Strike Investigates Lula's Friend Rochelle Onifade

Strike’s search for Rochelle Onifade, a friend Lula Landry had met in therapy, is a small but consequential strand of the investigation: it converts an imprecise name and a recollection of a hostel into a verifiable identity and a timeline of visits to Lula’s home. The trail also reveals the fragility of the information available about Rochelle, whose stays at St. Elmo’s Hostel were intermittent and whose whereabouts were uncertain.

The lead and Bristow’s reaction

Strike asks John Bristow to help identify a woman whose Christian name begins with R, perhaps Rachel or Raquelle. He knows she had been living at St. Elmo’s Hostel in Hammersmith when Lula died and that she and Lula met in therapy. The request is deliberately tentative: Strike has a location and a partial name, but not yet the surname needed to pursue her.

Bristow responds not by offering information but by asking why Strike wants to speak to the woman. He counters with Tansy Bestigui’s assertion that the voice heard upstairs was male. His disappointment, edging toward annoyance, makes the exchange significant: rather than follow Strike’s inquiry into a possible friend of Lula’s, Bristow redirects attention toward a witness whose account supports the idea that a man was involved. The response does not establish why he resists the lead, but it marks the question of Rochelle’s relevance as a point of tension in the investigation.

St. Elmo’s Hostel

The hostel gives Strike a concrete place to pursue the clue. Set behind a noisy concrete flyover in Hammersmith, it is a red-brick building with grubby white facings, peeling paint, a chipped street-level door and an institutional entrance buzzer. A caged camera hangs above the lintel; inside, a metal-grilled kiosk separates the visitor from the people working at the desk. The surroundings sharply contrast with Lula’s Mayfair home, linking the search for her friend to a far less secure and comfortable world.

At the desk, a bald staff member recognizes the name Rochelle, but says she has left. Her stays have come and gone, and she had last been at the hostel weeks earlier, perhaps even a couple of months before Strike’s visit. He has no address or reliable account of where she went, suggesting that she may again be sleeping rough. The answer provides neither a current location nor a surname; the hostel can confirm Rochelle’s connection to the place, but not keep her continuously within reach.

The staff member describes Rochelle as difficult and as having mental-health problems. He thinks a colleague, Carrianne, might know more, but neither worker can provide an aunt’s name or address, and the surname remains unknown to them. The bald man does know that Rochelle attended outpatient appointments at St Thomas’ Hospital for a time, though he cannot say whether she still goes. Carrianne adds that Rochelle had psychotic episodes, was taking a lot of medication, and had seemed not to care when Lula died. These details are second-hand descriptions from hostel staff, not a direct account from Rochelle; they establish the limits and character of the information Strike can obtain there, rather than resolving what Rochelle knew or felt.

Identifying Rochelle Onifade

The decisive breakthrough comes through a separate record: Strike asks Derrick Wilson to check the logbook for the friend Kieran Kolovas-Jones had mentioned, the woman from rehab who used to visit Lula. Wilson finds the entry and reads the name as Rochelle Onifade. The visitor log supplies the missing surname that the hostel staff could not provide, converting the uncertain “R” lead into a specific person.

Wilson dates Rochelle’s last recorded visit to early November. The entry therefore does more than identify her: it anchors her connection with Lula’s home to a period before Lula’s death and gives Strike a concrete point in the chronology to follow. Set beside the hostel’s report that Rochelle had left more than two months earlier, the record presents a person moving between temporary accommodation and visits to Lula, but it does not establish where she went afterward.

Significance and limits of the search

The search proceeds through fragments held by different people and places: Bristow knows the request concerns a friend but challenges its relevance; hostel workers recognize Rochelle yet cannot supply a surname or whereabouts; Wilson’s logbook provides the identifying detail and last visit. Each source is useful in a different way, and none alone gives Strike a complete account. In particular, the hostel staff’s impressions cannot substitute for Rochelle’s own testimony, and the visitor log establishes a visit rather than what was discussed there.

Rochelle’s uncertain movements also expose a practical difficulty in the investigation. A person who repeatedly leaves the hostel, may be sleeping rough, and is known to staff chiefly by her first name is hard to locate through ordinary records. Strike’s method is to make the scattered traces answer one another: a partial name and remembered residence lead to the hostel; an earlier reference to a friend from rehab leads to Wilson’s log; the log provides Onifade and an early-November date. The resulting identification sharpens the inquiry into Lula’s circle without, by itself, resolving Rochelle’s role or the circumstances of Lula’s death.