Troubled Blood: A Cormoran Strike Novel

by Galbraith, Robert

  The old lady, who was barely halfway down the stairs, was now audibly wheezing.

  “Get in here,” muttered Donna, pointing Strike and Robin toward the room from which she’d just emerged. “And you,” she snapped at her husband.

  They entered a small public sitting room, with a wall-mounted TV, a sparsely stocked bookcase and a miserable-looking spider plant sitting in a pedestalled urn. Through an arch was a breakfast room, where five tightly packed dining tables were being wiped down by a discontented-looking young woman in glasses, who sped up appreciably when she realized Donna had returned. Robin guessed that they were mother and daughter. Though the younger woman was dark rather than blonde, life had carved an identical groove of dissatisfaction in her forehead.

  “Leave that, Kirsty,” said Donna abruptly. “Take these towels upstairs, will you? And close the door.”

  Kirsty relieved Douthwaite silently of his pile of towels and left the room, her slides slapping the bottoms of her sockless feet. The door clicked shut behind her.

  “Sit down,” Donna instructed Strike and Robin, who did so, on a small sofa.

  Douthwaite took up a standing position, arms folded, with his back to the TV. Frowning slightly, his eyes flickered over Strike and Robin and back to his wife. The sunlight filtering through the net curtains cast an unforgiving light over his hair, which looked like wispy strands of steel wool.

  “He’s the one who caught that Shacklewell Ripper,” Donna said to her husband, jerking her head at Strike. “Why’s he after you?” Her voice rose in both pitch and volume. “Been dicking around with the wrong woman again, have you? Have you?”

  “What?” said Douthwaite, but it was obvious this was a stalling tactic: he had understood well enough. His right forearm was tattooed with an hourglass, and around it was wrapped a ribbon with the words “Never Enough.”

  “Mr. Douthwaite,” Strike began, but Douthwaite said quickly,

  “Diamond! It’s Diamond!”

  “Why’re you calling him Douthwaite?” asked Donna.

  “I’m sorry,” said Strike insincerely. “My mistake. Your husband was born Steven Douthwaite, as I’m sure you—”

  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.

  “Why’d you change your name from Douthwaite to Jacks?” she demanded. “Why were the police after you?”

  “They weren’t after me,” croaked Douthwaite. “This was ages ago. I wanted a fresh start, that’s all.”

  “How many fresh starts does one man need?” said Donna. “What did you do? Why’d you have to give a police statement?”

  “A doctor went missing,” said Douthwaite, with a glance at Strike.

  “What doctor? When?”

  “Her name was Margot Bamborough.”

  “Bamborough?” repeated Donna, her forehead bifurcated by that deep frown line, “But that… that was all over the news…”

  “They interviewed all the patients she’d seen before she disappeared,” Douthwaite said quickly. “It was routine! They didn’t have anything on me.”

  “You must think I was born bloody yesterday,” said Donna. “They,” she pointed at Strike and Robin, “haven’t tracked you down because it was routine inquiries, have they? You didn’t change your bloody name because it was routine inquiries! Screwing her, were you?”

  “No, I wasn’t bloody screwing her!” said Douthwaite, with his first sign of fight.

  “Mr. Douthwaite,” began Strike.

  “Diamond!” said Douthwaite, more in desperation than in anger.

  “I’d be grateful if you’d read through your police statement, see whether you’ve got anything to add.”

  Douthwaite looked as though he’d have liked to refuse, but after a slight hesitation he took the pieces of paper and began to read. The statement was a long one, covering as it did the suicide of Joanna Hammond, his married ex-lover, the beating he’d endured at the hands of her husband, the anxiety and depression which had led to so many visits to the St. John’s surgery, his assertion that he’d felt nothing more for Margot Bamborough than mild gratitude for her clinical expertise, his denial that he’d ever brought or sent her gifts and his feeble alibi for the time of her di
sappearance.

  “Yeah, I’ve got nothing to add to that,” Douthwaite said at last, holding the pieces of paper back out to Strike.

  “I want to read it,” said Donna at once.

  “It’s got nothing to do with—it’s forty years ago, it’s nothing,” said Douthwaite.

  “Your real name’s Douthwaite and I never knew till five minutes ago! I’ve got a right to know who you are,” she said fiercely, “I’ve got a right to know, so I can decide whether I was a bloody mug to stay with you, after the last—”

  “Fine, read it, go on,” said Douthwaite with unconvincing bravado, and Strike handed the statement over to Donna.

  She’d read for barely a minute when she burst out,

  “You were sleeping with a married—and she killed herself?”

  “I wasn’t—we weren’t—once, it happened, once! Nobody kills themselves over that!”

  “Why’d she do it, then? Why?”

  “Her husband was a bastard.”

  “My husband’s a bastard. I haven’t topped myself!”

  “Christ’s sake, Donna—”

  “What happened?”

  “It was nothing!” said Douthwaite. “We used to hang out together, few of the lads at work and their wives and whatever, and one night I was out with some other mates and ran into Joanna, who was with some girlfriends and… some cunt tipped off her husband we’d left the pub together and—”

  “And then this doctor disappeared and all, and the police came calling?”

  Donna got to her feet, Douthwaite’s crumpled statement quivering in her hand. Still sitting on the slippery maroon coverlet, Robin remembered the day she’d found Sarah Shadlock’s diamond earring in her bed, and thought she knew a little, a very little, of what Donna was experiencing.

  “I knew you were a bloody cheat and a liar, but three girlfriends dead? One’s a tragedy,” said Donna furiously, and Strike wondered whether they were about to hear a Wildean epigram, “but three? How bloody unlucky can one man get?”

  “I never had anything going on with that doctor!”

  “You’ll try it on with anyone!” shrieked Donna, and addressing Robin, she said, “Year before last, I catch him in a guest bedroom with one of my best friends—”

  “Christ’s sake, Donna!” whimpered Douthwaite.

  “—and six months ago—”

  “Donna—”

  “—I find out he’s been sneaking around with one of our regulars—and now—” said Donna, advancing on Douthwaite, his statements clutched in her fist. “You creepy bastard, what happened to all these women?”

  “I had nothing to do with any of them dying, fuck’s sake!” said Douthwaite, trying for an incredulous laugh and merely looking terrified. “Donna, come on—you think I’m some kind of murderer?”

  “You expect me to believe—”

  To Strike’s surprise, Robin suddenly jumped to her feet. Taking Donna by the shoulders, she guided her back into her chair.

  “Put your head down,” Robin was saying, “head down.”

  When Robin moved to untie Donna’s apron, which was tight around her waist, and Strike saw that Donna’s forehead, which was all he could see now she had sunk her face into her hands, was as white as the net curtain behind her.

  “Donna?” said Douthwaite feebly, but his wife whispered,

  “You stay away from me, you bastard.”

  “Breathe,” Robin was saying, crouching beside Donna’s chair. “Get her some water,” she told Strike, who got up and went into the tiny shower room, where a plastic beaker sat in a holder over the sink.

  Almost as pale as his wife, Douthwaite watched as Robin persuaded Donna to drink.

  “Stay there, now,” Robin told the landlady, one hand resting on her shoulder. “Don’t get up.”

  “Did he have something to do with them dying?” Donna whispered, looking sideways at Robin, her pupils enormous with shock.

  “That’s what we’re here to find out,” Robin murmured back.

  She turned and looked meaningfully at Strike, who silently agreed that the best thing he could do for the stricken Donna was to get information out of Douthwaite.

  “We’ve got a number of questions we’d like to ask you,” Strike told him. “Obviously you’re not obliged to answer them, but I’d put it to you that it would be in the best interests of everyone, yourself included, to cooperate.”

  “What questions?” said Douthwaite, still flat against the door. Then, in a torrent of words, he said, “I’ve never hurt anyone, never, I’m not a violent man. Donna will tell you, I’ve never laid a finger on her in anger, that’s not who I am.”

  But when Strike merely continued to look at him, Douthwaite said pleadingly,

  “Look, I’ve told you—with Joanna—it was a one-night stand. I was just a kid,” he said, and in an echo of Irene Hickson, he said, “You do those kinds of things when you’re young, don’t you?”

  “And when you’re old,” whispered Donna. “And all the bloody years in between…”

  “Where were you,” Strike asked Douthwaite, “when Joanna killed herself?”

  “In Brent,” said Douthwaite. “Miles away! And I had witnesses to prove it. We used to work in pairs, selling, each do one side of the street, and I was out with a bloke called Tadger,” and he tried to laugh again. Nobody smiled. “Tadger, you can imagine the grief he… well, he was with me all day…

  “Got back to the office late in the afternoon, and there was a group of lads in there, and they told us Hammond had just got the message his wife had topped herself…

  “Terrible,” said the pale and sweating Douthwaite, “but except for that one night together, I had nothing to do with it. But her old man—well, it was easier to blame me,” said Douthwaite, “wasn’t it, than think about his own bloody behavior?

  “I got home a couple of nights later and he was lying in wait. Ambush. He beat the shit out of me.”

  “Good!” said Donna, on a half-sob.

  “And your neighbor, Janice the nurse, looked after—”

  “Straight off with the neighbor, were you, Steve?” said Donna, with a hollow laugh. “Get the nurse to mop you up?”

  “It wasn’t like that!” said Douthwaite with surprising vehemence.

  “It’s his little trick,” the white-faced Donna told Robin, who was still kneeling by her chair. “Always got a sob story on the go. Fell for it myself. Heartbroken after the love of his life drowned… oh my God,” Donna whispered, slowly shaking her head. “And she was the third.” With a hysterical little laugh, she said, “As far as we know. Maybe there are others. Who knows?”

  “Christ’s sake, Donna!” said Douthwaite, yet again. Patches of underarm sweat were visible through his thin turquoise T-shirt: Strike could literally smell his fear. “Come on, you know me, you know I’d never hurt anyone!”

  “Janice says she advised you to see the doctor about your symp—”

  “She never told me to go to the doctor!” snapped Douthwaite, one eye on his wife. “I didn’t need telling, I went off my own bat because I was just getting worried about the… headaches and… mostly headaches. I felt really bad.”

  “You visited Margot six times in one two-week period,” said Strike.

  “I felt ill, stomach pains and what have you… I mean, it obviously affected me, Joanna dying, and then people talking about me…”

  “Oh, poor you, poor you,” murmured Donna. “Jesus effing Christ. You hate going to the doctor. Six times in two weeks?”

  “Donna, come on,” said Douthwaite imploringly, “I was feeling like shit! And then the bloody police come and make out like I was stalking her or something. It was all my health!”

  “Did you buy her—?” began Strike.

  “—chocolates? No!” said Douthwaite, who suddenly seemed very agitated. “If someone sent her chocolates, maybe you should find them. But it wasn’t me! I told the police I never bought her anything, it weren’t like that—”

  “Wi
tnesses said you seemed distressed and possibly angry, the last time you left Dr. Bamborough’s surgery,” said Strike. “What happened during that last visit?”

  Douthwaite’s breath was coming fast now. Suddenly, almost aggressively, he looked directly into Strike’s eyes.

  Experienced in the body language of suspects who yearn for the release and relief of unburdening themselves, no matter the consequences, Strike suddenly knew that Douthwaite was teetering on the brink of a disclosure. He’d have given almost anything to spirit the man away now, to a quiet interrogation room, but exactly as he’d feared, the precious moment was snatched away by Donna.

  “Turned you down, did she? What did you think, Steve—a scrubby little failed salesman had a chance with a doctor?”

  “I wasn’t bloody looking for a chance!” said Douthwaite, rounding on his wife, “I was there for my health, I was in a state!”

  “He’s like a bloody tomcat,” Donna told Robin, “slinking around behind everyone’s backs. He’ll use anything to get his end away, anything. His girlfriend’s topped herself and he’s using it to chat up nurses and doctors—”

  “I wasn’t, I was ill!”

  “That last meeting—” Strike began again.

  “I don’t know what you’re on about, it was nothing,” Douthwaite said, now avoiding looking Strike in the face. “The doc was just telling me to take it easy.”

  “Like you ever needed telling that, you lazy bastard,” spat Donna.

  “Perhaps,” said Strike, “as you’re feeling unwell, Mrs. Diamond, I could speak to Steve somewhere sep—”

  “Oh no you don’t!” said Donna. “No way! I want—”

  She exploded into tears, shoulders sagging, face in her hands.

  “I’m going to hear it all now… last chance…”

  “Donna—” said Douthwaite plaintively.

  “Don’t,” she sobbed into her fingers. “Don’t you dare.”

  “Perhaps,” said Strike, hoping to return to the last visit with Margot in due course, “we could go over your alibi for the time Dr. Bamborough disappeared?”

  Donna was sobbing, tears and mucus flowing freely now. Robin grabbed a paper napkin off the tray beside the kettle and handed it to her.