Page 99 of Troubled Blood

Robin hid a smile behind her mug of tea. Strike’s expression, as he outlined these astrological phenomena, would have been appropriate to a man asked to eat weeks’-old seafood.

“—was in Cancer on the day of Margot’s disappearance. From this, Talbot deduced that Janice knew or had had contact with Baphomet. Hence the request for a list of her sexual partners.”

“Wow,” said Robin quietly.

“I’m just giving you a hint of the nuttery, but there’s plenty more. I’ll email you the important points when I’ve finished deciphering it. But what’s interesting is that there are hints of an actual detective trying to fight through his illness.

“He had the same idea that occurred to me: that Margot might’ve been lured somewhere on the pretext of someone needing medical assistance, although he dresses it all up in mumbo-jumbo—there was a stellium in the sixth house, the House of Health, which he decided meant danger associated with illness.”

“What’s a stellium?”

“Group of more than three planets. The police did check out patients she’d seen a lot of in the run-up to the disappearance. There was Douthwaite, obviously, and a demented old woman on Gopsall Street, who kept ringing the surgery for something to do, and a family who lived on Herbal Hill, whose kid had had a reaction to his polio vaccination.”

“Doctors,” said Robin, “have contact with so many people.”

“Yeah,” said Strike, “and I think that’s part of what went wrong in this case. Talbot took in a huge amount of information and couldn’t see what to discard. On the other hand, the possibility of her being lured into a house on a medical pretext, or attacked by an angry patient isn’t crazy. Medics walk unaccompanied into all kinds of people’s houses… and look at Douthwaite. Lawson really fancied him as Margot’s abductor or killer, and Talbot was very interested in him, too. Even though Douthwaite was a Pisces, Talbot tries to make him a Capricorn. He says ‘Schmidt’ thinks Douthwaite’s really a Capricorn—”

“Who’s Schmidt?”

“No idea,” said Strike, “but he or she is all over the notes, correct­ing signs.”

“All the chances to get actual evidence lost,” said Robin quietly, “while Talbot was checking everyone’s horoscope.”

“Exactly. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so serious. But his interest in Douthwaite still smacks of sound copper instinct. Douthwaite seems pretty bloody fishy to me, as well.”

“Ha ha,” said Robin.

Strike looked blank.

“Pisces,” she reminded him.

“Oh. Yeah,” said Strike, unsmiling. The throbbing behind his eyes was worse than ever, his throat complaining every time he swallowed, but he couldn’t have flu. It was impossible. “I read that bit you marked in Oakden’s book,” he continued. “The stuff about Douthwaite changing his name when he went to Clacton to sing at a holiday camp, but I can’t find any trace of a Steve, Steven or Stevie Jacks after 1976, either. One name change might be understandable after a lot of police attention. Two starts to look suspicious.”

“You think?” said Robin. “We know he was the nervous type, judging from his medical records. Maybe he was spooked by Oakden turning up at Butlin’s?”

“But Oakden’s book was pulped. Nobody beyond a couple of Butlin’s Redcoats ever knew Stevie Jacks had been questioned about Margot Bamborough.”

“Maybe he went abroad,” said Robin. “Died abroad. I’m starting to think that’s what happened to Paul Satchwell, as well. Did you see, Satchwell’s ex-neighbor said he went off traveling?”

“Yeah,” said Strike. “Any luck on Gloria Conti yet?”

“Nothing,” sighed Robin. “But I have got a couple of things,” she went on, opening her notebook. “They don’t advance us much, but for what they’re worth…

“I’ve now spoken to Charlie Ramage’s widow in Spain. The hot-tub millionaire who thought he saw Margot in the Leamington Spa graveyard?”

Strike nodded, glad of a chance to rest his throat.

“I think Mrs. Ramage has either had a stroke or likes a lunchtime drink. She sounded slurred, but she confirmed that Charlie thought he’d seen Margot in a graveyard, and that he discussed it afterward with a policeman friend, whose name she couldn’t remember. Then suddenly she said, ‘No, wait—Mary Flanagan. It was Mary Flanagan he thought he saw.’ I took her back over the story and she said, yes, that was all correct, except that it was Mary Flanagan, not Margot Bamborough, he thought he’d seen. I’ve looked up Mary Flanagan,” said Robin, “and she’s been missing since 1959. It’s Britain’s longest ever missing person case.”

“Which of them would you say seemed more confused?” asked Strike. “Mrs. Ramage, or Janice?”

“Mrs. Ramage, definitely,” said Robin. “Janice definitely wouldn’t have confused the two women, would she? Whereas Mrs. Ramage might have done. She had no personal interest: to her, they were just two missing people whose names began with ‘M.’”

Strike sat frowning, thinking it over. Finally he said, his tonsils burning,

“If Ramage was a teller of tall tales generally, his policeman mate can’t be blamed for not taking him seriously. This is at least confir­mation that Ramage believed he’d once met a missing woman.”

He frowned so intensely that Robin said,