Page 24 of Troubled Blood

In truth, the agency was so busy that he felt guilty about the burden it was placing on Robin and his subcontractors by taking a long weekend in Cornwall. In addition to the five open cases still on the agency’s books, he and Robin were juggling increased management demands made by the expanded workforce, and negotiating a year’s extension on the office lease with the developer who’d bought their building. They were also trying, though so far without luck, to persuade one of the agency’s police contacts to find and hand over the forty-year-old file on Margot Bamborough’s disappearance. Morris was ex-Met, as was Andy Hutchins, their most longstanding subcontractor, a quiet, saturnine man whose MS was thankfully in remission, and both had tried to call in favors from former col­leagues as well, but so far, responses to the agency’s requests had ranged from “mice have probably had it” to “fuck off, Strike, I’m busy.”

One rainy afternoon, while tailing Shifty through the City, trying not to limp too obviously and inwardly cursing the second pavement seller of cheap umbrellas who’d got in his way, Strike’s mobile rang. Expecting to be given another problem to sort out, he was caught off guard when the caller said,

“Hi, Strike. George Layborn here. Heard you’re looking at the Bamborough case again?”

Strike had only met DI Layborn once before, and while it had been in the context of a case where Strike and Robin had given material assistance to the Met, he hadn’t considered their association close enough to ask Layborn for help on getting the Bamborough file.

“Hi, George. Yeah, you heard right,” said Strike, watching Shifty turn into a wine bar.

“Well, I could meet you tomorrow evening, if you fancy it. Feathers, six o’clock?” said Layborn.

So Strike asked Barclay to swap jobs, and headed to the pub near Scotland Yard the following evening, where he found Layborn already at the bar, waiting for him. A paunchy, gray-haired, middle-aged man, Layborn bought both of them pints of London Pride, and they removed themselves to a corner table.

“My old man worked the Bamborough case, under Bill Talbot,” Layborn told Strike. “He told me all about it. What’ve you got so far?”

“Nothing. I’ve been looking back at old press reports, and I’m trying to trace people who worked at the practice she disappeared from. Not much else I can do until I see the police file, but nobody’s been able to help with that so far.”

Layborn, who had demonstrated a fondness for colorfully obscene turns of phrase on their only previous encounter, seemed oddly subdued tonight.

“It was a fucking mess, the Bamborough investigation,” he said quietly. “Anyone told you about Talbot yet?”

“Go on.”

“He went off his rocker,” said Layborn. “Proper mental breakdown. He’d been going funny before he took on the case, but you know, it was the seventies—looking after the workforce’s mental health was for poofs. He’d been a good officer in his day, mind you. A couple of junior officers noticed he was acting odd, but when they raised it, they were told to eff off.

“He’d been heading up the Bamborough case six months before his wife called an ambulance in the middle of the night and got him sectioned. He got his pension, but it was too late for the case. He died a good ten years ago, but I heard he never got over fucking up the investigation. Once he recovered he was mortified about how he’d behaved.”

“How was that?”

“Putting too much stock in his own intuitions, didn’t take evidence properly, had no interest in talking to witnesses if they didn’t fit his theory—”

“Which was that Creed abducted her, right?”

“Exactly,” said Layborn. “Although Creed was still called the Essex Butcher back then, because he dumped the first couple of bodies in Epping Forest and Chigwell.” Layborn took a long pull on his pint. “They found most of Jackie Aylett in an industrial bin. He’s an animal, that one. Animal.”

“Who took over the case after Talbot?”

“Bloke called Lawson, Ken Lawson,” said Layborn, “but he’d lost six months, the trail had gone cold and he’d inherited a right balls-up. Added to which, she was unlucky in her timing, Margot Bamborough,” Layborn continued. “You know what happened a month after she vanished?”

“What?”

“Lord Lucan disappeared,” said Layborn. “You try and keep a missing GP on the front pages after a peer of the realm’s nanny gets bludgeoned to death and he goes on the run. They’d already used the Bunny Girl pictures—did you know Bamborough was a Bunny Girl?”

“Yeah,” said Strike.

“Helped fund her medical degree,” said Layborn, “but according to my old man, the family didn’t like that being dragged up. Put their backs right up, even though those pictures definitely got the case a bit more coverage. Way of the world,” he said, “isn’t it?”

“What did your dad think happened to her?” asked Strike.

“Well, to be honest,” sighed Layborn, “he thought Talbot was prob­ably right: Creed had taken her. There were no signs she meant to disappear—passport was still in the house, no case packed, no clothes missing, stable job, no money worries, young child.”

“Hard to drag a fit, healthy twenty-nine-year-old woman off a busy street without someone noticing,” said Strike.

“True,” said Layborn. “Creed usually picked them off when they were drunk. Having said that, it was a dark evening and rainy. He’d pulled that trick before. And he was good at lulling women’s suspicions and getting their sympathy. A couple of them walked into his flat of their own accord.”

“There was a van like Creed’s seen speeding in the area, wasn’t there?”

“Yeah,” said Layborn, “and from what Dad told me it was never checked out properly. Talbot didn’t want to hear that it might have been someone trying to get home for their tea, see. Routine work just wasn’t done. For instance, I heard there was an old boyfriend of Bamborough’s hanging around. I’m not saying the boyfriend killed her, but Dad told me Talbot spent half the interview trying to find out where this boyfriend had been on the night Helen Wardrop got attacked.”