Page 231 of Troubled Blood

“—was really her telling him everything Carmen had told her, yeah,” said Maya, feeling again for the cross around her neck. “She couldn’t own up that her sister had been going there instead of her, because my Uncle Marcus would’ve gone crazy if he’d found out. Auntie Carmen begged Mum not to tell the police and Mum agreed.

“So she had to pretend she was the one who’d seen the blood on the carpet and Dr. Phipps walking across the lawn.”

“Only,” interrupted Porschia, with a humorless laugh, “Carmen changed her mind about Dr. Phipps, after. Mum went back to her after her first police interview and said, ‘They’re asking whether I couldn’t have got confused and mistaken one of the workmen for Dr. Phipps.’ Carmen said, ‘Oh. Yeah. I forgot there were workmen round the back. Maybe I did.’”

Porschia let out a short laugh, but Robin knew she wasn’t truly amused. It was the same kind of laughter Robin had taken refuge in, the night she’d discussed rape with Max over the kitchen table.

“I know it isn’t funny,” said Porschia, catching Maya’s eye, “but come on. Carmen was always ditzy as hell, but you’d think she might’ve made sure of her facts then, wouldn’t you? Mum was liter­ally sick with stress, like, retching if she ate anything. And then that old bitch of a secretary at work found her having a dizzy spell…”

“Yeah,” said Eden, suddenly coming to life. “Next thing was, Mum was accused of being a thief and a drunk and the practice fired her. The old secretary claimed she’d had a secret sniff of Mum’s Thermos and smelled booze in it. Total fabrication.”

“That was a few months after Margot Bamborough disappeared, wasn’t it?” asked Strike, his pen poised over his notebook.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Eden said with icy sarcasm, “did I go off topic? Back to the missing white lady, everyone. Never mind what the black woman went through, who gives a shit?”

“Sorry, I didn’t—” began Strike.

“D’you know who Tiana Medaini is?” Eden shot at him.

“No,” he admitted.

“No,” said Eden, “of course you bloody don’t. Forty years after Margot Bamborough went missing, here we all are, fussing over her and where she went. Tiana Medaini’s a black teenager from Lewisham. She went missing last year. How many front pages has Tiana been on? Why wasn’t she top of the news, like Bamborough was? Because we’re not worth the same, are we, to the press or to the bloody police?”

Strike appeared unable to find an adequate response; doubtless, Robin thought, because Eden’s point was unarguable. The picture of Dennis Creed’s only black victim, Jackie Aylett, a secretary and mother of one, was the smallest and the least distinct of the ghostly black and white images of Creed’s victims on the cover of The Demon of Paradise Park. Jackie’s dark skin showed up worst on the gloomy cover. The greatest prominence had been given to sixteen-year-old Geraldine Christie and twenty-seven-year-old Susan Meyer, both of them pale and blonde.

“When Margot Bamborough went missing,” Eden said fiercely, “the white women at her practice were treated like bone china by the police, OK? Practically mopping their bloody tears for them—but not our mum. They treated her like a hardened con. That policeman in charge, what was his name—”

“Talbot?” suggested Robin.

“‘What are you hiding? Come on, I know you’re hiding something.’”

The mysterious figure of the Hierophant rose up in Robin’s mind. The keeper of secrets and mysteries in the Thoth tarot wore saffron robes and sat upon a bull (“the card is referred to Taurus”) and in front of him, half his size, stood a black priestess, her hair braided like Maya’s (“Before him is the woman girt with a sword; she represents the Scarlet Woman…”). Which had come first, the laying out of tarot cards signifying secrecy and concealment, or the policeman’s instinct that the terrified Wilma was lying to him?

“When he interviewed me—” began Eden.

“Talbot interviewed you?” asked Strike sharply.

“Yeah, he came to Marks & Spencer unannounced, to my work,” said Eden, and Robin realized that Eden’s eyes were suddenly bright with tears. “Someone else at the practice had seen that anonymous note Bamborough got. Talbot found out Dad was inside and he’d heard Mum was cleaning for the doctor. He went to every man in our family, accusing them of writing the threatening letters, and then he came to me, asking me really strange questions about all my male relatives, wanting to know what they’d been up to on different dates, asking whether Uncle Marcus often stayed out overnight. He even asked me about Dad and Uncle Marcus’s—”

“—star signs?” asked Robin.

Eden looked astounded.

“The hell did you know that?”

“Talbot left a notebook. It’s full of occult writing. He was trying to solve the case using tarot cards and astrology.”

“Astrology?” repeated Eden. “Effing astrology?”

“Talbot shouldn’t have been interviewing you without an adult present,” Strike told Eden. “What were you, sixteen?”

Eden laughed in the detective’s face.

“That might be how it works for white girls, but we’re different, aren’t you listening? We’re hardy. We’re tough. That occult stuff,” Eden said, turning back to Robin, “yeah, that makes sense, because he asked me about obeah. You know what that is?”

Robin shook her head.

“Kind of magic they used to practice in the Caribbean. Originated in West Africa. We were all born in Southwark, but, you know, we were all black pagans to Inspector Talbot. He had me alone in the back room and he was asking me stuff about rituals using blood, about black magic. I was terrified, I didn’t know what he was on about. I thought he meant Mum and the blood on the carpet, hinting she’d done away with Dr. Bamborough.”