Troubled Blood

“I remember two things about the morning: meeting Janice by the kettle at the back, and her going on about the sequel to The Godfather coming out soon, and me pretending to be excited about it, and actually feeling as though I’d run a mile rather than go and see it… and Irene being quite smug and pleased because Janice had just been on a date with some man she’d been trying to set Janice up with for ages.

“Irene was funny about Janice,” said Gloria. “They were supposed to be such great friends, but she was always going on about Janice being a bit of a man-eater, which was funny if you’d known Irene. She used to say that Janice needed to learn to cut her cloth, that she was deluded, waiting for someone like James Caan to show up and sweep her off her feet, because she was a single mother and not that great a catch. Irene thought the best she could hope for was this man from Eddie’s work, who sounded a bit simple. Irene was always laughing about him getting things wrong…

“We were quite busy, as I remember it, all three doctors coming in and out of the waiting room to call for their patients. I can’t remember anything unusual about the afternoon except that Irene left early. She claimed she had toothache, but I thought it was a fib at the time. She hadn’t seemed in pain to me, when she was going on about Janice’s love life.

“I knew Margot was meeting her friend later in the pub. She told me, because she had a doughnut in cling film in the fridge, and she asked me to bring it through to her, right before she saw her last patient, to keep her going. She loved sugar. She was always in the biscuit tin at five o’clock. She had one of those metabolisms, never put on weight, full of nervous energy.

“I remember the doughnut, because when I took it in to her, I said, ‘Why didn’t you just eat those chocolates?’ She had a box she’d taken out of the bin, I think it was the day before. I mean, they were still in their cellophane when she took them out of the bin, it wasn’t unhygienic. Someone had sent them to her—”

“Someone?” repeated Strike.

“Well, we all thought it was that patient the police were so interested in, Steve Douthwaite,” said Gloria. “Dorothy thought that, anyway.”

“Wasn’t there a message attached?”

“There was a card saying ‘Thank you,’” said Gloria, “and Dorothy might’ve made the assumption it was Steve Douthwaite, because we all thought he was turning up a lot. I don’t think the card was signed, though.”

“So Margot threw the box in the bin, and then took it out again, afterward?”

“Yes, because I laughed at her about it,” said Gloria. “I said, ‘I knew you couldn’t resist,’ and she laughed, too. And next day, when I said, ‘Why don’t you eat them?’ she said, ‘I have, I’ve finished them.’”

“But she still had the box there?”

“Yes, on the shelf with her books. I went back to the front desk. Dr. Brenner’s patient left, but Brenner didn’t, because he was writing up the notes.”

“Could I ask you whether you knew about Dr. Brenner’s barbiturate addiction?” asked Strike.

“His what?” said Gloria.

“Nobody ever told you about that?”

“No,” she said, looking surprised. “I had no idea.”

“You never heard that Janice had found an Amytal capsule in the bottom of a cup of tea?”

“No… oh. Is that why Margot started making her own tea? She told me Irene made it too milky.”

“Let’s go back to the order in which everyone left.”

“OK, so, Dr. Gupta’s patient was next, and Dr. Gupta left immediately afterward. He had some family dinner he needed to attend, so off he went.

“And then, just when I was thinking we were done for the day, in walked that girl, Theo.”

“Tell us about Theo,” said Strike.

“Long black hair… dark-skinned. She looked Romanian or Turkish. Ornate earrings, you know: gypsy-ish. I actually thought she looked like a gypsy. I’d never seen her before, so I knew she wasn’t registered with us. She looked as though she was in a lot of pain, with her stomach. She came up to the desk and asked to see a doctor urgently. I asked her name, and she said Theo… something or other. I didn’t ask her again because she was obviously suffering, so I told her to wait and went to see whether a doctor was free. Margot’s door was still closed, so I asked Dr. Brenner. He didn’t want to see her. He was always like that, always difficult. I never liked him.

“Then Margot’s door opened, and the mother and child who’d been seeing her left, and she said she’d see the girl who was waiting.”

“And Theo was definitely a girl?” asked Strike.

“Without any doubt at all,” said Gloria firmly. “She was broad-shouldered, I noticed that when she came to the desk, but she was definitely a woman. Maybe it was the shoulders that made Dr. Brenner say, afterward, she looked like a man, but honestly…

“I was thinking about him last night, knowing I was going to be talking to you. Brenner was probably the biggest misogynist I ever met. He’d denigrate women for not looking feminine or talking ‘like a lady,’ but he also despised Irene, who was giggly and blonde and very feminine, you know. I suppose what he wanted was for us all to be like Dorothy, subordinate and respectful, high collars, low hemlines. Dorothy was like a really humorless nun.”

Robin thought of Betty Fuller, lying on a bed, pretending to be comatose, while Brenner poured filthy words into her ear.

“Women patients really didn’t like Brenner. We were always having them asking to switch to Margot, but we had to turn most of them down, because her list was so full. But Brenner was coming up for retirement and we were hoping we’d get someone better when he went.

“So, yes, he left, and Theo went in to see Margot. I kept checking the time, because I was supposed to be meeting Luca, and if I kept him waiting, there was always trouble. But Theo’s appointment just went on and on. At a quarter past six, Theo finally came back out of the surgery and left.

“Margot came through just a couple of minutes later. She seemed absolutely exhausted. It had been a full day. She said, ‘I’m going to write her notes up tomorrow, I’ve got to go, Oonagh’s waiting. Lock up with the spare key.’ I didn’t really answer,” said Gloria, “because I was so worried about Luca getting angry with me. So, I never said goodbye, or have a good evening, to this woman who saved my life…

“Because she did, you know. I never said it to her, but she did…”

A tear trickled down her face. Gloria paused to wipe it away, then said,

“I remember, as she put her umbrella up, she slipped. Turned over on her heel. It was raining, the pavement was wet. Then she straightened up and walked out of sight.

“I started dashing round, turning off lights, locking the records up in the filing cabinets. Then I made sure the back door was locked, which it was—the police asked me about that. I closed and locked the front door, and ran straight up Passing Alley, which was right beside the surgery, to meet Luca in St. John Street.

“And that was the last time I ever saw Margot.”

Gloria reached again for her almost empty wine glass, and drained it.

“Did you have any idea what might have happened to her?” asked Strike.

“Of course,” said Gloria quietly. “I was terrified Luca had got someone to hurt her, or kidnap her. She’d become a bugbear to him. Every time I stood up for myself, he’d say horrible things about Margot influencing me. He was convinced she was trying to persuade me to leave him, which, of course, she was. My greatest fear was that he’d somehow find out what she’d helped me do… you know. In Bride Street.

“I knew he couldn’t have abducted her personally, because I met him on St. John Street, not five minutes after she left the surgery, and I know it can’t have been his father, because his brother Marco was in hospital at the time, and the parents were with him round the clock. But Luca had friends and cousins.

“I couldn’t tell the police. Luca had stopped pretending he was joking, when he threatened my grandparents. I asked him whether he was behind it, though. The anxiety was too much: I had to ask. He got really angry, called me names—dumb bitch, things like that. He said, of course he hadn’t. But he’d told me stories about his father ‘making people disappear,’ so I just didn’t know…”

“Did you ever have reason to suppose he knew…” Robin hesitated “… what happened in Bride Street?”

“I’m absolutely positive he never knew,” said Gloria. “Margot was too good for him. The wigs and using her name and giving me a plausible story for why I couldn’t have sex with him for a while… She’s the reason I got away with it. No, I don’t believe he ever knew. So, in my best moments, I thought, he didn’t really have a strong enough reason—”

The door behind Gloria opened, and in walked a handsome aquiline-nosed, gray-haired man in a striped shirt and jeans, carrying a bottle of red wine. A large German Shepherd dog followed him into the room, its tail wagging.

“Je m’excuse,” he said, smiling at Strike and Robin onscreen. “I am sorry for… Comment dit-on ‘interrompre’?” he asked his wife.

“Interrupt,” she said.

“Oui. I am sorry for interrupt.”

He refilled his wife’s glass, handed it back to her, patted her on the shoulder, then walked out again, calling the dog.

“Viens, Obélix.”

When both man and dog had disappeared, Gloria said, with a little laugh,