Troubled Blood

“So Talbot went back to Ruby and tried to force her to change her story. You’ll remember that there was another phone box at the opening of Albemarle Way. Talbot tried to persuade Ruby that she’d seen two people struggling in front of that phone box instead.

“Which is where things get mildly interesting,” said Strike, turning a page in his notebook. “According to Ruby’s daughter, Ruby was an absentminded woman, a nervous driver and a poor map reader, with virtually no sense of direction. On the other hand, her daughter claims she had a very retentive memory for small visual details. She might not remember what street she’d met an acquaintance on, but she could describe down to the color of a shoelace what they’d been wearing. She’d been a window dresser in her youth.

“Given her general vagueness, Talbot should have found it easy to persuade her she’d mistaken the phone box, but the harder he pushed, the firmer she stood, and the reason she stood firm, and said the two women couldn’t have been in front of the Albemarle phone box, was because she’d seen something else happen beside that particular phone box, something she’d forgotten all about until Talbot mentioned the wedge-shaped building. Don’t forget, she didn’t know Clerkenwell at all.

“According to her daughter, Ruby kept driving around in a big circle that night, continually missing Hayward’s Place, where her daughter’s new house was. When he said, ‘Are you sure you didn’t see these two struggling women beside the other phone box, near the wedge-shaped building on the corner of Albemarle Way?’ Ruby suddenly remembered that she’d had to brake at that point in the road, because a transit van ahead of her had stopped beside the wedge-shaped building without warning. It was picking up a dark, stocky young woman who was standing in the pouring rain, beside the phone box. The woman—”

“Wait a moment,” said Robin, momentarily taking her eyes off the rainy road to glance at Strike. “‘Dark and stocky?’ It wasn’t Theo?”

“Ruby thought it was, once she compared her memory of the girl in the rain with the artist’s impressions of Margot’s last patient. Dark-skinned, solid build, thick black hair—plastered to her face because it was so wet—and wearing a pair of—”

Strike sounded the unfamiliar name out, reading from his notebook.

“—Kuchi earrings.”

“What are Kuchi earrings?”

“Romany-style, according to Ruby’s daughter, which might account for Gloria calling Theo ‘gypsyish.’ Ruby knew clothes and jewelry. It was the kind of detail she noticed.

“The transit van braked without warning to pick up the-girl-who-could-have-been-Theo, temporarily holding up traffic. Cars behind Ruby were tooting their horns. The dark girl got into the front passenger seat, the transit van moved off in the direction of St. John Street and Ruby lost sight of it.”

“And she didn’t tell Talbot?”

“Her daughter says that by the time she remembered the second incident, she was exhausted by the whole business, sick to death of being ranted at by Talbot and told she must have been mistaken in thinking the two struggling women hadn’t been Margot and Creed in drag, and regretting she’d ever come forward in the first place.

“After Lawson took over the case, she was afraid of what the police and the press would say to her if she suddenly came up with a story of seeing someone who resembled Theo. Rightly or wrongly, she thought it might look as though, having had her first sighting proven to be worthless, she wanted another shot at being important to the inquiry.”

“But her daughter felt OK about telling you all this?”

“Well, Ruby’s dead, isn’t she? It can’t hurt her now. Her daughter made it clear she doesn’t think any of this is going to amount to anything, so she might as well tell me the lot. And when all’s said and done,” said Strike, turning a page in his notebook, “we don’t know the girl was Theo… although personally, I think she was. Theo wasn’t registered with the practice, so probably wasn’t familiar with the area. That corner would make an easily identifiable place to meet the transit van after she’d seen a doctor. Plenty of space for it to pull over.”

“True,” said Robin slowly, “but if that girl really was Theo, this lets her out of any involvement with Margot’s disappearance, doesn’t it? She clearly left the surgery alone, got a lift and drove—”

“Who was driving the van?”

“I don’t know. Anyone. Parent, friend, sibling…”

“Why didn’t Theo come forward after all the police appeals?”

“Maybe she was scared. Maybe she had a medical problem she didn’t want anyone to know about. Plenty of people would rather not get mixed up with the police.”

“Yeah, you’re not wrong,” admitted Strike. “Well, I still think it’s worth knowing that one of the last people to see Margot alive might’ve left the area in a vehicle big enough to hide a woman in.

“And speaking of the last person to see Margot alive,” Strike added, “any response from Gloria Conti?”

“No,” said Robin. “If nothing’s happened by the end of next week, I’ll try and contact her through her husband.”

Strike turned a page in his notebook.

“After I spoke to Ruby’s daughter and the Fleury bloke, I called Dr. Gupta back. Dunno whether you remember, but in my summary of the horoscope notes I mentioned ‘Scorpio,’ whose death, accord-ing to Talbot, worried Margot.”

“Yes,” said Robin. “You speculated Scorpio might be Steve Douthwaite’s married friend, who killed herself.”

“Well remembered,” said Strike. “Well, Gupta can’t remember any patient dying in unexplained circumstances, or in a way that troubled Margot, although he emphasized that all this is forty years ago and he can’t swear there wasn’t such a patient.

“Then I asked him whether he knew who Joseph Brenner might have been visiting in a block of flats on Skinner Street on the evening Margot disappeared. Gupta says they had a number of patients in Skinner Street, but he can’t think of any reason why Brenner would have lied about going on a house call there.

“Lastly, and not particularly helpfully, Gupta remembers that a couple of men came to pick Gloria up at the end of the practice Christmas party. He remembers one of the men being a lot older, and says he assumed that was Gloria’s father. The name ‘Mucky Ricci’ meant nothing to him.”

Midway across Chiswick Bridge, the sun sliced suddenly through a chink in the rain clouds, dazzling their eyes. The dirty Thames beneath the bridge and the shallow puddles flashed laser bright, but, seconds later, the clouds closed again and they were driving again through rain, in the dull gray January light, along a straight dual carriageway bordered by shrubs slick with rain and naked trees.

“What about that film?” said Robin, glancing sideways at Strike. “The film that came out of Gregory Talbot’s attic? You said you’d tell me in person.”

“Ah,” said Strike. “Yeah.”

He hesitated, looking past the windscreen wipers at the long straight road ahead, glimmering beneath a diagonal curtain of rain.

“It showed a hooded woman being gang-raped and killed.”

Robin experienced a slight prickling over her neck and scalp.

“And people get off on that,” she muttered, in disgust.

He knew from her tone that she hadn’t understood, that she thought he was describing a pornographic fiction.

“No,” he said, “it wasn’t porn. Someone filmed… the real thing.”

Robin looked around in shock, before turning quickly back to face the road. Her knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. Repulsive images were suddenly forcing their way into her mind. What had Strike seen, that made him look so closed up, so blank? Had the hooded woman’s body resembled Margot’s, the body Oonagh Kennedy had said was “all legs”?

“You all right?” asked Strike.

“Fine,” she almost snapped. “What—what did you see, how—?”

But Strike chose to answer a question she hadn’t asked.

“The woman had a long scar over the ribcage. There was never any mention of Margot having a scarred ribcage in press reports or police notes. I don’t think it was her.”

Robin said nothing but continued to look tense.

“There were four men, ah, involved,” Strike continued, “all Caucasian, and all with their faces hidden. There was also a fifth man looking on. His arm came briefly into shot. It could’ve been Mucky Ricci. There was an out-of-focus big gold ring.”

He was trying to reduce the account to a series of dry facts. His leg muscles had tensed up quite as much as Robin’s hands, and he was primed to grab the wheel. She’d had a panic attack once before while they were driving.

“What are the police saying?” Robin asked. “Do they know where it came from?”

“Hutchins asked around. An ex-Vice Squad guy thinks it’s part of a batch they seized in a raid made on a club in Soho in ’75. The club was owned by Ricci. They took a load of hardcore pornography out of the basement.

“One of Talbot’s best mates was also Vice Squad. The best guess is that Talbot nicked or copied it, after his mate showed it to him.”