Troubled Blood

“I already told you,” said Janice restlessly, “I don’t know why I do it, I just do… I wanted to see what would ’appen to ’er. I like knowing why fings are ’appening, when nobody else does…

“’Ow did you work all this out?” she demanded. “Talbot and Lawson never suspected.”

“Lawson might not have done,” said Strike, “but I think Talbot did.”

“’E never,” said Janice, at once. “I ’ad ’im eating out me ’and.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Strike. “He left a strange set of notes, and all through them he kept circling back to the death of Scorpio, or Juno, which are the names he gave Joanna Hammond. Seven interviews, Janice. I think he subconsciously knew there was something off about you. He mentions poison a lot, which I think had stuck in his mind because of the way Joanna died. At one point—I was reading the notes again, last night—he copies out a long description of the tarot card the Queen of Cups. Words to the effect that she reflects the observer back at themselves. ‘To see the truth of her is almost impossible.’ And on the night they hauled him off to hospital, he hallucinated a female demon with a cup in her hand and a seven hanging round her neck. He was too ill to string his suspicions together, but his subconscious kept trying to tell him you weren’t all you seemed. At one point, he wrote: ‘Is Cetus right?’—he called Irene Cetus—and eventually I asked myself what she could’ve been right about. Then I remembered that the first time we met the pair of you, she told us she thought you were ‘sweet on’ Douthwaite.”

At the sound of Douthwaite’s name, Janice winced slightly.

“Oakden said you got giggly around Douthwaite, too,” Strike continued, watching her closely. “And Dorothy bracketed you with Irene and Gloria as some kind of scarlet woman, which implies you’d done some flirting in front of her.”

“Is that all you went on: me flirting once, and being the Queen of Cups?” said Janice, managing to get a note of scorn into her voice, though he thought she seemed shaken.

“No,” said Strike, “there were plenty of other things. Strange anomalies and coincidences. People kept telling me Margot didn’t like ‘the nurse,’ but they got you confused with Irene a lot, so it took me a while to twig that they really did mean you.

“Then there was Fragile X. When I saw you that first time, with Irene, you claimed you’d only been to visit the Athorns once, but the second time I met you, you seemed to know a hell of a lot about them. Fragile X was called Martin-Bell syndrome back in the early seventies. If you’d only seen them that one time, it seemed odd you knew exactly what was wrong with them, and used the modern term…

“And then I started noticing how many people were getting stomach upsets or acting drugged. Did you put something in the punch at Margot and Roy’s barbecue?”

“I did, yeah,” she said. “Ipecac syrup, that was. I fort it would be funny if they all thought they’d got food poisoning from the barbe-cue, but then Carl broke the bowl, and I was glad, really… I just wanted to see ’em all ill, and maybe look after ’em all, and ruin ’er party, but it was stupid, wasn’t it?… That’s what I mean, I sailed close to the wind sometimes, they were doctors, what if they’d known?… It was only Gloria who ’ad a big glassful and was sick. Margot’s ’usband didn’t like that… ruined their smart house…”

And Strike saw the almost indiscriminate desire for disruption that lay behind the meek exterior.

“Gloria throwing up at the barbecue,” said Strike. “Irene and her irritable bowel syndrome—Kevin and his constant stomach aches—Wilma swaying on her feet and vomiting while she was working at St. John’s—me, puking up my Christmas chocolates—and, of course, Steve Douthwaite and his vision problems, his headaches and his churning guts… I’m assuming it was Douthwaite Irene was flirting with, the day you put Amytal capsules in her tea?”

Janice pressed her lips together, eyes narrowed.

“I suppose you told her he was gay to try and get her to back off?”

“She already ’ad Eddie gagging to marry ’er,” Janice burst out. “She ’ad all these blokes down the pub flirting with ’er. If I’d told ’er ’ow much I liked Steve, she’d’ve taken ’im for the fun of it, that’s what she was. So yeah, I told ’er ’e was queer.”

“What are you drugging her with, these days?”

“It varies,” said Janice quietly. “Depends ’ow much she’s pissing me off.”

“So tell me about Steve Douthwaite.”

Suddenly, Janice was breathing deeply. Her face was flushed again: she looked emotional.

“’E was… such a beautiful man.”

The passionate throb in her voice took Strike aback, almost more than the full stock of poisons she was keeping in her kitchen. He thought of the cheeky chap in his kipper tie, who’d become the puffy, bloodshot-eyed proprietor of the Allardice in Skegness, with his strands of graying hair stuck to his sweating forehead, and not for the first time, Strike had reason to reflect on the extraordinarily unpredictable nature of human love.

“I’ve always been one to fall ’ead over ’eels,” said Janice, and Strike thought of Johnny Marks dying in agony, and Janice kissing him farewell on his cold dead cheek. “Oh, Steve could make you laugh. I love a man what can make you laugh. Really ’andsome. I used to walk past ’is flat ten times a day just to get an ’ello… we got friendly…

“’E started dropping in, telling me all ’is problems… and ’e tells me ’ow ’e’s mad about this married woman. Fallen for ’is mate’s wife. On and on and on about ’ow ’ard ’er life is, and there’s me sitting there wiv a kid on me own. What about my ’ard life? She ’ad an ’usband, didn’t she? But no, I could tell I wasn’t gonna get nowhere wiv ’im unless she was out the way, so I fort, right, well, she’ll ’ave to go…

“She was no better lookin’ than I was,” muttered Janice, pointing at the picture of Joanna Hammond on the wall. “State of that fing on ’er face…

“So I looked ’er up in the phone book and I just went round ’er ’ouse when I knew ’er ’usband was at work. I used to ’ave this wig I wore to parties. Put that on, and me uniform, and a pair of glasses I used to ’ave, but I didn’t need. Rang the doorbell, told ’er I’d ’ad a tip-off about ’er domestic situation.

“People will always let a nurse in,” said Janice. “She was desperate to talk to someone. I got ’er good and emotional, cryin’ and all that. She told me about sleeping with Steve, and ’ow she fort she was in love wiv ’im…

“I made ’er a drink wiv latex gloves on. “’Alf of it was weedkiller. She knew, the moment she tasted it, but I grabbed ’er ’air from be’ind,” Janice mimed the motion in mid-air, “pulled ’er ’ead back, forced it down ’er fuckin’ throat. Oh yeah. Once she was on the floor, chokin’, I poured some more down, neat.

“’Ad to stay a while, to make sure she didn’t try an’ phone anyone. Once I knew she was too far gone to recover, I took off me uniform an’ left.

“It takes nerve,” said Janice Beattie, her color high and her eyes bright, “but act normal and people don’t see nothing strange… you just got to ’old your nerve. And maybe I wasn’t showy-looking when I was young, but that ’elped. I wasn’t the kind people remembered…

“Next day, near enough, I ’ad Steve crying ’is eyes out round my place. It was all going great,” said the woman who’d poured neat weedkiller down her rival’s throat, “I saw ’im loads after that, ’e was round my place all the time. There was somefing there between us, I could feel it.

“I never drugged ’im a lot,” said Janice, as though this was true evidence of affection. “Only enough to stop ’im going out, make ’im feel ’e needed me. I used to look after ’im really well. Once, ’e slept on my sofa, and I wiped ’is face for ’im, while ’e was asleep,” she said, and again, Strike thought of the kiss she’d given the dead Johnny Marks.

“But sometimes,” said Janice, with bitterness, “men fort I was the mumsy type and didn’t see me as anyfing else. I could tell Steve liked me, but I fort ’e might not be seeing me the right way, you know, wiv bein’ a nurse, and Kev always dragging round after me. One evening, Steve come over, and Kev was ’aving a tantrum, and Steve said, he thought ’e’d be off, let me look after Kev… and I could tell, I fort, you’re not gonna want me wiv a kid. So I fort, Kev needs to go.”

She said it as though talking about taking out the bins.

“But you gotta be careful when it’s your own kid,” said Janice. “I needed to get an ’istory going. ’E couldn’t just die, not after being perfectly ’ealthy. I started experimenting wiv stuff, I was finking, maybe a salt overdose, claim ’e did it on a dare or somefing. I started putting stuff in ’is food ’ere and there. Get ’im complaining to teachers about stomach aches an’ that, and then I’d say, “Oh, I know, I think it’s a bit of schoolitis’…”