He wants activity on or leading up to 8 January, including recent internet searches, and would rather not return to the police for the password unless necessary. The request makes the investigation’s central problem explicit: evidence can be present without having been read for the right purpose.

Testing testimony against the scene

The police file gives Strike reasons to revisit what happened in the Bestiguis’ flat. Tansy had been using cocaine that night, and her account of seeing Lula fall was not the only issue: her changing stories consistently placed Freddie in bed, asleep, when Lula went over the balcony. Strike remembers Tansy shielding her face as he pressed her on that point. Since the file contains no map or diagram of the apartment, he cannot establish where either Bestigui stood at the crucial moment. He therefore treats their locations as unproven rather than accepting the police view as conclusive.

The accounts of Evan Duffield and the people who said they saw him after he left Uzi also require distinctions between testimony and inference. Duffield admitted grabbing Lula by the upper arms when he tried to stop her leaving the nightclub, and said he followed her after she broke free. A driver’s statement supported his account of taking him to Kentigern Gardens and then to d’Arblay Street. Other statements placed Duffield near his dealer, but Strike notes reasons to question their weight: Wardle believed the dealer might lie for Duffield, a woman downstairs might have been paid, and witnesses who saw a man roaming the streets could honestly identify only someone in a wolf mask. The file offers corroboration, but not all corroboration is equally secure.

Reconstructing the route

At the building, Strike asks Derrick Wilson to repeat the order in which he searched Lula’s flat on the night she died. Wilson recalls entering one room first, seeing doors open without touching them, and leading Strike through the sequence. The method turns the inquiry from a contest between accounts into a test of movement through a real space: what Wilson did, where he went, and what could have left traces on the route.

On the stairs, Wilson suddenly remembers slipping backwards and landing hard. There had been water on the steps: he points out the drops, and Strike repeats the detail. The memory is small and initially disconnected from the larger case, but it becomes important because it can be checked against the route someone else took through the building. A forgotten physical mishap becomes a clue rather than an incidental part of a witness’s story.

From scattered signs to proof

As Strike looks down from the balcony, his reconstruction of Lula’s death begins to take shape, but he recognizes the difference between a persuasive account and an evidentially established one. The dead, he reflects, can speak only through the people left behind and the signs they leave. Having encountered Lula through her writing and voice, he now feels close to her while looking at the place from which she fell; still, the truth is only coming into focus, and he lacks proof. The investigation’s emotional proximity to the victim does not remove its evidential burden.

The drops on the stairs ultimately connect Wilson’s slip to the white roses John used to gain entry to Lula’s flat. In Strike’s reconstruction, John took roses from a vase in Flat Two, dried their ends imperfectly, and carried them upstairs, leaving a few drops of water behind. He knocked at Lula’s door with the flowers, exploiting her expectation of a long-lost brother: she had been waiting for him and had not seen him approach. The roses made the unexpected visitor seem welcome; the water they shed later helped reveal the route by which he reached her.

This chain of inference defines the reinvestigation. Strike does not treat the first official account, a witness’s confidence, or a striking theory as proof in itself. He revisits the computer, weighs testimony against its circumstances, and asks Wilson to retrace the search room by room. The case changes when apparently minor details—the missing apartment diagram, the uncertainty about where the Bestiguis stood, and water on a stair—are read together as evidence of actions rather than dismissed as background.