Page 210 of Troubled Blood

Strike rolled his eyes.

“—was in a hospice with, guess who?”

“I don’t know,” said Robin politely.

“Violet Cooper,” said Amanda. “You probably don’t—”

“Dennis Creed’s landlady,” said Robin.

“Exactly!” said Amanda, sounding pleased that Robin appreciated the significance of her story. “So, anyway, isn’t that just weird, that I saw Margot at that window, and then, all those years later, I work with someone whose relative met Vi Cooper? Only she was calling herself something different by then, because people hated her.”

“That is a coincidence,” said Robin, making sure not to look at Strike. “Well, thank—”

“That’s not all!” said Amanda, laughing. “No, there’s more to it than that! So, this girl’s great-aunt said Vi told her she wrote to Creed, once, asking if he’d killed Margot Bamborough.”

Amanda paused, clearly wanting a response, so Robin, who’d already read about this in The Demon of Paradise Park, said,

“Wow.”

“I know,” said Amanda. “And apparently, Vi said—this is on her deathbed, so you know, she was telling the truth, because you would, wouldn’t you?—Vi said the letter she got back, said he had killed her.”

“Really?” said Robin. “I thought the letter—”

“No, but this is direct from Violet,” Amanda said, while Strike rolled his eyes again, “and she said, he definitely did, he as good as told her so. He said it in a way only she’d understand, but she knew exactly what he meant.

“Crazy, though, isn’t it? I see Margot at the window, and then, years later—”

“Amazing,” said Robin. “Well, thanks very much for your time, Amanda, this has been really… er…”

It took Robin another couple of minutes, and much more insincere gratitude, to get Amanda off the line.

“What d’you think?” Robin asked Strike, when at last she’d succeeded in getting rid of Amanda.

He pointed a finger at the sky.

“What?” said Robin, looking up into the blue haze.

“If you look carefully,” said Strike, “you might just see an asteroid passing through the house of bollocks.”

50

Aye me (said she) where am I, or with whom?

Emong the liuing, or emong the dead?

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

Agency work unconnected with the Bamborough case consumed Strike for the next few days. His first attempt to surprise Nurse Janice Beattie at home was fruitless. He left Nightingale Grove, a nondescript street that lay hard against the Southeastern railway line, without receiving any answer to his knock.

His second attempt, on the following Wednesday, was made on a breezy afternoon that kept threatening showers. Strike approached Janice’s house from Hither Green station, along a pavement bordered to the right with railings and hedge, separating the road from the rail tracks. He was thinking about Robin as he trudged along, smoking, because she’d just turned down the opportunity of joining him to interview Janice, saying that there was “something else” she needed to do, but not specifying what that something was. Strike thought he’d detected a trace of caginess, almost amounting to defensiveness, in Robin’s response to the suggestion of a joint interview, where usually there’d have been only disappointment.

Since she’d left Matthew, Strike had become used to more ease and openness between him and Robin, so this refusal, coupled with her tone and lack of an explanation, made him curious. While there were naturally matters he might not have expected her to tell him about—trips to the gynecologist sprang to mind—he would have expected her to say “I’ve got a doctor’s appointment,” at least.

The sky darkened as Strike approached Janice’s house, which was considerably smaller than Irene Hickson’s. It stood in a terrace. Net curtains hung at all the windows, and the front door was dark red. Strike didn’t immediately register the fact that a light was shining from behind the net curtains at the sitting-room window until he was halfway across the road. When he realized that his quarry must be in, however, he successfully pushed all thoughts about his business partner out of his mind, crossed the road at a quicker pace and knocked firmly on the front door. As he stood waiting, he heard the muffled sounds of a TV on high volume through the glass of the downstairs window. He was just considering knocking again, in case Janice hadn’t heard the first time, when the door opened.

In contrast to the last time they’d met, the nurse, who was wearing steel-rimmed spectacles, looked shocked and none too pleased to see Strike. From behind her, two female American voices rang out from the out-of-sight TV: “So you love the bling?” “I love the bling!”

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