Strike’s investigation into Lula Landry’s death

Strike’s investigation into Lula Landry’s death is a process of reconstruction: he revisits the police file, tests witnesses’ accounts against physical details, and follows a paper trail and a remembered movement through the building. Its decisive turn comes when small inconsistencies—the uncertain positions of the Bestiguis, water on the stairs, and a missing blue sheet—begin to form a coherent alternative to the accepted account of Lula’s death.

Reviewing the Police Account

Strike does not treat the official file as a settled explanation. While reading the account of events inside the Bestiguis’ flat, he adds notes about a half-line of cocaine beside the bath and the few seconds after Tansy Bestigui saw Lula fall past the window. The police had reached a view of the case, but the file included no floor plan of the apartment, and Strike considers the Bestiguis’ precise positions when Lula fell unproven. Tansy had repeatedly insisted that Freddie Bestigui was asleep in bed; Strike recalls her shielding her face by pretending to push back her hair when he pressed her on this point. Her changing stories make the scene’s layout and timing matters to investigate rather than details to take on trust.

The file also preserves the competing account of Evan Duffield’s movements. Duffield admitted that he had tried to stop Lula leaving Uzi by taking hold of her upper arms, but said she broke free and left; he followed shortly afterward. His explanation for wearing a wolf-head mask was that it helped him avoid photographers. His driver supported the account that Duffield went to Kentigern Gardens and then continued to d’ Arblay Street, while other statements placed him near his dealer or described a masked man in London. Strike recognizes that these statements do not all have the same evidentiary force: a witness could have been paid, and seeing a man in a mask does not establish who was underneath it. The investigation therefore weighs corroboration and uncertainty rather than treating the number of statements as proof.

Reconstructing the Building

Strike tests Derrick Wilson’s recollection by asking him to demonstrate, room by room and in order, how he searched Lula’s flat on the night she died. Wilson first describes entering a room, seeing open doors, and leaving them untouched. As he retraces his route on the stairs, he recalls something he had apparently forgotten: he slipped backward and landed hard where there were drops of water. The memory changes the significance of a minor trace. A stain or mark is not enough on its own to identify what happened, but its location on Wilson’s route gives Strike a specific physical detail to compare with the reconstructed movements in the building.

The investigation also returns to Wilson’s first response after he discovered the fall. He says that he ran back inside, found the Bestiguis in the lobby, and told them to call the police and watch the lift in case someone tried to leave that way. He then took the master key from the back room, ran upstairs, found the stairwell empty, and unlocked Lula’s flat. Strike’s questions focus on what Wilson did and did not take with him, and on the sequence of his entry. Recalling the search as a route, rather than accepting its summary in a statement, makes it possible to test the account against the doors, stairs, and physical traces.

Following the Missing Paper

In questioning Bryony Radford, Strike establishes the limits of what she claims to know. Asked whether she saw a particular item, Bryony insists that she was there to do a job, not to search Lula’s belongings. Strike then asks about Tansy Bestigui; Bryony says she knows only Tansy’s sister, Ursula May, who had hired her for large parties. The distinction matters to Strike’s inquiry: a witness’s proximity to Lula or her possessions does not automatically mean she can verify what happened to an object.

Strike’s later account of his interviews shows how he keeps separate claims in play. He emphasizes Bryony’s insistence that dyslexia explained her listening to Ursula’s voicemail messages, Ciara Porter’s continued assertion that Lula had told her she would leave everything to her brother, and Duffield’s irritation that Lula kept checking the time at Uzi. He also tells Robin Ellacott about a threatening email Tansy sent her estranged husband. These details do not by themselves establish who killed Lula, but they sharpen questions about her intended arrangements, her state of mind, and Tansy’s position on the night of the fall.

The missing blue paper becomes central when Strike presents his theory to Eric Wardle and another police officer. He says Lula met Rochelle Onifade for fifteen minutes in a Notting Hill shop the day before she died, took her into a changing cubicle, and made a telephone call asking someone to come to her flat after one in the morning. A shop assistant in the adjoining cubicle, separated from them by a curtain, overheard the call. Strike connects that request with the blue paper Lula had before entering Vashti and with the fact that she had been writing in the back of the car. He argues that the paper was a will, not a suicide note, and that Lula brought it to the shop so Rochelle could witness it. The call and the paper give new significance to the claim that Lula had intended to leave everything to her brother: what matters is not only what she may have said, but whether a written document existed and who could confirm it.

Challenging the Accepted Explanation

Strike uses the timing of Lula’s request to challenge the idea that she had decided to die. In his argument to Wardle, an urgent invitation to visit her flat after one in the morning, combined with the missing paper and the journey to see Rochelle, suggests that Lula was trying to arrange something rather than simply preparing to take her own life. He also rejects the assumption that her conduct toward Rochelle proves callousness: bringing a penniless, homeless friend across town and then leaving her to make her own way home would be hard to reconcile with that reading unless Lula was acting under unusual emotional pressure or pursuing a purpose of her own. Strike presents these points as a case to be tested, not as isolated proof.

His confrontation with Freddie Bestigui supplies another possible test. Freddie angrily orders his assistant Elena to call security as Strike identifies John Bristow as Lula’s brother. Strike then states that a photographer was across the street from Bestigui’s house in the early hours of January 8 and that the photographer does not understand what the pictures show. He warns that the material could eventually reach either the police or the press. Freddie calls Strike’s account false but does not have the guards remove him; instead, he sends them away so they can speak privately. The potential photographs expand the inquiry beyond testimony: an image made without its photographer understanding its significance may still preserve evidence that a witness has denied or failed to recognize.

The Reconstructed Visit

In the account Strike gives of the murder, the press photographers eventually leave the street, apparently after Lula’s regular driver tips them off. John then has an opportunity to approach the building without their attention. Strike says John puts on Deeby Macc’s hoodie, a disguise that helps him pass as someone other than himself, and removes several white roses from a vase in Flat Two. He dries their ends, but not completely, and carries them upstairs to Lula’s flat, leaving the door of Flat Two ajar.

The roses explain the drops of water Wilson later remembers on the stairs. They also make the visit possible without an ordinary introduction: Lula, who had been waiting on her balcony with the windows open, sees the flowers through the peephole and opens the door in excitement, believing they signal her long-lost brother. In Strike’s reconstruction, John’s use of the roses turns a familiar object into a means of access, while the water they leave behind connects the murder to Wilson’s apparently incidental fall. The sequence joins motive, opportunity, deception, and a physical trace, transforming separate uncertainties in the police account into a specific accusation against John Bristow.