Page 286 of Troubled Blood

But Donna clearly hadn’t known this. She turned, astonished, from Strike to Douthwaite, who’d frozen, mouth slightly open.

“Douthwaite?” repeated Donna. She turned on her husband. “You told me your name used to be Jacks!”

“I—”

“When were you Douthwaite?”

“—ages—”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I—what’s it matter?”

The bell tinkled again and a group of people was heard out in the hall. Still looking shocked and angry, Donna strode outside to see what was needed, her wooden-soled sandals banging over the tiles. The moment she’d disappeared, Douthwaite addressed Strike.

“What d’you want?”

“We’ve been hired by Dr. Margot Bamborough’s daughter, to look into her disappearance,” said Strike.

The parts of Douthwaite’s face that weren’t ruddy with broken veins blanched.

The enormous old lady who’d been descending the stairs now walked into the room, her wide, innocent face demonstrating total immunity to the atmosphere within.

“Which way’s the seal sanctuary?”

“End of the road,” said Douthwaite hoarsely. “Turn left.”

She sidled out of the room again. The bell outside tinkled.

“Listen,” said Douthwaite quickly, as the sound of his wife’s footsteps grew louder again. “You’re wasting your time. I don’t know anything about Margot Bamborough.”

“Perhaps you could have a look over your old police statement, at least,” asked Strike, taking a copy out of his inside pocket.

“What?” said Donna, now back in the room. “What police statement? Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she said, as the bell tinkled again, and she clunked back out of the room and bellowed up the stairs, “Kirsty! KIRSTY!”

“That doctor,” Douthwaite said, looking at Strike through bloodshot eyes, his forehead sweaty, “it all happened forty-odd years ago, I don’t know anything about what happened, I never did.”

The harried Donna reappeared.

“Kirsty’ll mind the front door,” she said, glaring at her husband. “We’ll go upstairs. Lochnagar’s empty. We can’t go in ours,” she added to Strike and Robin, pointing toward the basement, “me grandkids are down there, playing computer games.”

Douthwaite hitched up his waistband and threw a wild look outside the net curtains, as though contemplating flight.

“Come on,” said Donna fiercely, and with a return to his hangdog look, he followed his wife out of the door.

Kirsty passed them, heading for the ground floor, as they climbed the steep tartan stairs, Strike making liberal use of the banister to haul himself up. He’d hoped Lochnagar might be on the first floor, but he was disappointed. It lay, as the name might have suggested, right at the top of the B&B, and faced out of the rear of the building.

The furniture inside was made of cheap pine. Kirsty had arranged towels in the shape of kissing swans on the maroon bedspread, which matched the patterned wallpaper of maroon and deep purple. Leads dangled from behind the wall-mounted TV. A plastic kettle sat in the corner on a low table, beside the Corby trouser press. Through the window Strike glimpsed the sea at last: a gleaming golden bar lying low between buildings, in the misty haze created by the net curtains.

Donna crossed the room and took the only chair. Her hands were gripping her own upper arms so tightly that the flesh showed white.

“You can sit down,” she told Strike and Robin.

Having nowhere else to do it, both sat down on the end of the double bed, with its slippery maroon cover. Douthwaite remained at the door, back against it, arms folded, displaying the hourglass tattoo.

“Diamond, Jacks, Douthwaite,” Donna recited. “How many other names have you had?”

“None,” said Douthwaite, trying for a laugh, but failing.

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