Troubled Blood

“Well, he had flu really badly,” said Robin. “He didn’t want to give it to anyone else.”

But as she washed up her mug, put on her coat, bade Pat farewell and set off downstairs, Robin found herself musing on this brief exchange. She’d often pondered the, to her, inexplicable animosity that Pat seemed to feel toward Strike. It had been clear from her tone that Pat had imagined Strike somehow immune to loneliness or vulnerability, and Robin was puzzled as to why, because Strike had never made any secret of where he was living or the fact that he slept there alone.

Robin’s mobile rang. Seeing an unknown number, and remembering that Tom Turvey had been on the other end of the line the last time she’d answered one, she paused outside Tottenham Court Road station to answer it, with slight trepidation.

“Is this Robin Ellacott?” said a Mancunian voice.

“It is,” said Robin.

“Hiya,” said the woman, a little nervously. “You wanted to talk to Dave Underwood. I’m his daughter.”

“Oh, yes,” said Robin. “Thank you so much for getting back to me.”

Dave Underwood was the man who’d been employed to drive a wholefoods shop van at the time that Margot Bamborough went missing. Robin, who’d found his address online and written him a letter three days previously, hadn’t expected such a quick response. She’d become inured to people ignoring her messages about Margot Bamborough.

“It was a bit of a shock, getting your letter,” said the woman on the phone. “The thing is, Dad can’t talk to you himself. He had a tracheotomy three weeks ago.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” said Robin, one finger in the ear not pressed to the phone, to block out the rumbling traffic.

“Yeah,” said the woman. “He’s here with me now, though, and he wants me to say… look… he’s not going to be in trouble, is he?”

“No, of course not,” said Robin. “As I said in my letter, it really is just about eliminating the van from inquiries.”

“All right then,” said Dave’s daughter. “Well, it was him. Amazing, you working it out, because they all swore it was a flower on the side of the van, didn’t they? He was glad at the time, because he thought he’d get in trouble, but he’s felt bad about it for years. He went the wrong way on a delivery and he was speeding through Clerkenwell Green to try and put himself right. He didn’t want to say, because the boss had had a go at him that morning for not getting deliveries out on time. He saw in the paper they were thinking maybe he’d been Dennis Creed and he just… well, you know. Nobody likes getting mixed up with stuff like that, do they? And the longer he kept quiet, the worse he thought it would look, him not coming forward straight away.”

“I see,” said Robin. “Yes, I can understand how he felt. Well, this is very helpful. And after he’d made his delivery, did he—?”

“Yeah, he went back to the shop and he got a right telling-off anyway, because they opened the van and saw he’d delivered the wrong order. He had to go back out again.”

So Margot Bamborough clearly hadn’t been in the back of the wholefoods van.

“Well, thanks very much for getting back to me,” said Robin, “and please thank your father for being honest. That’s going to be a great help.”

“You’re welcome,” said the woman, and then, quickly, before Robin could hang up. “Are you the girl the Shacklewell Ripper stabbed?”

For a moment, Robin considered denying it, but she’d signed the letter to Dave Underwood with her real name.

“Yes,” she said, but with less warmth than she’d put into her thank you for the information about the van. She didn’t like being called “the girl the Shacklewell Ripper stabbed.”

“Wow,” said the woman, “I told Dad I thought it was you. Well, at least Creed can’t get you, eh?”

She said it almost jauntily. Robin agreed, thanked her again for her cooperation, hung up the phone and proceeded down the stairs into the Tube.

At least Creed can’t get you, eh?

The cheery sign-off stayed with Robin as she descended to the Tube. That flippancy belonged only to those who had never felt blind terror, or come up against brute strength and steel, who’d never heard pig-like breathing close to their ear, or seen defocused eyes through balaclava holes, or felt their own flesh split, yet barely registered pain, because death was so close you could smell its breath.

Robin glanced over her shoulder on the escalator, because the careless commuter behind her kept touching the backs of her upper thighs with his briefcase. Sometimes she found casual physical contact with men almost unbearable. Reaching the bottom of the escalator she moved off fast to remove herself from the commuter’s vicinity. At least Creed can’t get you, eh? As though being “got” was nothing more than a game of tag.

Or was it being in the newspaper had somehow made Robin seem less human to the woman on the end of the phone? As Robin settled herself into a seat between two women on the Tube, her thoughts returned to Pat, and to the secretary’s surprise that Strike had nowhere to go when he was ill, and nobody to look after him. Was that at the root of her antipathy? An assumption that newsworthiness meant invulnerability?

When Robin let herself into the flat forty minutes later, carrying a bag of groceries and looking forward to an early night, she found the place empty except for Wolfgang, who greeted her exuberantly, then whined in a way that indicated a full bladder. With a sigh, Robin found his lead and took him downstairs for a quick walk around the block. After that, too tired to cook a proper meal, she scrambled herself some eggs and ate them with toast while watching the news on TV.

She was running herself a bath when her mobile rang again. Her heart sank a little when she saw that it was her brother Jonathan, who was in his final year of university in Manchester. She thought she knew what he was calling about.

“Hi, Jon,” she said.

“Hey, Robs. You didn’t answer my text.”

She knew perfectly well that she hadn’t. He’d sent it that morning, while she’d been watching Two-Times’ girlfriend having a blameless coffee, alone with a Stieg Larsson novel. Jon wanted to know whether he and a female friend could come and stay at her flat on the weekend of the fourteenth and fifteenth of February.

“Sorry,” said Robin, “I know I didn’t, it’s been a busy day. I’m not sure, to be honest, Jon. I don’t know what Max’s plans—”

“He wouldn’t mind us crashing in your room, would he? Courtney’s never been to London. There’s a comedy show we want to see on Saturday. At the Bloomsbury Theatre.”

“Is Courtney your girlfriend?” asked Robin, smiling now. Jonathan had always been quite cagey with the family about his love life.

“Is she my girlfriend,” repeated Jonathan mockingly, but Robin had an idea that he was quite pleased with the question really, and surmised that the answer was “yes.”

“I’ll check with Max, OK? And I’ll ring you back tomorrow,” said Robin.

Once she’d disposed of Jonathan, she finished running the bath and headed into her bedroom to fetch pajamas, dressing gown and something to read. The Demon of Paradise Park lay horizontally across the top of her neat shelf of novels. After hesitating for a moment, she picked it up and took it back to the bathroom with her, trying as she did so to imagine getting ready for bed with her brother and an unknown girl in the room, as well. Was she prudish, stuffy and old before her time? She’d never finished her university degree: “crashing” on floors in the houses of strangers had never been part of her life, and in the wake of the rape that had occurred in her halls of residence, she’d never had any desire to sleep anywhere except in an environment over which she had total control.

Sliding into the hot bubble bath, Robin let out a great sigh of pleasure. It had been a long week, sitting in the car for hours or else trudging through the rainy streets after Shifty or Elinor Dean. Eyes closed, enjoying the heat and the synthetic jasmine of her cheap bubble bath, her thoughts drifted back to Dave Underwood’s daughter.

At least Creed can’t get you, eh? Setting aside the offensively jocular tone, it struck her as significant that a woman who’d known for years that Creed hadn’t been driving the sun-emblazoned van was nevertheless certain that he’d abducted Margot.

Because, of course, Creed hadn’t always used a van. He’d killed two women before he ever got the job at the dry cleaner’s, and managed to persuade women to walk into his basement flat even after he’d acquired the vehicle.

Robin opened her eyes, reached for The Demon of Paradise Park and turned to the page where she had last left it. Holding the book clear of the hot, foamy water, she continued to read.