Page 216 of Troubled Blood

“What?”

“That you know each other,” Strike repeated.

“Me and Paul Satchwell?” said Janice with a little laugh. “I’ve never even met the man!”

“Really?” said Strike, watching her closely. “When he heard you’d told us about the sighting of Margot in Leamington Spa, he got quite angry. He said words to the effect,” Strike read off his notebook, “that you were trying to cause trouble for him.”

There was a long silence. A frown line appeared between Janice’s round blue eyes. At last she said,

“Did ’e mention me by name?”

“No,” said Strike. “As a matter of fact, he seemed to have forgotten it. He just remembered you as ‘the nurse.’ He also told Robin that you and Margot didn’t like each other.”

“’E said Margot didn’t like me?” said Janice, with the emphasis on the last word.

“I’m afraid so,” said Strike, watching her.

“But… no, sorry, that’s not right,” said Janice. “We used to get on great! Ovver than that one time wiv Kev and ’is tummy… all right, I did get shirty wiv ’er then, but I knew she meant it kindly. She fort she was doing me a favor, examining ’im… I took offense because… well, you do get a bit defensive, as a mother, if you fink another woman’s judging you for not taking care of your kids properly. I was on me own with Kev and… you just feel it more, when you’re on your own.”

“So why,” Strike asked, “would Satchwell say he knew you, and that you wanted to get him into trouble?”

The silence that followed was broken by the sound of a train passing beyond the hedge: a great rushing rumble built and subsided, and the quiet of the sitting room closed like a bubble in its wake, holding the detective and the nurse in suspension as they looked at each other.

“I fink you already know,” said Janice at last.

“Know what?”

“Don’t give me that. All them fings you’ve solved—you’re not a stupid man. I fink you already know, and all this is to try and scare me into telling you.”

“I’m certainly not trying to scare—”

“I know you didn’t like ’er,” said Janice abruptly. “Irene. Don’t bovver pretending, I know she annoyed you. If I couldn’t read people I wouldn’t ’ave been any good at my job, going in and out of strangers’ ’ouses all the time, would I? And I was very good at my job,” said Janice, and somehow the remark didn’t seem arrogant. “Listen: you saw Irene in one of ’er show-off moods. She was so excited to meet you, she put on a big act.

“It’s not easy for women, living alone when they’re used to company, you know. Even me, coming back from Dubai, it’s been a readjustment. You get used to ’aving family around you and then you’re back in the empty ’ouse again, alone… Me, I don’t mind me own company, but Irene ’ates it.

“She’s been a very good friend to me, Irene,” said Janice, with a kind of quiet ferocity. “Very kind. She ’elped me out financially, after Larry died, back when I ’ad nothing. I’ve always been welcome in ’er ’ouse. We’re company for each other, we go back a long way. So she might ’ave a few airs and graces, so what? So ’ave plenty of people…”

There was another brief pause.

“Wait there,” said Janice firmly. “I need to make a phone call.”

She got up and left the room. Strike waited. Beyond the net curtains, the sun suddenly slid out from behind a bullet-colored cloud, and turned the glass Cinderella coach on the mantelpiece neon bright.

Janice reappeared with a mobile in her hand.

“She’s not picking up,” she said, looking perturbed.

She sat back down on the sofa. There was another pause.

“Fine,” said Janice at last, as though Strike had harangued her into speech, “it wasn’t me ’oo knew Satchwell—it was Irene. But don’t you go thinking she’s done anyfing she shouldn’t’ve! I mean, not in a criminal sense. It worried ’er like ’ell, after. I was worried for ’er… Oh Gawd,” said Janice.

She took a deep breath then said,

“All right, well… she was engaged to Eddie at the time. Eddie was a lot older’n Irene. ’E worshipped the ground she walked on, an’ she loved ’im, too. She did,” said Janice, though Strike hadn’t contradicted her. “And she was really jealous if Eddie so much as looked at anyone else…

“But she always liked a drink and a flirt, Irene. It was ’armless. Mostly ’armless… that bloke Satchwell ’ad a band, didn’t ’e?”

“That’s right,” said Strike.