Troubled Blood

“How’s that?”

“The rise of gynocentric society,” said Oakden, with a slight bow toward Robin, who suddenly thought his narrow head resembled a stoat’s. “Late sixties, early seventies, it’s when it all started changing, isn’t it? You’ve got the pill: consequence-free fucking. Looks like it benefits the male, but by enabling women to avoid or subvert the reproductive function, you’re repressing natural and healthy patterns of sex behavior. You’ve got a gynocentric court system, which favors the female even if she didn’t want the kids in the first place. You’ve got misandrist authoritarianism masquerading as a campaign for equal rights, policing men’s thoughts and speech and natural behavior. And you’ve got widespread sexual exploitation of men. Playboy Club, that’s all bullshit. Look, but don’t touch. It’s the old courtly love lie. The woman’s there to be worshipped, the man’s there to spew cash, but never get satisfaction. Suckers, the men who hang round those places.

“Bamborough didn’t look after her own kid,” said Oakden, his eyes again darting to the entrance and back to Strike, “didn’t fuck her own husband, from what I heard, he was nearly always too ill to perform. He had plenty of cash though, so she gets a nanny and goes lording it over men at work.”

“Who, specifically, did she lord it over?” asked Strike.

“Well, Douthwaite ran out of there practically crying last time he saw her, my old woman said. But that’s been our culture since the sixties, hasn’t it? Male suffering, nobody gives a shit. People whine when men break, when they can’t handle it any more, when they lash out. If Douthwaite did her in—I don’t personally think he did,” said Oakden with an expansive gesture, and Robin reminded herself that Carl Oakden had almost certainly never laid eyes on Steven Douthwaite, and that he’d been fourteen years old when Margot disappeared, “but if he did, I’d lay odds it’s because she kicked his pain back in his teeth. Only women bleed,” said Oakden, with a contemptuous little laugh, “isn’t that right?” he shot at Robin. “Ah, there’s my sandwich.”

While the waiter served him, Robin got up and headed to the bar, where the beautiful woman in the cheongsam, whose hair hung like black silk in the light of the banked bottles of spirits, was standing with her partner. Both were ordering cocktails and looked delighted to be in each other’s company. For a few seconds Robin suddenly wondered whether she’d ever again feel as they did. Her job reminded her almost daily of the many ways in which men and women could hurt each other.

As she ordered herself a tonic water, Robin’s phone rang. Hoping it was Barclay, she instead saw her mother’s name. Perhaps Linda had got wind of Sarah’s pregnancy. Matthew might have taken his wife-to-be back to Masham by now, to share the good news. Robin muted the phone, paid for her drink, wishing it was alcoholic, and carried it back to the table in time to hear Oakden say to Strike,

“No, that didn’t happen.”

“You didn’t add vodka to the punch at Dr. Bamborough’s barbecue?”

Oakden took a large bite of his free sandwich, and chewed it insolently. In spite of his thin hair and the many wrinkles around his eyes, Robin could clearly see the spoiled teenager inside the fifty-four-year-old.

“Nicked some,” said Oakden thickly, “then drank it in the shed. Surprised they missed it, but the rich are tight. How they stay minted, isn’t it?”

“We heard the punch made someone sick.”

“Not my fault,” said Oakden.

“Dr. Phipps was pretty annoyed, I hear.”

“Him,” said Oakden, with a smirk. “Things worked out all right for old Phipps, didn’t they?”

“In what way?” asked Strike.

“Wife out the way, marrying the nanny. All very convenient.”

“Didn’t like Phipps, did you?” said Strike. “That came across in your book.”

“You’ve read it?” said Oakden, momentarily startled. “How come?”

“Managed to track down an advance copy,” said Strike. “It should’ve come out in ’85, right?”

“Yeah,” said Oakden.

“D’you remember the gazebo that was under construction in the garden when the barbecue happened?”

One of Oakden’s eyelids flickered. He raised a hand quickly to his face and made a sweep of his forehead, as though he felt a hair tickling him.

“No,” he said.

“It’s in the background of one of your photos. They’d just started building the columns. I expect they’d already put down the floor.”

“I can’t remember that,” said Oakden.

“The shed where you took the vodka wasn’t near there, then?”

“Can’t’ve been,” said Oakden.

“While we’re on the subject of nicking things,” said Strike, “would you happen to have the obituary of Dr. Brenner you took from Janice Beattie’s house?”

“I never stole no obituary from her house,” said Oakden, with a display of disdain. “What would I want that for?”

“To get some information you could try and pass off as your own?”

“I don’t need to look up old Joe Brenner, I know plenty about him. He came round our house for his dinner every other Sunday. My old woman used to cook better than his sister, apparently.”

“Go on, then,” said Strike, his tone becoming combative, “amaze us.”

Oakden raised his sparse eyebrows. He chewed another bite of sandwich and swallowed it, before saying,

“Hey, this was all your idea. You don’t want the information, I’m happy to go.”

“Unless you’ve got more than you put in your book—”

“Brenner wanted Margot Bamborough struck off the bloody medical register. Come round our house one Sunday full of it. Couple of weeks before she disappeared. There,” said Oakden pugnaciously, “I kept that out of the book, because my mother didn’t want it in there.”

“Why was that?”

“Still loyal to him,” said Oakden, with a little snort of laughter. “And I wanted to keep the old dear happy at the time, because noises had been made about writing me out of the will. Old women,” said the convicted con man, “are a bit too persuadable if you don’t keep an eye on them. She’d got chummy with the local vicar by the eighties. I was worried it was all going to go to rebuild the bloody church steeple unless I kept an eye on her.”

“Why did Brenner want Bamborough struck off?”

“She examined some kid without parental permission.”

“Was this Janice’s son?” asked Robin.

“Was I talking to you?” Oakden shot at her.

“You,” growled Strike, “want to keep a civil tongue in your bloody head. Was it Janice’s son, yes or no?”

“Maybe,” said Oakden, and Robin concluded that he couldn’t remember. “Point is, that’s unethical behavior, looking at a kid without a parent there, and old Joe was all worked up about it. ‘I’ll have her struck off for this,’ he kept saying. There. Didn’t get that from no obituary, did I?”

Oakden drank the rest of his cocktail straight off, then said,

“I’ll have another one of those.”

Strike ignored this, saying,

“And this was two weeks before Bamborough disappeared?”

“About that, yeah. Never seen the old bastard so excited. He loved disciplining people, old Joe. Vicious old bastard, actually.”

“In what way?”

“Told my old woman in front of me she wasn’t hitting me enough,” said Oakden. “She bloody listened, too. Tried to lay about me with a slipper a couple of days later, silly cow. She learned not to do that again.”

“Yeah? Hit her back, did you?”

Oakden’s too-close-together eyes raked Strike, as though trying to ascertain whether he was worth educating.

“If my father had lived, he’d’ve had the right to punish me, but her trying to humiliate me because Brenner told her to? I wasn’t taking that.”

“Exactly how close were your mother and Brenner?”

Oakden’s thin brows contracted.

“Doctor and secretary, that’s all. There wasn’t anything else between them, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“They didn’t have a little lie down after lunch, then?” said Strike. “She didn’t come over sleepy, after Brenner had come over?”

“You don’t want to judge everyone’s mother by yours,” said Oakden.

Strike acknowledged the jibe with a dark smile and said,

“Did your mother ask Brenner to sign the death certificate for your grandmother?”

“The hell’s that got to do with anything?”

“Did she?”

“I dunno,” said Oakden, his eyes darting once again toward the bar’s entrance. “Where did you get that idea? What’re you even asking that for?”

“Your grandmother’s doctor was Margot Bamborough, right?”

“I dunno,” said Oakden.

“You can remember every word your mother told you about Steve Douthwaite, right down to him flirting with receptionists and looking tearful the last time he left the surgery, but you can’t remember details of your own grandmother falling downstairs and killing herself?”

“I wasn’t there,” said Oakden. “I was out at a mate’s house when it happened. Come home and seen the ambulance.”

“Just your mother at home, then?”