Page 321 of Troubled Blood

She was still stroking the underside of her wedding ring.

“I don’t know why,” she said. “I just… like it.”

Her eyes wandered over the wall of photographs.

“I like seeing what ’appens to them, if they take poison or too many drugs. Sometimes I like ’elping ’em and ’aving them be grateful, and sometimes I like watching ’em suffer, and sometimes I like watching ’em go…” A prickle ran up the back of Strike’s neck. “I don’t know why,” she said again. “I sometimes fink it’s because I ’ad a bang on the ’ead, when I was ten. My dad knocked me downstairs. I was out for fifteen minutes. Ever since then, I’ve ’ad ’eadaches…’Ead trauma can do fings to you, you know. So maybe it’s not my fault, but… I dunno…

“Wiv me granddaughter,” said Janice, frowning slightly, “I just wanted ’er gone, honestly… spoiled and whiny… I don’t like kids,” she said, looking directly back at Strike. “I’ve never liked kids. I never wanted ’em, never wanted Kev, but I fort if I ’ad it, ’is dad might marry me… but ’e never, ’e wouldn’t…

“It was ’aving a baby what killed my mum,” said Janice. “I was eight. She ’ad it at ’ome. Placenta previa, it was. Blood everywhere, me trying to ’elp, no doctor, my father drunk, screaming at everyone…

“I took this,” said Janice quietly, showing Strike the wedding ring on her finger, “off Mum’s dead ’and. I knew my father would sell it for drink. I took it and ’id it so ’e couldn’t get it. It’s all I got of ’er. I loved my mum,” said Janice Beattie, stroking the wedding ring, and Strike wondered whether it was true, whether head trauma and early abuse had made Janice what she was, and whether Janice had the capacity to love at all.

“Is that really your little sister, Clare?” Strike asked, pointing at the double frame beside Janice, where the sleepy-eyed, overweight man with smoker’s teeth faced the heavy but pretty blonde.

“No,” said Janice, looking at the picture. After a short pause, she said, “She was Larry’s mistress. I killed both of ’em. I’m not sorry. They deserved it. ’E was wiv me, ’e wasn’t much of a catch, but ’e was wiv me, the pair of ’em carryin’ on be’ind my back. Bitch,” said Janice quietly, looking at the picture of the plump blonde.

“I assume you kept the obituaries?”

She got slowly up from the sofa, and Strike heard her knees click as she walked toward the china cabinet in the corner which housed most of her cheap spun-glass ornaments, and knelt down, again steadying herself with one hand on the mantelpiece. But now, instead of one folder, she tugged two out of the drawer in the base of the cabinet, and Strike remembered how she’d shifted things around in the drawer last time, doubtless removing those things she didn’t want him to see.

“That one,” she said, showing him the fatter of the two folders, “is all the stuff about Margot. I cut out everyfing I could find. Needed a second folder for all ’er clippings…”

She opened the thinner folder, which was the one Strike had seen before, and extracted an old work newsletter headed Hickson & Co. The blonde’s color photograph featured prominently at the top.

“Clare Martin,” said Janice. “’Eavy drinker, she was. ‘Accidental overdose’… liver failure. I knew she was taking too many paracetamol for ’er endometriosis, I watched ’er doing it. Me and Larry ’ad a bunch of people over to the ’ouse. They fort I was stupid. Eye contact between ’em all night long. Thick as mince, the pair of ’em. I was mixing drinks. Every cocktail I gave ’er was ’alf liquid paracetamol. She died eight days later…

“And there’s Larry’s,” she said indifferently, holding up a second newsletter from Hickson & Co.

“I waited six, seven monfs. That was easy. ’E was a walkin’ timebomb, Larry, the doctors ’ad warned ’im, ’is ’eart was wrecked. Pseudoephedrine, that was. They never even checked ’im for drugs in ’is system. They knew what it was: smoking and eating like a pig. Nobody looked further than ’is dodgy ticker…”

Strike detected not the slightest sign of remorse as she shuffled the obituaries of her victims as though they were so many knitting patterns. Her fingers trembled, but Strike thought that was down to shock, not shame. Mere minutes ago she’d thought of suicide. Perhaps that cool and clever brain was working very hard beneath the apparently frank surface, and Strike suddenly reached out and removed the drugged chocolates from the table beside Janice, and put them down on the floor beside his chair. Her eyes followed them, and he was sure he’d been right to suspect she was thinking of eating them. Now he leaned forwards again and picked up the old yellow clipping he’d examined last time, showing little Johnny Marks from Bethnal Green.

“He was your first, was he?”

Janice took a deep breath and exhaled. A couple of the cuttings fluttered.

“Yeah,” she said heavily. “Pesticide. You could get all sorts in them days, buy it over the counter. Organophosphates. I fancied ’im something rotten, Johnny Marks, but ’e made fun of me. Yeah, so they fort it was peritonitis and ’e died. It’s true the doctor didn’t turn up, mind. People didn’t care, when it was kids from a slum… That was a bad death, ’e ’ad. I was allowed to go in and look at ’im, after ’e died. I give ’im a little kiss on the cheek,” said Janice. “’E couldn’t stop me then, could ’e? Shouldn’t of made fun of me.”

“Marks,” said Strike, examining the clipping, “gave you the idea for Spencer, right? It was the name that first connected her with you, but I should’ve twigged when Clare phoned me back so promptly. Social workers never do that. Too overworked.”

“Huh,” said Janice, and she almost smiled. “Yeah. That’s where I got the name: Clare Martin and Johnny Marks.”

“You didn’t keep Brenner’s obituary, did you?”

“No,” said Janice.

“Because you didn’t kill him?”

“No. ’E died of old age somewhere in Devon. I never even read ’is obituary, but I ’ad to come up wiv somefing, didn’t I, when you asked for it? So I said Oakden took it.”

She was probably the most accomplished liar Strike had ever met. Her ability to come up with falsehoods at a moment’s notice, and the way she interwove her plausible lies with truth, never attempting too much, and delivering everything with such an air of authenticity and honesty, placed her in a class apart.

“Was Brenner really addicted to barbiturates?”

“No,” said Janice.

She was shuffling the obituaries back into their folder now, and Strike spotted the clipping about holy basil, on the reverse of which was Joanna Hammond’s death notice.