Troubled Blood

“Nuffing’s certain,” said the nurse. Unlike Creed, she didn’t pretend omnipotence, but then, she’d also been, however reluctantly, in the business of healing as well as killing. “I ’ad a good feeling for dosages, but you can’t never be an ’undred percent sure. I’d ’eard she was going to meet some friend in a pub up the road, and she usually ate somefing before she went, but I couldn’t be sure she’d eat it, or still be able to walk up the road after, or when it would really hit ’er…

“All the time I was doing it, getting the concrete and drugging the doughnut, I was finking, this won’t work, it can’t work. You’re gonna go to prison, Janice… And you know somefing?” said the nurse, now pink cheeked and fierce, “By then, I didn’t even care. Not if she’d told Steve about me. I fort, I’ll go on trial and I’ll tell ’em ’ow ’e treated me like a mum and a nurse and took advantage, round my flat all hours. ’E’ll ’ave to bloody notice me and ’ear me then, won’t ’e? I didn’t care. I just fort, I want you dead, lady. I want you dead, you wiv your ’usband and your boyfriend on the side, and my man coming to see you three times a week…

“Eivver she dies, I fort, and I get away wiv it, or I’ll be famous, I’ll be in the papers… and I liked the idea, then.”

She looked around her small sitting room, and Strike was certain that she wondered what her cell would be like.

“I left the surgery and went round the long way to the Athorns’, but when I let myself in, Gwilherm wasn’t there. I fort, OK, that’s a problem. Where is ’e?

“And then Deborah and Samhain started moaning. They didn’t want their vitamin injections. I ’ad to get strict wiv ’em. I said to Deborah, it’s these injections what’s keeping you well. You don’t take ’em, I’ll have to ring an ambulance and get ’em to take you into ’ospital for an assessment… You could scare ’er into anyfing if you told ’er she’d ’ave to go outside. I give Deborah and Samhain their ‘vitamin injections,’ lying side by side in the double bedroom. Rolled ’em onto their sides. They were out for the count.

“So then I goes outside, and I waits in the phone box, pretending to be on the phone, keepin’ watch.

“It didn’t feel real, none of it. I didn’t fink it’d work. Probably I’d go into work next day and ’ear Margot passed out in the street, and then she’d start yelling the place down saying she was drugged, and I knew she’d point the finger at me…

“She didn’t come for ages. I fort, it’s over. She’s eaten the doughnut and got ill in the surgery. She’s called an ambulance. She’s guessed, she’s got sick. There was this girl, standing in front of the phone box, and I’m trying to see round ’er, trying to see…

“And then I saw Margot coming up the road. I fort, well, this is it. It was raining hard. People weren’t watchin’. It was all umbrellas and cars splashing. She crossed the road and I could see she was in a bad way. Wobbling all over the place. She got to my side of the road and leaned up against the wall. ’Er legs were about to go. I come out the phone box and I says, “Come on, love, you need to sit down.” Kept my face down. She come wiv me, a few steps, then she realized it was me. We ’ad a bit of a struggle. I got ’er a few more feet, just inside Albemarle Way, but she was a tall girl… and I fort, this is where it ends…

“And then I seen Gwilherm coming up the other way. It was me only chance. I called ’im to ’elp me. ’E fort ’e was ’elping ’er. ’E ’elped me drag ’er up the stairs. There wasn’t much fight in ’er by then. I told Gwilherm some rubbish to stop ’im phoning the ambulance. Said I could treat ’er myself… said ’e didn’t want no police coming up, looking round the flat…’E was a very paranoid man about the auforities, so that worked…

“I says, you go and see if Deborah and Samhain are still asleep. They’ve both been very worried about where you’ve been, and I ’ad to give ’em a little sedative.

“I suffocated ’er while ’e was out of the room. It didn’t take much. ’Eld ’er nose, kept ’er mouth shut. Did to Margot what I’d been planning to do to the Athorns.

“When I knew she was dead,” said Janice, “I left ’er sitting on the sofa and I went into the barfroom. I sat on the bog, looking at the flamingos on the wallpaper and I fort, now what? Gwilherm’s here. ’E’s seen ’er… and the on’y fing I could fink of was, let ’im fink ’e’s done it. ’E’s crazy enough. I fort, I’ll probably ’ave to kill ’im, too, in the end, but I’ll worry about that later…

“So I waited in the bog and let ’im go in the room and find ’er.

“I give ’im five minutes alone wiv the body, then I walk back in, talkin’ to Margot, like I left ’er alive. “You feeling all right now, Margot, love?” And then I says, “What’ve you done, Gwilherm? What’ve you done?”

“And he says, ‘Nuffing, nuffing, I ain’t done nuffing,’ and I’m saying, ‘You told me you can kill people with your powers. P’rhaps we better call the police,’ and ’e’s begging me not to, ’e didn’t mean to, it was all a mistake. So in the end I says, all right, I won’t give you away. I’ll make it disappear. I’ll take care of it.

“’E was crying like a baby and he asked me for one of my sedatives. ’E asked me to put ’im out, can you believe that? I give ’im some downers. Left ’im curled up asleep on Samhain’s bed.

“It was really ’ard, putting her in that big box fing all on me own. I ’ad to take out all the crap they kept in there. Folded ’er up. Once I ’ad ’er in there, I checked on all the Athorns. Made sure the airways weren’t obstructed. Then I ran back outside to the phone box. I says to Irene, are we still on for the cinema? And she says no, like I fort she would, fank Gawd.

“So I go back inside. I was there till midnight, near enough. I ’ad to mix the concrete bit by bit, by ’and, in a bucket. It took ages. Margot filled up most of that box fing, but it took a long time to get all the concrete round her. Then I closed the lid. It stuck to the concrete. I couldn’t get it up again, so that was good.

“When they was all awake, I told Gwilherm I’d taken care of it. I said to ’im quietly, the lid on that box thing ’as jammed. Best find somewhere else to put Samhain’s toys.

“’E knew, obviously. I fink ’e pretended to ’imself ’e didn’t, but ’e did. I was there free times a week, afterward. I ’ad to be. Keeping ’im happy. One time I went round and ’e’d painted all those symbols on the walls, like it was some sort of pagan temple or something.

“Weeks after, monfs after, I was worried sick. I knew ’e was tellin’ people ’e’d killed ’er. Luckily, everyone fort ’e was a nutcase, local. But it got bad, toward the end. ’E ’ad to go. I still can’t believe I waited a year to get rid of ’im…”

“And around the time you killed him, you phoned Cynthia Phipps and pretended to be Margot, didn’t you? To give the police another lead to hare after, and distract from Gwilherm, in case anyone had taken him seriously?”

“Yeah. That’s right,” mumbled Janice, twisting the old wedding ring.

“And you kept visiting Deborah and Samhain as Clare Spencer?”

“Well, yeah,” said Janice. “I ’ad to. They needed watching. Last fing I wanted was real social workers fiddling around in there.”

“And Deborah and Samhain never realized Clare was the same as Janice the nurse?”

“People with Fragile X don’t recognize faces easy,” said Janice. “I changed me ’air color and used me glasses. I done a lot to keep ’em ’ealfy, you know. Vitamin D for Deborah, cause she never goes outside. She’s younger’n me… I fort, I might well be dead before anyone finds the body. Longer it went on, less likely it was anyone would ever know I ’ad anyfing to do wiv it…”

“And what about Douthwaite?”

“’E scarpered,” said Janice, her smile fading. “That near enough broke my ’eart. There was me ’aving to go out on foursomes wiv Irene and Eddie, and act like I was ’appy wiv Larry, and the love of my life’s disappeared. I asked ev’ryone where Steve ’ad gone, and no one knew.”

“So why’s Julie Wilkes on your wall?” asked Strike.

“’Oo?” said Janice, lost in her self-pitying reverie.

“The Redcoat who worked at Clacton-on-Sea,” said Strike, pointing at the young blonde with her frizzy hair, who was framed on Janice’s wall.

“Oh…’er,” said Janice, with a sigh. “Yeah… I ran into someone ’oo knew someone ’oo’d met Steve at Butlin’s, few years later… oh, I was excited. Gawd, I was bored wiv Larry by then. I really wanted to see Steve again. I love a man ’oo can make me laugh,” repeated the woman who’d planned the murder of a family, for the pleasure of watching them die. “I knew there’d been somefing there between us, I knew we coulda bin a couple. So I booked me and Larry an ’oliday at Butlin’s. Kev didn’t wanna come—suited me. I got meself a perm and I went on a diet. Couldn’t wait. You build things up in your mind, don’t you?

“And we went to the club night and there ’e was,” said Janice quietly. “Oh, ’e looked gorgeous. ‘Longfellow Serenade.’ All the girls went crazy for ’im when ’e finished singing. There’s Larry boozing… After Larry went to bed in the chalet I went back out again. Couldn’t find ’im.

“Took me free days to get a word wiv ’im. I said, ‘Steve, it’s me. Janice. Your neighbor. The nurse!’”