Hi,
Few bits and pieces on Bamborough before I see you:
• Charles Ramage, the hot tub millionaire, is dead. I’ve spoken to his son, who couldn’t confirm the story about the Margot sighting, but remembered Janice nursing his father after his crash and said Ramage Snr liked her and “probably told her all his stories, he had loads of them.” Said his father never minded exaggerating if it made a story better, but was not a liar and “had a good heart. Wouldn’t have told a lie about a missing woman.” Also confirmed that his father was close friends with a “senior police officer” (couldn’t remember rank or first name) called Greene. Ramage Snr’s widow is still alive and living in Spain, but she’s his second wife and the son doesn’t get on with her. I’m trying to get a contact number/email address for her.
• I’m 99% sure I’ve found the right Amanda White, who’s now called Amanda Laws. Two years ago she posted a piece on Facebook about people disappearing, which included Margot. She said in the comment that she’d been personally involved in the Margot disappearance. I’ve sent her a message but nothing back yet.
• I’ve got hold of a copy of Whatever Happened to Margot Bamborough? and read it (it’s not long). Judging by what we know about Margot so far, it looks full of inaccuracies. I’ll bring it with me this morning.
See you in a bit x
Sleep-deprived, Robin had added the kiss automatically and had sent the email before she could retract it. It was one thing to put a kiss on a birthday card, quite another to start adding them to work emails.
Shit.
She could hardly write a PS saying “Ignore that kiss, my fingers did it without me meaning to.” That would draw attention to the thing if Strike hadn’t thought anything of it.
As she closed her laptop, her mobile screen lit up: she’d received a long, excited text from her mother about baby Annabel Marie’s perfection, complete with a photograph of herself cradling her new granddaughter, Robin’s father beaming over his wife’s shoulder. Robin texted back:
She’s gorgeous!
even though the baby was quite as unprepossessing in the new photograph as she’d been in the old. Yet she wasn’t really lying: the fact of Annabel’s birth was somehow gorgeous, an everyday miracle, and Robin’s mysterious shower tears had been partly in acknowledgment of the fact.
As the Tube sped her toward Piccadilly Circus, Robin took out her copy of C. B. Oakden’s book, which she’d found at a second-hand bookshop in Chester, and flicked through it again. The dealer had said the book had been in his shop for several years, and had arrived in a job lot of books he’d taken off the hands of the family of an elderly local woman who’d died. Robin suspected that the dealer hadn’t known of the book’s murky legal status before Robin’s email inquiry, but he appeared to have no particular moral qualms about selling it. As long as Robin guaranteed by phone that she wouldn’t reveal where she’d got it, he was happy to part with it, for a hefty mark-up. Robin only hoped Strike would think the price justified, once he’d read it.
Robin’s particular copy appeared to have escaped pulping because it had been one of the author’s free copies, which must have been given to him before the court decision. An inscription on the fly-leaf read: To Auntie May, with every good wish, CB Oakden (Carl). To Robin, “with every good wish” seemed an affected, grandiose message to send an aunt.
Barely a hundred pages long, the flimsy paperback had a photograph of Margot as a Bunny Girl on the cover, a picture familiar to Robin because it had appeared in so many newspaper reports of her disappearance. Half cut off in this enlarged picture was a second Bunny Girl, who Robin knew to be Oonagh Kennedy. The photograph was reproduced in its entirety in the middle of the paperback, along with other pictures which Robin thought Strike would agree were the most valuable part of the book, though only, she feared, in terms of putting faces to names rather than helping the investigation.
Robin got off the Tube at Piccadilly Circus and walked in a strong wind up Piccadilly, beneath swaying Christmas lights, wondering where she might find a baby present for Stephen and Jenny. Having passed no appropriate shops, she arrived outside Fortnum & Mason with an hour to spare before the projected meeting with Oonagh Kennedy.
Robin had often passed the famous store since she had lived in London, but never gone inside. The ornate frontage was duck-egg blue and the windows, dressed for Christmas, some of the most beautiful in the city. Robin peered through clear circles of glass surrounded by artificial snow, at heaps of jewel-like crystallized fruits, silk scarves, gilded tea canisters, and wooden nutcrackers shaped like fairy-tale princes. A gust of particularly cold, rain-flecked wind whipped at her, and, without conscious thought, Robin allowed herself to be swept inside the sumptuous seasonal fantasy, through a door flanked by a doorman in an overcoat and top hat.
The store was carpeted in scarlet. Everywhere were mountains of duck-egg blue packaging. Close at hand she saw the very truffles that Morris had bought her for her birthday. Past marzipan fruits and biscuits she walked, until she glimpsed the café at the back of the ground floor where they’d agreed to meet Oonagh. Robin turned back. She didn’t want to see the retired vicar before the allotted time, because she wanted to reason herself into a more business-like frame of mind before an interview.
“Excuse me,” she asked a harried-looking woman selecting marzipan fruits for a client, “d’you sell anything for children in—?”
“Third floor,” said the woman, already moving away.
The small selection of children’s goods available were, in Robin’s view, exorbitantly priced, but as Annabel’s only aunt, and only London-based relative, she felt a certain pressure to give a suitably metropolitan gift. Accordingly, she purchased a large, cuddly Paddington bear.
Robin was walking away from the till with her duck-egg carrier bag when her mobile rang. Expecting it to be Strike, she saw instead an unknown number.
“Hi, Robin here.”
“Hi, Robin. It’s Tom,” said an angry voice.
Robin couldn’t for the life of her think who Tom was. She mentally ran through the cases the agency was currently working on—Two-Times, Twinkletoes, Postcard, Shifty and Bamborough—trying in vain to remember a Tom, while saying with what she intended to be yes-of-course-I-know-who-you-are warmth,
“Oh, hi!”
“Tom Turvey,” said the man, who didn’t appear fooled.
“Oh,” said Robin, her heart beginning to beat uncomfortably fast, and she drew back into an alcove where pricey scented candles stood on shelves.
Tom Turvey was Sarah Shadlock’s fiancé. Robin had had no contact with him since finding out that their respective partners had been sleeping together. She’d never particularly liked him, nor had she ever found out whether he knew about the affair.
“Thanks,” said Tom. “Thanks a fucking bunch, Robin!”
He was close to shouting. Robin distanced the mobile a little from her ear.
“Excuse me?” she said, but she suddenly seemed to have become all nerves and pulse.
“Didn’t bother fucking telling me, eh? Just walked away and washed your hands, did you?”
“Tom—”
“She’s told me fucking everything, and you knew a year ago and I find out today, four weeks before my wedding—”
“Tom, I—”
“Well, I hope you’re fucking happy!” he bellowed. Robin removed the phone from her ear and held it at arm’s length. He was still clearly audible as he yelled, “I’m the only one of us who hasn’t been fucking around, and I’m the one who’s been fucked over—”
Robin cut him off. Her hands were shaking.
“Excuse me,” said a large woman, who was trying to see the candles on the shelves behind Robin, who mumbled an apology and walked away, until she reached a curving iron banister, beyond which was a large, circular expanse of thin air. Looking down, she saw the floors had been cut out, so that she was able to see right into the basement, where compressed people were cri
ss-crossing the space with baskets laden with expensive hams and bottles of wine. Head spinning, hardly aware of what she was doing, Robin turned and headed blindly back toward the department exit, trying not to bump into tables piled with fragile china. Down the red carpeted stairs she walked, trying to breathe herself back to calm, trying to make sense of what she’d just heard.
“Robin.”
She walked on, and only when somebody said “Robin” again did she turn and realize Strike had just entered the store via a side door from Duke Street. The shoulders of his overcoat were studded with glimmering raindrops.
“Hi,” she said, dazed.
“You all right?”
For a split-second she wanted to tell him everything: after all, he knew about Matthew’s affair, he knew how her marriage had ended and he’d met Tom and Sarah. However, Strike himself looked tense, his mobile gripped in his hand.
“Fine. You?”
“Not great,” he said.
The two of them moved aside to allow a group of tourists into the store. In the shadow of the wooden staircase Strike said,
“Joan’s taken a turn for the worse. They’ve readmitted her to hospital.”
“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” said Robin. “Listen—go to Cornwall. We’ll cope. I’ll interview Oonagh, I’ll take care of everything—”
“No. She specifically told Ted she didn’t want us all dashing down there again. But that’s not like her…”
Strike seemed every bit as scattered and distracted as Robin felt, but now she pulled herself together. Screw Tom, screw Matthew and Sarah.
“Seriously, Cormoran, go. I can take care of work.”
“They’re expecting me in a fortnight for Christmas. Ted says she’s desperate to have us all at home. It’s supposed to be just for a couple of days, the hospital thing.”
“Well, if you’re sure…” said Robin. She checked her watch. “We’ve got ten minutes until Oonagh’s supposed to be here. Want to go to the café and wait for her?”
“Yeah,” said Strike. “Good thinking, I could use a coffee.”
“God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” trilled from the speakers as they entered the realm of crystallized fruits and expensive teas, both lost in painful thought.
24
… my delight is all in ioyfulnesse,
In beds, in bowres, in banckets, and in feasts:
And ill becomes you with your lofty creasts,
To scorne the ioy, that Ioue is glad to seeke…
Edmund Spenser
The Faerie Queene
The café was reached by a flight of stairs that placed it on a higher level than the shop floor, which it overlooked. Once he and Robin had sat down at a table for four by the window, Strike sat silently looking down into Jermyn Street, where passers-by were reduced to moving mushrooms, eclipsed by their umbrellas. He was a stone’s throw from the restaurant in which he’d last seen Charlotte.
He’d received several more calls from her since the nude photograph on his birthday, plus several texts, three of which had arrived the previous evening. He’d ignored all of them, but somewhere at the back of his anxiety about Joan scuttled a familiar worry about what Charlotte’s next move was going to be, because the texts were becoming increasingly overwrought. She had a couple of suicide attempts in her past, one of which had almost succeeded. Three years after he’d left her, she was still trying to make him responsible for her safety and her happiness, and Strike found it equally infuriating and saddening. When Ted had called Strike that morning with the news about Joan, the detective had been in the process of looking up the telephone number of the merchant bank where Charlotte’s husband worked. If Charlotte threatened suicide, or sent any kind of final message, Strike intended to call Jago.
“Cormoran,” Robin said.
He looked round. A waiter had arrived at the table. When both had ordered coffee, and Robin some toast, each relapsed into silence. Robin was looking away from the window toward the shoppers stocking up on fancy groceries for Christmas down on the shop floor and re-running Tom Turvey’s outburst in her head. The aftershocks were still hitting her. Four weeks before my fucking wedding. It must have been called off. Sarah had left Tom for Matthew, the man she’d wanted all along, and Robin was sure she wouldn’t have left Tom unless Matthew had shown himself ready to offer her what Tom had: diamonds and a change of name. I’m the only one of us who hasn’t been fucking around. Everyone had been unfaithful, in Tom’s opinion, except poor Tom… so Matthew must have told his old friend that she, Robin, had been sleeping with someone else (which meant Strike, of course, of whom Matthew had been perennially jealous and suspicious from the moment Robin had gone to work for him). And even now that Tom knew about Matthew and Sarah, after his old friend’s duplicity and treachery had been revealed, Tom still believed the lie about Robin and Strike. Doubtless he thought his current misery was all Robin’s fault, that if she hadn’t succumbed to Strike, the domino effect of infidelity would never have been started.
“You sure you’re all right?”
Robin started and looked around. Strike had come out of his own reverie and was looking at her over his coffee cup.
“Fine,” she said. “Just knackered. Did you get my email?”
“Email?” said Strike, reaching for the phone in his pocket. “Yeah, but I haven’t read it, sorry. Dealing with other—”
“Don’t bother now,” said Robin hastily, inwardly cringing at the thought of that accidental kiss, even in the midst of her new troubles. “It isn’t particularly important, it’ll keep. I did find this, though.”
She took the copy of Whatever Happened to Margot Bamborough? out of her bag and passed it over the table, but before Strike could express his surprise, she muttered,
“Give it back, give it back now,” tugged it back out of his hand and stuffed it into her bag.
A stout woman was heading toward them across the café. Two bulging bags of Christmas fare were dangling from her hands. She had the full cheeks and large square front teeth of a cheerful-looking chipmunk, an aspect that in her youthful photos had added a certain cheeky charm to her prettiness. The hair that once had been long, dark and glossy was now chin-length and white, except at the front, where a dashing bright purple streak had been added. A large silver and amethyst cross bounced on her purple sweater.
“Oonagh?” said Robin.
“Dat’s me,” she panted. She seemed nervous. “The queues! Well, what do I expect, Fortnum’s at Christmas? But fair play, dey do a lovely mustard.”
Robin smiled. Strike drew out the chair beside him.
“T’anks very much,” said Oonagh, sitting down.
Her Irish accent was attractive, and barely eroded by what Robin knew had been a longer residence in England than in the country of her birth.
Both detectives introduced themselves.
“Very nice to meet you,” Oonagh said, shaking hands before clearing her throat nervously. “Excuse me. I was made up to get yer message,” she told Strike. “Years and years I’ve spent, wondering why Roy never hired someone, because he’s got the money to do it and the police never got anywhere. So little Anna called you in, did she? God bless that gorl, what she must’ve gone through… Oh, hello,” she said to the waiter, “could I have a cappuccino and a bit of that carrot cake? T’ank you.”
When the waiter had gone, Oonagh took a deep breath and said,
“I know I’m rattlin’ on. I’m nervous, that’s the truth.”
“There’s nothing to be—” began Strike.
“Oh, there is,” Oonagh contradicted him, looking sober. “Whatever happened to Margot, it can’t be anything good, can it? Nigh on forty years I’ve prayed for that girl, prayed for the truth and prayed God would look after her, alive or dead. She was the best friend I ever had and—sorry. I knew this would happen. Knew it.”
She picked up her unused cloth napkin and mopped her eyes.
“Ask me a question,” she said, half-laughing. “Save me from
meself.”
Robin glanced at Strike, who handed the interview to her with a look as he pulled out his notebook.
“Well, perhaps we can start with how you and Margot met?” Robin suggested.
“We can, o’ course,” said Oonagh. “That would’ve been ’66. We were both auditioning to be Bunny Girls. You’ll know all about that?”
Robin nodded.
“I had a decent figure then, believe it or not,” said Oonagh, smiling as she gestured down at her tubby torso, although she seemed to feel little regret for the loss of her waist.
Robin hoped Strike wasn’t going to take her to task later for not organizing her questions according to the usual categories of people, places and things, but she judged it better to make this feel more like a normal conversation, at least at first, because Oonagh was still visibly nervous.
“Did you come over from Ireland, to try and get the job?” asked Robin.
“Oh no,” said Oonagh. “I was already in London. I kinda run away from home, truth be told. You’re lookin’ at a convent gorl with a mammy as strict as a prison warder. I had a week’s wages from a clothes shop in Derry in my pocket, and my mammy gave me one row too many. I walked out, got on the ferry, came to London and sent a postcard home to tell ’em I was alive and not to worry. My mammy didn’t speak to me for t’irty years.
“I was waitressing when I heard they were opening a Playboy Club in Mayfair. Well, the money was crazy good compared to what you could earn in a normal place. T’irty-five pounds a week, we started on. That’s near enough six hundred a week, nowadays. There was nowhere else in London was going to pay a working-class gorl that. It was more than most of our daddies earned.”
“And you met Margot at the club?”
“I met her at the audition. Knew she’d get hired the moment I looked at her. She had the figure of a model: all legs, and the girl lived on sugar. She was t’ree years younger than me, and she lied about her age so they’d take—oh, t’ank you very much,” said Oonagh, as the waiter placed her cappuccino and carrot cake in front of her.
Troubled Blood: A Cormoran Strike Novel Page 27
