“Go on about Irene,” said Robin, conscious of Strike’s pen hovering over his notebook.
“Well, she got drunk, if she’s the blonde one. She’d brought some man with her to the party. Anyway, toward the end of the night, Irene accused Margot of flirting with the man. Did you ever in your loife hear anything more ridiculous? There’s Margot standing there with her new baby in her arms, and the girl having a proper go at her. Was she not the nurse? It’s so long ago…”
“No, Irene was the receptionist,” said Robin.
“I t’ought that was the little Italian girl?”
“Gloria was the other one.”
“Oh, Margot loved her,” said Oonagh. “She said the girl was very clever but in a bad situation. She never gave me details. I t’ink the girl had seen her for medical advice and o’ course, Margot wouldn’t have shared anything about her health. She took all of dat very seriously. No priest in his confessional treated other people’s secrets with more respect.”
“I want to ask you about something sensitive,” said Robin tentatively. “There was a book about Margot, written in 1985, and you—”
“Joined with Roy to stop it,” said Oonagh at once. “I did. It was a pack o’ lies from start to finish. You know what he wrote, obviously. About—”
Oonagh might have left the Catholic Church, but she balked at the word.
“—the termination. It was a filthy lie. I never had an abortion and nor did Margot. She’d have told me, if she was thinking about it. We were best friends. Somebody used her name to make dat appointment. I don’t know who. The clinic didn’t recognize her picture. She’d never been there. The very best t’ing in her life was Anna and she’d never have got rid of another baby. Never. She wasn’t religious, but she’d have t’ought that was a sin, all right.”
“She wasn’t a churchgoer?” Robin asked.
“At’eist t’rough and t’rough,” said Oonagh. “She t’ought it was all superstition. Her mammy was chapel, and Margot reacted against it. The church kept women down, was the way Margot looked at it, and she said to me, ‘If there’s a God, why’d my daddy, who’s a good man, have to fall off that step-ladder? Why’s my family have to live the life we’ve had?’ Well, Margot couldn’t tell me anything about hypocrisy and religion I didn’t already know. I’d left the Catholics by then. Doctrine of papal infallibility. No contraception, no matter if women died having their eleventh.
“My own mammy t’ought she was God’s deputy on this earth, so she did, and some of the nuns at my school were pure bitches. Sister Mary Theresa—see there?” said Oonagh, pushing her fringe out of her eyes to reveal a scar the size of a five-pence piece. “She hit me round the head wit’ a metal set square. Blood everywhere. ‘I expect you deserved it,’ Mammy said.
“Now, I’ll tell you who reminded me of Sister Mary Theresa,” said Oonagh. “Would she have been the nurse, now? The older one at Margot’s practice?”
“D’you mean Dorothy?”
“She was a widow, the one I’m t’inking of.”
“Yes, that was Dorothy, the secretary.”
“Spit image of Sister Mary Theresa, the eyes on her,” said Oonagh. “I got cornered by her at the party. They’re drawn to the church, women like dat. Nearly every congregation’s got a couple. Outward observance, inward poison. They say the words, you know ‘Father forgive me, for I have sinned,’ but the Dorothys of this world, they don’t believe they can sin, not really.
“One t’ing life’s taught me: where there’s no capacity for joy, there’s no capacity for goodness,” said Oonagh Kennedy. “She had it in for Margot, that Dorothy. I told her I was Margot’s best friend and she started asking nosy questions. How we’d met. Boyfriends. How Margot met Roy. None of her bloody business.
“Then she started talking about the old doctor, whatever his name was. There was a bit of Sister Mary Theresa in her, all right, but dat woman’s god was sitting a desk away. I told Margot about the talk I’d had with her afterward, and Margot said I was right. Dorothy was a mean one.”
“It was Dorothy’s son who wrote the book about Margot,” said Robin.
“Was it her son?” gasped Oonagh. “Was it? Well, there you are. Nasty pieces of work, the pair of them.”
“When was the last time you saw Margot?” Robin asked.
“Exactly two weeks before the night she disappeared. We met at The T’ree Kings then, too. Six o’clock, I had a night off from the club. There were a couple of bars nearer the practice, but she didn’t want to run into anyone she worked with after hours.”
“Can you remember what you talked about that night?”
“I remember everyt’ing,” said Oonagh. “You’ll think that’s an exaggeration, but it isn’t. I started by giving her a row about going for a drink with Satchwell, which she’d told me about on the phone. They’d bumped into each other in the street.
“She said he seemed different to how he used to be and that worried me, I’m not going to lie. She wasn’t built for an affair, but she was unhappy. Once we got to the pub, she told me the whole story. He’d asked to see her again and she’d said no. I believed her, and I’ll tell you why:
