Troubled Blood

The parts of Douthwaite’s face that weren’t ruddy with broken veins blanched.

The enormous old lady who’d been descending the stairs now walked into the room, her wide, innocent face demonstrating total immunity to the atmosphere within.

“Which way’s the seal sanctuary?”

“End of the road,” said Douthwaite hoarsely. “Turn left.”

She sidled out of the room again. The bell outside tinkled.

“Listen,” said Douthwaite quickly, as the sound of his wife’s footsteps grew louder again. “You’re wasting your time. I don’t know anything about Margot Bamborough.”

“Perhaps you could have a look over your old police statement, at least,” asked Strike, taking a copy out of his inside pocket.

“What?” said Donna, now back in the room. “What police statement? Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she said, as the bell tinkled again, and she clunked back out of the room and bellowed up the stairs, “Kirsty! KIRSTY!”

“That doctor,” Douthwaite said, looking at Strike through bloodshot eyes, his forehead sweaty, “it all happened forty-odd years ago, I don’t know anything about what happened, I never did.”

The harried Donna reappeared.

“Kirsty’ll mind the front door,” she said, glaring at her husband. “We’ll go upstairs. Lochnagar’s empty. We can’t go in ours,” she added to Strike and Robin, pointing toward the basement, “me grandkids are down there, playing computer games.”

Douthwaite hitched up his waistband and threw a wild look outside the net curtains, as though contemplating flight.

“Come on,” said Donna fiercely, and with a return to his hangdog look, he followed his wife out of the door.

Kirsty passed them, heading for the ground floor, as they climbed the steep tartan stairs, Strike making liberal use of the banister to haul himself up. He’d hoped Lochnagar might be on the first floor, but he was disappointed. It lay, as the name might have suggested, right at the top of the B&B, and faced out of the rear of the building.

The furniture inside was made of cheap pine. Kirsty had arranged towels in the shape of kissing swans on the maroon bedspread, which matched the patterned wallpaper of maroon and deep purple. Leads dangled from behind the wall-mounted TV. A plastic kettle sat in the corner on a low table, beside the Corby trouser press. Through the window Strike glimpsed the sea at last: a gleaming golden bar lying low between buildings, in the misty haze created by the net curtains.

Donna crossed the room and took the only chair. Her hands were gripping her own upper arms so tightly that the flesh showed white.

“You can sit down,” she told Strike and Robin.

Having nowhere else to do it, both sat down on the end of the double bed, with its slippery maroon cover. Douthwaite remained at the door, back against it, arms folded, displaying the hourglass tattoo.

“Diamond, Jacks, Douthwaite,” Donna recited. “How many other names have you had?”

“None,” said Douthwaite, trying for a laugh, but failing.

“Why’d you change your name from Douthwaite to Jacks?” she demanded. “Why were the police after you?”

“They weren’t after me,” croaked Douthwaite. “This was ages ago. I wanted a fresh start, that’s all.”

“How many fresh starts does one man need?” said Donna. “What did you do? Why’d you have to give a police statement?”

“A doctor went missing,” said Douthwaite, with a glance at Strike.

“What doctor? When?”

“Her name was Margot Bamborough.”

“Bamborough?” repeated Donna, her forehead bifurcated by that deep frown line, “But that… that was all over the news…”

“They interviewed all the patients she’d seen before she disappeared,” Douthwaite said quickly. “It was routine! They didn’t have anything on me.”

“You must think I was born bloody yesterday,” said Donna. “They,” she pointed at Strike and Robin, “haven’t tracked you down because it was routine inquiries, have they? You didn’t change your bloody name because it was routine inquiries! Screwing her, were you?”

“No, I wasn’t bloody screwing her!” said Douthwaite, with his first sign of fight.

“Mr. Douthwaite,” began Strike.

“Diamond!” said Douthwaite, more in desperation than in anger.

“I’d be grateful if you’d read through your police statement, see whether you’ve got anything to add.”

Douthwaite looked as though he’d have liked to refuse, but after a slight hesitation he took the pieces of paper and began to read. The statement was a long one, covering as it did the suicide of Joanna Hammond, his married ex-lover, the beating he’d endured at the hands of her husband, the anxiety and depression which had led to so many visits to the St. John’s surgery, his assertion that he’d felt nothing more for Margot Bamborough than mild gratitude for her clinical expertise, his denial that he’d ever brought or sent her gifts and his feeble alibi for the time of her disappearance.

“Yeah, I’ve got nothing to add to that,” Douthwaite said at last, holding the pieces of paper back out to Strike.

“I want to read it,” said Donna at once.

“It’s got nothing to do with—it’s forty years ago, it’s nothing,” said Douthwaite.

“Your real name’s Douthwaite and I never knew till five minutes ago! I’ve got a right to know who you are,” she said fiercely, “I’ve got a right to know, so I can decide whether I was a bloody mug to stay with you, after the last—”

“Fine, read it, go on,” said Douthwaite with unconvincing bravado, and Strike handed the statement over to Donna.

She’d read for barely a minute when she burst out,

“You were sleeping with a married—and she killed herself?”

“I wasn’t—we weren’t—once, it happened, once! Nobody kills themselves over that!”

“Why’d she do it, then? Why?”

“Her husband was a bastard.”

“My husband’s a bastard. I haven’t topped myself!”

“Christ’s sake, Donna—”

“What happened?”

“It was nothing!” said Douthwaite. “We used to hang out together, few of the lads at work and their wives and whatever, and one night I was out with some other mates and ran into Joanna, who was with some girlfriends and… some cunt tipped off her husband we’d left the pub together and—”

“And then this doctor disappeared and all, and the police came calling?”

Donna got to her feet, Douthwaite’s crumpled statement quivering in her hand. Still sitting on the slippery maroon coverlet, Robin remembered the day she’d found Sarah Shadlock’s diamond earring in her bed, and thought she knew a little, a very little, of what Donna was experiencing.

“I knew you were a bloody cheat and a liar, but three girlfriends dead? One’s a tragedy,” said Donna furiously, and Strike wondered whether they were about to hear a Wildean epigram, “but three? How bloody unlucky can one man get?”

“I never had anything going on with that doctor!”

“You’ll try it on with anyone!” shrieked Donna, and addressing Robin, she said, “Year before last, I catch him in a guest bedroom with one of my best friends—”

“Christ’s sake, Donna!” whimpered Douthwaite.

“—and six months ago—”

“Donna—”

“—I find out he’s been sneaking around with one of our regulars—and now—” said Donna, advancing on Douthwaite, his statements clutched in her fist. “You creepy bastard, what happened to all these women?”

“I had nothing to do with any of them dying, fuck’s sake!” said Douthwaite, trying for an incredulous laugh and merely looking terrified. “Donna, come on—you think I’m some kind of murderer?”

“You expect me to believe—”

To Strike’s surprise, Robin suddenly jumped to her feet. Taking Donna by the shoulders, she guided her back into her chair.

“Put your head down,” Robin was saying, “head down.”

When Robin moved to untie Donna’s apron, which was tight around her waist, and Strike saw that Donna’s forehead, which was all he could see now she had sunk her face into her hands, was as white as the net curtain behind her.

“Donna?” said Douthwaite feebly, but his wife whispered,

“You stay away from me, you bastard.”

“Breathe,” Robin was saying, crouching beside Donna’s chair. “Get her some water,” she told Strike, who got up and went into the tiny shower room, where a plastic beaker sat in a holder over the sink.

Almost as pale as his wife, Douthwaite watched as Robin persuaded Donna to drink.

“Stay there, now,” Robin told the landlady, one hand resting on her shoulder. “Don’t get up.”

“Did he have something to do with them dying?” Donna whispered, looking sideways at Robin, her pupils enormous with shock.

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Robin murmured back.

She turned and looked meaningfully at Strike, who silently agreed that the best thing he could do for the stricken Donna was to get information out of Douthwaite.