Troubled Blood

“Who’re you?” she wheezed, looking from Robin to Strike.

“Afternoon, Mrs. Fuller,” said Strike loudly and clearly, “my name’s Cormoran Strike and this is Robin Ellacott.”

He pulled his driver’s license out of his pocket and showed it to her, with his card. She made an impatient gesture, to show she couldn’t read them; her eyes were milky with glaucoma.

“We’re private detectives,” said Strike, voice still raised over the arguing pair onscreen (“At the end of the day, Lucy, she slept, on a one-night stand, wiv a boy—” “Arg—Arg—Arg—this is irrelevant—”).

“We’ve been hired to try and find out what happened to Margot Bamborough. She was a doctor who—”

“’Oo?”

“Dr. Margot Bamborough,” Strike repeated, still more loudly. “She went missing from Clerkenwell in 1974. We heard you—”

“Oh yeah…” said Betty Fuller, who appeared to need to draw breath every few words. “Dr. Bamborough… yeah.”

“Well, we wondered whether we could talk to you about her?”

Betty Fuller stood there for what seemed a very long twenty seconds, thinking this over, while onscreen a young man in a maroon suit said to the over-made-up girl, “I didn’t wanna bring it up but you come over to me—”

Betty Fuller made an impatient gesture, turned and shuffled back inside. Strike and Robin glanced at each other.

“Is it all right to come in, Mrs. Fuller?” asked Strike loudly.

She nodded. Having carefully positioned her oxygen tank, she fell back into her armchair, then tugged the knitted dress in an effort to make it cover her knees. Strike and Robin entered the room and Strike closed the door. Watching the old lady struggle to pull her dress down, Robin had an urge to take a blanket off the unmade bed, and place it decorously over her lap.

Robin had discovered during her research that Betty was eighty-four. The old lady’s physical state shocked her. The small room smelled of BO and urine. A door showed a small toilet leading off the single bedroom. Through the open wardrobe door, Robin saw crumpled clothes which had been thrown there, and two empty wine bottles, half hidden in underwear. There was nothing on the walls except a cat calendar: the month of May showed a pair of ginger kittens peeking out from between pink geranium blossoms.

“Would it be all right to turn this down?” Strike shouted over the TV, where the couple onscreen continued to argue, the woman’s eyelashes as thick as wooly bear caterpillars.

“Turn it… off,” said Betty Fuller. “’S a recording.”

The Essex voices were suddenly extinguished. The two detectives looked around. There were only two choices for seats: the unmade bed and a hard, upright chair, so Robin took the former, Strike the latter. Removing his notebook from his pocket, Strike said, “We’ve been hired by Dr. Bamborough’s daughter, Mrs. Fuller, to try and find out what happened to her.”

Betty Fuller made a noise like “hurhm,” which sounded disparaging, although Strike thought it might also have been an attempt to clear phlegm out of her throat. She rocked slightly to one side in her chair and pulled ineffectually at the back of her dress. Her swollen lower legs were knotted with varicose veins.

“So, you remember Dr. Bamborough disappearing, do you, Mrs. Fuller?”

“…’es,” she grunted, still breathing heavily. In spite of her incapacity and unpromising manner, Strike had the impression of somebody both more alert than they might appear at first glance, and happier to have company and attention than the unprepossessing exterior might suggest.

“You were living in Skinner Street then, weren’t you?”

She coughed, which seemed to clear her lungs, and in a slightly steadier voice, she said, “Was there till… last year. Michael Cliffe…’Ouse. Top floor. Couldn’t manage, no more.”

Strike glanced at Robin; he’d expected her to lead the interrogation, assumed Betty would respond better to a woman, but Robin seemed oddly passive, sitting on the bed, her gaze wandering over the small room.

“Were you one of Dr. Bamborough’s patients?” Strike asked Betty.

“Yeah,” wheezed Betty. “I was.”

Robin was thinking, is this where single people end up, people without children to look out for them, without double incomes? In small boxes, living vicariously through reality stars?

Next Christmas, no doubt, she’d run into Matthew, Sarah and their new baby in Masham. She could just imagine Sarah’s proud strut through the streets, pushing a top-of-the-range pushchair, Matthew beside her, and a baby with Sarah’s white-blonde hair peeking over the top of the blankets. Now, when Jenny and Stephen ran into them, there’d be common ground, the shared language of parenthood. Robin decided there and then, sitting on Betty Fuller’s bed, to make sure she didn’t go home next Christmas. She’d offer to work through it, if necessary.

“Did you like Dr. Bamborough?” Strike was asking Betty.

“She were… all right,” said Betty.

“Did you ever meet any of the other doctors at the practice?” asked Strike.

Betty Fuller’s chest rose and fell with her labored breathing. Though it was hard to tell with the nasal cannula in the way, Strike thought he saw a thin smile.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Which ones?”

“Brenner,” she said hoarsely, and coughed again. “Needed an ’ouse call…’mergency… she weren’t available.”

“So Dr. Brenner came out to see you?”

“Hurhm,” said Betty Fuller. “Yeah.”

There were a few small, cheaply framed photographs on the windowsill, Robin noticed. Two of them showed a fat tabby cat, presumably a lamented pet, but there were also a couple showing toddlers, and one of two big-haired teenaged girls, wearing puff-sleeved dresses from the eighties. So you could end up alone, in near squalor, even if you had children? Was it solely money, then, that made the difference? She thought of the ten thousand pounds she’d be receiving into her bank account later that week, which would be reduced immediately by legal bills and council tax. She’d need to be careful not to fritter it away. She really needed to start saving, to start paying into a pension.

“You must have been seriously unwell, were you?” Strike was asking Betty. “To need a house call?”

He had no particular reason for asking, except to establish a friendly conversational atmosphere. In his experience of old ladies, there was little they enjoyed more than discussing their health.

Betty Fuller suddenly grinned at him, showing chipped yellow teeth.

“You ever taken it… up the shitter… with a nine-inch cock?”

Only by exercising the utmost restraint did Robin prevent herself letting out a shocked laugh. She had to hand it to Strike: he didn’t so much as grin as he said, “Can’t say I have.”

“Well,” wheezed Betty Fuller, “you can… take it from me… fuckin’… agony… geezer went at me… like a fucking power drill… split my arsehole open.”

She gasped for air, half-laughing.

“My Cindy ’ears me moanin’… blood… says ‘Mum, you gotta… get that seen to…’ called… doctor.”

“Cindy’s your—”

“Daughter,” said Betty Fuller. “Yeah… got two. Cindy and Cathy…”

“And Dr. Brenner came out to see you, did he?” asked Strike, trying not to dwell on the mental image Betty had conjured.

“Yeah… takes a look… sends me to A&E, yeah… nineteen stitches,” said Betty Fuller. “And I sat on… an ice pack… for a week… and no fuckin’ money… comin’ in… After that,” she panted, “no anal… unless they was… payin’ double and nuthin’ over… six inches… neither.”

She let out a cackle of laughter, which ended in coughs. Strike and Robin were carefully avoiding looking at each other.

“Was that the only time you met Dr. Brenner?” asked Strike, when the coughing had subsided.

“No,” croaked Betty Fuller, thumping her chest. “I seen ’im regular… ev’ry Friday night… for monfs… after.”

She didn’t seem to feel any qualms about telling Strike this. On the contrary, Strike thought she seemed to be enjoying herself.

“When did that arrangement start?” asked Strike.

“Couple o’ weeks… after ’e seen me… for me arse,” said Betty Fuller. “Knocked on me door… wiv ’is doctor’s bag… pre-tendin’ ’e’d… come to check… then ’e says… wants a regular ’pointment. Friday night…’alf past six… tell the neighbors… medical… if they ask…”

Betty paused to cough noisily. When she’d quelled her rattling chest, she went on, “… and if I told anyone…’e’d go to the cops… say I was… extorting ’im…”

“Threatened you, did he?”

“Yeah,” panted Betty Fuller, though without rancor, “but ’e wasn’t… try’na get it… free… so I kep’… me mouf shut.”

“You never told Dr. Bamborough what was going on?” asked Robin.

Betty looked sideways at Robin who, in Strike’s view, had rarely looked as out of place as she did sitting on Betty’s bed: young, clean and healthy, and perhaps Betty’s drooping, occluded eyes saw his partner the same way, because she seemed to resent both question and questioner.