Page 131 of Troubled Blood

“Thanks,” said Robin.

“But there’s a whole new van on the scene,” said Strike.

“What?” said Robin sharply.

“I spoke to the daughter of Ruby Elliot yesterday. You ­remember Ruby—”

“The woman who saw the two women struggling from her car.”

“That’s the one. I also spoke to a nephew of Mrs. Fleury, who was crossing Clerkenwell Green, trying to get her senile mother home out of the rain.”

Strike cleared his throat, and said, reading from his notes:

“According to Mark Fleury, his aunt was quite upset by the description in the papers of her ‘struggling’ and even ‘grappling’ with her mother, because it suggested she’d been rough with the old dear. She said she was chivvying her mother along, not forcing her, but admitted that otherwise the description fitted them to a tee: right place, right time, rain hat, raincoat, etc.

“But Talbot leapt on the ‘we weren’t grappling’ discrepancy and tried to pressure Mrs. Fleury into retracting her story and admitting that she and the old lady couldn’t have been the people Ruby Elliot saw. Mrs. Fleury wasn’t having that, though. The description of them was too good: she was sure they were the right people.

“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.”

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