Page 74 of Troubled Blood

“Not long before she disappeared. Four weeks? Something like that?”

“Before or after the anonymous notes?”

“I don’t—after, I think,” said Irene. “Or was it? I can’t remember…”

“Did you talk to anyone else about the appointment?”

“Only Jan, and she told me off. Didn’t you, Jan?”

“I know you didn’t mean any ’arm,” muttered Janice, “but patient confidentiality—”

“Margot wasn’t our patient. It’s a different thing.”

“And you didn’t tell the police about this?” Strike asked her.

“No,” said Irene, “because I—well, I shouldn’t’ve known, should I? Anyway, how could it have anything to do with her disappearing?”

“Apart from Mrs. Beattie, did you tell anyone else about it?”

“No,” said Irene defensively, “because—I mean, I wouldn’t have told anyone else—you kept your mouth shut, working at a doctor’s surgery. I could’ve told all kinds of people’s secrets, couldn’t I? Being a receptionist, I saw files, but of course you didn’t say anything, I knew how to keep secrets, it was part of the job…”

Expressionless, Strike wrote “protesting too much” in his notebook.

“I’ve got another question, Mrs. Hickson, and it might be a sensitive one,” Strike said, looking up again. “I heard you and Margot had a disagreement at the Christmas party.”

“Oh,” said Irene, her face falling. “That. Yes, well—”

There was a slight pause.

“I was cross about what she’d done to Kevin. Jan’s son. Remember, Jan?”

Janice looked confused.

“Come on, Jan, you do,” said Irene, tapping Janice’s arm again. “When she took him into her consulting room and blah blah blah.”

“Oh,” said Janice. For a moment, Robin had the distinct impression that Janice was truly cross with her friend this time. “But—”

“You remember,” said Irene, glaring at her.

“I… yeah,” said Janice. “Yeah, I was angry about that, all right.”

“Jan had kept him off school,” Irene told Strike. “Hadn’t you, Jan? How old was he, six? And then—”

“What exactly happened?” Strike asked Janice.

“Kev had a tummy ache,” said Janice. “Well, schoolitis, really. My neighbor ’oo sometimes looked after ’im wasn’t well—”

“Basically,’ interrupted Irene, “Jan brought Kevin to work and—”

“Could Mrs. Beattie tell the story?” Strike asked.

“Oh—yes, of course!” said Irene. She put her hand back on her abdomen again and stroked it, with a long-suffering air.

“Your usual childminder was ill?” Strike prompted Janice.

“Yeah, but I was s’posed to be at work, so I took Kev wiv me to the practice and give ’im a coloring book. Then I ’ad to change a lady’s dressing in the back room, so I put Kev in the waiting room. Irene and Gloria were keeping an eye on him for me. But then Margot—well, she took ’im into her consulting room and examined ’im, stripped ’im off to the waist and everything. She knew ’e was my son an’ she knew why ’e was there, but she took it upon herself… I was angry, I can’t lie,” said Janice quietly. ‘We ’ad words. I said, ‘All you ’ad to do was wait until I’d seen the patient and I’d’ve come in wiv ’im while you looked at him.’

“And I’ve got to say, when I put it to her straight, she backed down right away and apologized. No,” Janice said, because Irene had puffed herself up, “she did, Irene, she apologized, said I was quite right, she shouldn’t have seen him without me, but ’e’d been holding his tummy and she acted on instinct. It wasn’t badly intentioned. She just, sometimes—”

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