Strike Interview Derrick Wilson

Strike’s interview with Derrick Wilson begins as a methodical effort to test the evidence surrounding Lula Landry’s death, but its importance reaches beyond Wilson’s original testimony: when Strike later retraces the search, Wilson remembers slipping on water on the stairs, and Strike identifies it as a trace left by white roses carried by John Bristow. The interview thus supplies both a careful witness account and the overlooked physical detail that helps reconstruct the murder.

The interview and its purpose

Strike meets Wilson at the Phoenix Café on Coldharbour Lane, a place Strike knows from earlier visits with Shumba and his mother. Over pie and mash, he explains that John Bristow is dissatisfied with the inquest into his sister’s death and has hired him to review the evidence. The meeting is not presented as a confrontation: Wilson is composed, and Strike’s questions are direct, while his manner remains conversational.

Wilson’s account of Lula is personal but limited by his role at the building’s front desk. He saw her coming and going rather than spending time with her. He remembers that she greeted him politely and had once asked about Jamaica because she was considering working there. He also obtained an autograph for his nephew Jason, sent it to him in Afghanistan, and noticed that Lula subsequently asked after Jason by name. That small courtesy distinguishes her, in Wilson’s memory, from wealthy residents who did not bother to remember the security staff.

Establishing the building’s routines

Strike asks about the staff and the building’s daily records to establish who was on duty and how entry was monitored. Wilson explains that three guards—himself, Colin McLeod, and Ian Robson—worked shifts to keep someone at the desk around the clock. Wilson was supposed to be off on the night Lula died, but Robson called around four in the afternoon, saying he was ill. Wilson agreed to cover the shift because Robson had previously exchanged shifts with him to accommodate family business. He remarks that he should not have been there, a counterfactual that gives his account a note of regret without changing the practical fact that he was on duty.

The external keypad code had not changed during the three months Lula lived in the building, although it was changed after her death because so many police officers had learned it. Wilson says that everyone entering the building on the day before the death was logged and, as far as he knew, left again. These details help Strike distinguish the building’s ordinary access procedures from the less secure conditions that may have allowed someone to move through it.

One exception to the general picture of locked access is the swimming-pool door, which Wilson says was open that night. He cannot remember anyone using the pool and does not know how long the door had been left open; Colin had worked the previous night and should have checked it. The detail remains uncertain rather than becoming proof of a particular intruder, but it gives Strike a concrete lapse to weigh against the building’s usual routines.

Wilson’s account of the night

In discussing the noise that had led him to suspect Evan Duffield, Wilson recalls an earlier incident, about two months before Lula’s death. Lula had thrown Duffield out of her flat; Duffield hammered and kicked at the door, shouting insults, and Wilson went upstairs to remove him. That episode explains why Wilson could interpret later sounds through the history of Duffield’s volatile relationship with Lula. It is evidence of a past confrontation, not direct proof that Duffield was present at the fatal moment.

Wilson also describes what he did after the fall. Once the Bestiguis were in the lobby, he told them to call the police and watch the lift in case the suspected man tried to leave that way. He retrieved the master key from the back room and ran upstairs to Lula’s flat. Strike pauses over the fact that Wilson went in without taking anything to defend himself, asking whether he had considered the possibility that someone inside had just killed a woman. The question draws attention to the risk Wilson took, while the long silence that follows marks a point his account does not readily resolve.

Later, when Strike asks Wilson to retrace the rooms he searched, the security guard reconstructs the order of his movements. On the stairs, he suddenly remembers slipping backwards and landing hard. There had been water on the steps: drops. Strike repeats the observation, recognizing that the apparently minor detail may matter. The recollection is significant precisely because Wilson had not included it in his initial account; a physical trace survives where memory and formal testimony had left a gap.

From testimony to reconstruction

Strike’s later review of the Bestiguis’ statements makes clear why precise reconstruction matters. Tansy Bestigui repeatedly insisted that Freddie was asleep in bed when Lula fell, but Strike considered the exact positions of both Bestiguis at the time unproven. He also noted the cocaine in the bathroom and Tansy’s shifting account. These uncertainties do not establish that either Bestigui committed the crime; they show why Strike refuses to treat the police file’s conclusions as settled merely because they appear in official statements.

The water on the stairs acquires its explanation only when Strike confronts John Bristow with the sequence of events. He says John took white roses from a vase in Flat Two, dried their ends imperfectly, left the door ajar, and carried them upstairs to Lula’s flat. A few drops fell from the roses onto the stairs, where Wilson later slipped. The small trace links the guard’s forgotten experience to John’s movements and makes the interview part of a larger chain of physical evidence.

The scene demonstrates the difference between asking a witness what he remembers and reconstructing what the evidence permits. Wilson is neither the killer nor a flawless recorder: he offers useful observations, admits uncertainty about the pool door, and initially fails to recall the water. Strike’s persistence recovers the detail without turning uncertainty into certainty prematurely. In the final reconstruction, the drops become legible because the inquiry connects them to the roses, the open door, and John’s approach to his sister’s flat.