The Running Grave

Kuai/Break-through

One must resolutely make the matter known

At the court of the king.

It must be announced truthfully.

Danger.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

101

Nine in the third place means…

Awareness of danger,

With perseverance, furthers.

Practice chariot driving and armed defence daily.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Robin took the news of Carrie’s death, which Strike relayed by phone, very hard. The two detectives were questioned separately by the police the following day. Strike, who’d also shown the footage of the balaclavaed man to the police, had his own police interview later that afternoon.

Over the ensuing twenty-four hours, Strike and Robin saw very little of each other. Strike had given his partner the task of contacting Walter Fernsby’s and Marion Huxley’s children to see whether they’d be happy to talk about their respective parents’ involvement with the UHC, and to interview any who agreed. He’d done this because he knew Robin needed to keep busy, but had insisted she did it from home, because he didn’t want her running into any church members in the vicinity of the office. He, meanwhile, was taking care of their new client, who’d replaced the Franks: yet another wife who suspected her wealthy husband of infidelity.

Strike held a full team meeting, minus Shah, who was in Norwich keeping an eye out for Emily Pirbright, on Thursday. They met, not in the office, but in the red-carpeted basement room of the Flying Horse where they’d previously retired to evade Littlejohn, and which Strike had hired for a couple of hours. While careful observation of Denmark Street hadn’t revealed anyone who seemed to be keeping the office under surveillance, a locksmith who Strike wanted to disturb as little as possible was fitting a skeleton-key-proof lock on the street door, with the agreement of the landlord and second floor tenant. Neither knew what had occasioned Strike’s desire for more security, but as Strike was offering to pay for it, both were amenable.

The first part of the meeting was taken up by the subcontractors interrogating Robin, who they hadn’t seen since her return. They were mainly interested in the supposedly supernatural aspects of what she’d witnessed at Chapman Farm, and discussion ensued of how each illusion had been achieved, with only Pat remaining silent. Shortly after Barclay had suggested that Wace’s conjuring of Daiyu in the basement must have been a variation on the Victorian illusion called Pepper’s ghost, Strike said,

‘All right, enough, we’ve got work to do.’

He was afraid that Robin’s surface good humour might soon crack. She had purplish shadows under her eyes, and her smile was becoming increasingly strained.

‘I know we’ve seen no evidence of it yet,’ said Strike, ‘but I want eyes peeled at all times for anyone who seems to be watching the office, and get pictures if you can. I’ve got a feeling the UHC will be on the prowl.’

‘Any word on our gun-toting visitor?’ asked Barclay.

‘No,’ said Strike, ‘but the police have got the footage. With the street door secured, they’ll have a job getting back inside, whoever they were.’

‘What were they after?’ asked Midge.

‘UHC case file,’ suggested Barclay.

‘Probably,’ said Strike. ‘Anyway: I’ve got good news. Heard from the police this morning: both Franks are going to be charged with stalking and attempted kidnap.’

The others applauded, Robin joining in a little late, trying to appear as cheerful as the rest.

‘Excellent,’ said Barclay.

‘They’d better get bloody jail time this time,’ said Midge fiercely. ‘And not wriggle out of it again because,’ she affected a high-pitched squeak, ‘“I won’t be able to see my social worker!”’

Barclay and Strike laughed. Robin forced a smile.

‘I think they’re definitely going down this time,’ said Strike. ‘They had some nasty stuff in that lock-up where they were planning to keep her.’

‘Like wh—?’ began Barclay, but Strike, concerned about what his partner’s feelings might be on hearing about sex toys and ball-gags, said,

‘Moving on: Toy Boy update. Client told me yesterday he wants us to concentrate on the bloke’s background.’

‘We’ve looked,’ said Midge in frustration. ‘He’s clean!’

‘Well, we’re being paid to look again and find dirt,’ said Strike, ‘so it’s time to start milking family, friends and neighbours. You two,’ he said to Barclay and Midge, ‘put your heads together and come up with some workable covers, run them past me or Robin, and we’ll work out the rota accordingly.’

Strike ticked Toy Boy off the list in front of him and moved to the next item.

‘New client: her husband took a detour to Hampstead Heath last night, after dark.’

‘I’m guessing he wasn’t there for the views,’ said Midge.

As Hampstead Heath was a well-known gay cruising area, Strike tended to agree.

‘He didn’t meet anyone. Probably got the wind up: there was a gang of kids wandering around near where he got out of the car. Only stayed ten minutes – but if that’s his game, I doubt it’ll be long before we get the wife what she wants.’

‘Good,’ piped up Pat, ‘because I had that cricketer on the phone this morning, asking when we’re going to get to him.’

‘Let him go to McCabes,’ said Strike indifferently. ‘He’s an arsehole. Anyway, until we’ve got a replacement for Littlejohn, we haven’t got the manpower.’

He ticked ‘Hampstead’ off the list.

‘Which brings us to Patterson Inc.’

‘Or, as they’re now known, Royally Fucked Inc,’ said Barclay. ‘Patterson’s been charged, did ye see that?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘Turns out, if you’re going to illegally bug an office, best not to do it to a leading barrister. Hope Patterson enjoys prison food. Anyway, I’ve now had three job applications from people struggling to get off the sinking Patterson ship. I’ll check with Shah and see if any of them are worth an interview. I’m happy to forgo the pleasure of working with Navabi, given how shit she is at surveillance. However, her pitch for the job was that she’d be the ideal person to get into Zhou’s clinic.’

‘The fuck does she know we’re trying to get in there?’ asked Barclay.

‘Because she was in there herself, while Patterson Inc were still doing the UHC case, and that explains Littlejohn’s insistence he had something else for me – presumably she told him what she saw in there.’

‘You’re not going to get anything out of Littlejohn now,’ said Midge.

‘I know,’ said Strike, crossing ‘Patterson’ off the list, ‘but this makes me even keener than I was to get a woman into that bloody clinic – it’s got to be a woman, Navabi said it was ninety per cent women there. I just don’t think you fit the profile, Midge,’ Strike added, as the subcontractor opened her mouth, ‘we need someone—’

‘I wasn’t gonna suggest me,’ said Midge, ‘I was gonna say, we’ve got the ideal person.’

‘Robin can’t do it, she—’

‘I know that, Strike, I’m not fookin’ stupid. Tasha.’

‘Tasha,’ repeated Strike.

‘Tasha. She’s the type, isn’t she? Actress, got a bit of money. Her play’s finished as well. She’d do it for us, no problem. She’s dead grateful for—’

‘Still in touch with her, are you?’ said Strike.

Barclay and Robin both reached for their coffees and drank in perfect synchronicity.

‘Yeah,’ said Midge. ‘She’s not a client any more. Not a problem, is it?’

Strike caught Pat’s eye.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not a problem.’

102

Inquire of the oracle once again

Whether you possess sublimity, constancy, and perseverance;

Then there is no blame.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

The meeting had concluded. Pat returned to the office with Barclay, who had receipts to file, and Midge left to ask Tasha Mayo whether she’d be prepared to enjoy a week at the exclusive clinic of Dr Andy Zhou, expenses paid by the agency.

‘Want a coffee?’ Strike asked Robin.

‘OK,’ said Robin, even though she’d just had two.

They walked together to Frith Street and Bar Italia, which lay across the road from Ronnie Scott’s jazz club, and which Strike preferred to Starbucks. While he was buying their drinks, Robin sat at one of the round metal tables, watching the passers-by and wishing she was any one of them.

‘You all right?’ Strike said, once he’d set the drinks on the table and sat down. He knew perfectly well what the answer was, but was unable to think of any other opening. Robin took a sip of her cappuccino before saying,

‘I just keep thinking about her daughters.’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘I know.’

Both watched the cars pass for a moment or two, before Strike said,

‘Look—’

‘Don’t tell me we didn’t make it happen.’

‘Well, I am going to tell you that, because we didn’t.’

‘Strike—’

‘She did it. She chose to do it.’

‘Yes – because of us.’

‘We asked questions. That’s the job.’

‘That’s exactly what Ryan said. “That’s the job.”’

‘Well, he’s not wrong,’ said Strike. ‘Do I feel good about what happened? No. But we didn’t put the rope round her neck. She did that herself.’

Robin, who’d done a lot of crying when not at work in the last two days, had no tears left to shed. The terrible burden of guilt she’d carried with her ever since Strike had told her that the mother of two had been found hanged in the family’s garage wasn’t eased by his words. She kept visualising the picture stuck to Carrie Curtis Woods’ fridge door, of two figures hand in hand in princess dresses: Me and Mummy.

‘We went to interview her,’ said Strike, ‘because a seven-year-old child who was in her care vanished off the face of the earth. D’you think Carrie should’ve been able to walk away from that and never answer any questions, ever again?’

‘She’d already answered questions from the police and at the inquest. It was over, it was behind her, she had a happy life and a family, and we went raking it all up again… I feel as though they’ve made me one of them,’ Robin added quietly.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’ve become an agent of infection for the church. I carried the virus back to Carrie and this time she didn’t survive it.’

‘With respect,’ said Strike, ‘that’s complete bollocks. We’re just going to ignore the neon elephant in the room, are we? If Carrie was going to kill herself because of what the church did to her, it’d have happened in the last two decades. This wasn’t about the church. There was something she didn’t want to face, something she couldn’t stand people knowing, and that’s not our fault.’

‘But—’

‘What I want to know,’ said Strike, ‘is who called her that morning, before we arrived. Did the police ask you about that mobile number her husband didn’t recognise?’

‘Yes,’ said Robin dully. ‘It could have been anyone. Wrong number.’

‘Except that she called it back, after we left.’

‘Oh,’ said Robin. ‘They didn’t tell me that.’

‘They didn’t tell me, either. I read it upside down on the notes of the guy who was interviewing me. Reaney got a call shortly after I interviewed him, and he then started amassing sleeping pills. I never checked whether he’d had one before I met him, but it looks like the church is warning people we’re on the prowl, and demanding to be told what was said, afterwards.’

‘That implies the church knew we were going to Cherie’s that day.’

‘They could’ve seen she was back from holiday, from Facebook, and wanted to tell her to take the meeting when we turned up. I had the feeling when we introduced ourselves she wasn’t completely surprised to see us. Panicked, yeah. Not entirely surprised.’

Robin made no answer. Strike watched her take another sip of coffee. She’d tied back her hair; the expensive haircut she’d had before going to the Rupert Court Temple had long since grown out, and it hadn’t yet occurred to Robin to visit a hairdresser.

‘What d’you want to do?’ said Strike, watching her.

‘What d’you mean?’ she said.

‘D’you want to take another few days off?’

‘No,’ said Robin. More time to spend dwelling on her guilt about Carrie and her anxiety about the child abuse charges was the very last thing she wanted.

‘D’you feel up to talking about the case?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Get anything on Walter Fernsby’s and Marion Huxley’s kids?’

‘Not much,’ said Robin, forcing herself to focus. ‘I spoke to Marion’s elder daughter and, bottom line, it definitely can’t be Marion who’s gone back to the farm after years away. While her husband was alive, she hardly ever left Barnsley. After Marion disappeared, the family checked the PC she used at work, and she’d been watching Wace videos non-stop. They think she must have attended a meeting. Now they’re getting letters from Marion that don’t sound like her, telling them she wants to sell the undertakers and give all the profits to the UHC.’

‘And Walter?’

‘The only child I’ve been able to contact is his son, Rufus. He works for the Institute of Civil Engineers. The moment I mentioned Walter, he hung up.’

‘Maybe he’s been getting the same “sell everything, I want to give it to the church” letters as Marion’s daughter?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Well, I found something last night, too, after Hampstead Heath went home.’

Strike pulled out his phone, typed in a couple of words, then handed it to Robin, who found herself looking at a picture of a tall man with a long jaw and steel-grey hair, who was pictured mid-speech on stage, his arms stretched wide. Robin didn’t immediately understand why she was being shown the picture until she saw the caption: Joe Jackson of the UHC, speaking at the Climate Change Conference, 2015.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Joe, from the Polaroids?’

‘Could well be. He’s based at the San Francisco centre these days. He’s the right kind of age. He might not look much like the type to have a skull tattoo now, but there are plenty of people wandering around with tattoos they wish they hadn’t got when they were younger. Schoolmate of mine in Cornwall got his first girlfriend’s name tattooed on his neck. She dumped him as soon as she saw it.’

Robin didn’t smile. Instead she said quietly, her eyes on Ronnie Scott’s,

‘I feel as though we’re up against something we can’t fight. They’ve got it stitched up, and it’s genius, really. No wonder people either self-destruct or never talk once they get out. They’ve either had sex with underage teens, or participated in abuse, or watched people die in agony. People who stay are either too frightened or ground down to think of escaping, or they’re like Becca and him –’ she gestured towards Strike’s phone, ‘– true believers. They rationalise the abuse, even if they’ve suffered from it. I’ll bet you anything, if we went to Joe Jackson and asked him whether he’d ever been made to put on a pig mask and sodomise a man with a low IQ, he’d deny it, and not even because he’s frightened. He must have got quite high up in the hierarchy, if he’s giving speeches like that. He’ll have shut down part of his brain. Watching Becca on that tape… she knew she was lying and she didn’t flinch. It was all justified, all necessary. In her mind, she’s a heroine, helping the whole world towards the Lotus Way.’

‘So we give up, do we?’ said Strike. ‘We let Will Edensor rot in there?’

‘I’m not saying that, but—’

Strike’s mobile rang.

‘Hi Pat, what’s up?’

Robin could hear Pat’s gravelly voice, though she couldn’t make out the words.

‘Righto, we’re coming straight back. Five minutes.’

Strike hung up with an odd expression on his face.

‘Well, I’m glad you don’t think we should let Will Edensor rot,’ he told Robin.

‘Why?’

‘Because,’ said Strike, ‘he’s just turned up at the office.’

103

In this hexagram we are reminded of youth and folly… When the spring gushes forth, it does not know at first where it will go. But its steady flow fills up the deep place blocking its progress…

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Robin entered the office first, with Strike just behind her. Will Edensor was sitting on the sofa by Pat’s desk, wearing his blue tracksuit, which was not only filthy, but torn at the knees. He looked even thinner than when Robin had last seen him, although perhaps she’d simply become re-habituated to people who looked decently fed. At Will’s feet sat an old plastic bag that appeared to contain some large, solid object, and on his lap sat little Qing, who was also wearing a blue tracksuit, and eating a chocolate biscuit with an expression of ecstasy on her face.

Will turned scarlet when he saw Robin.

‘Hi Will,’ she said.

Will looked down at the floor. Even his ears were red.

‘That child needs some proper food,’ said Pat, sounding as though this was Strike and Robin’s fault. ‘We’ve only got biscuits.’

‘Good thinking,’ said Strike, pulling out his wallet, ‘could you get us all some pizza, Pat?’

Pat took the notes Strike had handed her, pulled on her coat and left the office. Robin wheeled Pat’s computer chair out from behind the desk to sit down at a short distance from Will and Qing. Strike, conscious of looming over everyone, went to the cupboard to take out one of the folding plastic chairs. Will sat hunchbacked, holding his daughter, blushing furiously, staring at the carpet. Qing, who was munching her biscuit, was easily the most at ease person in the room.

‘It’s great to see you, Will,’ said Robin. ‘Hello, Qing,’ she added, smiling.

‘More!’ said the toddler, stretching out her hands towards the biscuit tin on Pat’s desk.

Robin took out two chocolate fingers and gave them to her. Will remained hunched over, as though in pain, holding Qing around her middle. Strike, who had no idea that the last time Will had seen Robin he’d been naked and masturbating – Robin’s account had left her partner assuming both had been fully clothed when Will had thrown his punch – assumed his embarrassment stemmed from having hit her.

‘How did you get out?’ Robin asked Will, while Qing munched joyfully.

She hadn’t forgotten what Will had done to her in the Retreat Room, but at the moment that was of far less importance to her than the extraordinary fact that he’d left Chapman Farm.

‘Climbed over the wall at the blind spot,’ he muttered. ‘Same as you.’

‘By night?’

‘No, because I had to bring Qing.’

He forced himself to look up at Robin, but was unable to hold her gaze long, and instead addressed the leg of Pat’s desk.

‘I’ve got to find out where Lin is,’ he said, a little desperately.

‘We’re looking for her,’ Robin assured him.

‘Why?’

‘Because,’ said Robin, before Strike could say anything tactless about Lin’s potential usefulness in discrediting the church, ‘we care about her. I was there, remember, when she was miscarrying?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ said Will. ‘I forgot… they’ve got centres in Birmingham and Glasgow, you know,’ he added.

‘Yes, we know,’ said Robin. ‘But we think she might be in Dr Zhou’s clinic, just outside London.’

‘Has he got a clinic?’ said Will naively. ‘I thought he was just the church’s doctor?’

‘No, he’s a doctor on the outside, too,’ said Robin.

‘Lin doesn’t like him. She won’t like being in his clinic,’ muttered Will.

He glanced up at Robin and back at his own feet.

‘My father hired you, didn’t he?’

Strike and Robin looked at each other. The former, happy for Robin to take the lead, gave a slight shrug.

‘Yes,’ said Robin.

‘You can’t tell him I’m out,’ said Will, with a mixture of desperation and ferocity, looking up at Robin from beneath his eyebrows. ‘All right? If you’re going to tell my father, I’ll leave now. I only came here because I’ve got to find Lin, before I go to jail.’

‘Why d’you say you’re going to jail?’ asked Robin.

‘Because of all the things I’ve done. I don’t want to talk about it. As long as Lin and Qing are OK, I don’t mind, I deserve it. But you can’t tell my father. He’ll have to know once I’ve been arrested, but I won’t have to talk to him then, because I’ll be in custody. Anyway, once I start talking, the Drowned Prophet will probably come for me, so it won’t matter. But Lin’ll be able to get a council flat or something, won’t she? If she’s got a kid? Because I haven’t got any money,’ he added pathetically.

‘I’m sure something will be worked out,’ said Robin.

The glass door opened and Pat re-entered, carrying four boxes of pizza.

‘That was quick,’ said Strike.

‘It’s only up the road, isn’t it?’ said Pat, setting the pizzas down on the desk, ‘and I’ve just rung my granddaughter. She’s got clothes you can have, for the little one,’ she told Will. ‘Her youngest’s just turned three. She’ll bring them over.’

‘Hang on,’ said Strike, momentarily distracted. ‘You’re a—?’

‘Great-grandmother, yeah,’ said Pat, unemotionally. ‘We have ’em young in my family. Best way, when you’ve still got the energy.’

She hung up her bag and coat and went to fetch plates out of the kitchen area. Little Qing, who appeared to be having a fine time, now looked curiously towards the pizza boxes, from which an appetising smell was emanating, but Will’s lips had begun silently moving in what Robin recognised as the familiar chant, ‘Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu.’

‘I just need to have a quick word with Robin,’ Strike said to Will, disconcerted by his silent chanting. ‘You OK here with Pat for a bit?’

Will nodded, his lips still moving. Strike and Robin got up and, with a jerk of his head, Strike indicated to his partner that the landing would be the safest place to talk.

‘He and the kid should stay here,’ said Strike, having closed the glass door behind him. ‘They can have my place, and I’ll put up a camp bed in the office. I don’t think we can put them in a local hotel, it’s too close to Rupert Court, and I think he needs someone with him, in case he starts hallucinating the Drowned Prophet.’

‘OK,’ said Robin quietly, ‘but don’t tell him we’ve got to let Sir Colin know.’

‘Edensor’s the client. We’ve got to tell him.’

‘I know that,’ said Robin, ‘but Will doesn’t have to.’

‘Don’t you think, if we tell him his dad already knows about the kid—?’

‘I don’t think he’s scared of his father knowing about Qing. I think he’s worried Sir Colin will try and stop him going to prison.’

Strike looked down at her, nonplussed.

‘He’s obviously feeling really guilty about whatever he’s done in there, and prison’s just another Chapman Farm, isn’t it?’ said Robin. ‘Far less scary to him than the outside world.’

‘What are all these things, plural, he’s done, that are criminal?’ said Strike.

‘It might just be sleeping with Lin when she was underage,’ said Robin uncertainly. ‘I’m worried about pressing him for details, though, especially with Qing there. He might get upset, or kick off.’

‘You realise this is all down to you, him leaving?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Robin. ‘It’s Lin disappearing that made him do it. He was already having doubts when I turned up.’

‘You pushed his doubts to breaking point. He’s probably left early enough for his daughter not to be completely screwed up, as well. I think you might’ve saved two lives.’

Robin looked up at him.

‘I know why you’re saying this, Stri—’

‘It’s the truth. This is the job, as well as the other thing.’

But Robin drew little comfort from his words. It would take more than the unexpected escape of Will Edensor to erase her mental image of Carrie’s two little girls crying for their mother.

They returned to the office. Both Will and Qing were devouring slices of pizza, Will ravenously, Qing looking as though she was experiencing nirvana.

‘So how did you do it, Will?’ Robin asked, sitting down again. ‘How did you get out?’

Will swallowed a large mouthful of pizza and said,

‘Stole twenty pounds from Mazu’s office. Went to the classroom when Shawna was in charge. Said Qing had to see Dr Zhou. Shawna believed me. Ran across the field. Climbed out at the blind spot, like you did. Flagged down a car. Woman took us to Norwich.’

Robin, who fully appreciated how difficult every single part of this plan would have been to execute, said,

‘That’s incredible. And then you hitched to London?’

‘Yeah,’ said Will.

‘But how on earth did you find our office?’

Will pushed the plastic bag at his feet towards Robin with his toe, rather than dislodge the child on his lap. Robin bent to pick it up and extracted the plastic rock.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It was you who moved it… but it was empty. There weren’t any letters in it.’

‘I know,’ said Will, his mouth full of pizza, ‘but I worked it out. After what – after the Retreat Room –’ he dropped his gaze to the floor again – ‘I sneaked out at night to see if there was anything on the edge of the woods, because Lin had seen you with the torch, and I thought you must be an investigator. I found the rock and looked inside, and there were imprints on the paper, from what you’d written on the sheets on top, so I could tell I was right, and you’d been writing about what was going on at Chapman Farm. After you left, Vivienne was telling everyone you’d answered to “Robin” in Norwich, and Taio said there was a big guy waiting for you at the blind spot when you escaped. So I looked up “Robin” and “detective” in a library in Norwich – got a lift to London – and—’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Strike, ‘we’ve been told you’re bright, but this is impressive.’

Will neither looked at Strike nor acknowledged his words, except by a slight frown. Robin suspected this was because Will knew it must have been Sir Colin who’d told the two detectives his son was clever.

‘Water,’ said Pat, as Qing began to cough, because she’d stuffed so much pizza into her mouth.

Robin joined Pat at the sink to help her fill glasses.

‘Could you distract Qing,’ Robin whispered to the office manager, the sound of running water drowning her voice, ‘while Strike and I talk to Will in our office? He might not want to talk openly in front of her.’

‘No problem,’ said Pat, in the growl that was her whisper. ‘Say the name again?’

‘Qing.’

‘Kind of name’s that?’

‘Chinese.’

‘Huh… mind you, my great-granddaughter’s called Tanisha. Sanskrit,’ said Pat, with a slight eye roll.

When Pat and Robin had handed out glasses of water, Pat said gruffly,

‘Qing, look at these.’

She’d taken a block of bright orange Post-it notes out of her desk.

‘They come off, look,’ said Pat. ‘And they stick to things.’

Fascinated, the little girl slid off Will’s lap, but still clung to his knee. Having seen the other children at Chapman Farm, Robin was glad of this sign that Qing knew her father was a place of safety.

‘You can play with them, if you want,’ said Pat.

The little girl toddled uncertainly towards Pat, who held out the block to her, and rummaged for some pens. Strike and Robin’s eyes met again, and Strike stood up, holding his pizza.

‘Fancy coming through here a moment, Will?’ he asked.

They left the connecting door between the offices open, so that Qing could see where her father was. Strike brought his plastic chair with him.

Robin had forgotten that all the pictures relating to the UHC case were on the board on the inner office wall. Will stopped dead, staring at them.

‘Why have you got all these?’ he said, in an accusatory voice, and to Robin’s dismay, he backed away. ‘That’s the Drowned Prophet,’ he said, pointing at the Torment Town pictures, sounding panicked now. ‘Why have you drawn her like that?’

‘We didn’t draw her,’ said Strike, moving quickly to close the flaps of the board, but Will said suddenly,

‘That’s Kevin!’

‘Yes,’ said Strike. Changing his mind about closing up the board, he stepped away from it, allowing Will a clear view. ‘Did you know Kevin?’

‘Only for a few… he left, not long after I… why…?’

Will took a few steps closer to the board. Kevin’s picture, which Strike had taken from the newspaper archive, still had the caption attached: ‘Murder of Kevin Pirbright was drug-related, say police.’

‘Kevin killed himself,’ said Will slowly. ‘Why’re they saying…?’

‘He was shot by someone else,’ said Strike.

‘No, he killed himself,’ said Will, with some of the dogmatism he’d displayed the first time Robin had ever heard him talk, on the vegetable patch. ‘He committed suicide, because he was pure spirit, and couldn’t cope with the materialist world.’

‘There was no gun found at the scene,’ said Strike. ‘Somebody else shot him.’

‘No… they can’t have done…’

‘They did,’ said Strike.

Will was frowning. Then –

‘Pig demons!’ he said suddenly, pointing at the Polaroids.

Strike and Robin looked at each other.

‘Kevin told me they appear, if there are too many impure spirits at the farm.’

‘Those aren’t demons,’ said Strike.

‘No,’ said Will, with a trace of impatience. ‘I know that. They’re wearing masks. But that’s how Kevin described them to me. Naked, with pig heads.’

‘Where did he see them, Will, did he say?’ asked Robin.

‘In the barn,’ said Will. ‘He and his sister saw them, through a gap in the wood. I don’t want her looking at me,’ he added in a febrile voice, and Robin, who knew he meant the Drowned Prophet, strode to the board and covered it over.

‘Why don’t you sit down?’ said Strike.

Will did so, but he looked very wary as the other two also sat. They could hear Qing chattering to Pat in the outer office.

‘Will, you said you’ve done things that are criminal,’ said Strike.

‘I’ll tell the police all about that, once we’ve found Lin.’

‘OK,’ said Strike, ‘but as we’re—’

‘I’m not talking about it,’ said Will, turning red again. ‘You’re not the police, you can’t make me.’

‘Nobody’s going to make you do anything,’ said Robin, with a warning look at her partner, whose demeanour, even when trying to be sympathetic, was often more threatening than he realised. ‘We only want what you want, Will: to find Lin and make sure Qing’s OK.’

‘You’re doing more than that,’ said Will, with a nervous jab of the finger towards the covered board. ‘You’re trying to take the UHC on, aren’t you? That won’t work. It won’t, it definitely won’t. You’re messing with stuff you don’t understand. I know, if I tell the police everything, she’ll come for me. That’s a chance I’ll have to take. I don’t care if I die, as long as Lin and Qing are OK.’

‘You’re talking about the Drowned Prophet?’ Robin asked.

‘Yeah,’ said Will. ‘You don’t want her after you, as well. She protects the church.’

‘We won’t need to take on the UHC now,’ lied Robin. ‘All that stuff on the board – we were just trying to find ways to put pressure on the Waces, so your family could see you.’

‘But I don’t want to see them!’

‘No, I know,’ said Robin. ‘I’m just saying, there’s no point us going on with that part of the investigation –’ she pointed at the board ‘– now you’re out.’

‘But you’ll find Lin?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘What if she’s dead?’ Will burst out suddenly. ‘There was all that blood—’

‘I’m sure we’ll find her,’ said Robin.

‘It’ll be punishment on me, if she’s dead,’ said Will, ‘for what I did to my m-mum.’

He burst into tears.

Robin wheeled her chair out from behind the desk and drew nearer to Will, although she didn’t touch him. She guessed he’d seen his mother’s obituary online, in the internet café in Norwich. She said nothing, but waited for Will’s sobs to subside.

‘Will,’ she said, when at last she thought he was in a condition to take in what she was saying, ‘we’re only asking what you’ve done that might be criminal, because we need to know whether the church has got something on you that they could publish, before you’ve got a chance to talk to the police. If they do that, you could be arrested before we can find Lin, d’you see? And that would mean Qing being taken into care.’

Full of admiration for how Robin was handling this interview, Strike had to suppress a wholly inappropriate grin.

‘Oh,’ said Will, raising a grubby, tear-stained face. ‘Right. Well… they can’t publish it, without making themselves look really bad. It was either stuff we all had to do, or that I should’ve gone to the police about. They’re doing something really terrible in there. I didn’t realise how bad it was, ’til I had Qing.’

‘But you haven’t personally hurt anyone, have you?’

‘Yes, I have,’ he said miserably. ‘Lin. And – I’ll tell the police all of it, not you. Once we’ve got Lin, I’ll tell the police.’

Pat’s mobile rang and they heard her say,

‘Stay on the corner, I’ll come and get ’em off you.’ She appeared in the doorway. ‘Someone’ll have to look after Qing. That’s Kayleigh, with the clothes for her.’

‘That was—’ began Strike, but before he could say ‘quick’ for the second time that morning, Pat had disappeared. Qing now tottered into the inner office, in search of her father, demanding to go to the bathroom. By the time Will and Qing had returned from the landing, Pat had reappeared holding two bulging bags of second-hand children’s clothes, looking cross.

‘Bloody nosy, the lot of ’em,’ she complained, setting the bags on her desk.

‘Who?’ asked Robin, as Pat took out a small pair of dungarees, got awkwardly down on her knees and sized them up against a fascinated Qing.

‘My family,’ said Pat. ‘Always trying to find out what sort of office I work in. That was my granddaughter. Met her on the corner. No need for her to know what we do.’

‘You haven’t told any of them you work here?’

‘Signed an NDA, didn’t I?’

‘How did Kayleigh—?’

‘Her boyfriend brought ’em into town. She works up the road in TK Maxx. Told her it was urgent. Right, missus,’ she told Qing, ‘let’s get you into this clean stuff. You wanna do it,’ she asked Will, squinting up at him, ‘or shall I?’

‘I can do it,’ said Will, taking the dungarees, though looking slightly at a loss as to how they worked.

‘Robin can help you,’ said Pat. ‘Can I have a word?’ she added to Strike.

‘Can’t it—?’

‘No,’ she said.

So Strike followed Pat back into the room they’d just left, and Pat closed the door on Will, Qing and Robin.

‘Where’re they gonna stay?’ Pat demanded of Strike.

‘Here,’ said Strike, ‘I’ve just worked that out with Robin. They can go upstairs.’

‘That’s no good. They want looking after. They should come and stay with me.’

‘We can’t impose—’

‘It’s not imposing, I’m offering. We’ve got room, my Dennis won’t mind, and Dennis can be with them, while I’m at work. There’s a garden for the little girl and I can get her some toys off my granddaughters. They want looking after,’ repeated Pat, with a gimlet look that told Strike she didn’t consider him qualified for the job. ‘There’s no harm in that boy,’ said Pat, as though Strike had been arguing the contrary. ‘Just did a bloody silly thing. I’ll take care of them, ’til he’s ready to see his dad.’

104

There are dangers lurking… pay especial attention to small and insignificant things.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

‘It’s really good of Pat,’ said Robin the following afternoon, as she and Strike headed out of London in the latter’s BMW to meet Sir Colin Edensor at his home in Thames Ditton. ‘We should give her that pay rise, you know.’

‘Yeah, fine,’ sighed Strike, winding down the window so he could vape.

‘How did Sir Colin take it, when you told him Will’s out?’

‘Er – “stunned” sums it up, I think,’ said Strike, who’d rung their client the night before with the news, ‘but then I had to tell him Will doesn’t want to see him, so that poured a few gallons of cold water on the celebrations. I didn’t tell him Will’s determined to go to jail, or that he’s convinced the Drowned Prophet’ll come for him, once he’s interviewed by the police. Thought all that might be best discussed in person.’

‘Probably wise,’ said Robin. ‘Listen, while I’m thinking about it, I’ve swapped my evening surveillance on Hampstead Heath with Midge, if that’s OK. I’ve got something I need to do this evening.’

‘No problem,’ said Strike. As Robin didn’t elaborate on the ‘something’ she needed to do, he assumed it had to do with Murphy. Home-cooked dinner, or something even worse, like viewing a house together?

Robin, who was glad not to be questioned about her evening plans, because she doubted Strike would like them, went on,

‘I’ve got some case news, too – although now Will’s out, it might not matter.’

‘Go on.’

‘I ordered copies of Walter Fernsby’s out-of-print books, and one of them arrived yesterday while I was at work.’

‘Any good?’

‘Couldn’t tell you. I didn’t get further than the dedication: To Rosie.’

‘Ah,’ said Strike.

‘I already knew his daughter’s name was Rosalind, but I didn’t twig,’ said Robin. ‘Then I remembered something else. When we were all being told to write and tell our families we were staying at Chapman Farm, we were asked which people would object most. Walter said his son wouldn’t like it, but his daughter would be understanding.’

‘Really?’

‘So I went back online to look for Rosalind Fernsby. She’s listed as living with her father in West Clandon between 2010 and 2013, but I can’t find any trace of her after that – no death certificate,’ she added. ‘I checked.’

‘Where’s West Clandon?’

‘Just outside Guildford,’ said Robin. ‘But the house has been sold now.’

‘You said you contacted her brother and he hung up on you?’

‘Immediately I mentioned his father, yes. I’ve tried the mother’s landline, but she’s not answering. But it doesn’t matter now, does it? Sir Colin probably won’t want to pay for any more of this.’

‘The case isn’t closed yet. He still wants us to find Lin. Speaking of which, did you get the email about Tasha Mayo?’

‘I did, yes,’ said Robin. ‘Fantastic news.’

Tasha Mayo had not only agreed to go undercover at Zhou’s clinic for a week, she’d evinced real gusto for the job and unless something unexpected had happened, might already have arrived in Borehamwood. Her email enquiry had led within half an hour to a call from Dr Zhou in person, who’d taken a long history of her imaginary ailments over the phone, diagnosed her as in need of immediate treatment, and told her she’d need to stay a week and possibly longer.

‘You wouldn’t think she was that gutsy, looking at her,’ said Robin.

‘Appearances are definitely deceptive there,’ said Strike. ‘You should’ve seen her braving the Franks… can’t say I’m over-happy about her and Midge, though.’

‘You think they’re—?’

‘Yeah, I think they’re definitely,’ said Strike, ‘and it’s not a good idea to sleep with clients.’

‘But she’s not a client any more.’

A brief silence fell. As far as Strike was aware, Robin had no idea how seriously his entanglement with Bijou Watkins had threatened to compromise the agency and he hoped to keep it that way. Little did he know that Robin had had the whole story from Ilsa the previous evening, by phone. Their mutual friend, who’d been cross at learning that Robin was out of Chapman Farm and that nobody had told her, had regaled Robin with everything she knew about the saga of Strike and Bijou. Robin therefore had a fairly shrewd idea as to why Strike would currently be sensitive about any subcontractor sleeping with people who might expose them to gossip.

‘Anyway,’ said Strike, keen to usher in a fresh topic of conversation, ‘Edensor’s got a second motive to keep digging for dirt on the church, unless he hasn’t realised yet.’

‘Which is?’

‘His Wikipedia page has undergone a lot of overnight modifications, too.’

‘Shit, really?’

‘Exactly the same m.o. as they used on the Graves family. Brutal abuse towards Will by his father, family dysfunction, etc.’

‘Edensor might think lawyers are a better way of dealing with that, than us trying to take down the church.’

‘He might,’ said Strike, ‘but I’ve got counter-arguments.’

‘Which are?’

‘For one: does he really want Will hallucinating the Drowned Prophet and killing himself?’

‘He might argue psychotherapy would sort that out better than us trying to solve the mystery of Daiyu’s death. I mean, it’s not really even a mystery to anyone except us, is it?’

‘That’s because everyone else is a bloody idiot.’

‘The police, the coastguard, the witnesses and the coroner? They’re all bloody idiots?’ said Robin, amused.

‘You’re the one who said the UHC have got away with it because everyone thought them a “bit weird, but harmless”. Too many people, even intelligent ones – no, especially intelligent ones – presume innocence when they meet weirdness. “Bit odd, but I mustn’t let my prejudices cloud my judgement.” Then they over-correct, and what d’you get? A kid disappears off the face of the earth, and the whole story’s bloody odd, but the robes and the mystic bullshit get in the way, and nobody wants to look like a bigot, so they say, “Strange, going paddling in the North Sea at five in the morning, but I s’pose that’s the kind of thing people like that do. Probably something to do with moon phases.”’

Robin made no response to this speech, partly because she didn’t want to express aloud her real opinion, which was that her partner, too, was prejudiced: prejudiced in the opposite direction to the one he was describing, prejudiced against alternative lifestyles, because large parts of his own difficult and disrupted childhood had been spent in squats and communes. The other reason Robin didn’t respond was because she’d noticed something vaguely disquieting. After a full minute of silence, Strike noticed her regular glances into the mirror.

‘Something up?’

‘I’m… probably being paranoid.’

‘About what?’

‘Don’t look back,’ said Robin, ‘but we might be being followed.’

‘Who?’ said Strike, now watching the wing mirror.

‘The red Vauxhall Corsa behind the Mazda… but it might not be the same one.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘There was a red Corsa right behind us as we drove away from the garage in London. That one,’ said Robin, glancing in the rear-view mirror again, ‘has been keeping a car between us and it for the last few miles. Can you see the number plate?’

‘No,’ said Strike, squinting into the wing mirror. The driver was a fat man in sunglasses.

‘Weird.’

‘What?’

‘There’s another adult in there but they’re in the back seat… try speeding up. Overtake this Polo.’

Robin did so. Strike watched the Corsa in the wing mirror. It pulled out, overtook the Mazda, then settled back in behind the Polo.

‘Coincidence?’ said Robin.

‘Time will tell,’ said Strike, his eyes on the pursuant car.

105

Conflict within weakens the power to conquer danger without.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

‘I was being paranoid,’ said Robin.

She’d just taken the turning onto the A309 leading to Thames Ditton, but the red Vauxhall Corsa had continued along the A307 and vanished.

‘I’m not so sure,’ said Strike, checking the pictures he’d taken covertly of the Corsa in the wing mirror. ‘They might just’ve wanted confirmation we’re visiting the Edensors.’

‘Which we’ve just given them, by turning off,’ said Robin anxiously. ‘Maybe they think Will and Qing are staying with Sir Colin?’

‘They might,’ agreed Strike. ‘We’d better warn him to keep a lookout for that car.’

The house in which Sir Colin and Lady Edensor had raised their three sons lay on the banks of the Thames, on the edge of a suburban village. Though its street face was unpretentious, its considerable size became apparent when Sir Colin led the two detectives through the house to the rear. A succession of airy rooms full of comfortable furniture culminated in a modern kitchen-cum-dining area, with walls composed largely of glass, revealing a long lawn running at a gentle slope down to the river.

Will’s older brothers were waiting silently in the kitchen: James, dark and scowling, was standing beside an expensive-looking coffee machine, while the younger and fairer son, Ed, was sitting at a large dining table, his walking stick propped against the wall behind him. Robin sensed tension in the room. Neither brother looked as though they’d been rejoicing that Will had, at last, left the UHC, nor did they make any noise or sign of welcome. The strained atmosphere suggested that hot words had been exchanged, prior to their arrival. With unconvincing cheeriness, Sir Colin said,

‘James and Ed wanted to be here, for the full update. Please, sit down,’ he said, gesturing towards the table where Ed was already sitting. ‘Coffee?’

‘That’d be great,’ said Strike.

Once five coffees had been made, Sir Colin had joined them at the table, although James remained standing.

‘So, Will’s staying with your office manager,’ said Sir Colin.

‘Pat, yes,’ said Strike. ‘I think it’s a good arrangement. Keeps him out of the vicinity of Rupert Court.’

‘I must give her some money for his food and board, until he… while he’s there.’

‘Very good of you,’ said Strike. ‘I’ll pass that on.’

‘Could I send over some of his clothes?’

‘I’d advise against,’ said Strike. ‘As I said to you on the phone, he’s threatened to take off again, if we tell you he’s out.’

‘Then perhaps, if I give you some extra money, you could pass that on, too, so he can buy some clothing, without saying where the money came from? I hate to think of him wandering around in that UHC tracksuit.’

‘Fine,’ said Strike.

‘You said you had more to tell me, in person.’

‘That’s right,’ said Strike.

He proceeded to give the Edensors full details of their interview the previous day with Will. When Strike had finished, there was a short silence. Then Ed said,

‘So basically, he wants you to find this Lin girl, then turn himself in to the police?’

‘Exactly,’ said Strike.

‘But you don’t know what he’s done, to warrant arrest?’

‘It could just be sleeping with Lin when she was underage,’ said Robin.

‘Well, I’ve spoken to my lawyers,’ said Sir Colin, ‘and their view is that if Will’s worried about the statutory rape charge – and we’ve currently got no reason to suppose he’s done worse than that – immunity from prosecution could be arranged, if he’s prepared to give evidence against the church, and Lin doesn’t want to press charges. Extenuating circumstances, coercion and so on – Rentons think he’d have a good chance of immunity.’

‘It’s not quite as simple as that,’ Robin said. ‘As Cormoran’s said, Will believes the Drowned Prophet will come for him if he—’

‘But he’s prepared to talk, right?’ said Ed, ‘Once this girl Lin’s found?’

‘Yes, but only because—’

‘Then we get him some psychotherapy, explain to him clearly that there’s no need for him to go to jail if immunity’s arranged—’

Robin, who’d liked Ed on their first meeting, found herself frustrated and angered by the slight trace of patronage in his voice. He seemed to think she was making difficulties about matters that, to him, were completely straightforward. While Robin had no intention of pressing charges against Will for assaulting her, the memory of him advancing on her, naked, penis in hand, in the Retreat Room was among the memories of Chapman Farm that would take a long time to fade. The Edensors were not only operating in ignorance of what Will had endured, they were also failing to comprehend the full scope of what he’d done to others; compassionate though Robin felt towards Will, she remained most worried about Lin.

‘The problem is,’ she said, ‘Will wants to go to jail. He’s institutionalised and riddled with guilt. If you offer him psychotherapy, he’ll refuse.’

‘That’s quite a presumption,’ said Ed, raising his eyebrows. ‘It hasn’t been offered yet. And you’re contradicting yourself: you just said he’s scared of the Drowned Prophet coming for him, if he talks. How’s he going to serve a prison term, if he’s – what does the Drowned Prophet do, exactly? Put curses on people? Kill them?’

‘You’re asking Robin to explain the irrational,’ said Strike, who allowed all the impatience into his voice that his partner was carefully repressing. ‘Will’s on a kind of kamikaze mission. Make sure Qing’s safely with her mother, then ’fess up to everything he’s done wrong, and either get sent down, or let the Prophet take him out.’

‘And you’re suggesting we allow him to implement this plan?’

‘Not at all,’ said Robin, before Strike could speak. ‘We’re simply saying Will needs very careful handling right now. He’s got to feel safe, and that he’s in control, and if he knows we’ve told his family he’s out, he might take off again. If we can just find Lin—’

‘What d’you mean, “if”?’ said James, from over beside the coffee machine. ‘Dad told us you know where she is.’

‘We think she’s at Zhou’s Borehamwood clinic,’ said Strike, ‘and we’ve just put someone in there undercover – but we can’t know she’s there until we’re inside.’

‘So we’re going to mollycoddle Will, and let him have it all his own way as usual, are we?’ said James. ‘If I were you,’ he said to the back of his father’s head, ‘I’d go straight over to this Pat woman’s house and tell him he’s caused enough bloody trouble and it’s time he got a grip.’

He now turned the coffee machine back on. Raising his voice over the loud grinding noise, Strike said,

‘If your father did that, the risk to Will might be bigger than you realise, and I’m not just talking about his mental health. On Monday, a masked figure holding a gun tried to break into our office, possibly to get their hands on the UHC case file,’ said Strike. Shock now registered on all three Edensors’ faces. ‘The church now knows they’ve had a private investigator undercover with them for sixteen weeks. Will had direct, one-on-one contact with Robin before he escaped, which means the UHC might assume he’s now told her everything he’s feeling so guilty about.

‘Will’s also taken off with Wace’s granddaughter. Wace doesn’t seem particularly attached to either Lin or Qing, but he values his own bloodline enough to keep all the children related to him at the farm, so I doubt he’s going to be happy Qing’s disappeared. Meanwhile, if we can get word to Lin that Qing’s out, it makes it very likely she’ll want to leave. Lin grew up in the church and is likely to know a damn sight more than Will does about what goes on in there.

‘In short, Will’s got his finger in the ring pull of a large can of worms which, incidentally, also incriminates a well-known novelist, who appears to be going to Chapman Farm to sleep with young girls, and an actress who’s been pouring money into a dangerous and abusive organisation. As far as we know, the church has no idea yet where Will is, but if family members start visiting him, or if he starts visiting family lawyers, that could change. We think we were followed here this morning—’

‘We aren’t sure,’ said Robin, in response to the increasing alarm on Sir Colin’s face.

‘—by a red Vauxhall Corsa,’ said Strike, as though there’d been no interruption. ‘I’d advise you to keep an eye out for it. It’s possible the UHC is keeping tabs on us, and on you.’

There was a brief, appalled silence.

‘You’ve been to the police about this masked intruder?’ said Sir Colin.

‘Naturally,’ said Strike, ‘but they’ve got nothing so far. Whoever it was was well disguised, right down to a balaclava, and dressed all in black – and that description tallies with the only sighting of Kevin Pirbright’s shooter.’

‘Dear God,’ muttered Ed.

James, who’d refilled his own mug without offering coffee to anyone else, now advanced on the table.

‘So, Will’s potentially put all of us in danger? My wife? My kids?’

‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ said Strike.

‘Oh, wouldn’t you?’

‘They’ve never yet gone after the families of ex-members, except—’

‘Online,’ said Sir Colin. ‘Yes, I’ve seen my new Wikipedia page. Not that I care—’

‘You might not,’ said James loudly, ‘but I bloody well do! So what’s your solution to this mess?’ James threw at Strike. ‘Keep Will in hiding for a decade, while my father single-handedly funds an investigation into the whole fucking church?’

Strike deduced from this comment that Sir Colin had confided his doubts about the Daiyu line of enquiry to his elder son.

‘No,’ he began, but before he could elaborate on any course of action, Ed piped up.

‘It seems to me—’

‘Will you piss off with the bloody psychotherapy?’ spat James. ‘If they’re following and shooting people—’

‘I was going to say,’ said Ed, ‘that if this girl Lin’s prepared to give evidence against the church—’

‘She’s Wace’s daughter, she’s not going to—’

‘How the hell do you know?’

‘I know enough to know I don’t want to be beholden to her—’

‘We’ve got a duty of care—’ began Sir Colin.

‘No, we bloody don’t,’ shouted James. ‘Neither she, nor her bloody misbegotten child, are of any interest to me. That stupid little shit’s dragging Jonathan Wace’s people into our lives in place of our mother, who wouldn’t be bloody dead but for the UHC, and as far as I’m concerned, Will, this Lin and their bloody kid can go drown themselves—’

James swung his coffee mug towards the distant river, so that an arc of near-boiling black liquid hit Robin across the chest.

‘—and join his fucking prophet!’

Robin let out a shriek of pain; Strike yelled ‘Oi!’ and stood up; Ed also attempted to stand, but his weak leg gave way; Sir Colin said, ‘James!’ and while Robin was pulling scalding fabric away from her skin and looking frantically around for something to wash herself off with, Ed pushed himself back up on a second attempt and shouted at his elder brother, leaning on the table with both hands:

‘You’ve got this fucking narrative in your head – it was inoperable by the time they found it, it had been there since before Will joined the fucking church! You want to blame someone, blame me – she didn’t get herself checked because she was sitting next to me in hospital for five bloody months!’

With the two brothers yelling at each other so loudly nobody else could hear themselves speak, Robin left the table to grab some kitchen roll, which she ran under the cold tap then pressed beneath her shirt to relieve the burning on her skin.

‘Be quiet – BE QUIET!’ shouted Sir Colin, getting to his feet. ‘Miss Ellacott, I’m so sorry – are you…?’

‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ said Robin, who, preferring not to mop hot coffee off her breasts with four men watching, turned her back on them.

James, who didn’t seem to have realised he was responsible for the large black stain across Robin’s cream shirt, began again.

‘As far as I’m concerned—’

‘Not going to apologise, then?’ snarled Strike.

‘It’s not your bloody place to tell me—’

‘You’ve just thrown boiling coffee all over my partner!’

‘What?’

‘I’m fine,’ lied Robin.

Having bathed the smarting area with cold kitchen roll, she put the wad into the bin and returned to the table, her wet shirt clinging to her. Taking her jacket off the back of her chair, she pulled it back on, silently reflecting that she’d now been injured by two Edensor sons; perhaps Ed would make it a hat trick before she left the house, and smash her round the head with his walking stick.

‘I’m sorry,’ said James, taken aback. ‘I genuinely – I didn’t mean to do that…’

‘Will didn’t mean to do what he’s done, either,’ said Robin, feeling that if she had to get scalded, the least she was owed was to be able to capitalise on it. ‘He did a really stupid, careless thing, and he knows it, but he never meant to hurt anyone.’

‘I want this girl Lin found,’ said Sir Colin in a low voice, before James could respond. ‘I don’t want to hear another word about it, James. I want her found. And after that…’

He looked at Strike.

‘I’m prepared to fund another three months of investigation into Daiyu Wace’s death. If you can prove it was suspicious, that she’s not the deity they’ve turned her into, that might help Will – but if you haven’t found out anything after three months, we’ll drop it. In the meantime, please thank your office manager for looking after Will, and… we’ll keep our eyes open for that Vauxhall Corsa.’

106

It is true that there are still dividing walls on which we stand confronting one another. But the difficulties are too great. We get into straits, and this brings us to our senses. We cannot fight, and therein lies our good fortune.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

‘Well, that’s that,’ said Robin. ‘No Corsa.’

She’d been checking her rear-view mirror far more often than usual all the way back to London, and was certain they hadn’t been followed.

‘Maybe you should ring the Edensors and say it was a false alarm?’ she suggested.

‘Whoever was in that Corsa might’ve realised we’d seen them,’ Strike replied. ‘I still think the Edensors need to keep their eyes peeled… You can charge the dry-cleaning on that shirt to the agency,’ he added. He hadn’t liked to mention it, but the BMW now smelled strongly of coffee.

‘No dry-cleaner on earth’s going to get this out,’ said Robin, ‘and the accountant wouldn’t let me charge it, anyway.’

‘Then charge it to the busi—’

‘It’s old, and it was cheap when it was new. I don’t care.’

‘I do,’ said Strike. ‘Careless arsehole.’

Robin might have reminded Strike he’d once almost broken her nose when she’d tried to stop him punching a suspect, but decided against.

They parted at the garage where Strike kept his BMW. As Robin hadn’t said anything more about what she was up to that evening, Strike was confirmed in his view that it had something to do with Murphy, and set off back to the office in an irritable mood he chose to attribute to James Edensor’s barely veiled accusation that the agency was financially exploiting his father. Robin, meanwhile, headed straight to Oxford Street, where she bought a cheap new shirt, changed in a department store bathroom, then sprayed herself liberally with a perfume tester to get rid of the coffee smell, because she had no time to go home and change before she met Prudence.

She’d called the therapist the previous evening, and Prudence, who had a dental appointment, had suggested they meet in an Italian restaurant close by the surgery. Robin found herself hyper-alert as she travelled to Kensington High Street by Tube. She’d been followed before, doing this job, and Strike’s refusal to be reassured by the Corsa’s non-appearance on their return journey to London had put her slightly on edge. At one point, she thought a large man with heavy eyebrows might be following her, but on moving aside to let him pass, he merely strode past her, muttering under his breath.

On arriving at Il Portico, Robin was pleased to find it smaller and cosier than she’d imagined, given its upmarket location; her workday clothes were entirely appropriate, even if Prudence, who was already seated, looked far more elegant in her dark blue dress.

‘I’m still numb,’ Prudence said, pointing at her left cheek as she stood to kiss Robin on both cheeks. ‘I’m a bit scared of drinking, in case it all dribbles out… you’ve lost a lot of weight, Robin,’ she added, as she sat back down.

‘Yes, well, they don’t feed you a lot in the UHC,’ said Robin, taking the opposite seat. ‘Did you have to have anything awful done at the dentist?’

‘It was supposed to be replacing an old filling, but then he found another one that needed doing,’ said Prudence, fingering the side of her face. ‘Have you ever been here before?’

‘Never.’

‘Best pasta in London,’ said Prudence, passing Robin the menu. ‘What d’you want to drink?’

‘Well, I’m not driving,’ said Robin, ‘so I’ll have a glass of Prosecco.’

Prudence asked for this while Robin perused the menu, well aware that Prudence’s good mood might be about to change. When each had given their order, she said,

‘You were probably surprised to hear from me.’

‘Well,’ said Prudence, smiling, ‘not entirely. I’ve had a sort of impression, from what Corm’s told me, that you’re the emotionally intelligent side of the partnership.’

‘Right,’ said Robin cautiously. ‘So… did you think I wanted to meet to try and make things right between you and Strike?’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘Afraid not,’ said Robin. ‘I’m here to talk about Flora Brewster.’

The smile slid off Prudence’s face. As Robin had anticipated, she looked not only dismayed, but angry.

‘So he’s sent you—?’

‘He hasn’t sent me. I’m here entirely on my own account. He might well be furious, once he finds out what I’ve done.’

‘But he’s clearly worked out who—’

‘Yes,’ said Robin. ‘He knows Torment Town’s Flora. We had an argument about it, actually. He thinks Flora ought to be testifying against the UHC, not drawing pictures of what she witnessed in there, but I told him, maybe the Pinterest stuff was her way of processing it all. I said she probably went through appalling things in there. In the end, Strike agreed not to go after her, not to pursue her, as a lead.’

‘I see,’ said Prudence slowly. ‘Well, thank you for—’

‘But I’ve changed my mind.’

‘What?’

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ repeated Robin. ‘That’s why I asked you to meet me. I want to talk to Flora.’

Prudence, as Robin had expected, now looked openly angry.

‘You can’t do this, Robin. You can’t. Do you realise what kind of position this puts me in? The only way Corm could have worked out who she was—’

‘He already knew Flora had been in the church. He had dates, knew when she left – everything. That’s how, when you rang him and accused him of badgering your client, he was able to work out who Torment Town was.’

‘It’s immaterial what you knew, before. With respect, Robin—’

‘With equal respect, Prudence, you had a choice whether or not to tell us you had a client who’d escaped the UHC, and you told us. You also had a choice as to whether or not to call Strike and accuse him of badgering your client. You were the one who enabled him to work out her identity. You can’t blame him for doing his job.’

The waiter now arrived with Robin’s Prosecco and she took a large swig.

‘I’m here because the person we were hired to extract from the UHC got out yesterday, but they’re very messed up, and probably in danger. Not just of suicide,’ she added, when Prudence made to speak. ‘We think the church might take a more active role in their death, if given the chance.’

‘Which proves,’ said Prudence, in a heated whisper, ‘that you two don’t understand what you’re meddling with. People who get out of the UHC are often delusional. They think the church, or the Drowned Prophet, is stalking them, watching them, maybe going to kill them, but it’s all paran—’

‘A masked gunman tried to break into our office on Monday. They were caught on camera. An ex-member of the church was shot through the head last year. We know for a fact they kept tabs on a mother of two, who hanged herself this week after getting a call from an anonymous number.’

For the second time that day, Robin watched the effect of this kind of information on somebody who’d never had to face the threat of violence in their daily lives.

The waiter now set down antipasti on the table between the two women. Robin, who was extremely hungry, reached for some Parma ham.

‘I’m not going to do anything that will endanger the well-being of my client,’ Prudence told Robin in a low voice. ‘So if you’ve come here wanting – I don’t know – an introduction, or confidential information on her—’

‘Maybe, subconsciously, you want her to testify,’ said Robin, and she watched the colour mount in Prudence’s face. ‘That’s why you said too much.’

‘And maybe, subconsciously, you only talked Corm out of meeting me himself, so you could—’

‘Make myself a heroine in his eyes? If we’re taking cheap shots, I might say your secondary motive for telling us you had a client who was just out of the UHC was because you wanted to increase intimacy with your new brother.’

Before Prudence could articulate the undoubtedly furious speech germinating behind her brown eyes, Robin continued,

‘There’s a child at Chapman Farm. He’s called Jacob. I don’t know his surname – it should be Wace or Pirbright, but they probably never registered his birth…’

Robin told the story of her ten hours looking after Jacob. She described the boy’s convulsions, his laboured breathing, his attenuated limbs, his pitiful fight to remain alive in spite of starvation and neglect.

‘Somebody’s got to hold them accountable,’ Robin said. ‘Credible people – and more than one. I can’t do it alone, I’m too compromised by the job I went in to do. But if two or three intelligent people were to take the stand, and say what goes on in there, what happened to them and what they witnessed happening to others, I’m certain others would come forward. It would snowball.’

‘So you want me to ask Flora to back up your client’s relative?’

‘And he’d back her up,’ said Robin. ‘There’s also a chance of two more witnesses, if we can get them out. They both want to leave.’

Prudence took a large gulp of red wine, but half of it dribbled out of the side of her mouth.

‘Shit.’

She dabbed at the stain with her napkin. Robin watched, unmoved. Prudence could afford the dry-cleaning, and indeed a new dress, if she wanted it.

‘Look,’ said Prudence, chucking down her wine-stained napkin and lowering her voice again, ‘you don’t realise: Flora’s deeply troubled.’

‘Maybe it would help her to testify.’

‘That’s an incredibly glib thing to say.’

‘I’m speaking from personal experience,’ said Robin. ‘I became agoraphobic and clinically depressed after I was raped, strangled and left for dead when I was nineteen. Testifying was important in my recovery. I’m not saying it was easy, and I’m not saying it was the only thing that helped, but it did help.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Prudence, startled, ‘I didn’t know—’

‘Well, I’d rather you still didn’t know,’ said Robin bluntly. ‘I don’t really enjoy talking about it, and people have a tendency to think you’re using it, when you bring it up in discussions like this.’

‘I’m not saying you’re—’

‘I know you’re not, but most people would rather not hear it, because it makes them uncomfortable, and some people think it’s indecent to mention it at all. I’m trying to tell you that I can very much sympathise with Flora not wanting the worst time in her life to define her forever – but the fact is, it’s already defining her.

‘I got back a sense of power and self-worth from getting that rapist sent down. I’m not claiming it was easy, because it was horrible – it was hard, and to be honest, I frequently felt like I didn’t want to live any more, but it still helped, not while I was going through it, but afterwards, because I knew I’d helped stop him doing it to anyone else.’

Prudence now looked deeply conflicted.

‘Look, Robin,’ she said, ‘obviously I sympathise with you wanting to take the church to court, but I can’t say what I’d like to say, because I’ve got a duty of confidentiality – which,’ she added, ‘as you’ve already pointed out, it might be argued I’ve broken merely by telling you and Corm I’ve got a client who’s ex-UHC.’

‘I never said you’d broken—’

‘Fine, maybe that’s my guilty conscience talking!’ said Prudence, with sudden heat. ‘Maybe I felt bad, after you and Corm left, that I’d said that much! Maybe I did wonder whether I hadn’t said it for exactly the reason you’ve just suggested: to bind myself closer to him, to be part of the investigation, somehow.’

‘Wow,’ said Robin. ‘You must be a really good therapist.’

‘What?’ said Prudence, disconcerted.

‘To be that honest,’ said Robin. ‘I’ve had therapy. To be totally honest, I only liked one of them. Sometimes there’s a… a smugness.’

She drank more Prosecco, then said,

‘You’re wrong about me wanting to be a heroine in Corm’s eyes. I’m here because I thought he’d mess it up if he did it, and he might get personal.’

‘What does that mean?’ said Prudence, looking tense.

‘You’ll have noticed he’s got a massive chip on his shoulder about people with unearned wealth. He’s down on Flora for not working, for – as he sees it – sitting at home doing drawings of what she experienced, rather than reporting it. I was worried, if you pushed back at him the way you’re pushing back now, he’d start having a go at you for – oh, you know.’

‘For taking our father’s money?’

‘Whether you do or you don’t is none of my business,’ said Robin. ‘But I didn’t want you two to fall out any worse than you have already, because I meant what I said to you before. I think you might be exactly what he needs.’

The waiter now reappeared to clear away the antipasti, of which only Robin had partaken. Prudence’s expression had softened somewhat, and Robin decided to press her advantage.

‘Let me tell you, from my experience of Chapman Farm, what factors I think might make Flora afraid of testifying. Firstly,’ she said, counting on her fingers, ‘the sex stuff. I empathise. I’ve already told Strike she’ll have been effectively raped for five years.

‘Secondly, all sex is unprotected, so there’s a possibility she had children in there.’

She saw the tiniest flicker of Prudence’s left eye, but pretended she hadn’t noticed.

‘Thirdly, she might have done things in there that are criminal, and be terrified of prosecution. It’s well-nigh impossible not to end up coerced into criminal behaviour at Chapman Farm, as I know.’

This time, Prudence’s hand rose, apparently unconsciously, to obscure her face, as she brushed her hair unnecessarily out of her face.

‘Lastly,’ said Robin, wondering whether she was about to ruin the interview entirely, but certain she ought to say it, ‘you, as her therapist, might have urged caution about testifying or going to the police, because you’re worried she’s not mentally strong enough to cope with the fallout, especially as a lone witness.’

‘Well,’ said Prudence, ‘let me repay the compliment. You’re clearly very good at your job, too.’

The waiter now brought their main courses. Too hungry to resist, Robin took one mouthful of her tagliatelle with ragu and let out a moan of pleasure.

‘Oh my God, you weren’t wrong.’

Prudence still looked tense and anxious. She started on her own spaghetti and ate in silence for a while. Finally, having cleared half her plate, Robin said,

‘Prudence, I swear to you I wouldn’t say this if it weren’t true. We believe Flora witnessed something very serious inside the church. Very serious.’

‘What?’

‘If she hasn’t told you, I don’t think I should.’

Prudence now put down her spoon and fork. Judging it best to let Prudence speak in her own time, Robin continued to eat.

At last, the therapist said quietly,

‘There’s something she won’t tell me. She skirts around it. She comes close, then backs off. It’s to do with the Drowned Prophet.’

‘Yes,’ said Robin, ‘it would be.’

‘Robin…’

Prudence appeared to have reached a decision. In a whisper, she said,

‘Flora’s morbidly obese. She self-harms. She’s got a drink problem. She’s on so many anti-depressants she barely knows what day it is.’

‘She’s trying to block out something terrible,’ said Robin. ‘She witnessed something most of us will never witness. At best, it was gross negligence manslaughter. At worst, it was murder.’

‘What?’

‘All I wanted to say to you tonight,’ said Robin, ‘all I wanted to ask, is that you bear in mind how much good she could do, if she testified. We’re certain immunity from prosecution could be arranged. Flora and our client’s relative were both young and vulnerable, and I can testify as to what the church does to enforce silence and obedience.

‘The thing is,’ said Robin, ‘I was a nice intelligent middle-class girl with a steady boyfriend when I was raped. The only two other girls who survived him – they weren’t like that. It shouldn’t matter, but it did. One of the girls fell apart completely under questioning. They made out the other one was so promiscuous, she’d almost certainly had sex with him consensually – all because she’d once worn a pair of fluffy handcuffs to have sex with a man she met in a club.

‘Flora’s well educated and wealthy. Nobody can paint her as some chancer who’s after a pay-out.’

‘There’d be other ways to discredit her, Robin.’

‘But if our client’s relative testifies, she’d have back-up. The trouble is, our other two potential witnesses have been in the church pretty much all their lives. One of them’s sixteen at most. They’re going to struggle to reorientate themselves, even if we get them out. No clocks, no calendars, no normal frames of reference – I can see the church’s lawyers making mincemeat out of them, unless they’re given cover by people with more credibility.

‘Think about it, Prudence, please,’ Robin said. ‘Flora’s got the power to set thousands of people free. I wouldn’t ask, if I didn’t know lives are depending on it.’

107

Nine at the beginning means:

Waiting in the meadow.

It furthers one to abide in what endures.

No blame.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

While Robin was in Kensington, Strike was back in the Denmark Street office, eating his second Chinese meal in two weeks, this time a takeaway. He was finding the last stone to go before hitting his target weight very hard to shift, and while he supposed a nutritionist might tell him the reappearance of takeaways and pub food in his diet might have something to do with that, the lure of sweet and sour chicken and fried rice had proved too strong for him this evening.

He was eating in the office rather than at his flat, because he wanted to look through the CVs of two detectives he thought might be worth interviewing. He also wanted to review the UHC case file within view of the board now covered in pictures and notes relating to the church. He was staring at the board while eating, willing his subconscious to make one of those unexpected leaps that explained everything, when his mobile rang.

‘Hi,’ said Midge. ‘Tasha’s just called. She’s checked in, and she’s already been given a cold green tea enema.’

Strike hastily swallowed a mouthful of sweet and sour chicken.

‘Jesus, there was no need for her to—’

‘She had to, Dr Zhou ordered it. She says it wasn’t bad. Apparently—’

‘No details. I’m eating. What’s the place like, other than the tube up her arse?’

‘Like the lair of a Bond villain, apparently,’ said Midge. ‘All black and smoked glass – but get this. She thinks she might know where they’re keeping your girl.’

‘Already?’ said Strike, pushing away his plate and reaching for a pen.

‘Yeah. There’s an annexe with a “staff only” notice on it. A woman who’s been there before was surprised, because she told Tasha she had a room in the annexe six months ago, so it used to be for guests. Tasha’s already seen a member of the staff taking a tray of food in. Bit of a weird thing to do, unless a masseuse is ill, I suppose.’

‘This sounds promising,’ said Strike.

‘Tasha says she doesn’t want to nose around too much, seeing as she’s only just arrived. She’s gonna do a full day’s treatments tomorrow and then, in the evening, take a walk round the annexe and see whether she can get a peek through any of the windows.’

‘OK, but remind her to be very discreet. If there’s the slightest chance of discovery, she’s to back right off. We don’t want—’

‘You said all this in that forty-odd page email you sent her,’ said Midge. ‘She knows.’

‘She’d better, because it’s not just her who’ll pay if she slips up.’

When Midge had hung up, Strike returned to his takeaway, his slight irritability increased, because it was highly unsatisfactory to be relying on a non-employee in these circumstances. Having finished his food, he got up and peered down through the Venetian blind at the street below.

A tall, fit-looking black man was standing in a doorway on the opposite side of the road. He had short dreadlocks, wore jeans and a padded jacket, but his most distinctive feature, as Strike had noticed when they’d passed each other in Denmark Street earlier, were his pale green eyes.

Having taken a couple of photographs of the man on his phone, Strike let the blinds fall back into place, cleared away the takeaway things, washed his plate and cutlery, then sat down back down to look at the CVs of the two ex-Patterson potential hires. Across that of Dan Jarvis, Shah had scrawled ‘Worked with him, he’s an arsehole.’ Having faith in Shah’s character judgement, Strike tore the CV in half, put it in the bin, and picked up that of Kim Cochran.

His phone rang for a second time. Seeing it was Robin, he answered immediately.

‘Thought you had evening plans?’

‘I did, that’s what I’m calling about. I’ve just had dinner with Prudence. Your sister, Prudence,’ Robin added, when Strike didn’t say anything.

‘What did she want?’ asked Strike suspiciously. ‘Trying to send messages through you, was she? Warning me not to go near Brewster?’

‘No, the exact opposite. Dinner was my idea – not to try and get you two to make up or anything, I’m not meddling in your private life – I wanted to talk to her about Flora. Prudence says she knows Flora’s hiding something she witnessed at Chapman Farm, something connected to the Drowned Prophet. Apparently she keeps sidling up to it in therapy, then backing off again. So, anyway—’

Robin found it hard to judge whether Strike’s silence was ominous, because she was walking along Kensington High Street with a finger in her free ear, to block out the noise of traffic.

‘—I made a hard pitch for Prudence not standing in the way of Flora going to the police, or agreeing to testify against the church in court. I told her I thought immunity could be arranged. I said it might be good for Flora to let it all out.

‘I also asked whether Prudence would be prepared to help somebody who’s just got out of the church, seeing as she’s got experience of what the UHC does to people. It’s probably safer if Will doesn’t visit her house, in case the church is trying to find him, but they could FaceTime or something. If he knows Prudence is your sister, and completely unconnected to his own family, he might agree to speak to her. And if we managed to get Flora and Will talking to each other, they might, I don’t know, find it therapeutic. It might even make them braver, don’t you think?’

Silence was Strike’s only response.

‘Can you hear me?’ said Robin, raising her voice over the rumble of a passing double-decker.

‘What happened,’ said Strike, ‘to me being a chippy, brutal bastard who needs to back right off Brewster, and let her keep drawing pictures for Pinterest?’

‘What happened,’ said Robin, ‘is that I heard Will saying he’s convinced the Drowned Prophet’s going to come and get him. And I can’t get Jacob out of my head. We’ve got to find witnesses who’ll testify against the church. I suppose I’ve come round to your way of thinking. This is the job.’

She was almost at the station. When Strike didn’t speak, she drew aside and leaned up against the wall, phone still pressed to her ear.

‘You’re pissed off I went to Prudence behind your back, aren’t you? I just thought it was easier if she ended up hating me instead of you. I did tell her I was there on my own account. She knows you didn’t ask me to do it.’

‘I’m not pissed off,’ said Strike. ‘If you get results, bloody hell, that’ll be the first ray of light we’ve had in a long time. With Brewster as a witness to what happened to Deirdre Doherty, we might have enough to get police in there, even if Will’s still determined to let the Drowned Prophet get him. Where are you?’

‘Kensington,’ said Robin, who was immensely relieved Strike wasn’t angry.

‘Any red Corsas about?’

‘None,’ she said. ‘I did think a big guy was following me earl—’

‘What?’

‘Calm down, he wasn’t, it was just my imagination. I moved aside and he walked right past me, muttering.’

Now scowling, Strike got to his feet and peered down into Denmark Street again. The green-eyed man was still there, now talking on his phone.

‘Might’ve realised you were wise to him. There’s been a bloke with dreadlocks hanging around outside for about – oh, hang on, he’s off,’ said Strike, watching as the man ended his call and walked away towards Charing Cross Road.

‘You think he was watching the office?’

‘I did, yeah, but he was doing it bloody badly if the aim was to keep undercover. Mind you,’ said Strike, once again letting the Venetian blinds fall, ‘the aim might be to let us know we’re being watched. Little bit of intimidation. What did this large bloke following you look like?’

‘Balding, fifties – I honestly don’t think he was following me, not really. I’m just jumpy. But listen: something weird happened just now, while I was having coffee with Prudence. I got a call from Rufus Fernsby, Walter’s son. The one who slammed the phone down on me, two days ago.’

‘What did he want?’

‘For me to go and visit him at his office tomorrow.’

‘Why?’

‘No idea. He sounded quite tense, and just said, if I wanted to talk to him about his father, I could meet him at the office at a quarter to one and he’d speak to me… why aren’t you saying anything?’

‘It’s just odd,’ said Strike. ‘What’s happened to make him change his mind?’

‘No idea.’

There was another pause, in which Robin had time to reflect upon how tired she felt, and the fact that she still had an hour-long journey home. Since leaving Chapman Farm, she’d both craved and dreaded sleep, because it came punctuated with nightmares.

‘I thought you’d be angry about Prudence and pleased about Rufus,’ she told Strike.

‘I might yet be pleased about both of them,’ said Strike. ‘I just find the volte face strange. OK, I’ll rejig the rota so you can go and interview him at lunchtime. You heading home now?’

‘Yes,’ said Robin.

‘Well, keep your eyes peeled for muttering men, or for a tall black guy with green eyes.’

Robin promised to do so, and rang off.

Strike pulled out his vape pen, inhaled deeply, then picked up Kim Cochran’s CV again. Like Midge, Cochran was ex-police, and had only worked for Patterson for six months before the bugging scandal had sunk the business. Strike was just thinking that she might be worth an interview, when the landline rang in the outer office.

Charlotte, he thought at once – and then, with a strange chill, he remembered that Charlotte was dead.

Getting to his feet, he walked through to Pat’s desk, and answered.

‘Cormoran Strike.’

‘Oh,’ said a female voice. ‘I was going to leave a message, I didn’t expect anyone to—’

‘Who’s this?’

‘Amelia Crichton,’ said Charlotte’s sister.

‘Ah,’ said Strike, bitterly regretting that he hadn’t let the call go to voicemail. ‘Amelia.’

He was momentarily stymied for appropriate words. They hadn’t seen each other in years, and hadn’t liked each other, then.

‘Very sorry about… I’m sorry,’ said Strike.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I was just calling to say, I’m back in town next week and I’d like to see you, if that’s possible.’

Possible, he thought, just not desirable.

‘To tell you the truth, I’m very busy at the moment. Would it be all right if I call you when I know I’ve got a couple of free hours?’

‘Yes,’ she said coldly, ‘all right.’

She gave him her mobile number and rang off, leaving Strike irked and unsettled. If he knew Charlotte, she’d left some kind of dirty bomb behind her, which her sister felt honour bound to pass on: a message, or a note, or some legacy in her will designed to haunt and oppress him, to be one last, and lasting, ‘fuck you’.

Strike returned to the inner office only to pick up the UHC file and Kim Cochran’s CV, then left through the glass door, which he locked. He felt as though Amelia’s call had temporarily polluted his workspace, leaving a wraith of Charlotte peering at him vengefully from the shadows, defying him to return callously to work when he’d just (as she’d undoubtedly see it) turned his back on her, one more time.

108

… one must move warily, like an old fox walking over ice… deliberation and caution are the prerequisites of success.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

When she arrived at 1 Great George Street the following day at half past twelve, Robin discovered that she’d been quite wrong in vaguely imagining the Institute of Civil Engineers would be based in a brutalist building where function had been prioritised over elegance. Rufus Fernsby’s place of work was a gigantic Edwardian building of considerable grandeur.

When she gave the name of the man she’d come to see, Robin was sent up a crimson-carpeted staircase which, coupled with the white walls, reminded her faintly of the farmhouse at Chapman Farm. She passed oil paintings of eminent engineers, and a stained-glass window with a coat of arms supported by a crane and a beaver bearing the motto Scientia et Ingenio, and finally reached a long open-plan room with rows of desks, where two men stood having what looked like a heated discussion while the other workers kept their heads down.

With one of those strange intuitions that admit of no explanation, Robin guessed immediately that the taller, angrier and odder looking of the two men was Rufus Fernsby. Perhaps he looked like the kind of man who’d slam down a phone on someone who mentioned his unsatisfactory father. His argument with the shorter man seemed to centre on whether somebody called Bannerman should, or shouldn’t, have forwarded an email.

‘Nobody’s claiming Grierson shouldn’t have been copied in,’ he was saying heatedly, ‘that’s not the point. What I’m raising here is a pattern of persistent—’

The shorter man, becoming aware of Robin, and possibly looking for a route of escape, said,

‘Can I help you?’

‘—failure to follow an established procedure, which increases the risk of miscommunications, because I might not have realised—’

‘I’m here to meet Rufus Fernsby.’

As she’d feared, the taller man broke off mid-sentence to say angrily,

‘I’m Fernsby.’

‘I’m Robin Ellacott. We spoke—’

‘What are you doing here? You should have waited in the atrium.’

‘The man on the desk sent me up.’

‘Right, well, that’s unhelpful,’ said Rufus.

Dark, lean and wearing a Lycra T-shirt with his work trousers, he had the weather-beaten, sinewy look common to dedicated runners and cyclists, and was sporting what Robin thought was the oddest of all facial hair variations: a chin curtain beard with no moustache.

‘Good luck,’ murmured the second man to Robin as he walked away.

‘I was going to meet you in the café,’ said Rufus irritably, as though Robin should have known this, and perhaps already ordered his food. He checked his watch. Robin suspected he’d have liked to find she’d arrived too early, but as she was exactly on time he said,

‘Come on then – no, wait!’ he added explosively, and Robin came to a halt, wondering what she’d done wrong now, but Rufus had merely realised he was still clutching papers in his hand. Having stalked off to put them back on his desk, he rejoined her, walking out of the room so fast she had to almost jog to keep up.

‘This is a very beautiful building,’ she said, hoping to ingratiate herself. Rufus appeared to consider the comment beneath his notice.

The café on the ground floor was infinitely more upmarket than any that had graced the offices where Robin had once worked as a temporary secretary; there were booths of black leather banquettes, sleek light fittings and expressionist prints on the walls. As they headed for the queue at the counter, and in what she feared would be another doomed attempt to conciliate herself, Robin said,

‘I’m starting to think I should have done engineering, if these are the perks.’

‘What d’you mean?’ said Rufus suspiciously.

‘It’s a nice café,’ said Robin.

‘Oh.’

Rufus looked around as though he’d never before considered whether it was pleasant or not.

‘Yes. I suppose so,’ he said grudgingly. She had the impression he’d rather have found fault with the place.

From the moment Rufus had agreed to meet her, Robin had known that her main objective, that of finding out whether Rosalind Fernsby was the naked girl in the pig mask, would have to be approached tactfully. She didn’t like to imagine how any of her own brothers would react, if shown such a photograph featuring Robin. Having now met Rufus, she was afraid there might be a truly volcanic explosion when she showed him the pictures on her phone. She therefore decided that her secondary objective – that of finding out whether Walter was the person Jiang had recognised as someone who’d come back after many years – would form her first line of questioning.

Having purchased sandwiches, they sat down at a corner table.

‘Well, thanks very much for meeting me, Rufus,’ Robin began.

‘I only called you back because I want to know what exactly’s going on,’ said Rufus severely. ‘I had a call from a policewoman – well, she said she was a policewoman – a week ago. She was asking for contact details for my sister.’

‘Did you give them to her?’

‘I haven’t got any. We don’t talk, haven’t for years. Nothing in common.’

He said it with a kind of pugnacious pride.

‘Then she told me two individuals called Robin Ellacott and Cormorant Strike might make contact with me, because they were trying to dig up dirt on my family. Naturally, I asked for further details, but she said she couldn’t give them, as it was an open investigation. She gave me a number to call if you contacted me. So, when you called – well, you know what happened,’ said Rufus unapologetically. ‘I phoned the number I’d been given and asked for PC Curtis. The man who answered laughed. He passed me to this woman. I was suspicious. I asked for her badge number and jurisdiction. There was a silence. Then she hung up.’

‘Pretty sharp of you to check,’ commented Robin.

‘Well, of course I checked,’ said Rufus, with a whiff of gratified vanity. ‘There’s more at stake for engineers than getting a bad review in some joke social sciences journal, if we don’t check.’

‘D’you mind if I take notes?’ she asked, reaching into her bag.

‘Why should I mind?’ he said irritably.

Robin, who knew from online records that Fernsby was married, offered up a silent vote of sympathy for his wife as she reached for her pen.

‘Did PC Curtis – so-called – give you a landline number, or mobile?’

‘Mobile.’

‘Have you still got it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Could I have it?’

‘I’ll need to think about that,’ he said, confirming Robin’s impression that this was a man who believed information was very definitely power. ‘I decided to call you back because you, at least, were telling the truth about who you are. I checked you out online,’ he added, ‘though you don’t look much like your pictures.’

His tone left Robin in no doubt that he thought she looked worse in person. Feeling sorrier for his wife by the minute, she said,

‘I’ve lost some weight recently. Well, my partner and I—’

‘This is Cormorant Strike?’

‘Cormoran Strike,’ said Robin, who didn’t see why Fernsby should corner the market in pedantry.

‘Not the bird?’

‘Not the bird,’ said Robin patiently. ‘We’re investigating the Universal Humanitarian Church.’

‘Why?’

‘We’ve been hired to do so.’

‘By a newspaper?’

‘No,’ said Robin.

‘I’m not sure I want to talk to you, unless I know who’s paying you.’

‘Our client has a relative inside the church,’ said Robin, deciding it was simpler, given Rufus’s clearly nit-picking nature, not to say that the relative had in fact left.

‘And how’s my father relevant to the situation?’

‘Are you’re aware he’s currently—?’

‘At Chapman Farm? Yes. He wrote me a stupid letter saying he’d gone back.’

‘What d’you mean by “gone back”?’ asked Robin, her pulse rate accelerating.

‘I mean he’s been there before, obviously.’

‘Really? When?’

‘In 1995, for ten days,’ said Rufus, with pernickety though useful precision, ‘and 2007, for… possibly a week.’

‘Why such short stays? My client’s interested in what makes people join, and what makes them leave, you see,’ she added mendaciously.

‘He left the first time because my mother took legal action against him. Second time, my sister Rosie was ill.’

Disguising her keen interest in these answers, Robin asked,

‘What made him want to join in ’95, do you know?’

‘That man who started it, Wace, gave a talk at the University of Sussex, where my father was working. He went along in a spirit of supposed academic enquiry,’ said Rufus, with a slight sneer, ‘and fell for it. He resigned his post, and decided he was going to devote himself to the spiritual life.’

‘So he just took off?’

‘What d’you mean by “took off”?’

‘I mean, this was unexpected?’

‘Well,’ said Rufus, frowning slightly, ‘that’s hard to answer. My parents were in the middle of their divorce. I suppose you could argue my father was having what’s known as a mid-life crisis. He’d been passed over for promotion at work and was feeling unappreciated. He’s actually a very difficult personality. He’s never got on with colleagues, anywhere he worked. Argumentative. Obsessed with rank and titles. It’s rather pathetic.’

‘Really,’ said Robin. ‘And your mother took legal action against him, to make him leave?’

‘Not to make him leave,’ said Rufus. ‘He’d taken me and Rosie, to the farm.’

‘How old were you?’ asked Robin, her pulse speeding up further.

‘Fifteen. We’re twins. It was the school summer holidays. My father lied to us, said it was going to be a week’s holiday in the country. We didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so we agreed to go.

‘At the end of that week, he sent a letter to my mother full of church jargon saying the three of us had joined the UHC and wouldn’t be coming back. My mother got an emergency court order and threatened him with the police. We ended up sneaking out in the middle of the night, because my father had got himself into some ludicrous agreement with Wace and was scared of telling him it wouldn’t be happening.’

‘What kind of agreement?’

‘He wanted to sell the family home and give all the money to the church.’

‘I see,’ said Robin, who’d barely eaten any of her sandwich, she was making so many notes. ‘I’d imagine you and your sister were happy to leave?’

‘I was, but my sister was furious.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes,’ said Rufus, with another sneer, ‘because she was smitten with Jonathan Wace. He was s’posed to be taking her up to the Birmingham centre the next day.’

‘She was being transferred?’ asked Robin. ‘After a week?’

‘No, no,’ said Rufus impatiently, as though Robin were a particularly slow pupil. ‘It was a pretext. Get her off on her own. She was quite pretty and well developed, for fifteen. Bit chubby, actually,’ he added, straightening up to display his abs. ‘Most of the girls in there were after Wace. One girl clawed Rosie’s face over him – but that got hushed up, because Wace liked to think everyone was living in harmony. Rosie’s still got a scar under her left eye.’

Far from sounding sorry, Rufus seemed rather pleased about this.

‘Would you happen to remember the date you left?’ asked Robin.

‘Twenty-eighth of July.’

‘How can you be so precise?’ asked Robin.

As she’d expected, Rufus didn’t seem offended, but further gratified at a chance to show his deductive powers.

‘Because it was the night before a child at the farm drowned. We read about it, in the papers.’

‘How exactly did you leave?’ asked Robin.

‘In my father’s car. He’d managed to get the keys back, pretending he wanted to check the battery hadn’t gone flat.’

‘Did you see anything unusual as you were leaving the farm?’

‘Like what?’

‘People awake when they shouldn’t have been? Or,’ said Robin, thinking of Jordan Reaney, ‘someone sleeping more deeply than perhaps they should have been?’

‘I can’t see how I’d have known that,’ said Rufus. ‘No, we saw nothing unusual.’

‘And did either you or your sister ever return to Chapman Farm?’

‘I certainly didn’t. As far as I’m aware, Rosie didn’t, either.’

‘You said your father returned to Chapman Farm in 2007?’

‘Correct,’ said Rufus, now speaking as though Robin was at last showing some intellectual promise in remembering this fact from a couple of minutes previously. ‘He’d moved university, but he was bickering with his colleagues again and feeling hard done by, so he resigned again and went back into the UHC.’

Robin, who was doing some rapid mental calculation, deduced that Jiang would have been in his mid-teens on Walter’s second appearance at Chapman Farm and therefore, surely, old enough to remember him.

‘Why did he leave so quickly that time?’

‘Rosie got meningitis.’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ said Robin.

‘She survived,’ said Rufus, ‘but my mother had to track him down all over again, to let him know.’

‘This is all very helpful,’ said Robin.

‘I don’t see why,’ said Rufus. ‘Surely plenty of people have joined and left that place by now? I dare say our story’s quite common.’

Deciding not to argue the point, Robin said,

‘Would you have any idea where Rosie is now? Even a town? Is she going under a married name?’

‘She’s never married,’ said Rufus, ‘but she goes by Bhakta Dasa now.’

‘She – what, sorry?’

‘Converted to Hinduism. She’s probably in India,’ said Rufus, sneering again. ‘She’s like my father: silly crazes. Bikram yoga. Incense.’

‘Would your mother know where she is?’ said Robin.

‘Possibly,’ said Rufus, ‘but she’s currently in Canada, visiting her sister.’

‘Ah,’ said Robin. This explained why Mrs Fernsby never picked up her phone.

‘Well,’ said Rufus, looking at his watch, ‘that’s really all I can tell you, and as I’ve got a lot of work on—’

‘Just one last question, if you don’t mind,’ said Robin, her heart beginning to race again as she took her mobile out of her bag. ‘Can you remember anyone at the farm having a Polaroid camera?’

‘No. You weren’t supposed to take anything like that in there. Luckily, I left my Nintendo in my father’s car,’ Rufus said, with a satisfied smirk. ‘Rosie tried to take hers in with her and it was confiscated. Probably still there.’

‘This might seem an odd question,’ said Robin, ‘but was Rosie ever punished at the farm?’

‘Punished? Not that I’m aware of,’ said Rufus.

‘And she definitely seemed distressed at leaving? Not glad to go?’

‘Yes, I’ve told you that.’

‘And – this is an even weirder question, I know – did she ever mention wearing a pig mask?’

‘A pig mask?’ repeated Rufus Fernsby, frowning. ‘No.’

‘I want to show you a picture,’ said Robin, thinking, even as she said it, how untrue the statement was. ‘It’s – distressing, especially for a relative, but I wondered whether you could tell me if the dark girl in this picture is Rosie.’

She brought up one of the pig mask pictures, in which the dark-haired girl sat alone, naked, with her legs wide open, and passed it across the table.

Fernsby’s reaction was instantaneous.

‘How—? You – this is disgusting!’ he said, so loudly heads in the now crowded café turned. ‘That is definitely not my sister!’

‘Mr Fernsby, I—’

‘I’ll be contacting lawyers about you!’ he thundered, scrambling to his feet. ‘Lawyers!’

109

… there are annoying arguments like those of a married couple. Naturally this is not a favourable state of things…

The I Ching or Book of Changes

‘And then he stormed out,’ concluded Robin forty minutes later. She was now sitting beside Strike in his parked BMW, from which he was observing the office of the man they’d nicknamed Hampstead.

‘Hmm,’ said Strike, who was holding one of the takeaway coffees Robin had bought en route. ‘So did he go apeshit because it is his sister, or because he was afraid we’re going to claim it is?’

‘From his reaction, it could have been either, but if it wasn’t Rosie—’

‘Why did somebody posing as a policewoman try and warn him off speaking to us?’

‘Well, exactly,’ said Robin.

She’d called Strike immediately after leaving the Institute of Civil Engineers, and he’d asked her to meet him in Dorset Street, a short Tube journey away. Strike had been sitting in his parked car all morning, watching the entrance of Hampstead’s office: an exercise he’d guessed would be fruitless, as Hampstead’s only suspicious activity had so far been conducted by night.

Strike sipped his coffee, then said,

‘I don’t like this.’

‘Sorry, I got what you—’

‘Not the coffee. I mean these mysterious phone calls to everyone we interview. I don’t like that Corsa following us, or the bloke watching the office last night, or that guy stalking you on the Tube.’

‘I told you, he wasn’t stalking me. I’m just jumpy.’

‘Yeah, well, I wasn’t being jumpy when an armed intruder tried to smash their way through our office door with a gun, although Kevin Pirbright might well have been when he realised he was about to get shot through the head.’

Strike now pulled his mobile out of his pocket and handed it to Robin. Looking down, she saw the same flattering picture of Jonathan Wace that was on the enormous poster on the side of a building near her flat. It was captioned:

Interested in the Universal Humanitarian Church? Join us at

7pm Friday 12th August

SUPERSERVICE 2016

PAPA J AT OLYMPIA

‘Doubt there’ll be anyone at Olympia tonight who’s more interested in the Universal Humanitarian Church than I am,’ said Strike.

‘You can’t go!’

Though instantly ashamed of her own panic, and worried that Strike would think her foolish, the very idea of entering a space where Papa J was in charge brought back memories Robin been trying to suppress every day since she’d left Chapman Farm, but which resurfaced almost nightly in her dreams.

Strike understood Robin’s disproportionate reaction better than she realised. For a long time after half his leg had been ripped off in that exploding car in Afghanistan, certain experiences, certain noises, even certain faces, had evoked a primal response over which it had taken him years to gain mastery. A particular brand of rough humour, shared with those who understood, had got him through some of his bleakest moments, which was why he said,

‘Typical materialist reaction. Personally, I think I’ll go pure spirit very fast.’

‘You can’t,’ said Robin, trying to sound reasonable, and not as though she was trying to dispel a vivid recollection of Jonathan Wace advancing on her in that peacock blue room, calling her Artemis. ‘You’ll be recognised!’

‘Bloody well hope so. That’s the whole point.’

‘What?’

‘They know we’re investigating them, we know they know, they know we know they know. It’s time to stop playing this dumb game and actually look Wace in the eye.’

‘Strike, if you tell him any of the things people told me at Chapman Farm, those people will be in deep, deep trouble!’

‘You mean Emily?’

‘And Lin, who’s still inside, really, and Shawna, and even Jiang, not that I like him much. You’re messing—’

‘With forces I don’t understand?’

‘This isn’t funny!’

‘I don’t think it’s remotely funny,’ said Strike, unsmiling. ‘As I’ve just said, I don’t like the way this is going, nor have I forgotten that at the current tally, we’ve got one definite murder, one suspected murder, two coerced suicides and two missing kids – but whatever else Wace is, he’s not stupid. He can fuck around with Wikipedia pages all he likes, but it’d be a massive strategic error to shoot me through the head at Olympia. If they realise I’m there, I’ll lay you odds Wace’ll want to talk to me. He’ll want to know what we know.’

‘You won’t get anything out of interviewing him! He’ll just lie and—’

‘You’re presuming I want information.’

‘What’s the point in interviewing him, if you don’t want information?’

‘Has it occurred to you,’ said Strike, ‘that I was in two minds whether to let you go and see Rufus Fernsby on your own today, in case something happened to you? Do you realise how easy it would be to make your killing look like suicide? “She threw herself off the bridge – or stepped into moving traffic, or hanged herself, or slit her wrists – because she couldn’t face the child abuse charge.” You wouldn’t be much of a match for the guy who was watching our office last night, not if he decided to drag you into a car. I let you interview Fernsby because his office is in central London and it’d be pure insanity to risk a kidnapping there, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s a risk – so going forwards, I want you to stick to taxis, no public transport, and I’d rather you weren’t out on jobs on your own.’

‘Strike—’

‘You can’t have it both bloody ways! You can’t tell me they’re evil and dangerous, and then prance around London—’

‘You know what,’ said Robin furiously, ‘I’d really appreciate it if, every time we have a discussion like this, you don’t use words like “prance” for how I get around.’

‘Fine, you don’t prance,’ said the exasperated Strike. ‘Fuck’s sake, how complicated is this? We’re dealing with a bunch of people we believe are capable of murder, and the two people who are most dangerous to them right now are you and Rosie Fernsby, and if anything happens to either of you, it’ll be on me.’

‘What are you talking about? How’s it on you?’

‘I was the one who put you into Chapman Farm.’

‘Again,’ said Robin, infuriated, ‘you didn’t put me anywhere. I’m not a bloody pot plant, I wanted the job, I volunteered for the job, and I seem to remember getting there by minibus, not being carried there by you.’

‘All right, great: if you end up dead in a ditch it won’t be my fault. Cheers. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Rosie, or Bhakta, or whoever the fuck she is now.’

‘How on earth could that be your fault?’

‘Because I fucked up, didn’t I? Think! Why’s the church so interested in the whereabouts of a girl who was only at Chapman Farm for ten days, twenty-one years ago?’

‘Because of the Polaroids.’

‘Yeah, but how does the church know we’ve got the Polaroids? Because,’ said Strike, answering his own question, ‘I showed them to the wrong fucking person, who reported back. I strongly suspect that person of being Jordan Reaney. He told whoever it was who phoned him after our interview, posing as his wife.

‘From Reaney’s reaction, he knew exactly who was behind those pig masks. I’m not interested right now in whether he was present when they were taken. The point is that the person on the other end of the phone found out I had evidence that could see the church buried in a tsunami of filth. Pig masks, teenagers sodomising each other? That’s the front page of every tabloid guaranteed, and all the old Aylmerton Community stuff’ll be dragged up again. They’ll want to close the mouths of everyone who was in those pictures, because if one of the subjects testifies, the church is properly fucked. I’ve put Rosie Fernsby in danger, and that’s why I want to meet Jonathan Wace.’

110

Nine in the fifth place means:

Flying dragon in the heavens.

It furthers one to see the great man.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Strike had known before arriving at Olympia late on Friday afternoon that the Universal Humanitarian Church had spread internationally and that the church had tens of thousands of members. He was also well aware, having watched a couple of YouTube videos of Jonathan Wace preaching, that the man was possessed of undeniable charisma. Nevertheless, he found himself taken aback by the sheer numbers of people heading for the Victorian façade of the enormous events centre. All ages were represented in the crowd, including families with children.

About a fifth of the crowd were already wearing UHC tracksuits of royal blue. These church members were wholesome-looking people in the main, though noticeably thinner than those who wore civilian clothes. They wore no jewellery, didn’t dye their hair and had no visible tattoos, nor were there any family groups among the tracksuit-wearers. If they were grouped at all, it was by age, and as he drew nearer to the entrance, he found himself following in the wake of a bunch of twenty-somethings talking excitedly in German, a language of which Strike knew just enough (having been stationed in Germany during his military career) to understand that one of their number had never yet heard Papa J speak in person.

Around twenty young men in UHC tracksuits, all of whom appeared to have been selected for size, strength or both, were standing just outside the doors, their eyes swivelling constantly as they scanned the crowd. Remembering that Patterson’s operative had been turned away from the Rupert Court Temple on sight, Strike assumed they were looking out for known troublemakers. He therefore made sure to stand up a little straighter, separating himself as far as was possible from the German group, and deliberately caught the crooked eye of a short, heavy-set man with fuzzy hair, who recalled Robin’s description of Jiang Wace. Borne on by the crowd, he didn’t have time to see any reaction.

The venue’s security men were searching bags just inside the doors. Strike was funnelled towards the pre-bought ticket queue rather than the row of pretty young UHC women selling tickets to the less organised. He made sure to smile broadly at the young woman who checked his own ticket. She had short, spiky black hair, and he didn’t think he imagined the sudden widening of her eyes.

As he walked onwards, Strike heard the strains of a rock song he didn’t recognise, which grew steadily louder as he approached the Great Hall.

… another dissident,

Take back your evidence…

As he’d needed only one seat, Strike had managed to buy one in the second row of what was a rapidly filling hall. Edging with apologies past a line of young people in tracksuits, he finally reached the seat and sat down between a young blonde in a blue tracksuit, and an elderly woman chewing stoically on a toffee.

Seconds after he’d sat down, the girl on his right, who he guessed to be twenty at most, said, revealing herself to be American,

‘Hi, I’m Sanchia.’

‘Cormoran Strike.’

‘First time at a service?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Wow. You’ve chosen a really auspicious day to come. You wait.’

‘Sounds promising,’ said Strike.

‘What made you interested in the UHC, Cormoran?’

‘I’m a private detective,’ said Strike. ‘I’ve been hired to look into the church, particularly with regard to sexual abuse and suspicious deaths.’

It was as though he’d spat in her face. Mouth open, she stared at him unblinkingly for a few seconds, then looked quickly away.

The rock song was still playing loudly over speakers.

… sometimes it’s hard to breathe, Lord

at the bottom of the sea, yeah yeah…

In the centre of the floor, beneath a high curved ceiling of white-painted iron and glass, was a shining, black pentagonal stage. Above this were five enormous screens that would doubtless enable even those in the furthest seats to see Jonathan Wace close up. Higher still were five bright blue banners bearing the UHC’s heart-shaped logo.

After a bit of whispering to her companions, Sanchia vacated her seat.

The excitement in the hall mounted as it filled. Strike estimated that there were at least five thousand people here. A different song now began to play: REM’s ‘It’s The End of the World as We Know It’. With five minutes to go until the official start of the service, and almost every seat filled, the lights began to dim, and a premature wave of applause broke out, along with several screams of excitement. These re-erupted when the screens over the pentagonal stage came to life, so that everybody in the hall could watch a short procession of robed people walking in spotlights down an aisle, towards the front seats on the opposite side of the hall. Strike recognised Giles Harmon, who was comporting himself with the dignity and gravity appropriate to a man about to receive an honorary degree; Noli Seymour, whose robes had a discreet amount of glitter and looked as though they’d been tailored for her; the tall, handsome and scarred Dr Andy Zhou; a glossy-haired, wholesome-looking young woman with perfect teeth Strike recognised from the church website as Becca Pirbright, and several others, among them a frog-eyed MP whose name Strike wouldn’t have known, had Robin not put it in a letter from Chapman Farm, and a packaging multimillionaire, who was waving at the cheering crowds in a manner Strike would have categorised as gormless. These, he knew, were the church Principals, and he took a photograph on his phone, noting the absence of Mazu Wace, and also of the overweight, rat-faced Taio, who he’d smashed over the head with the wire-cutters at the perimeter of Chapman Farm.

Right behind Dr Zhou, and captured in the edge of the spotlight onscreen as the doctor sat down, was a middle-aged blonde whose hair was tied back in a velvet bow. As Strike was staring at this woman, the screen changed to black, projecting a written request to turn off all mobile phones. As Strike obeyed, his American neighbour came back down the row, retook her seat and bent away from him to whisper to some of her companions.

The lights dimmed still further, heightening the crowd’s anticipation. Now they began to clap rhythmically. Calls of ‘Papa J!’ filled the air and at last, as the opening bars of ‘Heroes’ began to play, the hall went black, and with screams echoing off the high metal ceiling, five thousand people (with the exception of Cormoran Strike) scrambled to their feet, whistling and applauding.

Jonathan Wace appeared in a spotlight, already standing on the stage. Wace, whose face now filled the screens, waved to every corner of the stadium, pausing every now and then to wipe his eyes; he shook his head while pressing his hand to his heart; he bowed and bowed again, his hands pressed together, namaste-style. Nothing was overdone: the humility and self-deprecation seemed entirely authentic, and Strike, who as far as he could see was the only person in the hall not clapping, found himself impressed by the man’s acting abilities. Handsome and fit, with his thick, dark, barely silvered hair and square jaw, had he been wearing a tuxedo rather than long, royal blue robes, he’d have fitted in on any red carpet in the world.

The ovation lasted five minutes and died away only after Wace had made a calming, dampening gesture with his hands. Even then, when a near silence had fallen, a woman screamed,

‘I love you, Papa J!’

‘And I love you!’ said a smiling Wace, at which there was a further eruption of screams and applause.

At last, the crowd retook their seats, and Wace, who was wearing a headset microphone, began to walk slowly clockwise around the pentagonal stage, looking out into the crowd.

‘Thank you… thank you for that welcome,’ he said. ‘You know… before every super service, I ask myself… am I a worthy vehicle? No!’ he said seriously, because there were further screams of adoration. ‘I ask, because it’s no light matter, to put yourself forward as the Blessed Divinity’s vessel! Many men before me have proclaimed to the world that they’re conduits of light and love, have perhaps even believed it, but have been wrong…

‘How arrogant of any human to call themselves a holy man! Don’t you think so?’ He looked around, smiling, as a hail of ‘no’s rained down upon him.

‘You ARE a holy man!’ bellowed a man somewhere up in the higher seats, and the crowd laughed, as did Wace.

‘Thank you, my friend!’ he called back. ‘But this is the question that confronts every honest man when he ascends a stage like this. It’s a question certain members of the press –’ a storm of boos broke out ‘– ask of me often. No!’ he said, smiling and shaking his head, ‘don’t boo! They’re right to ask the question! In a world full of charlatans and conmen – although some of us might wish they’d focus a little more on our politicians and our captains of capitalism –’ a deafening round of applause ‘– it is perfectly fair to ask by what right I stand before you, saying that I have seen Divine Truth, and that I seek nothing more than to share it with all who are receptive.

‘So all I ask of you this evening – to those who’ve already joined the Universal Humanitarian Church, and to those who haven’t, to the sceptics and the non-believers – yes, perhaps especially to them,’ he said with a little laugh, which the crowd obligingly echoed ‘is to make one simple statement, if you feel you can. It commits you to nothing. It requires nothing but an open mind.

‘Do you think it possible that I’ve seen God, that I know God as well as I know my closest companions, and that I have proof of everlasting life? Is that possible? I ask no more than this – no belief, no blind acceptance. If you think you can say it, then I ask you to say the following to me now…’

The screens changed to black, with four words written on them in white.

‘Together!’ said Jonathan Wace, and the crowd roared the four words back at him:

‘I admit the possibility!’

Cormoran Strike, who was sitting with his arms folded and a look of profound boredom on his face, admitted nothing whatsoever.

111

… the second place may be that of the woman, active within the house, while the fifth place is that of the husband, active in the world without.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Robin was in the Denmark Street office. Pat had already left, and Robin had half a mind to stay until Strike returned from Wace’s meeting, because Murphy was working tonight.

Her anxiety made it hard to concentrate on anything. Wace’s meeting would be well underway by now. Robin was worried about Strike, picturing things she knew to be unlikely if not irrational: Strike being met by police, who’d been informed of some false charge against him, concocted by the church; Strike being dragged onto a UHC minibus, just as he’d suggested she might be kidnapped off the street, a few days ago.

You’re being completely ridiculous, she told herself, yet her nerves remained.

Even though there were two top-grade, skeleton-key-proof locks between her and the street, she felt far more frightened than at any time since she’d left Chapman Farm. Right now, she understood how those who’d been truly indoctrinated remained consumed by dread of the Drowned Prophet even after they’d recognised that the church’s other beliefs were fallacies. A nonsensical notion had her in its grip: that, merely by inserting himself boldly into the same physical space as Jonathan Wace, Strike would reap some kind of supernatural penalty. Intellectually, she knew Wace to be a crook and a conman, but her fear of his influence couldn’t be dismantled by her intellect alone.

Moreover, in her solitude, it was impossible to stop those memories she kept trying to suppress intruding into her thoughts. She seemed to feel Jonathan Wace’s hand between her legs again. She saw Will Edensor, penis in hand, advancing on her, and felt the punch. She remembered – and it was almost as shameful a recollection as the others – kneeling to kiss Mazu’s foot. Then she remembered Jacob, wasting away, untreated, in that filthy attic room, and that the police remained entirely silent about whether she was going to be charged for child sex abuse. Stop thinking about it all, she told herself firmly, heading for the kettle.

Having made herself what was probably her eighth or ninth coffee of the day, Robin took the mug through to the inner office, to stand in front of the noticeboard. Determined to do something productive rather than brood, she scrutinised the six Polaroids of naked teenagers she’d found in the biscuit tin at Chapman Farm far more closely than she’d done before. This was far easier to do without Strike present.

The dark, naked, chubby girl – Rosalind Fernsby, assuming their identification was correct – was the only person in the pictures who featured alone. Had it been the only photo, Robin might almost have believed Rosie had posed willingly, except for the deliberate degradation of the pig mask. Robin, of course, had a particular aversion to animal masks. Her rapist had worn a latex gorilla’s face to commit his serial crimes.

The next photo showed Carrie being penetrated from behind by Paul Draper, recognisable by his wispy hair.

In the third picture, Draper was being sodomised by Joe Jackson, assuming this identification, too, was correct. Jackson was dragging Draper’s head back by his hair, and the sinews were rigid in Draper’s neck, and Robin could almost see the grimace of pain on the moon face of the teenager pictured, looking timid, in the old newspaper article, at the top right of the board. The camera flash had illuminated the edge of something that looked like a vehicle in this picture. The UHC’s lawyers, of course, would probably argue that many vehicles were stored in many barns up and down the country.

The fourth Polaroid showed the dark girl being penetrated by Skull Tattoo from the front, her legs splayed, and now Robin noticed a deep graze on her left knee that hadn’t been there in the first picture. Either these Polaroids came from more than one photographic session, or she’d sustained the injury during it.

In the fifth picture, blonde Carrie had pushed up her mask far enough to give Draper oral sex while Skull Tattoo entered her from behind. The flash had illuminated the edge of something that looked like a wine bottle. Having read Strike’s notes on his interview with Henry Worthington-Fields, Robin knew Joe Jackson had later recruited Henry in a bar, in spite of the church’s prohibition on alcohol.

In the sixth and last picture, the dark girl was giving Skull Tattoo oral sex, and Draper was penetrating her vaginally. Now Robin noticed something she hadn’t seen before. What she’d thought was a shadow wasn’t: Skull Tattoo appeared to be wearing a black condom.

Self-disgust seized Robin, and she turned away from the pictures. They weren’t, after all, mere puzzle pieces. Joe Jackson, towards whom she could muster no pity, might now be flourishing in the church, but Carrie and Paul were both dead in dreadful circumstances and Rosie, though she almost certainly didn’t know it yet, was being hunted, all because she’d once been naive enough to trust whoever had lured her into the barn.

Robin sat back down in Strike’s chair, picturing the teenage Rosie creeping out of the farm with her father and brother, mere hours before the vegetable truck left Chapman Farm with Daiyu on board…

An idea came to Robin so suddenly she sat up straight in her chair as though called to attention. There should have been a second person in the children’s dormitory that night… could it have been Rosie? Had the girl performed the old trick of hiding pillows under her blankets, to convince Carrie she was present, before sneaking out of the farm forever? That would explain why Emily hadn’t seen a second supervisor, and it might also explain why Carrie had been curiously averse, before she saw the Polaroids and knew there was no hiding what had happened in the barn, to identifying the other person who ought to have been on duty, because if found, she might talk, not only about child duty, but pig masks and sodomy.

Robin returned to the outer office, unlocked the filing cabinet and took out the UHC case file. Back at the partners’ desk, she ran her eye back over the notes she’d made during her interview with Rufus, then checked the printouts of the housing records for the Fernsby family again. Walter no longer owned property. Rosie’s mother lived in Richmond, whereas Rufus and his wife lived in Enfield.

In spite of diligently searching all available records, Robin had found no evidence that Rosie had ever owned property in the UK under either of her known names. She’d never married and had no children. She was now nearing forty. Converted to Hinduism. Possibly in India. Silly crazes. Bikram yoga. Incense.

A vague picture was forming in Robin’s mind of a woman who saw herself as a free spirit, but who might, perhaps, have suffered emotional or financial reverses (would many solvent thirty-year-olds voluntarily go and live with their father, as Rosie had done before her name change, unless they had no alternative?). Perhaps Rosie was in India, as her brother had suggested? Or was Rosie one of those chaotic people who left little trace of themselves in records, flitting, perhaps, between sub-lets and squats, rather as Leda Strike had done?

The ringing of her mobile made Robin jump.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi,’ said Prudence’s voice. ‘How are you?’

‘Fine,’ said Robin. ‘You?’

‘Not bad… so, um… I had a session with Flora this afternoon.’

‘Oh,’ said Robin, bracing herself.

‘I’ve told her – I had to – who the person was, who’d contacted her about her Pinterest pictures. I apologised, I said it was my fault Corm worked it out, even though I didn’t name her.’

‘Right,’ said Robin.

‘Anyway… we talked about your investigation, and I told her somebody else has managed to get out of Chapman Farm, and that you helped them do it, and… long story short… she’d like to meet that person.’

‘Really?’ said Robin, who realised she’d been holding her breath.

‘She’s not committing to anything beyond that, at the moment, OK? But if you and Cormoran are agreeable, she says she’s prepared to meet your ex-UHC person, with me present – and for the other individual to have someone there for support, too.’

‘That’s fantastic,’ said Robin. ‘That’s wonderful, Prudence, thank you. We’ll talk to our client’s son, and see whether he’d like to meet Flora. I’m sure he’d find it helpful.’

After Prudence had rung off, Robin checked the rota, then texted Pat.

Sorry to disturb you after working hours Pat, but would it be ok for Strike and me to come over to your house tomorrow morning at 10am to talk to Will?

Pat, as was her invariable habit, called Robin back five minutes later, rather than texting.

‘You want to come and see him?’ she asked, in her usual baritone. ‘Yeah, that’s fine.’

‘How is he?’

‘Still chanting a bit. I tell him, “Stop doing that and give me a hand with the washing up,” and he does. I got him more clothes. He’s seemed happier, being out of that tracksuit. He’s playing chess with Dennis just now. I’ve just put Qing to bed. Right little chatterbox, all of a sudden. I read her the Hungry Caterpillar. She wanted it five times in a row.’

‘Pat, we really can’t thank you enough for this.’

‘No trouble. He’s well brought up, you can tell. He’ll be a nice enough boy, once he’s got all their rubbish out of his system.’

‘Has he mentioned the Drowned Prophet at all?’ asked Robin.

‘Yeah, last night,’ said Pat unemotionally. ‘Dennis said to him, “You don’t believe in ghosts, intelligent bloke like you?” Will said Dennis would, if he’d seen what Will’s seen. Said he’d seen people levitate. Dennis said, “How high did they go?” Few inches, said Will. So Dennis showed him how they fake it. Silly sod nearly fell over onto our gas fire.’

‘How does Dennis know how to fake levitation?’ asked Robin, diverted.

‘Mate of his, when he was young, used to do stuff like that to impress girls,’ said Pat laconically. ‘Some girls are bloody silly, let’s face it. When does anyone need a man who can rise two inches into the air?’

Robin laughed, thanked Pat again, and wished her a good evening. Having hung up, she found herself in a considerably improved state of mind. She now had both a new theory and a potentially crucial meeting to tell Strike about when he returned. She checked her watch. Strike would now have been in Wace’s meeting for over an hour, but Robin knew Papa J: he’d probably just be getting started. Perhaps she’d order some food, to be delivered to the office while reviewing the UHC file.

She got to her feet, mobile in hand, and moved to the window, wondering what kind of pizza she fancied. The sun was falling and Denmark Street was now in shadow. The shops were closed, many of their windows covered in metal blinds.

Robin had just decided she wanted something with capers on it, when she spotted somebody tall, bulky and dressed all in black walking along the street. Bizarrely, for a mild evening in August, they had their hood up. Robin raised her phone and switched it to camera mode, recording the figure as it walked down the steps in front of the music shop opposite, disappearing into the basement area below.

Perhaps they knew the shop owner? Maybe they’d been instructed to go to the door beneath street level?

Robin pressed pause on the camera and watched the few seconds of footage back. Then, with a return of her earlier feeling of foreboding, she returned to the UHC file and withdrew the still photographs of the masked intruder with the gun Strike had printed off from the camera footage.

It might be the same person, but equally, it might not. They were wearing similar black jackets, but the photographs from the dimly lit landing were too blurry to make an identification certain.

Should she call the police? But what would she say? That someone in a black jacket had their hood up in the vicinity of the office, and had walked down some steps? It was hardly criminal behaviour.

The person with the gun had waited until nightfall, and the extinguishment of all lights in the building, to act, Robin reminded herself. She now wondered whether a pizza delivery was such a good idea. She’d have to open the ground-floor door to let them in; what if the lurker in the black jacket forced entry, along with the delivery man, a gun pressed to their back? Or was she being absurdly paranoid?

No, said Strike’s voice in her head. You’re being smart. Keep an eye on them. Don’t leave the office until you’re certain they’ve gone.

Aware that her silhouette might be visible even through the Venetian blinds, Robin went to turn out the office lights. She then drew Strike’s chair to the window, the UHC file on her lap, glancing regularly down into the street. The black-clad figure remained out of sight.

112

Nine in the fourth place means:

He treads on the tail of the tiger.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Jonathan Wace had already explained how the UHC found commonality in all faiths, uniting and fusing them into a single, all-encompassing belief system. He’d quoted Jesus Christ, the Buddha, the Talmud and, mostly, himself. He’d called Giles Harmon and Noli Seymour separately onto the stage, where each had paid heartfelt tributes to the inspirational genius of Papa J, Harmon with an intellectual gravitas that earned a round of applause, Seymour with an effusive girlishness that the crowd appreciated even more.

The sky visible through the glass panes in the vaulted ceiling deepened gradually to dark blue, and Strike’s one and a half legs, cramped in the second row of seats, had developed pins and needles. Wace had moved on to denouncing world leaders, while the screens above him showed images of war, famine and environmental devastation. The crowd was punctuating his shorter sentences with whoops and cheers, greeting his oratorical flourishes with applause, and roaring their approval of every castigation and accusation he flung at the elites and the warmongers. Surely, Strike thought, checking his watch, they were nearly done? But another twenty minutes passed, and Strike, who now needed a piss, was becoming uncomfortable as well as bored.

‘So which of you will help us?’ shouted Wace at long last, his voice cracking with emotion as he stood alone in the spotlight, all else in shadow. ‘Who will join? Who’ll stand with me, to transform this broken world?’

As he spoke, the pentagonal stage began to transform, to further screams and applause. Five panels lifted like rigid petals to reveal a pentagonal baptismal pool, their undersides ridged in steps that would afford easy access to the water. Wace was left standing on a small circular platform in the middle. He now invited all those who felt they’d like to be received into the UHC to join him, and be reborn into the church.

The lights came up and some of the audience began to make their way towards the exits, including the elderly toffee-chewer to Strike’s left. She’d seemed impressed by Wace’s charisma and stirred by his righteous anger, but evidently felt a dip in the baptismal pool would be taking things too far. Some of the other departing audience members were carrying sleepy children; others were stretching stiff limbs after the long period of enforced sitting. No doubt many would enrich the UHC further, by purchasing a copy of The Answer or a hat, T-shirt or keyring before leaving the building.

Meanwhile, trickles of people were descending down the aisle to be baptised by Papa J. The cheers of existing members continued to ring off the metal supports of the Great Hall as one by one the new members were submerged, then rose, gasping and usually laughing, to be wrapped in towels by a couple of pretty girls on the other side of the pool.

Strike watched the baptisms, until the sky was black and his right leg had gone to sleep. At last, there were no more volunteers for baptism. Jonathan Wace pressed his hand to his heart, bowed, and the stage area went dark to a final burst of applause.

‘Excuse me?’ said a soft voice in Strike’s ear. He turned to see a young redhead in a UHC tracksuit. ‘Are you Cormoran Strike?’

‘That’s me,’ he said.

To his right, American Sanchia hastily averted her face.

‘Papa J would be so pleased if you felt like coming backstage.’

‘Not as pleased as I am,’ said Strike.

He pushed himself carefully into a standing position, stretching his numb stump until the feeling returned, and followed her through the mass of departing people. Cheery young people in UHC tracksuits were rattling collecting buckets on either side of the exit. Most who passed dropped in a handful of change, or even a note, doubtless convinced that the church did wonderful charitable work, perhaps even trying to appease a vague sense of guilt because they were leaving in dry clothes, unbaptised.

Once they’d left the main hall, Strike’s companion led him off along a corridor into which she was allowed admission, by virtue of the badge on a lanyard around her neck.

‘How did you enjoy the service?’ she asked Strike brightly.

‘Very interesting,’ said Strike. ‘What happens to the people who’ve just joined? Straight onto a bus to Chapman Farm?’

‘Only if they’d like to come,’ she said, smiling. ‘We aren’t tyrants, you know.’

‘No,’ said Strike, also smiling. ‘I didn’t know.’

She sped up, walking slightly ahead of him, so that she didn’t see Strike taking out his mobile, setting it to record, and replacing it in his pocket.

As they neared what Strike assumed would be the green room, they came across two of the burly young men in UHC tracksuits who’d been standing outside earlier. A tall, rangy-looking, long-jawed man was admonishing them.

‘… shouldn’t even have gotten near Papa J.’

‘She didn’t, we told her there was no—’

‘But the fact she even got as far as this corrid—’

‘Mr Jackson!’ said Strike, coming to a halt. ‘I thought you were based in San Francisco these days?’

Joe Jackson turned, frowning, tall enough to look straight into Strike’s eyes.

‘Do we know each other?’

His voice was a strange compound of Midlands, overlain with west coast American. His eyes were a light grey.

‘No,’ said Strike. ‘I recognised you from your pictures.’

‘Please,’ said the disconcerted redhead, ‘come, if you’d like to speak to Papa J.’

Judging that his odds of getting a truthful answer from Joe Jackson to the question ‘Got any tattoos?’ were minimal under these circumstances, Strike walked on.

They arrived at last at a closed door, from beyond which came a buzz of talk. The girl knocked, opened the door and stood back to allow Strike to enter.

There were at least twenty people inside, all of them wearing blue. Jonathan Wace was sitting in a chair in the middle of the group, a glass of clear liquid in his hand, a crumpled towel in his lap, with a cluster of young people in tracksuits around him. Most of the robed church Principals were also present.

Silence crept over the room like a rapidly moving frost as those nearest the door became aware that Strike had arrived. It reached Giles Harmon last. He was talking to a couple of young women in a distant corner.

‘… said to him, “What you fail to appreciate is the heterodox—”’

Apparently realising his voice was ringing alone through the room, Harmon broke off mid-sentence.

‘Evening,’ said Strike, moving further into the room.

If Jonathan Wace had meant to intimidate Strike by receiving him amid a crowd, he’d greatly mistaken his opponent. Strike found it positively stimulating to come face to face with the kind of people he most despised: fanatics and hypocrites, as he mentally dubbed all of them, each of them undoubtedly convinced of their own critical importance to Wace’s grandiose mission, blind to their own motives and indifferent to the sometimes irreversible damage done by the man to whom they’d sworn allegiance.

Wace rose, let the towel in his lap fall onto the arm of his chair and walked towards Strike, glass in hand. His smile was as charming and self-deprecating as it had been when he’d first mounted the pentagonal stage.

‘I’m glad – genuinely glad – you’re here.’

He held out his hand, and Strike shook it, looking down at him.

‘Don’t stand behind Mr Strike,’ said Wace, to the ordinary members who’d moved to surround the pair. ‘It’s bad manners. Or,’ he looked back at Strike, ‘may I call you Cormoran?’

‘Call me whatever you like,’ said Strike.

‘I think we’re a little crowded,’ said Wace, and Strike had to give him this much credit: he’d intuited in a few seconds that the detective was indifferent to the numbers in the room. ‘Principals, remain please. The rest of you, I know you won’t mind leaving us… Lindsey, if Joe’s still outside, tell him to join us.’

Most of the attractive young women filed out of the room.

‘Got a bathroom?’ asked Strike. ‘I could do with a pee.’

‘Certainly, certainly,’ said Wace. He pointed to a white door. ‘Over there.’

Strike was mildly amused to find, on washing his hands, that Wace appeared to have brought his own toiletries with him, because he doubted very much that Olympia routinely provided soaps from Hermès or bathrobes from Armani. Strike slipped his hand into the pockets of the latter, but they were empty.

‘Please, sit down,’ Wace invited Strike, when he emerged. Somebody had pulled up a chair to face the church leader’s. As Strike did as he was bid, Joe Jackson entered the room and crossed to join the other Principals, who were either standing or sitting behind the church leader.

‘She’s gone,’ Jackson informed Wace. ‘She wanted you to have this note.’

‘I’ll read it later,’ said Wace lightly. ‘It’s Cormoran I’m interested in now. Would you mind,’ Wace asked the detective, ‘if my wife listened in to our talk? I know she’d love to hear from you.’

‘Not at all,’ said Strike.

‘Becca,’ said Wace, indicating a smart-looking laptop lying on a chair nearby, ‘could you get Mazu on FaceTime for me? Bless you. Water?’ Wace asked Strike.

‘That’d be great,’ said Strike.

Noli Seymour was glaring at Strike as though he’d just told her his hotel hadn’t received her booking. Becca Pirbright was busy with the laptop and not looking at Strike. The rest of the Principals were variously looking uneasy, contemptuous, studiously uninterested or, in the case of Joe Jackson, definitely tense.

‘How’s your partner?’ said Wace earnestly, settling back in his chair as Becca handed Strike a cold bottle of water.

‘Robin? A lot better for being outside the box,’ said Strike.

‘Box?’ said Wace. ‘What box?’

‘Do you remember the box you locked my partner in, Miss Pirbright?’ Strike asked.

Becca gave no sign she’d heard him.

‘Is Miss Ellacott a business partner, or something more, by the way?’ asked Wace.

‘Your sons not here?’ said Strike, looking around. ‘I saw the one who looks like Piltdown Man outside.’

‘Papa J,’ said Becca quietly, ‘Mazu.’

She adjusted the laptop so that Mazu could see her husband, and for the first time in thirty years, Strike looked into the face of the girl who’d led his sister away from the football game at Forgeman Farm, and shut her in with a paedophile. She was sitting in front of shelves cluttered with Chinese statuettes. Her long black hair fell in two wings over her face, emphasising the pale, pointed nose. Her eyes were in shadow.

‘It’s Cormoran Strike, my love,’ said Wace, to the face on the screen. ‘Our Miss Ellacott’s detective partner.’

Mazu said nothing.

‘Well, Cormoran,’ said Wace, smiling, ‘shall we speak plainly?’

‘I wasn’t intending to speak any other way, but go on.’

Wace laughed.

‘Very well: you aren’t the first, and won’t be the last, to investigate the Universal Humanitarian Church. Many have tried to uncover scandals and plots and wrongdoing, but none have succeeded, for the simple reason that we are exactly who we profess to be: people of faith, living as we believe the Blessed Divinity requires us to live, pursuing the ends They wish to see achieved, fighting against evil wherever we find it. That necessarily brings us into conflict with both the ignorant, who fear what they don’t understand, and the malevolent, who understand our purpose and wish to thwart us. Are you familiar with the work of Dr K. Sri Dhammananda? No? “Struggle must exist, for all life is a struggle of some kind. But make certain that you do not struggle in the interest of self against truth and justice.”’

‘I see we’ve got different definitions of “speaking plainly”,’ said Strike. ‘Tell me: is the boy Robin saw dying in the attic of the farmhouse still alive?’

A tiny noise, somewhere between a grunt and a gulp, escaped Giles Harmon.

‘Wind?’ enquired Strike of the novelist. ‘Or have you got something to say?’

‘Jonathan,’ said Harmon, ignoring the detective, ‘I should be going. I’m on a flight to Paris at eleven tomorrow. Need to pack.’

Wace rose to embrace Harmon.

‘You were marvellous tonight,’ he told the writer, releasing Harmon but holding him by the upper arms. ‘I believe we owe at least half the new recruits to you. I’ll call you later.’

Harmon stalked out past Strike without looking at him, giving the latter time to reflect on what a mistake it was for short men to wear robes.

Wace sat back down.

‘Your partner,’ he said quietly, ‘has invented a story to cover up the incriminating position she found herself in with Jacob, in the bathroom. She panicked, and she lied. We are all of us frail and subject to temptations, but I want to reassure you: in spite of appearances, I don’t really believe Miss Ellacott meant to assault little Jacob. Possibly she was trying to get information out of him. Much as I deplore trying to force falsehoods out of children, we’d be prepared to drop charges, subject to an apology and a donation to the church.’

Strike laughed as he stretched out his right leg, which was still sore. Wace’s earnest expression didn’t flicker.

‘Has it occurred to you,’ Wace said, ‘that your partner invented dying children and other such dramatic incidents, because she observed nothing of any note during our time with us, but had to justify the fees you charge your clients?’

‘You know,’ said Strike, ‘I always think it’s a mistake to diversify too far away from the core brand. I’m sure Dr Zhou would agree,’ he added, looking over at the doctor. ‘Just because a man knows how to market enemas to idiots, doesn’t mean he knows shit about pig farming – to take a random example.’

‘I’m sure there’s meaning in that cryptic statement,’ said Wace, looking entertained, ‘but I must confess, I can’t find it.’

‘Well, let’s say a failed car salesman finds out he’s supremely good at flogging liquid bullshit to the masses. Would he be smart to try parcelling up solid chunks for the likes of me?’

‘Ah, you’re cleverer than everyone else in this room, are you?’ said Wace. Though still smiling, it was as though his large blue eyes had become a little more opaque.

‘On the contrary. I’m just like you, Jonathan,’ said Strike. ‘Every day, I get up, look myself in the mirror and ask, “Cormoran, are you a righteous vessel for truth and justice?”’

‘You’re disgusting!’ burst out Noli Seymour.

‘Noli,’ said Wace, making a small version of the gesture with which he’d quelled the crowd’s applause. ‘Remember the Buddha.’

‘“Conquer anger with non-anger”?’ asked Strike. ‘Always thought that’d make a pretty substandard fortune cookie, personally.’

Becca was now looking at him with a little smile, as though she’d seen many like him before. A muscle flickered at the scarred corner of Zhou’s mouth. Joe Jackson had folded his long arms, looking down at Strike with a slight frown. Mazu was so motionless, the screen might have frozen.

‘Now, I’m the first to admit, I wouldn’t be any good at what you do, Jonathan,’ said Strike. ‘But you seem to think you’ve got a flair for my game.’

‘What does that mean?’ said Wace, with a puzzled smile.

‘Surveillance of our office. Tailing us by car.’

‘Cormoran,’ said Wace slowly, ‘I can’t tell whether you know you’re inventing things, or not.’

‘As I say,’ said Strike, ‘it’s all about diversifying from the core brand. You’re top notch at picking out people who’re happy to be sucked dry of all their worldly goods, or slave on the farm for no wages, but less good, if you don’t mind me saying, at picking people to stake out premises, or follow targets discreetly. Bright red Vauxhall Corsas aren’t discreet. Unless you meant to let us know what you’re up to, I’m here to tell you: this isn’t your forte. You can’t just pick some random guy who’s fucked up this year’s carrot crop to stand opposite my office, staring up at the windows.’

‘Cormoran, we’re not watching you,’ said Wace, smiling. ‘If these things have indeed happened, you must have offended someone who takes a less tolerant view of your activities than we do. We choose – like the Buddha—’

‘The bullet through Kevin Pirbright’s brain was shot in non-anger, was it?’

‘I’m afraid I have no idea what emotions Kevin was feeling when he shot himself.’

‘Any interest in who murdered your brother?’ Strike said, turning to Becca.

‘What you don’t perhaps realise, Mr Strike, is that Kevin had a guilty conscience,’ said Becca sweetly. ‘I forgive him for what he did to me, but apparently he couldn’t forgive himself.’

‘How d’you choose the people making the phone calls?’ Strike said, looking back at Wace. ‘Obviously, a woman had to pretend to be Reaney’s wife to persuade the authorities to let the call through, but who spoke to him once he’d picked up? You?’

‘I have literally no idea who or what you’re talking about, Cormoran,’ said Wace.

‘Jordan Reaney. Overslept the morning he was supposed to be on the vegetable run, conveniently leaving room for Daiyu in the front of the truck.’ Out of the corner of his eye, Strike saw the smile vanish from Becca’s face. ‘Currently in jail. Got a call after I interviewed him, which appears to have precipitated a suicide attempt.’

‘This all sounds very upsetting and unfortunate and more than a little strange,’ said Wace, ‘but I promise you, I don’t have the slightest knowledge about any phone calls to any prison.’

‘You remember Cherie Gittins, of course?’

‘I’m hardly likely to forget her,’ said Wace quietly.

‘Why were you so careful to keep track of her, after she left?’

‘We did no such thing.’

Strike turned again to Becca, and he gained some satisfaction from her sudden look of panic.

‘Miss Pirbright here knows Cherie had daughters. She told the police so. Volunteered the information, for some reason. Went right off script, talking about how what seems devilish may, in fact, be divine.’

Some women blush becomingly, but Becca wasn’t one of them. She turned a purplish red. In the short silence that followed, both Noli Seymour and Joe Jackson turned their heads to look at Becca.

‘How many important religious figures would you say end up hanged?’ asked Strike. ‘Offhand, I can only think of Judas.’

‘Cherie wasn’t hanged,’ said Becca. Her eyes flickered towards Wace as she said it.

‘Do you mean that in a metaphysical sense?’ asked Strike. ‘Same as Daiyu didn’t really drown, but dissolved into pure spirit?’

‘Papa J,’ said Jackson unexpectedly, pushing himself off the wall, ‘I wonder whether there’s much point—?’

‘Thank you, Joe,’ said Wace quietly, and Jackson fell immediately back into line.

‘Now, that’s what I like to see,’ said Strike approvingly. ‘Military-level discipline. Shame it doesn’t extend to the foot soldiers.’

The door behind Strike opened. He glanced round. Taio entered the room, large, greasy-haired, rat-faced and dressed in a UHC tracksuit that strained across his belly. On seeing Strike, he stopped dead.

‘Cormoran’s here at my invitation, Taio,’ said Wace, smiling. ‘Join us.’

‘How’s the head?’ said Strike, as Taio took up a standing position beside Jackson. ‘Need stitches at all?’

‘We were talking about Cherie,’ said Wace, again addressing Strike. ‘As a matter of fact – I know this may be hard for you to understand – Becca’s perfectly right in what she said: Cherie played a divine role, a necessarily difficult role, in the ascension of Daiyu as a prophet. If she has indeed hanged herself, that, too, may have been ordained.’

‘You’ll be hanging up a second thrashing straw figure in temple to celebrate, will you?’

‘I see you’re one of those who prides themselves on disrespecting rites, mysteries, and religious observance,’ said Wace, smiling again. ‘I shall pray for you, Cormoran. I mean that sincerely.’

‘I’ll tell you one book I’ve read, that’s right up your street,’ said Strike. ‘Came across it in a Christian mission where I was spending a night, just outside Nairobi. This was when I was still in the army. I’d drunk too much coffee, and there were only two books in the room, and it was late, and I didn’t think I’d be able to make much of a dent in the Bible, so I went for Who Moved the Stone? by Frank Morison. Have you read it?’

‘I’ve heard of it,’ said Wace, sitting back in his chair, still smiling. ‘We recognise Jesus Christ as an important emissary of the Blessed Divinity, though, of course, he’s not the only one.’

‘Oh, he had nothing on you, obviously,’ said Strike. ‘Anyway, Morison was a non-believer who set out to prove the resurrection never happened. He did an in-depth investigation into the events surrounding Jesus’ death, drawing on as many historical sources as he could find, and as a direct result, was converted to Christianity. You see what I’m driving at?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Wace.

‘What questions d’you think Morison would’ve wanted answered, if he set out to disprove the legend of the Drowned Prophet?’

Three people reacted: Taio, who let out a low growl, Noli Seymour, who gasped, and Mazu, who, for the first time, spoke.

‘Jonathan.’

‘My love?’ said Wace, turning to look at the face on screen.

‘The sage casts out all that is inferior and degrading,’ said Mazu.

‘Well said.’

It was Dr Zhou who’d spoken. He’d drawn himself up to his full height, and unlike the absent Harmon, he looked undeniably impressive in his robes.

‘Is that from the I Ching?’ asked Strike, looking from Zhou to Mazu. ‘Funnily enough, I’ve got a few questions on the subject of degradation, if you’d rather hear those? No?’ he said, when nobody answered. ‘Back to what I was saying, then. Let’s suppose I fancy writing the new Who Moved the Stone? – working title, “Why Paddle in the North Sea at Five a.m.?” As a sceptical investigator of the miraculous ascension into heaven of Daiyu, I think I’d start with how Cherie knew Jordan Reaney would oversleep that morning. Then I’d be finding out why Daiyu was wearing a dress that made her as visible as possible in the dark, why she drowned off exactly the same stretch of beach as your first wife and – parallels with Who Moved the Stone? here – I’d want to know where the body went. But unlike Morison, I might include a chapter on Birmingham.’

‘Birmingham?’ repeated Wace. Unlike everyone else in the room, he was still smiling.

‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘I’ve noticed there’s a lot of going to Birmingham round about the time Daiyu disappeared.’

‘Once again, I have literally no—’

‘You were supposed to be in Birmingham that morning, but you called it off, right? You sent your daughter Abigail up to Birmingham, shortly after Daiyu died. And I think you were banished to Birmingham, too, weren’t you, Miss Pirbright? For three years, is that correct?’

Before Becca could answer, Wace had leaned forwards, hands clasped between his knees, and said quietly,

‘If the mention of my eldest daughter is supposed to worry me, you’re shooting wide of the mark, Cormoran. The most of which I can be reproached regarding Abigail is that I spoiled her, after the – after the dreadful death of her mother.’

Incredibly, at least to Strike, who found it difficult to cry in extremity, let alone on cue, Wace’s eyes now welled with tears.

‘Do I regret that Abigail left the church?’ he said. ‘Of course – but for her sake, not mine. If you are indeed in contact with her,’ said Wace, now placing a hand over his heart, ‘tell her, from me, “Popsicle misses you”. It’s what she used to call me.’

‘Touching,’ said Strike indifferently. ‘Moving on: you remember Rosie Fernsby, I presume? Well-developed fifteen-year-old you were going to take up to Birmingham, on the morning Daiyu died?’

Wace, who was wiping his eyes on the crumpled towel, didn’t answer.

‘You were going to “show her something”,’ Strike went on. ‘What kinds of things does he show young girls in Birmingham?’ he asked Becca. ‘You must have seen some of them, if you were there three years?’

‘Jonathan,’ said Mazu again, more insistently. Her husband ignored her.

‘You talk about “spoiling”,’ said Strike, looking back at Wace. ‘There’s a word with a double meaning, if ever there was one… which brings us to pig masks.’

‘Cormoran,’ said Wace, his tone world-weary, ‘I think I’ve heard enough to realise that you’re determined to write some lurid exposé, full of innuendo, short on facts and embellished with whatever fictional details you and Miss Ellacott can dream up together. I regret to say we’ll have to proceed with our action against Miss Ellacott for child abuse. It would be best if you communicate henceforth through my lawyers.’

‘That’s a shame. We were getting on so well. To return to the pig masks—’

‘I’ve made my position clear, Mr Strike.’

Wace’s charm and ease of manner, his smile, his warmth, had vanished. Once before, Strike had faced a killer whose eyes, under the stress and excitement of hearing their crimes described, had become as black and blank as those of a shark, and now he saw the phenomenon again: Wace’s eyes might have turned into empty boreholes.

‘Abigail and others were made to wear pig masks and crawl through the dirt to do their chores, at the command of your charming wife,’ said Strike.

‘That never happened,’ said Mazu contemptuously. ‘Never. Jonathan—’

‘Unfortunately for you, Mrs Wace, I have concrete evidence of those masks being worn at Chapman Farm,’ said Strike, ‘although it’d be in your own interests to deny you knew all the ways in which they were used. Perhaps Mr Jackson could enlighten you?’

Jackson glanced at Wace, then said, in his strange hybrid drawl,

‘You’re off on some kinda fantastical kick, Mr Strike.’

‘Then let me do a bit more plain speaking before I go. The police don’t like too many coincidences. Twice in the last couple of months, phone calls from unknown numbers had been followed by suicide attempts, one of them successful. I don’t think anyone but my agency has connected them yet, but that can soon change.

‘Late last year, Kevin Pirbright was caught on tape saying he had an appointment with someone from the church. Five days later, he was murdered. That’s two unnatural deaths and one close shave for three of the people who were at Chapman Farm when Daiyu drowned – assuming, of course, she ever drowned at all.’

Becca’s mouth fell open. Mazu began to shout, but unfortunately for her, so did both Taio and Noli Seymour who, both being in the room, easily obliterated the oaths now pouring from Mazu’s thin lips.

‘You bastard—’

‘You vile, evil, disgusting man, how dare you say these things about a dead child, have you no conscience—’

Strike raised his voice over the tumult.

‘There are witnesses to the fact that Rosie Fernsby was at Chapman Farm when certain Polaroids were taken. Rosie was identified by Cherie Gittins as one of the subjects of those photos. I know you’re trying to find her, so I’m warning you,’ he said, pointing directly into the face of Jonathan Wace, ‘if she’s found dead, whether by her own hand, or by accident, or by murder, rest assured, I’ll be showing those Polaroids to the police, drawing their attention to the fact that we’ve now got four unnatural deaths of ex-UHC members within a ten-month period, urging them to recheck certain phone records and making sure my journalistic contact makes as much of a noise about it all as possible.

‘To tell you the truth, I’m not as humble as you are, Jonathan,’ said Strike, getting to his feet. ‘I don’t need to ask myself whether I’m up to the job, because I know I’m fucking great at it, so be warned: if you do anything to hurt either my partner or Rosie Fernsby, I will burn your church to the fucking ground.’

113

… one may spend a full cycle of time with a friend of kindred spirit without fear of making a mistake.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Spending the night curled up on what she’d previously found a fairly comfortable sofa, which revealed unexpected crevices and hard edges when asked to double as a bed, was bad enough. Insult was added to injury when, having finally achieved a couple of hours of deep sleep, Robin was woken rudely by a loud exclamation of ‘What the—?’ from a man in her immediate vicinity. For a fraction of a second she had no idea where she was: her flat, the dormitory at Chapman Farm, Ryan’s bedroom, all of which had doors in different relative positions. She sat up fast, disorientated; her coat slid off her onto the floor, and then she realised she was in the office, looking blearily up at Strike.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t expecting to find a body.’

‘You nearly gave me a heart—’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I think our gunman came back last night,’ Robin said, bending down to retrieve her coat.

‘What?’

‘Black jacket, hood up – they lurked in those basement steps opposite for a bit and when the street was clear, they crossed the street and tried to get in through our front door, but this time, they couldn’t.’

‘Did you call the police?’

‘It happened too fast. They must have realised the lock had changed, because they left. I watched them to the end of Denmark Street, but I was afraid they might be waiting for me on Charing Cross Road. I didn’t fancy risking it, so I slept here.’

At this moment, the alarm on Robin’s mobile went off, making her jump again.

‘Good thinking,’ said Strike. ‘Very good thinking. Were the lights on when they arrived?’

‘Until I spotted the black jacket and the hood on the opposite pavement, then I turned them off. It’s possible they didn’t notice, and thought the office was empty, but they might have known someone was here and been determined to get in anyway. Don’t look like that,’ said Robin, ‘the lock worked, and I didn’t take any chances, did I?’

‘No. That’s good. Don’t suppose you got any pictures?’

‘I did,’ said Robin, bringing them up on her mobile and handing it to Strike. ‘It was a tricky angle, because they were directly beneath me, obviously, when they were trying to get in.’

‘Yeah, that looks like the same person… same jacket, anyway… face carefully hidden… I’ll pass these to the police, too. With luck, they took down their hood and were caught on CCTV once they were out of here.’

‘Did you get my text about Will, Flora and Prudence?’ said Robin, trying to detangle her hair with her fingers, without much success. ‘Pat’s fine with us going over there this morning, which is good of her, given it’s Saturday.’

‘I did, yeah,’ said Strike, moving to the kettle. ‘Excellent work that, Ellacott. Want a coffee? We’ve got time. I only came in here to put my notes in the file, from last night.’

‘Oh God, of course!’ said Robin, who in her exhaustion had briefly forgotten where Strike had been. ‘What happened?’

Strike gave Robin a full account of the UHC meeting and his subsequent interview with Wace while they drank their coffees. When he’d finished, Robin said,

‘You told him you’d “burn his church to the fucking ground”?’

‘Might’ve got a bit carried away there,’ admitted Strike. ‘I was on a roll.’

‘Don’t you think that’s a bit… declaration of all-out war?’

‘Not really. Come on, they already knew we’re investigating them. Why else does everyone we want to talk to get warning phone calls?’

‘We don’t know for sure the church is behind those calls.’

‘We don’t know for sure the people in pig masks lived at Chapman Farm, either, but I think it’s safe to hazard a guess. I’d’ve liked to say a damn sight more than I did, but Deirdre Doherty drowning drags in Flora Brewster, Daiyu going out of the window incriminates Emily Pirbright, and if I’d told Harmon I knew he was fucking underage girls, it would’ve put Lin in the firing line. No, the only new information they got from me last night was that we think Daiyu’s death is fishy, and I said that deliberately, to see the reactions.’

‘And?’

‘Shock, outrage; exactly what you’d expect. But I warned them what’s going to happen if Rosie Fernsby turns up dead, which was the main point of the exercise, and I’ve told them we know they’re keeping tabs on us, however ineptly, so as far as I’m concerned, job done. Er… if you want a shower or anything, you can go upstairs.’

‘That’d be great, thanks,’ said Robin. ‘I’ll be quick.’

Her reflection in Strike’s bathroom mirror looked just as bad as Robin felt: a large crease had been pressed into the side of her face and her eyes were puffy. Trying not to visualise Strike standing naked in exactly the same spot she was now occupying in the tiny bathroom, Robin showered, pinched some of his deodorant, put yesterday’s clothes back on, brushed her hair, applied lipstick to make herself look less washed out, wiped it off because she thought it made her look worse, and returned downstairs.

Robin usually drove when the two of them were out together, but today, in deference to her tiredness, Strike volunteered. The BMW, being automatic, wasn’t nearly as hard for a man with a prosthetic to drive as the Land Rover would have been. Robin waited until they were on their way to Kilburn before saying,

‘I actually had a couple of thoughts myself last night, going through the UHC file.’

Robin outlined her theory that Rosie Fernsby had been the other teenager in the dormitory, the night before Daiyu had drowned. Strike drove for a minute, thinking.

‘I quite like it—’

‘Only quite?’

‘I can’t see Cherie not checking Rosie’s bed, not if she wanted to be sure everyone was out for the count before she gave all the kids their special drinks, then shunted Daiyu out of the window.’

‘Maybe she did check, and it suited her that Rosie wasn’t there?’

‘But how would she know Rosie wouldn’t come back later? The pillows could’ve been there so Rosie could, I dunno, have an assignation in a Retreat Room or go into the woods to smoke a joint.’

‘If you’d been at Chapman Farm, you’d know the only permissible reason for alone time is going to the bathroom. If Rosie was supposed to be on child duty, that’s exactly where she should have been… What if Rosie told Cherie she and her father and brother were leaving that night?’

‘She’d only been at Chapman Farm a week or so. She’d’ve been putting a hell of a lot of trust in Cherie, telling her they were escaping.’

‘Maybe Rosie and Cherie had been through something together that would have bonded them quite quickly?’

‘Ah,’ said Strike, remembering the Polaroids. ‘Yeah. There’s that, of course… and yet Rosie was sorry to leave the farm, according to her brother.’

‘Teenage girls can be weird,’ said Robin quietly. ‘They rationalise things… tell themselves it wasn’t as bad as they know, deep down, it was… She had a big crush on Jonathan Wace, remember. Maybe she walked willingly into the barn, not knowing what was about to happen. Afterwards, if Wace is telling her how wonderful she is, how beautiful and brave and free spirited… telling her she’s proved herself somehow… But I know it’s all speculation until we find her, which is the other thing I was going to tell you. There’s a chance – only a chance, don’t get too excited – that I have found her.’

‘You’re kidding me?’

‘I had an idea in the early hours of the morning. Well, two ideas, actually, but this one first. I’ve drawn a total blank on property records, but then I thought, dating apps. I had to join about half a dozen to get access. Anyway, on mingleguru.co.uk—’

‘Mingle Guru?’

‘Yes, Mingle Guru – is one Bhakta Dasha, age thirty-six, so the right age for Rosie, and very much not Asian, unlike everyone else on the site.’

As Strike pulled up at a red light, she held up a profile picture for him to see.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Strike.

The woman was pretty, round-faced and dimpled, wearing a stuck-on bindi and with very orange skin. As the lights changed and they moved off again, Strike said,

‘That should be brought to the attention of the Advertising Standards Authority.’

‘She’s a practising Hindu,’ said Robin, reading Bhakta’s details, ‘who loves India, has travelled extensively there, would very much like to meet someone who shares her outlook and religion, and gives her current location as London. I wondered whether—’

‘Dev,’ said Strike.

‘Exactly, unless he’s getting tired of being the resident good-looking man we always send to sweet talk women.’

‘There are worse problems to have,’ said Strike. ‘Starting to think you should sleep on the sofa more often. It seems to bring something out in you.’

‘You haven’t heard my second idea yet. I was trying to get to sleep and thinking about Cherie, and then I thought, Isaac Mills.’

‘Who?’

‘Isaac Mills. Her boyfriend after Chapman Farm. The one who robbed the pharmacy.’

‘Oh, yeah. The junkie with the teeth.’

‘I thought, what if she told Isaac what had happened at Chapman Farm?’ said Robin. ‘What if she confided in him? It was all very recent when she met him.’

‘That,’ said Strike, ‘is a very sound bit of reasoning and I’m pissed off I didn’t think of it myself.’

‘So you think it’s worth looking for him?’ said Robin, pleased that this theory, at least, wasn’t getting short shrift.

‘Definitely. Just hope he’s still alive. He didn’t have the look of a man who gets a lot of fresh air and vitamins – shit, I forgot to tell you something else, from last night.’

‘What?’

‘I might be wrong,’ said Strike, ‘but I could’ve sworn I saw Phillipa Delaunay in the audience at Wace’s meeting. Daiyu’s aunt – brother of the Stolen Prophet.’

‘Why on earth would she be there?’

‘Good question. Mind you, as I say, I could be wrong. Hearty blondes in pearls all blur into one to me. Dunno how their husbands tell them apart.’

‘Pheromones?’ suggested Robin.

‘Maybe. Or some kind of special call. Like penguins.’

Robin laughed.

114

What has been spoiled through man’s fault can be made good again through man’s work.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

As they admitted to each other afterwards, for the first hour Strike and Robin spent talking to Will in Pat’s house in Kilburn, each privately thought their mission was doomed. He was implacably opposed to meeting Flora Brewster and insisted he didn’t want immunity from prosecution, because he deserved jail. All he wanted was for Lin to be found, so she could look after Qing once he’d handed himself over to the police.

Pat had taken Will’s daughter to the shops to allow them to talk in peace. The room in which they were sitting was small, neat, smelled strongly of stale Superkings and was cluttered with family photographs, although Pat also had an unsuspected weakness for crystal animal figurines. Will was wearing a new green sweater which, though it hung loosely on his still very thin frame, both suited and fitted him better than his filthy UHC tracksuit. His colour had improved, the shadows under his eyes had gone, and for a full sixty minutes, he made no mention of the Drowned Prophet.

However, when Strike, starting to lose patience, pushed Will on why he didn’t want to at least talk to another ex-member with a view to joining forces and freeing as many people as possible from the church, Will said,

‘You can’t free them all. She wants to keep them. She’ll let some go, like me, who aren’t any good—’

‘Who’s “she”?’ said Strike.

‘You know who,’ muttered Will.

They heard the front door open. Strike and Robin assumed Pat and Qing had returned, but instead a pudgy, bespectacled, fair-haired man of around seventy appeared. He was wearing a Queens Park Rangers football strip, brown trousers of the kind Strike was used to seeing on Ted, and had a copy of the Daily Mail under his arm.

‘Ah. You’ll be the detectives.’

‘That’s us,’ said Strike, standing up to shake hands.

‘Dennis Chauncey. Everyone all right for tea? I’m having some, it’s no trouble.’

Dennis disappeared into the kitchen. Robin noticed that he was limping slightly, possibly due to the fall he’d suffered while demonstrating levitation.

‘Look, Will—’ Strike began.

‘If I talk to Flora before the police, I’ll never get to the police,’ said Will, ‘because she’ll come for me before I can—’

‘Who’ll come for you?’ Dennis, who evidently had sharp hearing, had reappeared at the door of the sitting room, munching on a chocolate bourbon. ‘Drowned Prophet, is it?’

Will looked sheepish.

‘I’ve told you, son.’ Dennis tapped his temple. ‘It’s in your head. It’s all in your head.’

‘I’ve seen—’

‘You’ve seen tricks,’ said Dennis, not unkindly. ‘That’s all you’ve seen. Tricks. They’ve done a right number on you, but it’s tricks, that’s all.’

He disappeared again. Before Strike could say anything else, they heard the front door open for a second time. Shortly afterwards, Pat entered the room.

‘Walked her around and she fell asleep,’ she said in the growl that passed for her whisper. ‘I’ve left her in the hall.’

She wriggled out of her jacket, pulled a pack of Superkings out of its pocket, lit one, sat down in the armchair and said,

‘What’s going on?’

By the time Robin had explained about Flora Brewster’s wish to meet Will, Dennis had returned with a fresh pot of tea.

‘Sounds like a good idea,’ said Pat, peering beadily at Will. She took a long drag on her cigarette. ‘If you want the police to take you seriously,’ she said, exhaling, so that her face was momentarily obscured by a cloud of blue smoke, ‘you need corroboration.’

‘Exactly,’ said Strike. ‘Thank you, Pat.’

‘Mr Chauncey, you sit here,’ said Robin, getting up, as there were no other chairs.

‘No, you’re all right love, gotta do the pigeons,’ said Dennis. He poured himself a mug of tea, added three sugars and left again.

‘Racing pigeons,’ said Pat. ‘He keeps them out the back. Just don’t get him onto Fergus McLeod. I’ve had nothing else, morning, noon and night, for a month.’

‘Who’s Fergus McLeod?’ asked Robin.

‘He cheated,’ said Will unexpectedly. ‘With a microchip. The bird never left his loft. Dennis told me all about it.’

‘It’s been a bloody relief, having someone else around to listen to him bang on about it,’ said Pat, rolling her eyes.

Strike’s mobile now rang: Midge.

‘’S’cuse me,’ he said.

Not wanting to risk waking Qing, who was fast asleep in a pushchair just inside the front door, he moved through to the kitchen and let himself carefully into the small garden. Half of it was given over to the pigeons, and Dennis was visible at the window of the coop, apparently cleaning out cages.

‘Midge?’

‘Lin’s at the clinic,’ said Midge excitedly. ‘Tasha just called me. Zhou wasn’t around last night, so Tasha went creeping around that annexe. The doors were locked, but blinds have been down over one of the windows all the time she’s been there. She was trying to peer through a gap when, get this – a skinny blonde girl lifted it up and peered right back out at her. Tash says they were nearly nose to nose. She nearly fell over backwards onto her arse. Then Tasha thinks the girl realised she wasn’t in a staff uniform and she mouths “help me”. Tasha mimed at her to push up the window, but it’s bolted. Then Tash could hear someone coming, so she had to leg it, but she mouthed at Lin that she was going to come back.’

‘Excellent,’ said Strike, his mind now working rapidly as he watched Dennis talking to the pigeon in his hand. ‘All right, listen: I want you to head down to Borehamwood. Tasha might need back-up. You can check in to a B&B in the vicinity or something. If Tasha can get back to that window tonight, get her to tap on it and hold up a note to tell Lin Will’s out, he’s got Qing and they’re both safe.’

‘Will do,’ said Midge, who sounded delighted. ‘How about I—?’

‘For now, just stay within hailing distance of the clinic, in case they try and move Lin by night. Don’t try any rescue attempts, and tell Tasha not to take any more risks than she has to, OK?’

‘OK,’ said Midge.

‘With any luck,’ said Strike, ‘this news will put a stick of dynamite under Will Edensor, because Christ knows what else’ll do it.’

115

At such times when hidden divergences in temper make themselves felt and lead to mutual misunderstandings, we must take quick and vigorous action to dissolve the misunderstandings and mutual distrust.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

‘It took another hour and a half to persuade him,’ Robin told Murphy later, at her flat. He’d wanted to take her out to dinner, but Robin, who was exhausted, had told him she’d rather eat in, so Murphy had picked up a Chinese takeaway. Robin was avoiding the noodles; she never wanted to eat another noodle in her life.

‘We went round and round in circles,’ Robin went on, ‘but Pat clinched it. She told Will that Lin probably won’t be in a fit state to have sole charge of Qing the moment she gets out – if we can get her out, obviously – and said the best thing Will can do is to keep himself out of jail, so he can help. Anyway, it’s all arranged: we’re going to take Will over to Prudence’s on Monday evening.’

‘Great,’ said Murphy.

He hadn’t been particularly talkative since arriving, and didn’t smile as he said this. Robin had assumed he, too, was tired, but now she detected a certain constraint.

‘You OK?’

‘Yeah,’ said Murphy, ‘fine.’

He tipped more chow mein onto his plate, then said,

‘How come you didn’t call me last night, when the guy in black was trying to get into the building?’

‘You were working,’ said Robin, surprised. ‘What could you have done about it?’

‘Right,’ said Murphy. ‘So you’d only call me if I could be useful?’

A familiar mixture of unease and frustration, one she’d felt all too many times in her marriage, rose inside Robin.

‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘But we’ve changed the locks. The guy didn’t get in. I wasn’t in any danger.’

‘But you still spent the night there.’

‘As a precaution,’ said Robin.

She now knew exactly what was bothering Murphy: the same thing that had bothered Matthew, both before and after they’d got married.

‘Ryan—’

‘How come Strike didn’t realise you were still in the office, when he got back from this religious meeting?’

‘Because the lights were out,’ said Robin.

‘So you heard him go upstairs, but you didn’t go out and ask him what had happened with Wace? You waited until this morning.’

‘I didn’t hear him going upstairs,’ said Robin truthfully. ‘You can’t, in the inner office, which is where I was.’

‘And you hadn’t texted him, to say you were staying the night?’

‘No,’ said Robin, trying not to become openly angry, because she was too tired to want a row, ‘because I didn’t decide to stay the night until one in the morning. It was too late to take the Tube and I was still worried the person in the black jacket would be hanging around.’

‘You just told me you weren’t in any danger.’

‘I wasn’t, not inside the building.’

‘You could’ve got a taxi.’

‘I know I could, but I was really tired, so I decided to stay.’

‘Weren’t you worried about where Strike had got to?’

Now on the brink of losing the fight with her anger, Robin said,

‘I’m not his wife and he can handle himself. Anyway, I told you: I was busy joining dating sites to try and find this woman we need to interview.’

‘And he didn’t call you after he left the meeting?’

‘No. It was late and he probably assumed I’d be in bed.’

‘Right,’ said Murphy, with precisely the edge in his voice Matthew had once had, whenever they discussed Strike.

‘For God’s sake, just ask,’ said Robin, losing her temper. ‘Ask me whether I slept upstairs.’

‘If you say you slept in the office—’

‘That is what I say, because that’s the truth, and you can keep giving me the third degree, but the story won’t change, because I’m telling you what actually happened.’

‘Fine,’ said Murphy, and the monosyllable had so much of Matthew in it, that Robin said,

‘Listen, I’ve done this shit before, and I’m not going to do it again.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning you’re not the first man who thinks I can’t be in partnership with Strike without screwing him. If you don’t trust me—’

‘It’s not a question of trust.’

‘How can it not be a question of trust? You’ve just been trying to catch me out in a lie!’

‘You might’ve wanted to spare my feelings. Slept upstairs, and maybe nothing happened, but you didn’t want to admit you’d been there.’

‘That isn’t – what – happened. Strike and I are friends – and he happens to be dating a lawyer.’

The lie fell easily and instinctively out of Robin’s mouth, and when she saw Murphy’s expression clear, she knew it had served its purpose.

‘You never told me that.’

‘I had no idea you were so interested in Strike’s love life. I’ll keep you briefed in future.’

Murphy laughed.

‘I’m sorry, Robin,’ he said, reaching for her hand. ‘I am, seriously. Shit… I didn’t mean to… Lizzie went off with a supposed “friend”, in the end.’

‘I know that, but what you’re failing to factor in here is, I’m not Lizzie.’

‘I know. I’m sorry, seriously. How long’s Strike been with this lawyer?’

‘I don’t know – months. I don’t keep notes,’ said Robin.

The rest of the evening passed amicably enough. Tired, still annoyed but wanting to keep the peace, Robin told herself she’d worry later about what might happen if Nick, Ilsa, or Strike himself revealed that his affair with Bijou was over.

116

Nine at the beginning means:

Hidden dragon.

Do not act.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Robin spent a good deal of the next three days asking herself unanswerable questions about the state of her own feelings, and in speculation about the likely future trajectory of Murphy’s newly revealed jealousy. Would this relationship go the same way as her marriage, through increasing levels of suspicion to a destructive explosion, or was she projecting old resentments onto Murphy, much as he’d done to her?

Though she’d accepted the truce, and did her best to act as though all was forgiven and forgotten, Robin remained annoyed that, yet again, she’d been forced to justify and dissemble on matters relating to Cormoran Strike. Those fatal four words, ‘I love you, too’, had brought about a shift in Murphy. It would be going too far to call his new attitude possessiveness, but there was a certain assurance that had been lacking before.

In her more honest moments, Robin asked herself why she hadn’t called him when worried a gunman might be lurking out of sight round the corner. The only answers she could come up with were confused, and some opened doors onto further questions she didn’t want to answer. At the admissible end of the scale was her fear that Murphy would have overreacted. She hadn’t wanted to hand her boyfriend a justification for dictating what risks she took, because she’d had quite enough of that already, from her mother. Yet, whispered her conscience, she’d let Strike tell her to be more careful, hadn’t she? She’d also done as he’d suggested, with regard to taxis and taking on no jobs on her own. What was the difference?

The answer (so Robin told herself) was that she and Strike were in business together, which gave him certain rights – but here, her self-analysis stopped, because it might be argued that Murphy, too, had rights; it was simply that she found them less admissible. Such musings came dangerously close to forcing her to confront something she was determinedly avoiding. Ruminations on Strike’s true feelings, as she knew from past experience, led only to confusion and pain.

Strike, meanwhile, had personal worries of his own. On Saturday afternoon, Lucy called him with the news that Ted, who was still staying at her house, had had a ‘funny turn’. Guilt-stricken that he hadn’t so much as visited Ted in the last couple of weeks, Strike abandoned surveillance of the husband they’d nicknamed Hampstead to drive straight to Lucy’s house in Bromley, where he’d found Ted even more disorientated than usual. Lucy had already made a doctor’s appointment for their uncle, and had promised to get back to Strike with news as soon as she had it.

He spent most of Monday on surveillance of Toy Boy, handing over to Barclay in the late afternoon, then heading back to the office at four o’clock. Robin had been there all day, trying to sublimate in work the anxiety she felt about moving Will out of the safe haven of Pat’s house to visit Prudence that evening.

‘I still think Will and Flora could have FaceTimed,’ Robin said to Strike, when he joined her at the partners’ desk, coffee in hand.

‘Yeah, well, Prudence is a therapist, isn’t she? Wants the in-person touch.’

He glanced at Robin, who looked both tired and tense. Assuming this was due to her continuing fear of the church, he said,

‘They’d be stupider than I think they are to try and tail us after what I said to Wace on Friday, but if we spot anyone, we’ll pull over and confront them.’

Strike chose not to mention that if, as he half-suspected, Wace was playing mind games rather than genuinely attempting covert surveillance, the church leader might equally decide to ramp up harassment in retribution for their face-to-face chat at Olympia.

‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news,’ Robin said. ‘I can’t be a hundred per cent certain, but I think Isaac Mills might be dead. Look: I found it an hour ago.’

She passed the printout of a small news item in the Telegraph dated January 2011 across the desk. It described an incident in which Isaac Mills, 38, had died in a head-on collision with a van which, unlike Mills, had been driving on the correct side of the road.

‘Right age,’ said Robin, ‘and wrong side of the road sounds like he was drunk or stoned.’

‘Shit,’ said Strike.

‘I’ll keep looking,’ said Robin, taking back the clipping, ‘because there are other Isaac Millses out there, but I’ve got a horrible feeling that was our man. Did you talk to Dev about taking Rosie Fernsby out for dinner, by the way?’

‘Did, yeah, he’s going to make a profile on Mingle Guru tonight. I had another thought about Rosie, actually. If that profile is hers, and she really has been travelling around India for the last few years, it makes sense that she hasn’t got a permanent base here. I wondered whether she might be housesitting while her mother’s in Canada.’

‘Nobody’s answered the landline in all the time I’ve tried. It just goes straight to voicemail.’

‘Even so, it wouldn’t be far out of our way, going through Richmond on the way back from Strawberry Hill. We could just knock on the door in Cedar Terrace and see what happens.’

Strike’s mobile rang. Expecting Lucy, he instead saw Midge’s number.

‘Everything all right?’

‘No,’ said Midge.

With a sense of foreboding, Strike switched the mobile to speakerphone and laid it down on the desk between him and Robin.

‘It’s not Tash’s fault,’ said Midge defensively, ‘OK? She hasn’t been able to get back to the annexe for the last couple of nights, so she seized a chance when she was coming back from a massage an hour ago.’

‘She was spotted?’ said Strike sharply.

‘Yeah,’ said Midge. ‘Some bloke who works there saw her tapping on the window.’

Strike’s and Robin’s eyes met. The latter, who feared Strike was about to explode, made a grimace intended to prevent any unhelpful outburst.

‘Obviously, Tash walked straight off,’ said Midge, ‘but the bad thing is—’

‘That’s not the bad thing?’ said Strike ominously.

‘Look, she’s done us a favour, Strike, and at least she’s found out Lin’s there!’

‘Midge, what else happened?’ said Robin, before Strike could retort.

‘Well, she had the note in the pocket of her robe, the one to show Lin, saying Will and Qing are out, and… and now she can’t find it. She thinks she might’ve taken the wrong robe when she left the massage room. Or, maybe, she’s dropped it.’

‘OK,’ said Robin, gesturing to Strike to withhold the stream of recriminations she knew he was bursting to deliver, ‘Midge, if she can pretend she’s lost a ring or something—’

‘She’s already gone back to the massage room to look, but she called me first because, obviously—’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘Obviously.’

‘Let us know what happens,’ said Robin. ‘Call us.’

‘Will do,’ said Midge. She rang off.

‘Fuck’s sake!’ said Strike, seething. ‘What did I tell Tasha? Take no risks, be ultra-cautious, then she goes to that fucking window by daylight—’

‘I know,’ said Robin, ‘I know.’

‘We should never have put an amateur in there!’

‘It was the only way,’ said Robin. ‘We had to use someone they’d never realise had a connection to us. Now we’ve just got to hope she gets that note back.’

Strike got to his feet and began to pace.

‘If they’ve found that note, Zhou’s probably scrambling to pull another Jacob – hide Lin and come up with an alternative blonde, fast. Fuck – this isn’t good… I’m going to call Wardle.’

Strike did so. Robin listened as her partner laid out the problem to his best police contact. As she could have predicted, Wardle needed quite a lot of explanation and repetition before he fully grasped what Strike was telling him.

‘If Wardle finds it hard to believe, I can just imagine how regular officers are going to react,’ said Strike bitterly, having hung up. ‘I don’t think they’ll see it as a top priority, rescuing a girl who’s living at a luxury spa. What’s the time?’

‘Time to go,’ said Robin, shutting down her computer.

‘Are we giving Pat a lift home?’

‘No, she’s meeting her granddaughter. Dennis is going to look after Qing while Will’s with us.’

So Strike and Robin walked together towards the garage where Strike kept his BMW. It was a warm evening; a pleasant change from the intermittent drizzle of the last few days. They’d just reached the garage when Strike’s mobile rang again: Lucy.

‘Hi, what did the GP say?’ he asked.

‘He thinks Ted’s had a mini-stroke.’

‘Oh, shit,’ said Strike, unlocking the car with his free hand.

‘They want to scan him. The earliest they can do is Friday.’

‘Right,’ said Strike, getting into the passenger’s seat while Robin took the wheel. ‘Well, if you like, I’ll go with him. You’re picking up all the slack here.’

‘Thanks, Stick,’ said Lucy. ‘I appreciate that.’

‘Thank Christ he was with you when it happened. Imagine if he’d been alone in St Mawes.’

‘I know,’ said Lucy.

‘I’ll take him for the scan, and afterwards we’ll talk plans, OK?’

‘Yes,’ said Lucy, sounding defeated. ‘OK. How are things with you?’

‘Busy,’ said Strike. ‘I’ll call you later.’

‘Everything all right?’ asked Robin, waiting until Strike had hung up until turning on the ignition.

‘No,’ said Strike, and as they set off up the road, he explained about Ted’s stroke, and his Alzheimer’s, and the burden Lucy was currently bearing, and the guilt he felt about not pulling his weight. In consequence, neither Strike nor Robin noticed the blue Ford Focus that pulled away from the kerb a hundred yards beyond the garage, as Robin accelerated.

The Ford’s speed was often adjusted, which varied the distance between it and the BMW, so that it was sometimes one, and sometimes as many as three cars behind them. Both detectives’ minds were so preoccupied with their separate, joint, general and specific anxieties that both failed to notice they were, again, being followed.

117

K’an represents the heart, the soul locked up within the body, the principle of light enclosed in the dark – that is, reason.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

It was only as Robin approached Prudence’s house that she registered, in some dim region of her mind, that she’d spotted a blue Ford Focus in her rear-view mirror at another point in the journey. She rounded the corner of Prudence’s street, and the blue car drove innocently past. Preoccupied with the imminent meeting between Will and Flora, Robin immediately forgot it again.

‘You’ll like Prudence,’ she said reassuringly to Will, who’d barely spoken during the journey. ‘She’s really nice.’

Will looked up at the large Edwardian house, shoulders hunched and arms folded, an expression of intense misgiving on his face.

‘Hi,’ said Prudence, when she opened the front door, looking understatedly elegant as ever in cream trousers and a matching sweater. ‘Oh.’

Her face had fallen on seeing Strike.

‘Problem?’ he asked, wondering whether she’d expected him to call and apologise after their last, heated phone call. As he considered himself entirely blameless in the matter of identifying Flora, the idea hadn’t occurred to him.

‘I assumed it would just be Robin,’ said Prudence, standing back to let them all in. ‘Flora isn’t expecting another man.’

‘Ah,’ said Strike. ‘Right. I could wait in the car?’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Prudence, with a slight awkwardness. ‘You can go in the sitting room.’

‘Thanks,’ said Strike. He caught Robin’s eye, then headed wordlessly through the door to the right. Prudence opened a door on the left.

Like the sitting room, Prudence’s consulting room was tastefully decorated in neutral colours. A few decorative objects, including jade snuff bottles and a Chinese puzzle ball, were arranged on wall shelves. There was a sofa upholstered in cream, a flourishing palm tree in the corner and an antique rug on the floor.

A pale and very heavy woman of around thirty was sitting in a low, black, steel-framed chair. Every item she wore was dark and baggy. Robin noticed the thin white self-harm scars on her neck, and the way she was clutching both cuffs of her long-sleeved top, so as to hold them down over her hands. Her curly hair was arranged to cover as much of her face as possible, though a pair of large, beautiful brown eyes were just visible.

‘Have a seat, Will,’ said Prudence. ‘Anywhere you like.’

After a moment’s indecision, he chose a chair. Robin sat down on the sofa.

‘So: Flora, Will, Will, Flora,’ said Prudence, smiling as she sat down too.

‘Hi,’ said Flora.

‘Hi,’ muttered Will.

When neither of them showed any further inclination for interacting with each other, Prudence said,

‘Flora was in the UHC for five years, Will, and I think you were in for—’

‘Four, yeah.’

Will’s eyes were darting around the room, lingering on some of the objects.

‘How long have you been out?’ he shot suddenly at Flora.

‘Um… eleven years,’ said Flora, peering at Will through her fringe.

Will got up so suddenly, Flora gasped. Pointing at her, Will snarled at Robin,

‘It’s a trap. She’s still working for them.’

‘I’m not!’ exclaimed Flora indignantly.

‘She’s in on it, as well!’ Will said, now pointing at Prudence. ‘This place –’ He looked from the Chinese puzzle ball to the antique rug, ‘it’s just like Zhou’s office!’

‘Will,’ said Robin, getting to her feet, too, ‘why on earth would I have gone undercover at Chapman Farm to get you out, only to lead you straight back to them?’

‘They fooled you! Or, it’s all been a test. You’re an agent of the church too!’

‘You found the plastic rock,’ said Robin calmly. ‘You saw the torch and the traces of my notes. If I were a church agent, why would I have been writing to outsiders? And how would I have known you’d find the rock at all?’

‘I want to go back to Pat’s,’ said Will desperately. ‘I want to go back.’

He was almost at the door when Robin said,

‘Will, your mother’s dead. You know that, don’t you?’

Will turned back, glaring at her, his thin chest rising and falling rapidly. Robin felt she had no choice but to resort to dirty tactics, but it wrung her heart, nonetheless.

‘You looked it up online, didn’t you? Didn’t you?’

Will nodded.

‘You know how much I risked at Chapman Farm, by telling you that. You heard them talking about me after I left, and you found out my real name, and tracked me down to exactly where I should have been, at our office. I’m not lying to you. Flora was a church member, but she got out. Please, just sit down and talk to her for a bit. I’ll drive you back to Pat’s afterwards.’

After almost a full minute of deliberation, Will returned reluctantly to his chair.

‘I know how you feel, Will,’ said Flora unexpectedly, in a timid voice. ‘I do, honestly.’

‘Why are you still alive?’ said Will brutally.

‘I wonder myself, sometimes,’ said Flora with a shaky little laugh.

Robin was starting to fear this meeting was going to do both parties more harm than good. She looked at Prudence for help, and the latter said,

‘Are you wondering why the Drowned Prophet hasn’t come for Flora, Will?’

‘Yes, obviously,’ said Will, refusing to look at Prudence, whose offences of possessing snuff bottles and antique rugs were apparently too severe for him to overlook.

‘The Drowned Prophet kind of did come for me. I’m not supposed to drink on my meds,’ said Flora, with a guilty glance at Prudence, ‘and I’m try not to, but if I do, I start feeling like the prophet’s watching me again, and I can hear her telling me I’m not fit to live. But nowadays I know the voice isn’t real.’

‘How?’ demanded Will.

‘Because she hates all the things I hate about myself,’ said Flora, in a voice barely louder than a whisper. ‘I know it’s me doing it, not her.’

‘How did you get out?’

‘I wasn’t very well.’

‘I don’t believe you. ‘They wouldn’t have let you go just for that. They’d have treated you.’

‘They did treat me, kind of. They made me chant in the temple, and gave me some herbs, and Papa J –’ A look of disgust flickered across Flora’s half-concealed face ‘– but none of it worked. I was seeing things and hearing voices. In the end, they contacted my dad and he came and picked me up.’

‘You’re lying. They wouldn’t do that. They’d never contact a flesh object.’

‘They didn’t know what else to do with me, I don’t think,’ said Flora. ‘My dad was really angry. He said it was all my own fault for running away and causing a load of trouble and not answering letters. Once we got home, he was really pissed off with me chanting and doing the joyful meditation. He thought it was me trying to stay in the religion… he didn’t understand that I couldn’t stop… I could see the Drowned Prophet standing behind doors and sometimes I’d see her reflection in the bathroom mirror, right behind me, and I’d turn around but she’d be gone. I didn’t tell Dad or my stepmum, because the Drowned Prophet told me not to – I mean, I thought she told me not to…’

‘How d’you know it wasn’t the Drowned Prophet?’ said Will.

Robin was starting to feel that this had all been a terrible mistake. She hadn’t dreamed that Will would attempt to re-indoctrinate Flora, and she turned to look at Prudence, hoping she’d shut this conversation down, but Prudence was merely listening with a neutral expression on her face.

‘Because she stopped appearing, after I got treatment, but it was ages before I saw a doctor, because my dad and my stepmum kept saying I had to either reapply to uni or get a job, so I was supposed to be filling out application forms and things, but I couldn’t concentrate… and there were things I couldn’t tell them…

‘I had a baby there and she died. She was born dead. The cord was wrapped around her neck.’

‘Oh God,’ said Robin, unable to contain herself. She was back in the dormitory, blood everywhere, helping to deliver Wan’s breech baby.

‘They punished me for it,’ said Flora with a little sob. ‘They said it was my fault. They said I killed the baby, by being bad. I couldn’t tell Dad and my stepmum things like that. I never told anyone about the baby at all, until I started seeing Prudence. For a long time, I didn’t know if I’d really had a baby or not… but later… much later… I went to a doctor for an examination. And I said to her, “Have I given birth?” And she thought it was a very weird question, obviously, but she said yes. She could tell. By feeling.’

Flora swallowed, then continued,

‘I spoke to a journalist after I left, but I didn’t tell him about the baby, either. I knew the Drowned Prophet might kill me if I talked to him, but I was desperate and I wanted people to know how bad the church was. I thought, maybe if Dad and my stepmum read my interview in the papers, they’d understand better what I’d been through, and forgive me. So I met the journalist and told him some things, and that night the Drowned Prophet came, and she was floating outside my window, and she told me to kill myself, because I’d betrayed everyone in the church. So I called the journalist and told him she’d come for me, and to write the story, and then I slit my wrists in the bathroom.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Robin, but Flora gave no sign she’d heard her.

‘Then my dad broke down the bathroom door and I got taken to hospital and they diagnosed psychosis and I got admitted to a mental ward. I was in there for ages, and they gave me tons of meds and I had to see the psychiatrist, like, five times a week, but in the end I stopped seeing the Drowned Prophet.

‘After I got out of hospital, I went to New Zealand. My aunt and uncle are in business, in Wellington. They sort of made up a job for me…’

Flora’s voice trailed away.

‘And you never saw the prophet again?’ said Will.

Angry at him for maintaining his inquisitorial tone after everything Flora had just told them, Robin muttered ‘Will!’ but Flora answered.

‘No, I did. I mean, it wasn’t really her – it was my fault. I was smoking a lot of weed in New Zealand and it all started up again. I ended up in another psychiatric hospital for months, and after that my aunt and uncle put me back on a plane to London. They’d had enough of me. They didn’t want the responsibility.

‘But I’ve never seen her again, since New Zealand,’ said Flora. ‘Except, like I say, sometimes if I drink I think I can hear her again… but I know she’s not real.’

‘If you really thought she wasn’t real, you’d have been to the police.’

‘Will—’ said Robin, and was ignored.

‘I know she’s real, and she’s going to come for me,’ Will continued, with a kind of desperate bravado, ‘but I’m still going to turn myself in. So either you do believe in her, and you’re scared, or you don’t want the church exposed.’

‘I do want them exposed,’ said Flora vehemently. ‘That’s why I spoke to the journalist and why I said I’d meet you. You don’t understand,’ she said, starting to sob. ‘I feel guilty all the time. I know I’m a coward, but I’m afraid—’

‘Of the Drowned Prophet,’ said Will triumphantly. ‘There you are. You know she’s real.’

‘There are more things to be frightened of than the Drowned Prophet!’ said Flora shrilly.

‘What – like jail?’ said Will dismissively. ‘I know I’m going to jail, if she doesn’t kill me first. I don’t care, it’s the right thing to do.’

‘Will, I’ve already told you this: there’s no need for either of you to go to jail,’ said Robin. Turning to Flora, she said, ‘We believe immunity from prosecution could be arranged if you were prepared to testify against the church, Flora. Everything you’ve just described shows clearly how traumatised you were by what happened to you at Chapman Farm. You had good and valid reasons for not speaking.’

‘I tried to tell people,’ said Flora desperately. ‘I told my psychiatrists the worst thing and they said it was part of my psychosis, that I was imagining it, that it was all part of my hallucinations of the prophet. It’s so long ago, now… everyone will blame me, like him,’ she added hopelessly, jabbing a finger at Will. Now that she wasn’t holding her cuff over her hand, Robin glimpsed the ugly scars on her wrist where she’d tried to end her life.

‘What things did you tell your psychiatrists?’ said Will implacably. ‘The Divine Secrets?’

Robin now remembered Shawna talking about Divine Secrets. She’d never found out what they were.

‘No,’ admitted Flora.

‘So you weren’t really telling them anything,’ said Will scornfully. ‘If you were convinced there’s no Drowned Prophet, you’d have talked about all that.’

‘I told them the worst thing!’ said Flora wildly. ‘And when they didn’t believe that, I knew there’d be no point talking about the Divine Secrets!’

Robin could tell by the look on Prudence’s face that she didn’t know what these secrets were, either.

‘You don’t know everything I saw,’ Flora said to Will, and there was a trace of anger in her voice now. ‘You weren’t there. I drew it,’ she said, turning to Robin, ‘because there were other witnesses, too, and I thought, if any of them had left, they might see the picture and contact me. Then I’d know for sure it was real, but all I got—’

‘Was my partner,’ said Robin.

‘Yes,’ said Flora, ‘and I knew from the way he wrote he’d never been in the UHC. You wouldn’t talk like that, if you had. “You really don’t like the UHC, do you?” You wouldn’t be that… casual. Then I thought it might be someone from Deirdre’s family, trying to goad me, and I felt… so guilty… so scared, I deleted my account.’

‘Who’s Deirdre?’ said Will.

‘Lin’s mother,’ said Robin.

For the first time, Will looked taken aback.

‘Flora,’ Robin said, ‘can I tell you what I think you saw?’

Slowly and carefully, Robin described the scene in the temple she believed had taken place during the Manifestation of the Drowned Prophet, in which Deirdre had been taken out of the pool, dead. When she’d finished speaking, Flora, whose breathing was shallow and whose face was very white, whispered,

‘How do you know that?’

‘I worked it out,’ said Robin. ‘I was there for one of the Manifestations. They nearly drowned me. But how did they explain what had happened? How did they get away with telling everyone Deirdre had left?’

‘When they took her out of the pool,’ said Flora haltingly, ‘it was still very dark. Dr Zhou bent over her and said, “She’s all right, she’s breathing.” Papa J told everyone to leave, the younger ones first. As we were filing out, Papa J was pretending to talk to Deirdre, acting as if they were having a conversation, as though her voice was very quiet but he could hear it.

‘But I knew she was dead,’ said Flora. ‘I was close to the stage. I saw her face when they pulled her out of the pool. There was foam on her lips. Her eyes were open. I knew. But you had to believe what Papa J and Mazu said. You had to. Next day, they gathered us together and said Deirdre had been expelled, and everyone just – they just accepted it. I heard people saying “Of course they had to expel her, if she’d displeased the prophet like that.”

‘I remember this boy called Kevin. It should have been his first Manifestation, but he was being punished, so he wasn’t allowed to attend. He asked a lot of questions about what Deirdre had done to be expelled, and I remember Becca – she was a teenager, one of Papa J’s spirit wives – hitting him round the head and telling him to shut up about Deirdre… Becca was the one who made me… who made me…’

‘What did Becca make you do?’ Robin asked.

When Flora shook her head, looking down into her lap, Robin said,

‘Becca made me do things, too. She also tried to get me into terrible trouble, hiding something stolen under my bed. I think she’s nearly as scary as the Waces, personally.’

Flora looked up at Robin for the first time.

‘Me too,’ she whispered.

‘What did she make you do? Something that might make you complicit in an awful situation? They did the same thing to me, sent me to look after a dying boy. I knew that if he died while I was with him, they’d blame me.’

‘That’s worse,’ said Flora faintly, and Robin was touched to see genuine sympathy for her on Flora’s face. ‘That’s worse than mine… they did do it to make me complicit, I’ve often thought that… Becca made me type letters from Deirdre, to her family. I had to make them up myself. I had to write that I’d left the farm but I wanted a new life, away from my husband and children… so obviously Deirdre was dead,’ said Flora in frustration, ‘but Becca looked me in the eye and told me she was alive, and she’d been expelled, even while she was making me write those letters!’

‘I think that’s a big part of what they do,’ said Robin. ‘They force you to agree black’s white and up’s down. It’s part of the way they control you.’

‘But that’s fraud, isn’t it?’ said Flora desperately. ‘They made me part of the cover-up!’

‘You were being coerced,’ said Robin. ‘I’m certain you’d get immunity, Flora.’

‘Is Becca still there?’

‘Yes,’ said Robin and Will together. The latter wore an odd, arrested expression now; he’d followed the story of the fake letters closely.

‘Has Becca ever increased?’ asked Flora.

‘No,’ said Will.

Now, for the first time, he volunteered information rather than demanding it.

‘Papa J doesn’t want to, because he thinks her bloodline’s tainted.’

‘That’s not why he won’t let her have a baby,’ said Flora quietly.

‘Why, then?’

‘He wants to keep her a virgin,’ said Flora. ‘That’s why Mazu doesn’t hate on her, like she does with all the other spirit wives.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ said Will, very surprised.

‘All the spirit wives know,’ said Flora. ‘I was one of them,’ she added.

‘Really?’ said Robin.

‘Yes,’ said Flora. ‘It started as the Loving Cure, and he liked it so much he made me a spirit wife. He likes… he likes it when you don’t like it.’

Robin’s thoughts flew immediately to Deirdre Doherty, the prim woman who’d wished to remain faithful to her husband, and whose last pregnancy, she believed, was the result of Wace’s rape.

‘Mazu sometimes joined in,’ said Flora, in a near whisper. ‘She’d… sometimes, she’d help hold me down, or… sometimes he likes to watch her do stuff to you…’

‘Oh God,’ said Robin. ‘Flora… I’m so sorry.’

Will now looked both scared and disturbed. Twice, he opened his mouth to speak, changed his mind, then blurted out,

‘How d’you explain the things the prophet does at Chapman Farm, if she’s not real, though?’

‘Like, what kind of things?’ said Flora.

‘The Manifestations.’

‘You mean, like, in the pool and in the woods?’

‘I know they use little girls, dressed up like her, in the woods, I’m not stupid,’ said Will. ‘But that doesn’t mean they don’t become her, when they’re doing it.’

‘What do you mean by that, Will?’ asked Prudence.

‘Well, it’s like transubstantiation, isn’t it?’ said Will. He might have been back on the vegetable patch again, lecturing Robin on church doctrine. ‘The wafer they give you in communion isn’t really the body of Christ, but it is. Same thing. And that dummy thing they make rise up out of the baptismal pool, it’s just symbolic. It’s not her, but it is her.’

‘Is that one of the Higher-Level Truths?’ Robin asked. ‘That the little girls dressed up like Daiyu, and the dummy without eyes, are Daiyu?’

‘Don’t call her Daiyu,’ said Will angrily. ‘It’s disrespectful. And no,’ he added, ‘I worked that stuff out for myself.’

He seemed to feel he needed to justify himself, because he said forcefully,

‘Look, I know a lot of it’s bullshit. I saw the hypocrisy, how Papa J gets to do stuff nobody else is allowed to – he can marry, and he gets to keep his kids and his grandkids because his bloodline’s special, and everyone else has got to make the Living Sacrifice, and the alcohol in the farmhouse, and the smarming around celebrities even though that’s all supposed to be bullshit – I know Papa J’s not a messiah, and that they do really bad things at that farm, but you can’t say they haven’t got something right, because you’ve seen it,’ he said to Flora, ‘and you have too!’ he added to Robin. ‘The spirit world’s real!’

There was a short silence, broken by Prudence.

‘Why d’you think nobody in the church ever admits they dress up little girls at night, and use a dummy to rise up out of the baptismal pool, Will? Because a lot of people believe they’re literally seeing something supernatural, don’t they?’

‘Some of them might,’ said Will defensively, ‘but not all of them. Anyway, the Drowned Prophet does come back for real. She materialises out of thin air!’

‘But if the other things are a trick…’ suggested Flora.

‘That doesn’t follow. Yeah, OK, sometimes they’re just showing us representations of the prophet, but other times, she genuinely comes… it’s like, in churches, having a model of Jesus on the wall. Nobody’s pretending it’s literally him. But when the Drowned Prophet appears as a spirit, and moves around and everything – there’s no other explanation for it. There’s no projector, and she’s not a puppet – it’s her, it’s really her.’

‘Are you talking about when she manifests like a ghost, in the basement room?’ asked Robin.

‘Not just in the basement,’ said Will. ‘She does it in the temple, too.’

‘Is the audience always sitting in the dark when that happens?’ asked Robin. ‘And do they sometimes make you clear the room before she appears? They made us leave the basement for a while before we saw her manifest. Is the audience always in front of her when she manifests, not sitting round the stage?’

‘Yeah, it was always like that,’ said Flora, when Will didn’t answer. ‘Why?’

‘Because I might be able to explain how they do it,’ said Robin. ‘A man I work with suggested it could be an old illusion called Pepper’s ghost. I looked it up. You need a glass screen, which is at an angle to the audience, and a hidden side room. Then a figure in the side room is slightly illuminated, and the lights on stage go down, and the audience sees the reflection of the supposed ghost in the glass, and it’s transparent and looks as though it’s onstage.’

Silence followed these words. Then, startling everyone in the room, Flora said loudly,

‘Oh my God.’

The other three looked at her. Flora was gazing through her hair at Robin in what appeared to be awe.

‘That’s it. That’s how they do it. Oh. My. God.’

Flora began to laugh.

‘I can’t believe it!’ she said breathlessly. ‘I’ve never been able to work that one out, it’s always been the one that made me doubt… a reflection on glass – that’s it, that makes total sense! They only ever did it where there was a side room. And if we were in temple, we all had to sit face-on to the stage.’

‘I think,’ said Robin, ‘the temple at Chapman Farm was designed like a theatre. That upper balcony where members never sit, those recesses… I think it’s been constructed to enable large-scale illusions.’

‘You can’t be sure of that,’ said Will, who now appeared deeply uneasy.

‘The Drowned Prophet isn’t real,’ Flora told Will. ‘She’s not.’

‘If you honestly believed that,’ said Will, with a trace of his former anger, ‘if you genuinely believed it, you’d reveal the Divine Secrets.’

‘You mean, the Dragon Meadow? The Living Sacrifice? The Loving Cure?’

Will glanced nervously towards the window, as though he expected the eyeless Daiyu to be floating there.

‘If I speak about them now, and I don’t die, will you believe she’s not real?’ said Flora.

Flora had shaken the hair out of her face now. She was revealed as a beautiful woman. Will didn’t answer her question. He looked frightened.

‘The Dragon Meadow is the place they bury all the bodies,’ said Flora in a clear voice. ‘It’s that field the horses are always ploughing.’

Will emitted a little gasp of shock, but Flora kept talking.

118

In danger all that counts is really carrying out all that has to be done…

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Strike had been waiting in Prudence’s sitting room for nearly three hours. Shortly after Prudence, Robin and Will had disappeared into the consulting room, he’d heard raised voices from behind the closed door, but since then there’d been no indication of what was happening in the meeting from which he’d been excluded. Prudence’s husband seemed to be out for the evening. Both teenage children had made brief appearances, en route to the kitchen where they’d got themselves snacks, and Strike had wondered, while listening to them opening and closing the fridge, how odd they found the sudden presence of this hulking new uncle on the family tree and thought it possible they hadn’t thought much about it. Happy families, he thought, didn’t seem to brood on the significance and power of blood ties; it was only voluntarily fatherless mongrels like him who found it strange to see a faint trace of himself in people who were almost strangers.

In any case, whatever his half-niece and nephew’s feelings about him, neither had offered Strike anything to eat. He didn’t take it personally; as far as he could remember, offering food to adults he barely knew wouldn’t have figured high on his list of priorities at their age, either. Half an hour previously, he’d sneaked into the kitchen and, not wanting to be accused of taking liberties, helped himself to a few biscuits. Now, still extremely hungry, he was thinking of suggesting to Robin that they stop off at a drive-in McDonald’s on the way back to Pat’s when his mobile buzzed. Happy to have something to do, Strike reached for it and saw Midge’s number.

Tash just texted me. She hasn’t found the note. The robe was taken away before she got back to the massage place. Nobody’s asked her about tapping on the window. What do you want her to do?

Strike texted back:

Nothing. Police now know Lin’s being held against her will there. Just cover the exit, in case they move her.

He’d barely finished typing when the door of Prudence’s consulting room opened. His sister left the room first. Then came Will, who looked slightly shell-shocked.

‘Is it all right,’ he muttered to Prudence, ‘if I use your bathroom?’

‘Of course,’ said Prudence. ‘Down the hall, second left.’

Will disappeared. Now a large, curly haired woman dressed all in black emerged from the room, followed by Robin. Prudence had gone to open the front door, but Flora turned to Robin and said shyly,

‘Can I hug you?’

‘Of course,’ said Robin, opening her arms.

Strike watched the two women embrace. Robin muttered something in Flora’s ear, and the latter nodded, before casting a nervous look in Strike’s direction and moving out of sight.

Robin immediately entered the sitting room and said, in a rapid whisper,

‘Loads – loads of information. The Loving Cure – Papa J screws gay and mentally ill women, to cure them. The Dragon Meadow: they bury people who’ve died at Chapman Farm in the ploughed field, and Flora’s certain the deaths aren’t registered. But the big one’s the Living Sacrifice. It—’

Will entered the sitting room, still looking vaguely disorientated.

‘All right?’ said Strike.

‘Yeah,’ said Will.

They heard the front door close. Prudence now entered the room.

‘Sorry that went on so long,’ she said to Strike. ‘Did Sylvie or Gerry get you something to eat?’

‘Er – no, but it’s fine,’ said Strike.

‘Then let me—’

‘Really, it’s fine,’ said Strike, who’d now mentally committed to a burger and chips. ‘We need to get Will back to Qing.’

‘Oh, yes, of course,’ said Prudence. She looked up at Will.

‘If you ever want to talk to someone, Will, I wouldn’t charge you. Think about it, OK? Or I can recommend another therapist. And do read the books I lent Robin.’

‘Thanks,’ said Will. ‘Yeah. I will.’

Prudence now turned to Robin.

‘That was a massive breakthrough for Flora. I’ve never seen her like that before.’

‘I’m glad,’ said Robin, ‘I really am.’

‘And I think, you sharing your own experience – that was crucial.’

‘Well, there’s no rush,’ said Robin. ‘She can think over what she wants to do next, but I meant what I said. I’d be with her every step of the way. Anyway, thanks so much for arranging this, Prudence, it was really helpful. We should probably—’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, whose stomach was loudly rumbling.

Strike, Robin and Will walked in silence back to the car.

‘You hungry?’ Strike asked Will, very much hoping the answer was yes. Will nodded.

‘Great,’ said Strike, ‘we’ll swing by a McDonald’s.’

‘What about Cedar Terrace?’ said Robin, turning on the engine. ‘Are we going to check whether Rosie Fernsby’s there?’

‘Might as well,’ said Strike. ‘Not a big detour, is it? But if we see a McDonald’s, we’ll do that first.’

‘Fine,’ said Robin, amused.

‘Aren’t you hungry?’ said Strike, as they pulled away.

‘I think I got used to less food at Chapman Farm,’ said Robin. ‘I’m acclimatised.’

Strike, who very much wanted to hear Robin’s new information, gathered from her silence that she considered it inadvisable to dredge up everything that had happened in the consulting room with Will present. The latter looked exhausted and troubled.

‘Have you heard from Midge?’ Robin asked.

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, ‘nothing new.’

Robin’s heart sank. She could tell from Strike’s tone that ‘nothing new’ meant ‘nothing good’, but in deference to Will’s feelings, she forwent further questions.

They crossed Twickenham Bridge with its bronze lamps and balustrades, the Thames glinting, gunmetal grey, below, and Strike wound down the window to vape. As he did so, he glanced in the wing mirror. A blue Ford Focus was following them. He watched it for a few seconds, then said,

‘There’s—’

‘A car following us, with dodgy number plates,’ said Robin. ‘I know.’

She’d just spotted it. The plates were fake and illegal, the kind that could be ordered easily online. The car had been moving steadily closer since they’d moved into Richmond.

‘Shit,’ said Robin, ‘I think I saw it on the way to Prudence’s, but it was hanging back. Shit,’ she added, looking into the rear-view mirror, ‘is the driver—?’

‘Wearing a balaclava, yeah,’ said Strike. ‘But I don’t think it’s the Franks.’

Both remembered Strike’s bullish assertion earlier that they’d stop and confront anyone who seemed to be tailing them. Each, watching the car, knew this would be exceptionally unwise.

‘Will,’ said Robin, ‘duck down, please, right down. And hold on – you too,’ she told Strike.

Without indicating, Robin accelerated and took a hard right. The Ford’s driver was caught off guard; they swerved into the middle of the road, almost colliding with oncoming traffic as Robin sped off, first through a car park, then down a narrow residential road.

‘The fuck did you know you’d be able to get out the other side of the car park?’ said Strike, who was holding on as best he could. Robin was twenty miles over the speed limit.

‘Been here before,’ said Robin, who, again failing to indicate, now turned left onto a wider road. ‘I was following that cheating accountant. Where are they?’

‘Catching up,’ said Strike, turning to look. ‘Just hit two parked cars.’

Robin slammed her foot on the accelerator. Two pedestrians crossing the road had to sprint to get out of her way.

‘Shit,’ she shouted again, as it became clear that they were about to rejoin the A316, going back the way they’d come.

‘Doesn’t matter, just go—’

Robin took the corner at such speed she narrowly missed the central barrier.

‘Will,’ she said, ‘keep down, for God’s sake, I—’

The rear window and windscreen shattered. The bullet had passed so close to Strike’s head he’d felt its heat: with blank whiteness where there’d been glass, Robin was driving blind.

‘Punch it out!’ she shouted at Strike, who took off his seat belt to oblige. A second loud bang: they heard the bullet hit the boot. Strike was thumping broken glass out of the windscreen to give Robin visibility; fragments showered down upon both of them.

A third shot: this time wide.

‘Hold on!’ Robin said again, and she skidded around the turn into the other lane, making it by inches, causing Strike to smash his face into the intact side window.

‘Sorry, sorry—’

‘Fuck that, GO!’

The passing bullet had flooded Strike’s brain with white-hot panic; he had the irrational conviction that the car was about to explode. Craning around in his seat, he saw the Ford hit the barrier at speed.

‘That’s fucked them – no – shit—’

The crash hadn’t been disabling. The Ford was reversing, trying to make the turn.

‘Go, GO!’

As Robin slammed her foot to the floor, she saw a flashing blue light on the other side of the road.

‘Where’s the Ford? Where’s the Ford?’

‘Can’t see—’

‘What are you going that way for?’ Robin yelled at the passing police car, which was going in the opposite direction. ‘Hold on—’

She steered a hard left at speed into another narrow street.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Strike, whose face had hit what remained of the windscreen, and who couldn’t believe she’d made the turn.

‘And again!’ said Robin, the BMW tipping slightly as she took a right.

‘They’ve gone,’ said Strike, looking at the wing mirror and as he wiped away the blood trickling down his face. ‘Slow down – you’ve lost them… fuck.’

Robin decelerated. She turned another corner, then steered into a parking space and braked, her hands gripping the wheel so tightly she had to make a conscious effort to let go. They could hear sirens in the distance.

‘You all right, Will?’ asked Strike, looking back at the young man now lying in the dark footwell, covered in glass.

‘Yeah,’ said Will faintly.

A group of young men were walking up the dark street towards them.

‘You’ve got a crack in your windscreen, love,’ said one of them, to hearty guffaws from his mates.

‘You all right?’ Strike asked Robin.

‘Better than you,’ she answered, looking at the cut on his face.

‘Windscreen, not bullet,’ said Strike, drawing out his mobile and keying in 999.

‘D’you think they got him?’ Robin asked, looking over her shoulder in the direction of the sirens.

‘We’ll find out soon enough. Police,’ he told the operator.

119

Nine in the fifth place means:

Resolute conduct.

Perseverance with awareness of danger.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

‘This is the fifth time we’ve spoken to the police about the UHC and suspicious activity around our office,’ said Strike. ‘I appreciate that you don’t have all that information immediately to hand, I know I’m giving you a lot of back story you might think is irrelevant, but I’m not going to lie: I’d appreciate it if you stopped looking at me like I’m a fucking idiot.’

It was two o’clock in the morning. It had taken an hour for Strike’s heart rate to slow to an appropriate rate for a stationary forty-one-year-old male. He was still sitting in the small police interview room he’d been taken to upon arrival at the local station. Having been asked whether he knew why someone might want to shoot him, Strike had given a full account of the agency’s current investigation into the UHC, advised his interrogator to look up Kevin Pirbright’s murder, explained that a gun-toting intruder had tried to break into their office a week previously and informed the officer this was the second time he and Robin had been tailed in a car in the last couple of weeks.

The sheer scale of Strike’s story seemed to aggravate PC Bowers, a long-necked man with an adenoidal voice. As Bowers became more openly sceptical and incredulous (‘A church has got it in for you?’) Strike had been provoked into open irritability. Aside from everything else, he was now exceptionally hungry. A request for food had led to the production of three plain biscuits and a cup of milky tea, and given that he was the victim of the shooting rather than a suspect, Strike felt he was owed a little more consideration.

Robin, meanwhile, was dealing with a different kind of problem. She’d finished giving her statement to a perfectly friendly and competent female officer, but had declined a lift home, instead insisting that Will be driven back to Pat’s. Having seen Will into the police car, Robin returned to the waiting room and, with a sense of dread but knowing she had no choice, called Murphy to tell him what had happened.

His reaction to her news was, understandably, one of alarm and well-justified concern. Even so, Robin had to bite back angry retorts to what she considered Murphy’s statements of the obvious: that extra security measures would now be necessary and that the police would need every scrap of information Strike and Robin could provide them about the UHC. Unknowingly echoing Strike, Robin said,

‘This is literally the fifth time we’ve spoken to police about the church. We haven’t been hiding anything.’

‘No, I know, I get that, but bloody hell, Robin – wish I could come and pick you up. I’m stuck with this bloody stabbing in Southall.’

‘I’m fine,’ said Robin, ‘there isn’t a mark on me. I’ll call an Uber.’

‘Don’t call an Uber, for Christ’s sake, let one of the cops take you home. Can’t believe they haven’t nicked the shooter.’

‘Maybe they have, by now.’

‘It shouldn’t be taking them this bloody long!’

‘They radioed ahead to a couple of cars to try and cut him off, but I don’t know what happened – either they didn’t get there in time, or he knew a detour.’

‘They’ll must have him on camera, though. A316, bound to have.’

‘Yes,’ said Robin. She felt slightly jittery, perhaps a result of coffee on an empty stomach. ‘Listen, Ryan, I’ll have to go.’

‘Yeah, OK. I’m bloody glad you’re safe. Love you.’

‘I love you too,’ murmured Robin, because she’d just seen movement out of the corner of her eye, and sure enough, as she hung up, Strike emerged at last from his interview room, looking extremely grumpy.

‘You’re still here,’ said Strike, cheering up at the sight of her. ‘Thought you might’ve gone. Aren’t you knackered?’

‘No,’ said Robin, ‘I feel… wired.’

‘Getting shot at has that effect on me, too,’ said Strike. ‘What would you say to going and getting that McDonald’s?’

‘Sounds fantastic,’ said Robin, slipping her mobile back into her pocket.

120

If we are not on guard, evil will succeed in escaping by means of concealment, and when it has eluded us new misfortunes will develop from the remaining seeds, for evil does not die easily.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Forty minutes later, Strike and Robin got out of their Uber outside a twenty-four-hour McDonald’s on the Strand.

‘I’m having everything,’ said Strike, as they headed to the counter. ‘You?’

‘Um – Big Mac and—’

‘Oh, shit, what now?’ growled Strike, as his mobile rang. Answering, he heard Midge’s voice and a car engine.

‘I think they’re moving Lin. Tasha saw two men going into the office this afternoon. They were shown into the annexe, came out, left again. She didn’t realise at the time they were police, because they were plainclothes – they drove in right past me, I should’ve realised they were cops, but honestly, they were both that well groomed, I thought they might be a gay couple having a getaway. I’ve been living in this car for the last three days and I’m knackered,’ she added defensively.

‘I know the feeling,’ said Strike, watching Robin order.

‘Next thing, Tasha’s called in to see Zhou. “You appear to have lost this, I hope it’s not important.” They’d found the note in the pocket of her robes. She acted innocent, obviously—’

‘Fuck’s sake, what’s happening now?’

‘I’m trying to tell you! Tasha thought she’d better clear out before she gets locked in an annexe too—’

‘I’m not interested in Tasha!’

‘Charming,’ said the actress’s voice in the background.

‘Oh, for—’ said Strike, closing his eyes and running a hand over his face.

‘A plain van came out the front gates of the clinic ten minutes ago. We’re sure Lin’s in there. Three a.m.’s a bloody funny time to be driving vans around. Did I wake you up, by the way?’

‘No,’ said Strike, ‘listen—’

‘So we’re tailing—’

‘BLOODY LISTEN!’

Robin, the McDonald’s servers and the other customers all turned to stare. Strike marched out of the restaurant. Once on the pavement he said,

‘I’m awake because my car just got shot up, with Robin and me in it—’

‘Wh—?’

‘—and my information is the church has got guns, plural. This hour of the morning, it’ll be obvious you’re following that van. Give it up.’

‘But—’

‘You don’t know Lin’s in there. It’s too big a risk. You’ve got a civilian with you – a civilian they know knows too much. Get the number plate, then go home.’

‘But—’

‘Do – not – fucking – argue – with – me,’ said Strike in a dangerous voice. ‘I’ve told you what I want. Fucking do it.’

Seething, he turned back, only to see Robin carrying two large bags of food.

‘Let’s have it in the office,’ she suggested, keen not to draw any more attention to themselves inside the restaurant. ‘It’s only ten minutes up the road. Then we can talk properly.’

‘Fine,’ said Strike irritably, ‘but give me a burger first.’

So they walked through the dark streets towards Denmark Street, Strike telling Robin what Midge had just said between large mouthfuls of burger. He’d already started on a bag of fries before they reached the familiar black door, with its skeleton-key-proof new lock. Once upstairs, Robin unpacked the rest of the food at the partners’ desk. She still felt wide awake.

Strike, who’d soon devoured three burgers and two bags of fries, now started on an apple pie. Like Robin, he felt no desire whatsoever for sleep. The immediate past seemed to compress and extend in his mind: at one moment, the shooting felt as though it had happened a week previously, the next, as though he’d only just felt the heat of the bullet searing his cheek and watched the windscreen shatter.

‘What are you looking at?’ he asked Robin, noticing her slightly glass-eyed stare at the board on the wall behind him.

She seemed to withdraw her attention from a long way away.

‘I didn’t tell you what the third Divine Secret is, did I? The “Living Sacrifice”?’

‘No,’ said Strike.

‘The UHC are child trafficking.’

Strike’s jaws stopped moving.

‘What?’

‘Superfluous babies, mostly boys, are taken to the Birmingham centre where they’re warehoused until they’re sold. It’s an illegal adoption service: babies for cash. Most of them go to America. Your friend Joe Jackson is in charge, apparently. From what Flora said, hundreds of babies must have passed out of the UHC by now.’

‘Holy—’

‘I should’ve realised there was something up, given how much unprotected sex they’re having at Chapman Farm, because there are relatively few kids there, and nearly all of them looked as though they’d been fathered by Jonathan or Taio. Wace keeps his own bloodline and, of course, enough non-related girls to keep providing the church with future generations.’

Momentarily lost for words, Strike swallowed his apple pie and reached for the beer he’d got out of the office fridge.

‘Will knew, because of Lin,’ Robin said. ‘When she got pregnant she was terrified Qing would be sent to Birmingham. Neither of them could understand why she was allowed to stay, so I have to assume Lin doesn’t realise Wace is her father… Strike, I’m really worried about Lin.’

‘Me too,’ said Strike, ‘but Midge couldn’t tail that bloody van through the night, and definitely not with her girlfriend coming along for the jolly.’

‘That’s not fair,’ said Robin. ‘You used to – I mean, obviously, I wasn’t your girlfriend, but you let me do stuff in the early days when, technically, I was your temp. Tasha’s worried about Lin too.’

‘Investigation isn’t a bloody team sport. So is it an open secret, this baby trade?’

‘I don’t know. Flora only found out when she was pregnant. One of the other women told her her baby was going to be sold for lots of cash for the glorious mission, but the baby died at birth. Flora was punished for that,’ said Robin.

‘Shit,’ said Strike.

Whether or not Robin had intended her information to have that effect, Strike now felt guilty that he’d judged Flora Brewster so harshly.

‘Robin, this is fucking massive, and you did it.’

‘Except,’ said Robin, who didn’t sound particularly pleased, ‘it’s still hearsay, isn’t it? Flora, Will and Lin have never been to the Birmingham centre. We haven’t got a shred of concrete proof of the trafficking.’

‘Emily Pirbright was relocated from Birmingham, right?’

‘Yes, but given that she hasn’t been allowed to leave Chapman Farm since I escaped, we might be waiting a long time for her testimony.’

‘Abigail Glover was sent to Birmingham after Daiyu died, as well, but she never said a word about a glut of babies being kept there.’

‘If Abigail wasn’t ever pregnant, she probably thought all the kids belonged to people living at the Birmingham centre. Women seem to find out about it only once they’re expecting… we’ve got to get police in there,’ said Robin, ‘and not when the church is expecting it.’

‘Agreed,’ said Strike, now taking out his notebook. ‘Fuck it, we’ve got the contacts, it’s time to stop being so bloody polite. I say we try and get them all together, Wardle, Layborn, Ekwensi – Murphy,’ he added, after a slight hesitation – needs must, he supposed – ‘and lay it all on the line, preferably with Will and Flora present. D’you think they’d talk?’

‘I’m ninety per cent certain Flora would, after tonight. Will… I think he’s still determined only to speak to the police once Lin’s out.’

‘Maybe bullets sailing a foot over his head will have sharpened his ideas up,’ said Strike. ‘I’ll make those calls tomorrow… later today, I mean.’

Strike ate a solitary cold chip lingering at the bottom of a greasy bag. Robin was again looking at the board on the wall. Her eyes travelled from the photo of rabbity-faced Daiyu to Flora Brewster’s drawing of the girl without eyes; from the mugshot of twenty-something Carrie Curtis Woods to Jennifer Wace, with her eighties perm; from the pig-mask Polaroids to Paul Draper’s timid moon face, and lastly to the note to himself Strike had written, which read, JOGGER ON THE BEACH?

‘Strike,’ said Robin, ‘what the hell’s going on?’

121

Six in the third place means:

Whoever hunts deer without the forester

Only loses his way in the forest.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

‘Enough to bring down the UHC, if we’re lucky,’ said Strike.

‘No, I mean the things that have been happening since I got out. Why are they simultaneously so slick, so hard to catch in the act, but also so incompetent?’

‘Go on,’ said Strike, because she was articulating something he himself had been wondering about.

‘That couple in the red Corsa: were they genuinely tailing us? If so, they were lousy at it, whereas the Ford Focus – I know I messed up, not spotting them sooner—’

‘No, whoever was driving that car was very good, and they also came bloody close to killing one or both of us.’

‘Right, and whoever tried to break in here with the gun looked pretty efficient, and whoever murdered Kevin Pirbright has got clean away with it—’

‘Whereas our green-eyed friend couldn’t have been more obvious unless he’d held up a placard saying, “I am watching you”.’

‘And then you’ve got Reaney and Carrie, scared into suicide without even being face to face with the person… don’t you feel as though we’ve got two different sets of people after us, one of them kind of a clown show, and the other lot really dangerous?’

‘Personally,’ said Strike, ‘I think we’ve got someone after us who can’t be picky about their underlings. They have to go with what they’ve got at any given time.’

‘But that doesn’t fit Jonathan Wace. He’s got thousands of people who’re absolutely devoted to him at his disposal, and whatever else you might say about him, he’s got a real talent for putting people where they’re most useful. He’s never had a high-level defector.’

‘There’s that,’ said Strike, ‘and also the fact he’d have the ability to keep us under twenty-four-hour surveillance without ever repeating a face, whereas whoever’s behind this seems to be watching us and following us at what seem fairly random times. I get the sense that they’re only doing it when they can.

‘You know,’ said Strike, reaching for his beer, ‘Wace absolutely denied he was following or watching us when I met him at Olympia. He would, of course, but I s’pose there’s an outside chance he was telling the truth.’

‘What if,’ said Robin, thinking the thing out as she spoke, ‘someone in the church is scared we’ve found out something Wace never knew about? Something he’d be really angry about?’

Both of them now looked up at the noticeboard.

‘Going by who they’re trying to stop us talking to, it’s those Polaroids,’ said Strike, ‘because I doubt it’s escaped your notice that the bullets only started hitting us once it looked as though we were heading for Cedar Terrace and, I strongly suspect, Rosie Fernsby. They didn’t give a damn about Will, or they’d have tried to stop us earlier. It’s possible they’re banking on the fact he won’t talk while they’ve still got Lin, in case she’s the one who pays for it… in point of fact, she’s something of a trump card for the church, isn’t she? It’s in their best interests to keep her alive…

‘No,’ said Strike, reaching for his notebook and pen again, ‘I still think Rosie Fernsby’s the one in real danger. Someone’s got to go to Cedar Terrace and warn her, if she’s there.’

He made a note to this effect and set his pen down again.

Robin shivered. It was now approaching four in the morning, and while her brain was far too overwrought for sleep, her body felt differently. She was too busy staring at the picture of Daiyu on the noticeboard to register Strike taking off his jacket until he passed it to her.

‘Oh… are you sure?’

‘I’ve got about five stone of extra padding, compared to you.’

‘Don’t exaggerate,’ muttered Robin. ‘Thank you.’

She pulled the jacket on: it was comfortingly warm.

‘How did Wace react when you mentioned the pig-mask Polaroids?’

‘Incredulity, disbelief… exactly what you’d expect.’

Both sat in thought for a while, still gazing up at the board.

‘Strike, I don’t see why anyone would risk shooting us, purely because of those pictures,’ said Robin, breaking a lengthy silence. ‘They’re horrible, and they’d definitely get tabloid coverage, but honestly, compared with what the church could be facing if we can get Will and Flora and maybe others to testify, those pictures would surely pale into – not insignificance, but they’d be just one more sordid detail. Plus, there’s nothing in the pictures to show they were taken at Chapman Farm. It’s deniable.’

‘Not if Rosie Fernsby testifies, it isn’t.’

‘She hasn’t spoken up in twenty-one years. Her face is hidden in the pictures. If she wants to deny it’s her, we’ll never be able to prove it.’

‘So why’s someone so keen to stop us talking to her?’

‘I don’t know, except… I know you don’t like the theory, but she was there, the night before Daiyu died. What if she witnessed something, or heard something, as she was sneaking out of the women’s dormitory to join her father and brother?’

‘How far away from the kids’ dormitory is the women’s?’

‘A fair distance,’ admitted Robin, ‘but what if Daiyu came into the women’s dorm, after leaving the children’s one? Or maybe Rosie looked out of her dormitory window and saw Daiyu heading for the woods, or a Retreat Room?’

‘Then somebody else must have been with Daiyu, to know Rosie had spotted them.’

Another silence followed. Then Robin said,

‘Daiyu was getting food and toys from somewhere…’

‘Yeah, and you know what that smacks of? Grooming.’

‘But Carrie said it wasn’t her.’

‘Do we believe her?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Robin.

Another long pause followed, each of them lost in thought.

‘It would make a damn sight more sense,’ said Strike at last, ‘if the last glimpse anyone ever had of Daiyu was her going out of that window. If you were going to drown a child in the early hours, why help them out of the window first? What if Daiyu didn’t come back?… Or was that the point? Daiyu hides – or is hidden – somewhere after climbing out of the window… and another child gets taken to the beach in her place?’

‘Are you serious?’ said Robin. ‘You’re saying a different child drowned?’

‘What do we know about the journey to the beach?’ said Strike. ‘It’s dark, self-evidently – it must’ve been around this time of night,’ said Strike, glancing out of the window at the navy blue sky. ‘We know there was a kid in the van, because he or she waved as they passed the people on early duty – which, when you think about it, is suspicious in itself. You’d think Daiyu would’ve ducked down until they were safely off the premises if she didn’t have permission for the trip. I also find it fishy that Daiyu was dressed in a distinctive white dress unlike any other at the farm. Then, after they left the farm, the only witness was an elderly woman who saw them from a distance and didn’t know Daiyu from Adam anyway. She wouldn’t have known which kid it was.’

‘But the body,’ said Robin. ‘How could Carrie be sure it wouldn’t wash back up? DNA would prove it wasn’t Daiyu.’

‘They might not bother taking DNA if Daiyu’s loving mother was prepared to identify the corpse as her daughter,’ said Strike.

‘So Mazu’s in on the switch? And nobody notices there’s an extra child missing from Chapman Farm?’

‘You’re the one who’s found out the church separates kids from parents and shifts them around the different centres. What if a kid was drafted in from Glasgow or Birmingham to be Daiyu’s stand-in? All the Waces would need to do is tell everyone the child’s gone back to where they came from. If it was a child whose birth was never registered, who’s going to go looking?’

Robin, who was remembering the shaven-headed, closed-down children in the Chapman Farm classroom, and how easily they’d shown affection to a total stranger, now felt a nasty sinking sensation.

After another silence, Strike said,

‘Colonel Graves thinks the witnesses who saw the van passing were set up, so the Waces could punish them and maintain the fiction that they didn’t know about the trip to the beach. If it was a set-up, it was bloody sadistic. Brian Kennett: getting steadily sicker, no use to the church any more. Draper: low IQ and possibly brain-damaged. Abigail: the heartbroken stepmother can’t bear to look at the stepdaughter who let her child drive off to a watery grave and insists on getting rid of her.’

‘You think Wace would deliberately set up his elder daughter to be shut up naked in the pigsty?’

‘Wace was supposed to be absent that morning, remember,’ said Strike.

‘So you think Mazu planned it all behind Wace’s back?’

‘It’s a possibility.’

‘But where did Daiyu go, if the drowning was faked? We haven’t found any other family.’

‘Yeah, we have. Wace’s parents, in South Africa.’

‘But that means a passport, and if Wace wasn’t privy to the hoax…’

Strike frowned, then said with a sigh,

‘OK, objection sustained.’

‘I’ve got another objection,’ said Robin tentatively. ‘I know you’re going to say this is based on emotion, not facts, but I don’t believe Carrie was capable of drowning a child. I just don’t, Strike.’

‘Then explain “It wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t pretend. It was real. She wasn’t coming back.”’

‘I can’t, except that I’m certain Carrie believed Daiyu was dead.’

‘Then—’

‘Dead… but not in the sea. Or not with her, in the sea…

‘You know,’ said Robin, after another long pause, ‘there might be an alternative explanation for the chocolate and the toys. Not grooming… blackmail. Daiyu saw something when she was sneaking around. Somebody was trying to keep her sweet… and that might tie back in with those Polaroids. Maybe she saw the naked people in masks, but unlike Kevin, knew they were real people… I need a pee,’ said Robin, getting to her feet, Strike’s jacket still wrapped around her.

Robin’s reflection was ghostly in the tarnished mirror of the landing bathroom. Having washed her hands, she returned to the office to find Strike now at Pat’s desk, poring over his attempt at a transcript of Kevin Pirbright’s interview with Farah Navabi.

‘I ran you off a copy,’ said Strike, putting the still-warm pages into Robin’s hand.

‘Want a coffee?’ asked Robin, dropping the pages onto the sofa to attend to in a few minutes.

‘Yeah, go on… and she drowned, or they said she drowned,’ he read off the paper in front of him. ‘So Kevin had his doubts about Daiyu’s death, too.’

‘He was only six when it happened,’ objected Robin, switching on the kettle.

‘He might not have had doubts then, but he grew up with people who might’ve let slip more than they let on at the time, and started wondering about it later… and he says, I remember funny things happening, things I keep thinking about, stuff I keep remembering, and then, there were four of them – or that’s what Navabi thought he said. It’s not clear on the tape.’

‘Four people in pig masks?’ suggested Robin.

‘Possibly, although we might be getting a bit too hung up on those pictures… What else could it be? “More of them”, “score of them”, “sixty-four of them”… Christ knows…

‘Then we’ve got it was more than just Cherie – he was slurring a lot, but that’s what it sounded like… then something about drinks… then, but Bec made Em, visible and then bullshit.’

‘But Becca made Emily lie about Daiyu being invisible?’ suggested Robin, over the sound of the bubbling kettle.

‘Got to be, because then Navabi says, Becca made Em lie, did you say? And Kevin says, she was allowed out, she could get things and smuggle it in.’

Robin finished making the two coffees, set Strike’s beside him and sat down on the sofa.

‘Cheers,’ said Strike, still reading the transcript. ‘Then we’ve got let her away with stuff – didn’t care about her, really – she had chocolate once and I stole some – and bully, though.’

Robin had just found the part of the transcript Strike was reading.

‘Well, let her away with stuff sounds like Daiyu… and didn’t care about her, really might well apply to Daiyu, too…’

‘Who didn’t care about Daiyu?’ objected Strike. ‘Abigail told me she was the princess of the place.’

‘But was she, though?’ said Robin. ‘You know, I saw a virtual shrine to Daiyu in Mazu’s office and for a few seconds, I felt genuinely sorry for her. What could be worse than waking and finding out your child’s disappeared, and then hearing she’s drowned? But the picture other people paint isn’t of a devoted mother. Mazu was happy to palm Daiyu off onto other people – well, certainly onto Carrie. Don’t you think,’ said Robin, warming to her subject, ‘it’s odd behaviour, the way Mazu’s let this cult grow up around Daiyu? The drowning’s mentioned constantly. Is that consistent with genuine grief?’

‘Could be a deranged kind of grief.’

‘But Mazu thrives off it. It makes her important, being the mother of the Drowned Prophet. Don’t you think the whole thing feels… I don’t know… horribly exploitative? I’m sure it felt to Abigail like Daiyu was her father and stepmother’s little princess – she’d just lost her own mum, and her father had no time for her any more – but I’m not sure that was the reality.’

‘You make good points,’ said Strike, scratching his now heavily stubbled chin. ‘OK, so we think let her away with stuff but didn’t care about her really both refer to Daiyu… So who was allowed out and able to get things and smuggle them in? Who did Kevin steal chocolate from? Who was the bully?’

‘Becca,’ said Robin, with such conviction that Strike looked up at her, surprised. ‘Sorry,’ Robin said, with a disconcerted laugh, ‘I – don’t really know where that came from, except there’s something really weird about Becca’s whole… status.’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, she seems to have been singled out really early by Wace as… I mean, if I had to pick out anyone who’s treated like a princess, it would be Becca. I told you what Flora said about her being a virgin, didn’t I?’

‘You definitely didn’t,’ said Strike, staring at her. ‘I’d’ve remembered.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Robin, ‘of course I didn’t. It feels like Flora told me that a week ago.’

‘How can Becca be a virgin? I thought she was a spirit wife?’

‘That’s what’s so weird. Emily’s convinced Becca sleeps with Wace, which is why she never goes into the Retreat Rooms with anyone else, but Emily also told me Wace won’t have kids with Becca. Shawna said that’s because Wace doesn’t want a baby with her, because her half-brother was born with so many problems. But Flora says all the other spirit wives know Wace isn’t sleeping with Becca, and that’s why Mazu doesn’t hate Becca as much as she hates the rest of them. And honestly, that makes sense to me, because Mazu and Becca always seem – if not matey, there’s definitely a sense of alliance.’

Another pause ensued in which both Strike and Robin drank coffee, reading the transcript, and the dawn chorus twittered ever louder beyond the windows.

‘Making allowances,’ Strike read under his breath. ‘Bad t – possibly bad time… gonna talk to her…’

‘She’s going to meet me,’ said Robin, also reading. ‘But who’s “she”?’

‘And did “she” turn up?’ asked Strike. ‘Or was “she” a ruse? Did he answer the door and find our masked gunman friend outside? Then Navabi says is someone from the church going to meet you, Kevin? and the by now exceptionally pissed Kevin says, and answer for it. So,’ said Strike, looking up, ‘which woman in the church had things to answer for, as far as Kevin was concerned? Who was going to “answer for it”?’

‘Take your pick,’ said Robin. ‘Mazu – Louise – she dragged the family there in the first place – Becca—’

‘Becca,’ repeated Strike, ‘who he connected with a plot, according to the writing on his bedroom wall…’

He dropped his gaze again to the transcript.

‘Then Kevin goes off on a bit of a detour, starts talking about Paul Draper, or Dopey, as he refers to him here… think was part of… part of the plot? That fits, if Draper was one of the people set up to witness Carrie and Daiyu leaving.’

Robin was also reading the transcript again.

‘The pigs,’ she read aloud, ‘and Navabi says forget the pigs and Kevin says he liked pigs… no “he liked pigs”… is that Draper?’

‘Well, we know for sure it’s not Jordan Reaney,’ said Strike. ‘I was in the woods… Becca told me off because, Wace’s daughter and mustn’t snitch. And then Kevin mentions a plot again and in it together. So: a plot that involving Wace’s daughter, and multiple other people.’

‘Daiyu wasn’t the only Wace daughter at the farm, remember,’ said Robin. ‘There was Abigail, Lin – any number of girls playing in the woods at Chapman Farm could have been fathered by Jonathan Wace. Most of the kids I saw in the classroom have got his or Taio’s eyes.’

‘Always together,’ said Strike, reading again, ‘which could mean Daiyu and Carrie – if I’m right – and bution. What’s bution?’

‘Attribution? Contribution? Distri—’

‘Retribution!’ said Strike sharply. ‘“Retribution” was written on Kevin’s wall as well. And then he gets really incoherent. There’s a gale blowing, an ire but too wet – no idea – weird – threatened me – ran out of there (I think, though possibly not) – thought it was for punishment – Becca told me… and then he went off to puke in the bogs.’

‘Fire,’ said Robin.

‘What?’

‘A fire, but it was too wet to catch, maybe?’

‘You think someone was trying to burn something in the woods?’

‘Someone did burn something in those woods,’ said Robin. ‘Rope.’

‘Rope,’ repeated Strike.

‘There was a lump of charred rope near those stumps I told you about. The posts someone chopped down. They were in a circle – it looked pagan.’

‘You think someone at Chapman Farm was conducting secret rituals in the woods?’

‘Daiyu was supposedly doing secret magic with the big kids, don’t forget. Oh, and we’re also forgetting the axe. The one hidden in the tree, which Jiang says was Daiyu’s.’

‘Does it seem plausible a seven-year-old had her own pet axe?’

‘Not really,’ said Robin. ‘I’m only telling you what Jiang said.’

Strike sat in silence for a few seconds then said, ‘I need a pee now,’ and pushed himself to his feet with a grunt.

His first words on re-entering the office a few minutes later were,

‘I’m hungry.’

‘You’ve literally just eaten about five thousand calories,’ said Robin in disbelief.

‘Well, I’m doing a lot of brain work here.’

Strike refilled the kettle. The birds were singing more loudly outside. The hour was fast approaching when Daiyu Wace had supposedly entered the sea at Cromer, never to be seen again.

‘Why the same stretch of beach?’ Strike said, turning to look at Robin. ‘Why the hell was Daiyu – or whoever the kid was – taken to exactly the same stretch of beach where Jennifer Wace died?’

‘No idea,’ said Robin.

‘And why did Jordan Reaney try and kill himself?’

‘Again – no idea.’

‘Come on,’ said Strike bracingly.

‘Well… presumably because he was afraid of retribution,’ said Robin.

‘Retribution,’ repeated Strike. ‘Exactly. So what did whoever was on the phone threaten Reaney with?’

‘I suppose… being hurt in some way. Exposed as involved in something serious and criminal. Beaten up. Killed.’

‘Right. But nobody’s hurt Reaney so far except Reaney.’

Strike made two more coffees, passed one to Robin, then sat back down at Pat’s desk.

‘How’s this for a theory?’ he said. ‘Reaney overdosed because he knew he’d be in deep shit once whoever phoned him realised he’d blabbed to me.’

‘Blabbed what?’

‘Good question. He was cagey about nearly everything. He did say he’d had to “clean up” after the Waces, and that things he’d done played on his mind…’

‘Maybe,’ said Robin suddenly, ‘he was supposed to destroy those Polaroids? Just the fact that they’re still in existence might be what’s got him in trouble?’

‘Possible. Likely, even, given that those Polaroids definitely put the fear of God into him.’

Strike got up again and entered the inner office, reappearing with the noticeboard. Closing the dividing door, he propped the board against it and sat back down. For the longest time yet, the pair sat in silence, staring at the pictures, cuttings and notes.

‘Some of this,’ said Strike at last, ‘has got to be irrelevant. People were there, but not involved. Things get misremembered. Accidents do happen,’ he said, his gaze travelling yet again to Jennifer Wace.

Getting up again, he unpinned the picture of Kevin Pirbright’s bedsit as it had been found on his death, and took it back to the desk to examine more closely. Robin was staring at the words ‘jogger on the beach?’ but Strike was now staring at one innocent little word on Kevin’s wall, which he’d seen previously, and never thought about again. He looked up at the pig-masked figures in the Polaroids, and after several long minutes of staring at them, he realised something he couldn’t quite believe he hadn’t registered before.

He mentally backed away from his new theory to examine it in its entirety, and from every angle he surveyed it, saw it to be smooth, balanced and complete. The extraneous and the irrelevant were now lying discarded to one side.

‘I think I know what happened,’ said Strike.

And as he drew breath to explain, a quotation rang through his head that he’d heard recently from a man who had nothing whatsoever to do with the Universal Humanitarian Church.

‘And where the offence is, let the great axe fall.’