Troubled Blood

Anna and Kim sat down side by side on the free sofa, and when Cynthia had drawn up spindly side tables to hold everyone’s tea, and cut slices of cake for those who wanted some, she sat herself down beside her stepdaughter-in-law, looking scared.

“Well,” said Roy at last, addressing Strike. “I’d be interested to hear what you think your chances are of finding out what the Metropolitan Police has been unable to discover in four decades.”

Robin was sure Roy had been planning this aggressive opening during the long and painful silence.

“Fairly small,” said Strike matter-of-factly, once he’d swallowed a large piece of the cake Cynthia had given him, “though we’ve got a new alleged sighting of your first wife I wanted to discuss with you.”

Roy looked taken aback.

“Alleged sighting,” Strike emphasized, setting down his plate and reaching inside his jacket for his notebook. “But obviously… Excellent cake, Mrs. Phipps,” he told Cynthia.

“Oh, thank you,” she said in a small voice. “Coffee and walnut was Anna’s favorite when she was little—wasn’t it, love?” she said, but Anna’s only response was a tense smile.

“We heard about it from one of your wife’s ex-colleagues, Janice Beattie.”

Roy shook his head and shrugged impatiently, to convey non-recognition of the names.

“She was the practice nurse at the St. John’s surgery,” said Strike.

“Oh,” said Roy. “Yes. I think she came here once, for a barbecue. She seemed quite a decent woman… Disaster, that afternoon. Bloody disaster. Those children were atrocious—d’you remember?” he shot at Cynthia.

“Yes,” said Cynthia quickly, “no, there was one boy who was really—”

“Spiked the punch,” barked Roy. “Vodka. Someone was sick.”

“Gloria,” said Cynthia.

“I don’t remember all their names,” said Roy, with an impatient wave of the hand. “Sick all over the downstairs bathroom. Disgusting.”

“This boy would’ve been Carl Oakden?” asked Strike.

“That’s him,” said Roy. “We found the vodka bottle empty, later, hidden in a shed. He’d sneaked into the house and taken it out of the drinks cabinet.”

“Yes,” said Cynthia, “and then he smashed—”

“Crystal bowl of my mother’s and half a dozen glasses. Hit a cricket ball right across the barbecue area. The nurse cleaned it all up for me, because—decent of her. She knew I couldn’t—broken glass,” said Roy, with an impatient gesture.

“On the bright side,” said Cynthia, with the ghost of a laugh, “he’d smashed the punch, so nobody else got sick.”

“That bowl was art deco,” said Roy, unsmiling. “Bloody disaster, the whole thing. I said to Margot,” and he paused for a second after saying the name, and Robin wondered when he’d last spoken it, “‘I don’t know what you think this is going to achieve.’ Because he didn’t come, the one she was trying to conciliate—the doctor she didn’t get on with, what was his—?”

“Joseph Brenner,” said Robin.

“Brenner, exactly. He’d refused the invitation, so what was the point? But no, we still had to give up our Saturday to entertain this motley collection of people, and our reward was to have our drink stolen and our possessions smashed.”

Roy’s fists lay on the arms of his chair. He uncoiled the long fingers for a moment in a movement like a hermit crab unflexing its legs, then curled them tightly in upon themselves again.

“That same boy, Oakden, wrote a book about Margot later,” he said. “Used a photograph from that damn barbecue to add credibility to the notion that he and his mother knew all about our private lives. So, yes,” said Roy coldly, “not one of Margot’s better ideas.”

“Well, she was trying to make the practice work better together, wasn’t she?” said Anna. “You’ve never really needed to manage different personalities at work—”

“Oh, you know all about my work, too, do you, Anna?”

“Well, it wasn’t the same as being a GP, was it?” said Anna. “You were lecturing, doing research, you didn’t have to manage cleaners and receptionists and a whole bunch of non-medics.”

“They were quite badly behaved, Anna,” said Cynthia, hurrying loyally to support Roy. “No, they really were. I never told—I didn’t want to cause trouble—but one of the women sneaked upstairs into your mum and dad’s bedroom.”

“What?” barked Roy.

“Yes,” said Cynthia, nervously. “No, I went upstairs to change Anna’s nappy and I heard movement in there. I walked in and she was looking at Margot’s clothes in the wardrobe.”

“Who was this?” asked Strike.

“The blonde one. The receptionist who wasn’t Gloria.”

“Irene,” said Strike. “Did she know you’d seen her?”

“Oh yes. I walked in, holding Anna.”

“What did she say when she saw you?” asked Robin.

“Well, she was a bit embarrassed,” said Cynthia. “You would be, wouldn’t you? She laughed and said ‘just being nosy’ and walked back out past me.”

“Good God,” said Roy Phipps, shaking his head. “Who hired these people?”

“Was she really just looking?” Robin asked Cynthia. “Or d’you think she’d gone in there to—”

“Oh, I don’t think she’d taken anything,” said Cynthia. “And you never—Margot never missed anything, did she?” she asked Roy.

“No, but you should still have told me this at the time,” said Roy crossly.

“I didn’t want to cause trouble. You were already… well, it was a stressful day, wasn’t it?”

“About this alleged sighting,” said Strike, and he told the family the third-hand tale of Charlie Ramage, who claimed to have seen Margot wandering among graves in a churchyard in Leamington Spa.

“… and Robin’s now spoken to Ramage’s widow, who confirmed the basic story, though she couldn’t swear to it that it was Margot he thought he’d seen, and not another missing woman. The sighting doesn’t seem to have been passed to the police, so I wanted to ask whether Margot had any connection with Leamington Spa that you know of?”

“None,” said Roy, and Cynthia shook her head.

Strike made a note.

“Thank you. While we’re on the subject of sightings,” said Strike, “I wonder whether we could run through the rest of the list?”

Robin thought she knew what Strike was up to. However uncomfortable the idea that Margot was still alive might be for the people in this room, Strike wanted to start the interview from a standpoint that didn’t presume murder.

“The woman at the service station in Birmingham, the mother in Brighton, the dog walker down in Eastbourne,” Roy rattled off, before Strike could speak. “Why would she have been out and about, driving cars and walking dogs? If she’d disappeared voluntarily, she clearly didn’t want to be found. The same goes for wandering around graveyards.”

“True,” said Strike. “But there was one sighting—”

“Warwick,” said Roy. “Yes.”

A look passed between husband and wife. Strike waited. Roy set down his cup and saucer on the table in front of him and looked up at his daughter.

“You’re quite sure you want to do this, Anna, are you?” he asked, looking at his silent daughter. “Quite, quite sure?”

“What d’you mean?” she snapped back. “What d’you think I hired detectives for? Fun?”

“All right, then,” said Roy, “all right. That sighting caught… caught my attention, because my wife’s ex-boyfriend, a man called Paul Satchwell, hailed originally from Warwick. This was a man she’d… reconnected with, before she disappeared.”

“Oh for God’s sake,” said Anna, with a tight little laugh, “did you honestly think I don’t know about Paul Satchwell? Of course I do!” Kim reached out and put a hand on her wife’s leg, whether in comfort or warning, it was hard to tell. “Have you never heard of the internet, Dad, or press archives? I’ve seen Satchwell’s ridiculous photograph, with all his chest hair and his medallions, and I know my mother went for a drink with him three weeks before she vanished! But it was only one drink—”

“Oh, was it?” said Roy nastily. “Thanks for your reassurance, Anna. Thanks for your expert knowledge. How marvelous to be all-knowing—”

“Roy,” whispered Cynthia.

“What are you saying, that it was more than a drink?” said Anna, looking shaken. “No, it wasn’t, that’s a horrible thing to say! Oonagh says—”

“Oh, right, yes, I see!” said Roy loudly, his sunken cheeks turning purple as his hands gripped the arms of his chair, “Oonagh says, does she? Everything is explained!”

“What’s explained?” demanded Anna.

“This!” he shouted, pointing a trembling, rope-veined, swollen-knuckled hand at Strike and Robin. “Oonagh Kennedy’s behind it all, is she? I should have known I hadn’t heard the last of her!”

“For God’s sake, Roy,” said Kim loudly, “that’s a preposterous—”

“Oonagh Kennedy wanted me arrested!”

“Dad, that’s simply not true!” said Anna, forcibly removing Kim’s restraining hand from her leg. “You’ve got a morbid fixation about Oonagh—”

“Badgering me to complain about Talbot—”

“Well, why the bloody hell didn’t you?” said Anna loudly. “The man was in the middle of a fully fledged breakdown!”