Strike's interview with Bryony Radford

Cormoran Strike’s interview with Bryony Radford tests the difference between remembering a day and recognizing the significance of what was present in it. Radford recalls Lula Landry’s excitement over Deeby Macc’s anticipated visit and her own hours spent doing Lula’s makeup, but cannot account for the handwritten blue paper Strike is seeking. Her uncertainty leaves the interview balanced between useful recollection and a conspicuous blank in the investigation.

Setting and purpose

At five o’clock, after eating lightly, drinking plenty of water, taking painkillers, and making another trip to the restaurant bathroom, Strike arrives at 1 Arlington Place. The visit is part of his investigation into Lula’s death, and he comes to ask Radford about the afternoon before it. His physical preparation gives the appointment a concrete, effortful quality: this is an investigator still managing pain and discomfort, proceeding with the interview nonetheless.

Radford receives him in a room crowded with makeup tables and chairs. She opens a door onto a paved garden area, makes space on a table, and sits there while Strike takes a chair and gets out his notebook. Her invitation to begin is quickly followed by her own recollection that she has been thinking about the afternoon nonstop and that it was sad. The arrangement is informal, but Strike’s notebook and questions give the conversation its investigative purpose.

Radford’s account of Lula

Radford says she knew Lula fairly well through her work as a makeup artist. She had done Lula’s makeup for a couple of photo shoots and for the Rainforest Benefit; after mentioning that she could thread eyebrows, she was asked to do them for Lula at home. Radford also explains that the paparazzi followed Lula constantly, even when she went to the salon, so helping at home offered a measure of practical relief from that attention.

Radford places herself at the flat at about three o’clock. Lula and Ciara Porter were excited about Deeby Macc’s arrival, and Radford remembers their talk and laughter while she did Lula’s eyebrows. Ciara then asked Radford to do her nails as well, and Radford ended up making up both women. She estimates that she stayed for three hours and left at about six. These details establish both the length of her visit and the ordinary activity surrounding Lula in the hours before her death.

Asked whether Lula seemed excited, Radford answers emphatically that she did. She recalls Lula’s anticipation of meeting Deeby, whom she and Ciara discussed while Radford worked. The recollection is not simply an inference from a general mood: Radford locates the excitement in a specific conversation and in the shared attention the women gave to his expected arrival.

A second mood beneath the excitement

The account also contains a competing sign. While Radford was doing Lula’s eyebrows, Lula kept checking her phone, which was lying in her lap. Radford understood this as a sign that Evan Duffield was messing her around again. Thus the same afternoon appears to hold both anticipation of Deeby’s visit and anxious attention to a troubled relationship. Radford’s testimony does not resolve the contrast; it makes Lula’s mood less simple than the word “excited” suggests.

Strike returns to the question of mood and asks Radford to characterize it. She confirms the excitement, while her earlier description of Lula’s repeated phone-checking qualifies that answer. The interview’s value lies partly in this distinction: an eyewitness can be sure of what Lula and Ciara discussed and still describe a more mixed state of mind in which a phone repeatedly drew Lula’s attention.

The missing blue paper

Strike asks whether Radford saw a piece of blue paper bearing Lula’s handwriting. Radford says she did not and asks what it was. Strike replies that he does not know and wants to find out. The exchange defines the paper as an investigative unknown rather than an identified message: its color and handwriting matter, but its contents remain undisclosed in this conversation.

Strike broadens the question to ask whether Radford saw any paper with Lula’s writing. Radford again says she cannot remember any. She then qualifies the denial: something of that kind could have been lying around without her noticing it. The distinction matters. Radford does not provide a positive sighting or confirm that the paper was in the flat; she concedes only that its presence would not necessarily have registered during a busy makeup session.

The interview therefore preserves two kinds of evidence at once. Radford gives a detailed, time-bounded account of the afternoon—her arrival around three, the makeup, Ciara’s involvement, Lula’s excitement, and her departure around six—while the paper remains outside her recollection. As a result, her testimony sharpens the picture of Lula’s last day without closing the specific evidentiary gap Strike came to investigate.