Page 199 of Troubled Blood

“Looking at graves. Allegedly, she had her hair dyed black.”

“’Oo saw this?”

“A man visiting the area on a motorbike. Two years later, he told the St. John’s practice nurse about it.”

“He told the nurse?”

Satchwell’s jaw hardened.

“And what else has the nurse told you?” he said, searching Robin’s face. He seemed suddenly and unexpectedly angry.

“Do you know Janice?” asked Robin, wondering why he looked so angry.

“That’s her name, is it?” said Satchwell. “I couldn’t remember.”

“You do know her?”

Satchwell put more chips in his mouth. Robin could see that he was trying to decide what to tell her, and she felt that jolt of excitement that made all the long, tedious hours of the job, the sitting around, the sleeplessness, worthwhile.

“She’s shit-stirring,” said Satchwell abruptly. “She’s a shit-stirrer, that one, that nurse. She and Margot didn’t like each other. Margot told me she didn’t like her.”

“When was this?”

“When we ran into each other, like I told you, in the street—”

“I thought you said she didn’t talk about work?”

“Well, she told me that. They’d had a row or something. I don’t know. It was just something she said in passing. She told me she didn’t like the nurse,” repeated Satchwell.

It was as though a hard mask had surfaced under the leather dark skin: the slightly comical, crêpey-faced charmer had been replaced by a mean old one-eyed man. Robin remembered how Matthew’s lower face had tautened when angry, giving him the look of a muzzled dog, but she wasn’t intimidated. She sensed in Satchwell the same wily instinct for self-preservation as in her ex-husband. Whatever Satchwell might have meted out to Margot, or to the wives who’d left him, he’d think better of slapping Robin in a crowded pub, in the town where his sister still lived.

“You seem angry,” Robin said.

“Gia chári tou, of course I am—that nurse, what’s her name? Trying to implicate me, isn’t she? Making up a story to make it look like Margot ran away to be with me—”

“Janice didn’t invent the story. We checked with Mr. Ramage’s widow and she confirmed that her late husband told other people he’d met a missing woman—”

“What else has Janice told you?” he said again.

“She never mentioned you,” said Robin, now immensely curious. “We had no idea you knew each other.”

“But she claims Margot was seen in Leamington Spa after she disappeared? No, she knows exactly what she’s bloody doing.”

Satchwell took another chip, ate it, then suddenly got to his feet and walked past Robin, who looked over her shoulder to see him striding into the gents. His back view was older than his front: she could see the pink scalp through the thin white hair and there was no backside filling out his jeans.

Robin guessed he considered the interview finished. However, she had something else up her sleeve: a dangerous something, perhaps, but she’d use it rather than let the interview end here, with more questions raised than answered.

It was fully five minutes before he reappeared and she could tell that he’d worked himself up in his absence. Rather than sitting back down, he stood over her as he said,

“I don’t think you’re a fucking detective. I think you’re press.”

Seen from below, the tortoise’s neck was particularly striking. The chain, the turquoise and silver rings and the long hair now seemed like fancy dress.

“You can call Anna Phipps and check if you like,” said Robin. “I’ve got her number here. Why d’you think the press would be interested in you?”

“I had enough of them last time. I’m off. I don’t need this. I’m supposed to be recuperating.”

“One last thing,” said Robin, “and you’re going to want to hear it.”