Troubled Blood

Strike wasn’t to know that Robin’s primary association with stargazer lilies, now and for evermore, would be with Sarah Shadlock, who’d once brought an almost identical bouquet to Robin and Matthew’s housewarming party. When she walked into the office the day after her birthday and saw the flowers standing there on the partners’ desk, stuck in a vase full of water but still in their cellophane, with a large magenta bow on them and a small card that read “Happy birthday from Cormoran” (no kiss, he never put kisses), she was affected exactly the same way she’d been by the hand-grenade-shaped bottle in Selfridges. She didn’t want these flowers; they were a double irritant in reminding her of Strike’s forgetfulness and Matthew’s infidelity, and if she had to look at or smell them, she resolved, it wouldn’t be in her own home.

So she’d left the lilies at the office, where they stubbornly refused to die, Pat conscientiously refilling their water every morning and taking such good care of them that they lived for nearly two weeks. Even Strike was sick of them by the end: he kept getting wafts of something that reminded him of his ex-girlfriend Lorelei’s perfume, an unpleasant association.

By the time the waxy pink and white petals began to shrivel and fall, the thirty-ninth anniversary of Margot Bamborough’s disappearance had passed unmarked and probably unnoticed by anyone except, perhaps, her family, Strike and Robin, who both registered the fateful date. Copies of the police records had been brought to the office as promised by George Layborn, and now lay in four cardboard boxes under the partners’ desk, which was the only place the agency had room for them. Strike, who was currently the least encumbered by the agency’s other cases, because he was holding himself in readiness to go back down to Cornwall should the need arise, set himself to work systematically through these files. Once he’d digested their contents, he intended to visit Clerkenwell with Robin, and retrace the route between the old St. John’s practice where Margot had last been seen alive, and the pub where her friend had waited for her in vain.

So, on the last day of October, Robin left the office at one o’clock and hurried, beneath a threatening sky and with her umbrella ready in her hand, onto the Tube. She was quietly excited by the prospect of this afternoon, the first she and Strike would spend working the Bamborough case together.

It was already drizzling slightly when Robin caught sight of Strike, standing smoking as he surveyed the frontage of a building halfway down St. John’s Lane. He turned at the sound of her heels on the wet pavement.

“Am I late?” she called, as she approached.

“No,” said Strike, “I was early.”

She joined him, still holding her umbrella, and looked up at the tall, multi-story building of brown brick, with large, metal-framed windows. It appeared to house offices, but there was no indication of what kind of businesses were operating inside.

“It was right here,” said Strike, pointing at the door numbered 29. “The old St. John’s Medical Practice. They’ve remodeled the front of the building, obviously. There used to be a back entrance,” he said. “We’ll go round and have a shufti in a minute.”

Robin turned to look up and down St. John’s Lane, which was a long, narrow one-way street, bordered on either side by tall, multi-windowed buildings.

“Very overlooked,” commented Robin.

“Yep,” said Strike. “So, let’s begin with what Margot was wearing when she disappeared.”

“I already know,” said Robin. “Brown corduroy skirt, red shirt, knitted tank top, beige Burberry raincoat, silver necklace and earrings, gold wedding ring. Carrying a leather shoulder bag and a black umbrella.”

“You should take up detection,” said Strike, mildly impressed. “Ready for the police records?”

“Go on.”

“At a quarter to six on the eleventh of October 1974 only three people are known to have been inside this building: Margot, who was dressed exactly as you describe, but hadn’t yet put on her raincoat; Gloria Conti, who was the younger of the two receptionists; and an emergency patient with abdominal pain, who’d walked in off the street. The patient, according to the hasty note Gloria took, was called ‘Theo question mark.’ In spite of the male name, and Dr. Joseph Brenner’s assertion that he thought the patient looked like a man, and Talbot trying hard to persuade her that Theo was a man dressed as a woman, Gloria never wavered in her assertion that ‘Theo’ was a woman.

“All the other employees had left before a quarter to six, except Wilma the cleaner, who hadn’t been there at all that day, because she didn’t work Fridays. More of Wilma later.

“Janice, the nurse, was here until midday, then making house visits the rest of the afternoon and didn’t return. Irene, the receptionist, left at half past two for a dental appointment and didn’t come back. According to their statements, each of which were corroborated by some other witness, the secretary, Dorothy, left at ten past five, Dr. Gupta at half past and Dr. Brenner at a quarter to six. Police were happy with the alibis all three gave for the rest of the evening: Dorothy went home to her son and spent the evening watching TV with him. Dr. Gupta attended a large family dinner to celebrate his mother’s birthday and Dr. Brenner was with the spinster sister he shared his house with. Both Brenners were seen through the sitting-room window later that evening, by a dog walker.

“The last registered patients, a mother and child, were Margot’s, and they left the practice shortly before Brenner did. The patients testified that Margot was fine when they saw her.

“From that point on, Gloria is the only witness. According to Gloria, Theo went into Margot’s consulting room and stayed there longer than expected. At a quarter past six, Theo left, never to be seen at the practice again. A police appeal was subsequently put out for her, but nobody came forward.

“Margot left no notes about Theo. The assumption is that she intended to write up the consultation the following day, because her friend had now been waiting for her in the pub for a quarter of an hour and she didn’t want to make herself even later.

“Shortly after Theo left, Margot came hurrying out of her consulting room, put on her raincoat, told Gloria to lock up with the emergency key, walked out into the rain, put up her umbrella, turned right and disappeared from Gloria’s sight.”

Strike turned and pointed up the road toward a yellow stone arch of ancient appearance, which lay directly ahead of them.

“Which means she was heading in that direction, toward the Three Kings.”

For a moment, both of them looked toward the old arch that spanned the road, as though some shadow of Margot might materialize. Then Strike ground out his cigarette underfoot and said,

“Follow me.”

He walked the length of number 28, then paused to point up a dark passageway the width of a door, called Passing Alley.

“Good hiding place,” said Robin, pausing to look up and down the dark, vaulted corridor through the buildings.

“Certainly is,” said Strike. “If somebody wanted to lie in wait for her, this is tailor made. Catch her by surprise, drag her up here—but after that, it’d get problematic.”

They walked along the short passage and emerged into a sunken garden area of concrete and shrubs that lay between two parallel streets.

“The police searched this whole garden area with sniffer dogs. Nothing. And if an assailant dragged her onwards, through there,” Strike pointed to the road that ran parallel to St. John’s Lane, “onto St. John Street, it would’ve been well-nigh impossible to go undetected. The street’s far busier than St. John’s Lane. And that’s assuming a fit, tall twenty-nine-year-old wouldn’t have shouted and fought back.”

He turned to look at the back entrance.

“The district nurse sometimes went in the back, rather than going through the waiting room. She had a little room to the rear of the building where she kept her own stuff and sometimes saw patients. Wilma the cleaner sometimes went out the back door as well. Otherwise it was usually locked.”

“Are we interested in people being able to enter or leave the building through a second door?” asked Robin.

“Not especially, but I want to get a feel for the layout. It’s been nearly forty years: we’ve got to go back over everything.”

They walked back through Passing Alley to the front of the building.

“We’ve got one advantage over Bill Talbot,” said Strike. “We know the Essex Butcher turned out to be slim and blond, not a swarthy thickset person of gypsy-ish appearance. Theo, whoever she was, wasn’t Creed. Which doesn’t necessarily make her irrelevant, of course.

“One last thing, then we’re done with the practice itself,” said Strike, looking up at number 29. “Irene, the blonde receptionist, told the police that Margot received two threatening, anonymous notes shortly before she disappeared. They’re not in the police file, so we’ve only got Irene’s statement to go on. She claims she opened one, and that she saw another on Margot’s desk when bringing her tea. She says the one she read mentioned hellfire.”

“You’d think it was the secretary’s job to open mail,” commented Robin. “Not a receptionist’s.”

“Good point,” said Strike, pulling out his notebook and scribbling, “we’ll check that… It seems relevant to add here that Talbot thought Irene was an unreliable witness: inaccurate and prone to exaggeration. Incidentally, Gupta said Irene and Margot had what he called a ‘contretemps’ at a Christmas party. He didn’t think it was a particularly big deal, but he’d remembered it.”