Strike exchanges clues for police records

Strike’s exchange with Eric Wardle converts a fragmentary lead about Brett Fearney into access to the police file on Lula Landry’s death, supplying the documentary evidence that lets Strike scrutinize the official suicide finding. The bargain is neither a simple favor nor an instant transfer: Wardle makes access conditional on Fearney being found, while Strike’s later reading of the file turns its paperwork into a means of challenging what the police thought they knew.

The lead and the bargain

During a meeting with Wardle, Strike begins by raising the fatal stabbing of Liam Yates, a police informant. Wardle already knows who committed the killing, but Strike presses on the point that the suspect’s whereabouts remain unknown. The conversation shifts from the stabbing to a possible route toward the man: Shona Holland, who works at Betbusters on Hackney Road, is renting a flat nearby and has Brett Fearney staying with her. Fearney had previously beaten Holland’s sister, and Strike presents him as someone Holland would find difficult to refuse a favor.

Strike does not hand Wardle a complete address. He gives him the tenant’s name and part of the postcode, then challenges him to do some detective work of his own. The deliberate incompleteness makes the information a lead to pursue rather than a finished solution. Wardle questions whether it might be false, and Strike does not pretend that the police have already secured Fearney; the exchange remains a negotiation over information, credibility, and effort.

A conditional offer

Strike frames the next step as a fair exchange. Later, as Wardle prepares to leave, Strike gives him a business card and reminds him that he has given him Fearney. Wardle objects that he has not yet done so in any completed sense. He nevertheless agrees to the condition: if the police get Fearney, Strike can have the file. The agreement therefore depends on action beyond the conversation, and access is promised rather than immediately delivered.

The exchange places the two men in complementary roles. Strike can contribute information from his own contacts and inquiries; Wardle controls access to the police material Strike needs. Their bargain is practical rather than ceremonial, and Wardle’s skepticism prevents the lead from being treated as proof. The file becomes available only after Strike’s information has met Wardle’s stated condition.

The file as an investigative resource

Three hours after Wardle says he will send it, a courier delivers a bulky package from Scotland Yard. Strike signs for it and unwraps a thick gray folder of photocopied material. The delay and the physical package mark the difference between the verbal promise and the completed exchange: the file is not a convenient summary but a substantial body of records that Strike must work through.

The folder brings together statements from people who saw Lula on the final evening of her life, DNA evidence collected from her flat, photocopies of the visitors’ book at 18 Kentigern Gardens, records of medication prescribed for her bipolar disorder, the autopsy report, medical records from the preceding year, mobile and landline phone records, and a précis of the findings on her laptop. It also contains a DVD marked “CCTV 2 Runners.” These materials place witness accounts beside forensic, medical, communications, and surveillance evidence, allowing Strike to compare different kinds of records rather than rely on a single recollection.

The DVD initially presents a practical obstacle: Strike’s secondhand computer has a nonfunctioning DVD drive. He puts the disc in the pocket of the overcoat hanging by the glass door and continues with the printed documents. Meanwhile, he reads through the material methodically at Robin Ellacott’s desk, under the pool of light from the desk lamp, tracing the reasoning that had led to the conclusion of suicide.

Re-reading the official account

The file does not settle the case for Strike simply by being comprehensive. Its statements and timings instead give him a way to test inconsistencies. In Tansy Bestigui’s account, he focuses on a line of cocaine on the side of the bath and on the moments after she saw Lula’s figure fall past the window. Tansy repeatedly insists that her husband, Freddie Bestigui, was asleep in bed when Lula fell. Strike recalls how she shielded her face by pretending to push back her hair when he questioned her on that point, and concludes that the Bestiguis’ precise positions at the moment of the fall remain unproved.

The same critical method governs his review of Evan Duffield’s statement. Duffield admits that he tried to stop Lula leaving Uzi by gripping her upper arms; she broke free, and he followed shortly afterward. His statement also explains his use of a wolf-head mask to avoid photographers. A driver confirms taking Duffield from Uzi to Kentigern Gardens and then on to d’Arblay Street, but the police-prepared account does not convey the antipathy Wardle had attributed to the driver. Strike distinguishes what the file actually records from the interpretation attached to it.

Other statements supporting Duffield’s account are not automatically conclusive either. A woman says she saw him climbing the stairs to his dealer’s flat, and the dealer, Whycliff, also provides support; Strike remembers Wardle’s view that Whycliff might lie for Duffield. The remaining witnesses who place a man in a wolf mask around London have not necessarily identified Duffield personally. The police file thus gives Strike material to evaluate, not a verdict he must accept.

From paperwork to reconstruction

The importance of the exchange becomes clearer as Strike returns to the physical sequence inside Lula’s building. At the time of the death, Derrick Wilson says he took the master key from the back room, ran upstairs, found the stairwell empty, and unlocked Lula’s flat. Later, while Strike and Robin retrace the search, Wilson describes moving through the rooms and stops on the stairs when a remembered detail returns: he had slipped backward and landed hard where there were drops of water.

The drops give the investigation a concrete trace to connect with the scene. In Strike’s eventual reconstruction, John Bristow had taken several white roses from a vase, wiped their ends but not thoroughly enough, carried them from Flat Two, left the door ajar, and climbed to Lula’s flat. The water left by the roses was what Wilson slipped on later. The roses were not an incidental prop: carried to Lula’s door, they concealed the visitor’s identity from the peephole and helped bring about the moment when she opened the door to the person she believed was her long-lost brother.

The exchange with Wardle is therefore one step in a broader evidentiary chain. The police file gives Strike statements, records, and a route to surveillance material; his method is to compare them with behavior, timing, and physical traces rather than treat the original conclusion as settled. The bargain’s significance lies in that change of access: by contributing a lead in return for official records, Strike gains the means to re-examine the case and expose how a conclusion presented as suicide can be unsettled by contradictions and small details.