Troubled Blood

“Maybe I should talk to him next time?”

“Might not be a bad idea,” said Strike. “Anyway,” he took a gulp of coffee, “that’s all I’ve done on Bamborough since I got back. But I’m planning to drop in on Nurse Janice the moment I’ve got a couple of clear hours. She’ll be back from Dubai by now, and I want to know why she never mentioned she knew Paul Satchwell. Don’t think I’ll warn her I’m coming, this time. There’s something to be said for catching people unawares. So, what’s new your end?”

“Well,” said Robin, “Gloria Conti, or Jaubert, as she is these days, hasn’t answered Anna’s email.”

“Pity,” said Strike, frowning. “I thought she’d be more likely to talk to us if Anna asked.”

“So did I. I think it’s worth giving it another week, then getting Anna to prod her. The worst that can happen is another definite ‘no.’ In slightly better news, I’m supposed to be speaking to Amanda White, who’s now Amanda Laws, later today.”

“How much is that costing us?”

“Nothing. I appealed to her better nature,” said Robin, “and she pretended to be persuaded, but I can tell she’s quite enamored of the idea of publicity, and she likes the idea of you, and of getting her name in the papers again as the plucky schoolgirl who stuck to her woman-in-the-window story even when the police didn’t believe her. That’s in spite of the fact that her whole shtick, when I first contacted her, was that she didn’t want to go through all the stress of press interest again unless she got money out of it.”

“She still married?” asked Strike, taking his cigarettes out of his pocket. “Because she and Oakden sound like a good match. Mightn’t be a bad sideline for us, setting grifters up with each other.”

Robin laughed.

“So they can have dodgy children together, thus keeping us in business forever?”

Strike lit his cigarette, exhaled and then said,

“Not a perfect business plan. There’s no guarantee breeding two shits together will produce a third shit. I’ve known decent people who were raised by complete bastards, and vice versa.”

“You’re nature over nurture, are you?” asked Robin.

“Maybe,” said Strike. “My three nephews were all raised the same, weren’t they? And—”

“—one’s lovely, one’s a prick and one’s an arsehole,” said Robin.

Strike’s loud burst of laughter seemed to offend the harried-looking suited man who was hurrying past with a mobile pressed to his ear.

“Well remembered,” Strike said, still grinning as he watched the scowling man march out of sight. Lately he, too, had had moods where the sound of other people’s cheerfulness grated, but at this moment, with the sunshine, the good coffee and Robin beside him, he suddenly realized he was happier than he’d been in months.

“People are never raised the same way, though,” said Robin, “not even in the same house, with the same parents. Birth order matters, and all kinds of other things. Speaking of which, Wilma Bayliss’s daughter Maya has definitely agreed to talk to us. We’re trying to find a convenient date. I think I told you, the youngest sister is recovering from breast cancer, so I don’t want to hassle them.

“And there’s something else,” said Robin, feeling self-conscious.

Strike, who’d returned to his sandwich, saw, to his surprise, Robin drawing from her bag Talbot’s leather-bound notebook, which Strike had assumed was still in the locked filing cabinet in the office.

“I’ve been looking back through this.”

“Think I missed something, do you?” said Strike, through a mouthful of bread.

“No, I—”

“It’s fine,” he said. “Perfectly possible. Nobody’s infallible.”

Sunshine was slowly making its way into Frith Street now, and the pages of the old notebook glowed yellow as Robin opened it.

“Well, it’s about Scorpio. You remember Scorpio?”

“The person whose death Margot might have been worried about?”

“Exactly. You thought Scorpio might be Steve Douthwaite’s married girlfriend, who killed herself.”

“I’m open to other theories,” said Strike. His sandwich finished, he brushed off his hands and took out his cigarettes. “The notes ask whether Aquarius confronted Pisces, don’t they? Which I assumed meant Margot confronted Douthwaite.”

In spite of his neutral tone, Strike resented remembering these star signs. The laborious and ultimately unrewarding task of working out which suspects and witnesses were represented by each astrological glyph had been far from his favorite bit of research.

“Well,” said Robin, taking out two folded photocopies, which she’d been keeping in the notebook, “I’ve been wondering… look at these.”

She passed the two documents to Strike, who opened them and saw copies of two birth certificates, one for Olive Satchwell, the other for Blanche Satchwell.

“Olive was Satchwell’s mother,” said Robin, as Strike, smoking, examined the documents. “And Blanche was his sister, who died aged ten—possibly with a pillow over her face.”

“If you’re expecting me to deduce their star signs from these birthdays,” said Strike, “I haven’t memorized the whole zodiac.”

“Blanche was born on the twenty-fifth of October, which makes her a Scorpio,” said Robin. “Olive was born on the twenty-ninth of March. Under the traditional system, she’d be Aries, like Satchwell…”

To Strike’s surprise, Robin now took out a copy of Astrology 14 by Steven Schmidt.

“It was quite hard to track this down. It’s been out of print for ages.”

“A masterwork like that? You amaze me,” said Strike, watching Robin turn to a page listing the dates of revised signs according to Schmidt. Robin smiled, but refusing to be deflected said,

“Look here. By Schmidt’s system, Satchwell’s mother was a Pisces.”

“We’re mixing up the two systems now, are we?” asked Strike.

“Well, Talbot did,” Robin pointed out. “He decided Irene and Roy should be given their Schmidt signs, but other people were allowed to keep the traditional ones.”

“But,” said Strike, well aware that he was trying to impose logic on what was essentially illogical, “Talbot made massive, sweeping assumptions on the basis of people’s original signs. Brenner was ruled out as a suspect solely because he was—”

“—Libra, yes,” said Robin.

“Well, what happens to Janice being psychic and the Essex Butcher being a Capricorn if all the dates start sliding around?”

“Wherever there was a discrepancy between the traditional sign and Schmidt sign, he seems to have gone with the sign he thought suited the person best.”

“Which makes a mockery of the whole business. And also,” said Strike, “calls all my identifications of signs and suspects into question.”

“I know,” said Robin. “Even Talbot seems to have got very stressed trying to work across both systems, which is when he began concentrating mainly on asteroids and the tarot.”

“OK,” said Strike, blowing smoke away from her, “go on with what you were saying—if Satchwell’s sister was a Scorpio, and her mother was Pisces… remind me,” said Strike, “exactly what that passage about Scorpio says?”

Robin flicked backward through Talbot’s notebook until she found the passage decorated with doodles of the crab, the fish, the scorpion, the fish-tailed goat and the water-bearer’s urn.

“‘Aquarius worried about how Scorpio died, question mark,’” she read aloud. “And—written in capitals—‘SCHMIDT AGREES WITH ADAMS.’ Then, ‘Did Aquarius challenge Pisces about Scorpio? Was Cancer there, did Cancer witness? Cancer is kind, instinct is to protect,’ then, in capitals, ‘INTERVIEW AGAIN. Scorpio and Aquarius connected, water, water, also Cancer, and Capricorn,’ in capitals, ‘HAS A FISH’S TAIL.’”

Brow furrowed, Strike said:

“We’re assuming Cancer still means Janice, right?”

“Well, Janice and Cynthia are the only two Cancerians connected with the case, and Janice seems to fit this better,” said Robin. “Let’s say Margot decided she was going to act on her suspicion that Satchwell’s mother killed his sister. If she phoned Olive from the surgery, Janice might have overheard a phone call, mightn’t she? And if Janice knew the Satchwell family, or was involved with them in some way we don’t know about, she mightn’t have wanted to tell the police what she’d overheard, for fear of incriminating Olive.”

“Why would Margot have waited years to check out her suspicions about the pillow dream?” asked Strike, but before Robin could supply an answer, he did it himself. “Of course, people do sometimes take years to decide what action to take on something like that. Or to muster up the courage to do it.”

He handed Robin back the two photocopies.

“Well, if that’s the story behind the Scorpio business, Satchwell’s still a prime suspect.”

“I never got his address in Greece,” said Robin guiltily.

“We’ll get at him through his surviving sister if we have to.”

Strike took a swig of coffee then, slightly against his better judgment, asked,