Troubled Blood

“And can you remember what you talked about?”

“She told me she’d met ’er husband at medical school, ’e was an ’igh-flier and all that. What was ’e?” said Satchwell, with what seemed to Robin a forced unconcern. “A cardiologist or something?”

“Hematologist,” said Robin.

“What’s that, blood? Yeah, she was always impressed by clever people, Margot. Didn’t occur to ’er that they can be shits like anyone else.”

“Did you get the impression Dr. Phipps was a shit?” asked Robin lightly.

“Not really,” said Satchwell. “But I was told ’e had a stick up his arse and was a bit of a mummy’s boy.”

“Who told you that?” asked Robin, pausing with her pen suspended over her notebook.

“Someone ’oo’d met him,” he replied with a slight shrug. “You not married?” he went on, his eyes on Robin’s bare left hand.

“Living with someone,” said Robin, with a brief smile. It was the answer she’d learned to give, to shut down flirtation from witnesses and clients, to erect barriers. Satchwell said, “Ah. I always know, if a bird’s living with a bloke without marriage, she must be really keen on him. Nothing but ’er feelings holding her, is there?”

“I suppose not,” said Robin, with a brief smile. She knew he was trying to disconcert her. “Did Margot mention anything that might be worrying her, or causing her problems? At home or at work?”

“Told you, it was all window dressing,” said Satchwell, munching on fries. “Great job, great ’usband, nice kid, nice ’ouse: she’d made it.” He swallowed. “I did the same thing back: told her I was having an exhibition, won an award for one of me paintings, in a band, serious girlfriend… which was a lie,” he added, with a slight snort. “I only remember that bird because we split up later that evening. Don’t ask me her name now. We ’adn’t been together long. She had long black hair and a massive tattoo of a spider’s web round her navel, that’s what I mainly remember—yeah, anyway, I ended it. Seeing Margot again—”

He hesitated. His uncovered eye unfocused, he said,

“I was thirty-five. It’s a funny age. It starts dawning on you forty’s really gonna happen to you, not just to other people. What are you, twenty-five?”

“Twenty-nine,” said Robin.

“Happens earlier for women, that worrying about getting old thing,” said Satchwell. “Got kids yet?”

“No,” said Robin, and then, “so Margot didn’t say anything to you that might suggest a reason for disappearing voluntarily?”

“Margot wouldn’t have gone away and left everyone in the lurch,” said Satchwell, as positive on the point as Oonagh. “Not Margot. Responsible was her middle name. She was a good girl, you know? School prefect sort.”

“So you didn’t make any plans to meet again?”

“No plans,” said Satchwell, munching on chips. “I mentioned to ’er my band was playing at the Dublin Castle the following week. Said, ‘drop in if you’re passing,’ but she said she wouldn’t be able to. Dublin Castle was a pub in Camden,” Satchwell added. “Might still be there.”

“Yes,” said Robin, “it is.”

“I told the investigating officer I’d mentioned the gig to her. Told ’im I’d’ve been up for seeing her again, if she’d wanted it. I ’ad nothing to hide.”

Robin remembered Strike’s opinion that Satchwell volunteering this information seemed almost too helpful, and, trying to dissemble her sudden suspicion, asked:

“Did anyone spot Margot at the pub, the night you were playing?”

Satchwell took his time before swallowing, then said,

“Not as far as I know.”

“The little wooden Viking you gave her,” said Robin, watching him carefully, “the one with ‘Brunhilda’ written on the foot—”

“The one she had on her desk at work?” he said, with what Robin thought might have been a whiff of gratified vanity. “Yeah, I gave her that in the old days, when we were dating.”

Could it be true, Robin wondered. After the acrimonious way Margot and Satchwell had broken up, after he’d locked her in his flat so she couldn’t get out to work, after he’d hit her, after she’d married another man, would Margot really have kept Satchwell’s silly little gift? Didn’t private jokes and nicknames become dead and rotten things after a painful breakup, when the thought of them became almost worse than memories of rows and insults? Robin had given most of Matthew’s gifts to charity after she’d found out about his infidelity, including the plush elephant that had been his first Valentine’s present and the jewelry box he’d given her for her twenty-first. However, Robin could tell Satchwell was going to stick to his story, so she moved to the next question in her notebook.

“There was a printers on Clerkenwell Road I think you had an association with.”

“Come again?” said Satchwell, frowning. “A printers?”

“A schoolgirl called Amanda White claims she saw Margot in an upper window belonging to this printers on the night—”

“Really?” said Satchwell. “I never ’ad no association with no printers. ’Oo says I did?”

“There was a book written in the eighties about Margot’s disappearance—”

“Yeah? I missed that.”

“—it said the printers produced flyers for a nightclub you’d painted a mural for.”

“For crying out loud,” said Satchwell, half-amused, half-exasperated. “That’s not an association. It’d be a stretch to call it a coincidence. I’ve never heard of the bloody place.”

Robin made a note and moved to her next question.

“What did you think of Bill Talbot?”

“Who?”

“The investigating officer. The first one,” said Robin.

“Oh yeah,” said Satchwell, nodding. “Very odd bloke. When I ’eard afterward he’d had a breakdown or whatever, I wasn’t surprised. Kept asking me what I was doing on random dates. Afterward, I worked out ’e was trying to decide wevver I was the Essex Butcher. He wanted to know my time of birth, as well, and what the hell that had to do with anything…”

“He was trying to draw up your horoscope,” said Robin, and she explained Talbot’s preoccupation with astrology.

“Dén tó pistévo!” said Satchwell, looking annoyed. “Astrology? That’s not funny. He was in charge of the case—how long?”

“Six months,” said Robin.

“Jesus,” said Satchwell, scowling so that the clear tape holding the dressing over his eye crinkled.

“I don’t think the people around him realized how ill he was until it got too obvious to ignore,” said Robin, now pulling a few tagged sheets of paper out of her bag: photocopies of Satchwell’s statements to both Talbot and Lawson.

“What’s all that?” he said sharply.

“Your statements to the police,” said Robin.

“Why are there—what are they, stars?—all over—”

“They’re pentagrams,” said Robin. “This is the statement Talbot took from you. It’s just routine,” she added, because Satchwell was now looking wary. “We’ve done it with everyone the police interviewed. I know your statements were double-checked at the time, but I wondered if I could run over them again, in case you remember anything useful?”

Taking his silence for consent, she continued:

“You were alone in your studio on the afternoon of the eleventh of October, but you took a call there at five from a Mr.… Hendricks?”

“Hendricks, yeah,” said Satchwell. “He was my agent at the time.”

“You went out to eat at a local café around half past six, where you had a conversation with the woman behind the till, which she remembered. Then you went back home to change, and out again to meet a few friends in a bar called Joe Bloggs around eight o’clock. All three friends you were drinking with confirmed your story… nothing to add to any of that?”

“No,” said Satchwell, and Robin thought she detected a slight sense of relief. “That all sounds right.”

“Was it one of those friends who’d met Roy Phipps?” Robin asked casually.

“No,” said Satchwell, unsmiling, and then, changing the subject, he said, “Margot’s daughter must be knocking on forty now, is she?”

“Forty last year,” said Robin.

“éla,” said Satchwell, shaking his head. “Time just—”

One of the mahogany brown hands, wrinkled and embellished with heavy silver and turquoise rings, made a smooth motion, as of a paper airplane in flight.

“—and then one day you’re old and you never saw it sneaking up on you.”

“When did you move abroad?”

“I didn’t mean to move, not at first. Went traveling, late ’75,” said Satchwell. He’d nearly finished his steak, now.

“What made you—?”

“I’d been thinking of traveling for a bit,” said Satchwell. “But after Creed killed Margot—it was such a bloody ’orrible thing—such a shock—I dunno, I wanted a change of scene.”

“That’s what you think happened to her, do you? Creed killed her?”