Telephone

“Telephone,” Lady Gaga’s song, fills the car during a late-night ride with Ciara Porter, Kieran Kolovas-Jones, and Cormoran Strike. Its refrain about an unanswered call becomes an ironic counterpoint to Ciara’s advances toward Strike and the driver’s watchful glances in the mirror.

The Song in the Car

After a silence, Kieran asks Ciara whether she is going home. She agrees, then asks him to turn on the radio and make the music louder. The song she welcomes fills the car as streetlights sweep across her face and Strike registers the smell of alcohol on her breath and perfume on her skin.

Lyrics and Conversation

Ciara asks Strike whether he wants to ask her anything else. Their talk turns to the customisable bags she describes: their patterned silk linings can be exchanged or worn as scarves, and their zip edging is, she says, rock-and-roll. As she rests her upper leg lightly against Strike’s and giggles, Lady Gaga sings, “Call all you want, but there’s no one home.” The lyric’s image of an unanswered call sits pointedly beside a conversation that is becoming more intimate, without resolving what Ciara wants from Strike.

The Driver’s Watchfulness

The music masks the conversation, but Kieran’s eyes move with unnecessary regularity between the road and the rear-view mirror. Against that quiet surveillance, Ciara tells Strike that she likes them big, calls him butch and stern, and says that she finds this sexy. The song therefore accompanies both the car’s private-seeming exchange and the driver’s repeated attention to it; its refrain supplies an ironic echo, not an explanation, for the encounter.