The Running Grave

Wei Chi/Before Completion

BEFORE COMPLETION. Success.

But if the little fox, after nearly completing the crossing,

Gets his tail in the water,

There is nothing that would further.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

122

At the beginning of a military enterprise, order is imperative. A just and valid cause must exist, and the obedience and coordination of the troops must be well organized, otherwise the result is inevitably failure.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Of the many things that needed to be done before the agency could prove how, why and by whose contrivance Daiyu Wace had disappeared forever, Strike allocated one of the most important to Sam Barclay, whom he recalled from Norwich the day after the shooting, after Robin had gone home to catch up on some sleep. Both partners had agreed that the so far fruitless exercise of waiting for Emily Pirbright to appear with a collecting tin should now be abandoned, and the agency’s efforts turned instead towards proving that the myth of the Drowned Prophet was entirely baseless.

‘How far am I allowed to go, tae worm my way in wi’ this guy?’ asked Barclay, who’d just pocketed the name, address, place of work and photograph, all gleaned online by Strike, of the man who Strike wanted him to befriend, by whatever means necessary.

‘Unlimited alcohol budget. Doubt he’s into drugs. Milk the military. Big yourself up.’

‘A’right, I’ll get ontae it.’

‘And be careful. There’s a gun out there that’s still got bullets in the chamber.’

Barclay gave a mock salute and departed, passing Pat in the doorway.

‘I’ve called all these people,’ she told Strike, holding in her hand a piece of paper on which Strike had listed the names and numbers of Eric Wardle, who was his best friend in the Metropolitan Police; Vanessa Ekwensi, who was Robin’s; DI George Layborn, who’d rendered the agency significant help in a previous case, and Ryan Murphy. ‘I’ve only been able to get hold of George Layborn so far. He says he could meet you Wednesday evening, next week. I’ve left messages with the rest of them. I don’t see why Robin can’t ask Ryan herself.’

‘Because this is coming from me,’ said Strike. ‘I need to meet them all simultaneously, and lay out everything we’ve got, so we can hit the UHC as hard as possible, right when Wace and his lawyers aren’t expecting it.’

‘They still haven’t found that bloke who shot at you two and Will,’ grumbled Pat. ‘Don’t know what we pay our bloody taxes for.’

Blurry pictures of the Ford Focus with the fake plates had been appearing on various news channels all morning, with appeals to the public for any information. Though thankful his and Robin’s names hadn’t appeared in the press, Strike had had to take two cabs already that morning, and knew he’d need to hire himself a car for work purposes before the police were through with his own.

‘Dennis just called, by the way,’ Pat added. ‘Will’s feeling a bit better.’

‘Great,’ said Strike, who’d already endured ten solid minutes’ grousing from Pat about the state of shock in which Will had been returned to her house in the early hours of the morning. ‘Any news on him talking to my lawyer friend about immunity from prosecution?’

‘He’s thinking about it,’ said Pat.

Strike suppressed any expression of frustration at what he considered Will Edensor’s idiotic stubbornness.

Pat returned to her desk, e-cigarette between her teeth, and Strike rubbed his eyes. He’d insisted on walking Robin to her taxi at six o’clock, telling her it was imperative that neither of them took any more risks. In spite of their sleepless night, he hadn’t been to bed: there was too much to think about, to organise and to do, and it must all be done methodically and stealthily if they were to have any chance of taking on the UHC without anyone else getting shot through the head.

His mobile rang and he groped for it.

‘Hi,’ said Robin’s voice.

‘You were supposed to be getting some sleep.’

‘I can’t,’ said Robin. ‘I came home, got into bed, lay there awake for an hour then got back up again. Too much coffee. What’s going on there?’

‘I’ve seen Barclay and I’ve called Ilsa,’ said Strike, suppressing a yawn. ‘She’s happy to represent Will and Flora, if they’re agreeable. Shah’s on his way to Birmingham.’

Strike heaved himself up onto his feet and glanced down into the street again. The tall, fit-looking black man with green eyes had reappeared since he’d last looked, though on this occasion he was marginally better hidden than previously, in a doorway four along from the office on the other side of the street.

‘We’re still being watched,’ Strike informed Robin, ‘but only by the clown squad. He wasn’t there when I went out to Cedar Terrace this morning.’

‘You went? I thought we agreed neither of us was going to take stupid risks?’

‘I couldn’t send Shah, Barclay was still in Norwich and Midge was asleep. Anyway, it wasn’t a risk,’ said Strike, letting the blinds fall back into place. ‘There was never going to be a safer time to go and talk to Rosie Fernsby than while police are hunting the shooter. Trouble with trying to kill people you’re afraid know too much is, if you miss, you’ve not only handed them confirmation of their theory, you’ve made yourself a target. Anyway,’ Strike continued, dropping back into his chair, ‘Rosie-Bhakta was there.’

‘She was?’ said Robin, sounding excited.

‘Yeah. She’s bloody annoying, although maybe I’d’ve found her less so if I wasn’t this knackered. Says she doesn’t ever bother answering the landline because it’s only ever for her mother – predictably, given it’s her mother’s house.’

‘What did she say about the Polaroids?’

‘Exactly what we expected her to say. She was quite excited to think she might be in danger, though. I’ve persuaded her to move to a B&B at Colin Edensor’s expense.’

‘Good. Listen, I’m worried about Midge going back to Chapman Farm—’

‘She’ll want to do it. She’s constantly pissed off I don’t let her do dangerous stuff. However bloody insubordinate she can be, nobody could call her a coward.’

Robin, who’d rolled her eyes at the word ‘insubordinate’, said,

‘And what if they’ve put up cameras at the blind spot now?’

‘Unless they’re night vision cameras she’ll be OK, as long as she’s well covered and got the wire cutters. We’ve got to chance it. Without forensic evidence, we’re going to be bloody hard-pressed to prove what happened…

‘I’ve got Pat typing up a final report on Toy Boy, by the way. You’ll like this: Dev caught him in the same hotel as Bigfoot, with another Eastern European girl.’

‘No way.’

‘Yeah, so I’ve passed those photos to the client. Toy Boy’s seen his last Rolex. You and I will have to cover Hampstead while the others are working the UHC case. With luck, the clowns watching us will think we’ve lost interest in the church now we’ve been shot at.’

‘I’m worried about Sam, though. What if—?’

‘Barclay can handle himself fine,’ said Strike. ‘Stop worrying about him and Midge and concentrate on the fact that we’re trying to take down a bunch of fuckers who’re brainwashing thousands, raping people and selling kids.’

‘I am concentrating on that,’ said Robin crossly. ‘For your information, I’ve spent the last six hours combing through every other Isaac Mills in the UK.’

‘And?’

‘And there are two more Isaac Millses who’re the right age. One’s a chartered accountant, the other’s in jail.’

‘Very promising,’ said Strike. ‘Which jail?’

‘Wandsworth.’

‘Even better,’ said Strike. ‘Won’t be a long trip. What’s he in for?’

‘Manslaughter. I’m doing some more digging right now.’

‘Great.’ Strike scratched his chin, thinking. ‘If he’s the right one, you should visit him. Might require a lighter touch than I gave Reaney.’

He chose not to say that Mills was likely to fancy a visit from an attractive young woman far more than he’d want to meet a broken-nosed forty-one-year-old man.

‘This is all going to take time to arrange,’ said Robin, sounding worried.

‘Doesn’t matter. We do this properly or not at all. I’m trying to fix up a meeting with all our police contacts—’

‘I know, Ryan just called me, he got Pat’s message,’ said Robin.

Then why the fuck didn’t he call Pat? was Strike’s immediate, ungracious thought.

‘He can’t do anything until next week.’

‘Nor can Layborn,’ said Strike. ‘I might give them all a little kick up the arse, tell them my journalist contact is gagging to write a piece about the church and police apathy, and that I’m barely holding him off.’

‘Would you mind not?’ said Robin. ‘Or not unless it’s absolutely necessary?’

‘You’re the one who wants to speed things up,’ said Strike.

And nobody made you start seeing that prick Murphy.

123

Strength in the face of danger does not plunge ahead but bides its time, whereas weakness in the face of danger grows agitated and has not the patience to wait.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

For the next fortnight, everyone at the agency was very busy, their efforts directed almost exclusively to proving Strike’s theory about the fate of the Drowned Prophet.

Midge, who’d accepted with alacrity the possibly dangerous job of trying to get forensic evidence from the woods at Chapman Farm, returned safely and triumphantly from Norfolk. Given that the agency had no access to a forensics lab, the only hope of having her findings analysed would be in the context of a police investigation that hadn’t yet started, if, indeed, it ever did. Everything she’d carried out of the woods at Chapman Farm was now wrapped carefully in plastic in the office safe.

After a week of hanging around various likely haunts, Barclay had successfully located the man whom Strike was so keen to have befriended, and was cautiously optimistic, given his target’s fondness for drink and military anecdotes, that a few more free pints might see himself invited round to the man’s home.

‘Don’t rush it,’ warned Strike. ‘One false move could set off alarm bells.’

Shah remained in Birmingham, where some of the activities he’d undertaken were illegal. In consequence, Strike didn’t intend to share any of Dev’s findings at the meeting with his and Robin’s four best police contacts, which finally took place two weeks and a day after Strike and Robin had been shot at, on a Tuesday evening, in the useful downstairs room at the Flying Horse. Strike – who felt he was becoming increasingly profligate with Sir Colin Edensor’s money – was paying for the room and dinner out of his own pocket, with the promise of burgers and chips to sweeten their contacts’ sacrifice of a few hours of their free time.

Unfortunately for Strike, he was late for his own meeting. He’d driven to Norfolk and back that day in a hired automatic Audi A1. The interview he’d conducted there had taken longer than he’d expected, the unfamiliar car’s pedals had been hard on his right leg, he’d hit a lot of traffic on the way back into London, and this, coupled with the stress of checking constantly that he wasn’t being followed, had etched a slight scowl onto his face which he had to discipline into a smile when he reached the downstairs room, where he found Eric Wardle, George Layborn, Vanessa Ekwensi, Ryan Murphy, Robin, Will, Flora and Ilsa.

‘Sorry,’ Strike muttered, spilling some of his pint as he dropped clumsily into the spare seat at the table. ‘Long day.’

‘I’ve ordered for you,’ said Robin, and Strike noted the look of irritation on Murphy’s face as she said it.

Robin was feeling uneasy. Will, she knew, had been cajoled into attending by Pat and Dennis, the latter having told Will firmly that he was caught in a chicken and egg situation and needed to bloody well get himself out of it. Since arriving in the basement of the Flying Horse with Flora and Ilsa, Will, who looked pale and worried, had barely spoken. Meanwhile, it had required all Robin’s cheerful chat and gratitude for her presence to raise the slightest smile from Flora, who was currently twisting her fingers on her lap beneath the table. Robin had already glimpsed a fresh self-harm mark on her neck.

Aside from her worries about how this meeting was likely to affect the two fragile ex-church members, Robin sensed undercurrents between Wardle and Murphy; the latter had become peremptory and curt in manner even before Strike arrived.

After some slightly stilted small talk, Strike introduced the subject of the meeting. The police listened in silence while Strike ran over the main accusations against the church, omitting all mention of the Drowned Prophet. When Strike said Flora and Will were prepared to give statements about what they’d witnessed while members of the church, Robin saw the knuckles of Flora’s hands turn white beneath the table.

Food arrived before the police had had time to ask any questions. Once the waitress had left, the CID officers began to speak up. They were, as Strike had expected, starting from a position, if not of scepticism, then of caution.

He’d expected their muted response to the child trafficking allegations, given that neither Will nor Flora had ever been to the Birmingham centre which was supposed to be its hub. Nobody was disposed to challenge out loud Flora’s statement, delivered in a quaking voice while staring at the table in front of her, that she’d been repeatedly raped, but it angered Robin that it took her own corroboration about the Retreat Rooms to wipe the doubtful expression from George Layborn’s face. She described, in blunt language, her own close shaves with Taio, and the sight of an underage girl emerging from a Retreat Room with Giles Harmon. The novelist’s name seemed unfamiliar to Layborn, but Wardle and Ekwensi exchanged a look at this, and both got out their notebooks.

As for the allegation that the church was improperly burying bodies without registering deaths, Robin thought that, too, might have been dismissed as an evidence-free claim, but for the unexpected intervention of Will.

‘They do bury them illegally,’ he said, interrupting Layborn, who was pressing a distressed Flora for details. ‘I’ve seen it as well. Right before I left, they buried a kid who was born with – well, I don’t know what was wrong with him. They never got him seen by anyone except Zhou.’

‘Not Jacob?’ said Robin, looking around at Will.

‘Yeah. He died a few hours after you left. They buried him on the far side of the field, by the oak,’ said Will, who hadn’t previously disclosed this. ‘I watched them do it.’

Robin was too distressed by this information to say anything except, ‘Oh.’

‘And,’ said Will, ‘we – I had to help—’

He swallowed and pressed on.

‘—I had to help dig up Kevin. They put him in the field, first, but they moved him to the vegetable patch instead, to punish Louise – his… mother.’

‘What?’ said Vanessa Ekwensi, her pen hovering over her pad.

‘She tried to… she went to plant flowers on him, in the field,’ said Will, turning red. ‘And someone saw her, and reported her to Mazu. So Mazu said, if she wanted to plant stuff on a Deviate, she could. And they dug him up and put him in the vegetable patch and made Louise plant carrots on him.’

The horrified silence that followed these words was broken by Strike’s mobile buzzing. He glanced at the text he’d received, then looked up at Will.

‘We’ve found Lin: she’s been moved to Birmingham.’

Will looked stunned.

‘They’ve let her out to fundraise?’

‘No,’ said Strike. ‘She’s in the church compound, helping look after the babies.’

He answered Shah’s text, giving further instructions, then looked up at the police.

‘Look, we’re not stupid: we know you can’t authorise or even guarantee a massive investigation like this, right now, tonight. But you’ve got two people here who are willing to testify to widespread criminality, and we’re sure there’ll be many more, if only you can get into those church centres and start asking questions. Robin’s ready to go to court about everything she saw, too. There’s going to be glory in this, for whoever takes the UHC down,’ said Strike, ‘and I’ve already got a journalist who’s gagging to run an exposé.’

‘That’s not a threat, is it?’ said Murphy.

‘No,’ said Robin, before Strike could say anything, ‘it’s a fact. If we can’t get a police investigation without the press, we’ll let the journalist have it and try and force one that way. If you’d been in there, as I have, you’d understand exactly why every day the UHC is getting away with it counts.’

After that, Strike noticed with satisfaction, Murphy said nothing more.

At ten o’clock, the meeting broke up, with handshakes all round. Vanessa Ekwensi and Eric Wardle, who’d taken most notes, separately promised to get back to Strike and Robin quickly.

Strike determinedly didn’t watch Murphy kissing Robin goodbye and telling her he’d see her the next day, because she was taking over surveillance on Hampstead from Midge in an hour’s time. However, Strike gained some pleasure from Murphy’s clear unhappiness at leaving his girlfriend alone with her partner.

‘Well,’ said Robin, sitting back down at the table, ‘it went about as well as could be expected, I suppose.’

‘Yeah, not bad,’ said Strike.

‘So what happened in Norfolk?’

‘I got an earful, as expected,’ said Strike. ‘They’re definitely rattled. What about Isaac Mills?’

‘No word yet. He might not fancy meeting me at all.’

‘Don’t despair yet. It’s pretty monotonous in the nick.’

‘D’you think you’ll have to go back to Reaney?’ asked Robin, as the waitress re-entered the room to clear away pint glasses and both detectives got to their feet.

‘Maybe,’ said Strike, ‘but I doubt he’ll talk until he has to.’

They climbed the stairs together, emerging onto Oxford Street, where Strike pulled out his vape pen and took a long-awaited lungful of nicotine.

‘I’m parked up the road. There’s no need to escort me,’ Robin added, correctly guessing what Strike was about to say, ‘it’s still crowded and I definitely wasn’t followed here. I kept checking, all the way.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Strike. ‘Speak tomorrow, then.’

As he set off up the road, Strike’s mobile buzzed again, now with a text from Barclay.

Still no invite

Strike sent two words back.

Keep trying

124

The inferior man is not ashamed of unkindness and does not shrink from injustice. If no advantage beckons he makes no effort.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

The second week of September passed without progress on the UHC case, and no word as to whether the church’s accusation of child abuse against Robin was likely to result in her arrest, which meant she continued to suffer regular stabs of dread every time she thought about it. In slightly better news, both Will and Flora had been invited to give formal statements to the police, and, far more quickly than she’d expected, Robin received word that she’d been put on Isaac Mills’ visitors’ list.

‘S’pose you were right: prison’s boring,’ Robin told Strike, when she called him from outside Hampstead’s office to tell him the good news.

‘Be interesting to know whether he’s got any idea what it’s about,’ said Strike, who was walking away from Chinatown as he spoke.

‘Anyone watching the office today?’

‘No,’ said Strike, ‘but I’ve just followed a friend of yours to the Rupert Court Temple. Saw her from across the street when I was buying vape juice: Becca.’

‘What, out with a collecting tin?’ said Robin. ‘I thought she was too important for that.’

‘No tin. She was just walking along staring at the ground. She unlocked the temple doors and went inside and didn’t come out while I was watching, which was for about half an hour. I had to leave, I’ve got Colin Edensor arriving in twenty minutes; he wants an update on Will. Anyway, very good news on Mills. This Saturday, did you say?’

‘Yes. I’ve never visited a prison before.’

‘I wouldn’t worry. The dress code’s fairly relaxed,’ said Strike, and Robin laughed.

Having seen his 1999 mugshot, Robin hadn’t supposed Isaac Mills would look more attractive or healthy seventeen years later, but she certainly wasn’t expecting the man who shuffled towards her in the Wandsworth visitors’ centre a few days later.

He was, without exception, the most pathetic example of humanity Robin had ever laid eyes on. Though she knew him to be forty-three, he might have been seventy. The small amount of hair he still possessed was dull and grey, and while his skin was bronzed, his hollow face seemed to have collapsed inwards. Most of his teeth were missing, and the few that remained were blackened stumps, while his discoloured fingernails scooped upwards, as if peeling away from his hands. Robin had the macabre thought that she was looking at a man whose proper setting was a coffin, an impression reinforced by the gust of rotten breath that reached her as he sat down.

In the first two minutes of their meeting, Mills told Robin that he never received visits and that he was waiting for a liver transplant. After this, the conversation stalled. When Robin mentioned Carrie – or Cherry, as she’d been when Mills knew her – he informed her that Cherry had been a ‘stupid tart’, then folded his arms and contemplated her with a sneer on his face, his demeanour posing the silent question, What’s in this for me?

Appeals to conscience – ‘Daiyu was only seven when she disappeared. You’ve got children, haven’t you?’ – or to a sense of justice – ‘Kevin’s killer’s still walking around, free, and you could help us catch them’ – elicited nothing at all from the prisoner, though his sunken eyes, with their yellow whites and pinprick pupils, remained fixed on the healthy young woman who sat breathing in his odour of decay.

Uneasily conscious of the time slipping past, Robin tried an appeal to self-interest.

‘If you were to help our investigation, I’m sure it would be taken into account when you come up for parole.’

Mills’ only reaction was a low, unpleasant chuckle. He was serving twelve years for manslaughter; they both knew he was unlikely to live long enough to meet a parole board.

‘We’ve got a journalist who’s very interested in this story,’ she said, resorting in desperation to the tactic Strike had used on the police. ‘Finding out what really happened could help us bring down the church, which—’

‘It’s a cult,’ said Isaac Mills unexpectedly, a further gust of halitosis engulfing Robin. ‘Not a fucking church.’

‘I agree. That’s what’s got the journalist interested. Cherry talked to you about the UHC, then, did she?’

Mills’ only response was a loud sniff.

‘Did Cherry ever mention Daiyu, at all?’

Mills glanced at the large clock over the double doors through which he’d emerged.

Robin was forced to the conclusion that she had indeed been invited to Wandsworth to while away an hour of Mills’ tedious, miserable life. He showed no inclination to get up and leave, presumably because he was enjoying the pathetic pleasure of denying her what she’d come for.

For nearly a minute, Robin contemplated him in silence, thinking. She doubted any hospital would ever be brave enough to put Isaac Mills to the top of a waiting list for a liver, because the newspaper-reading public would doubtless feel such a gift should go to a patient who wasn’t an addict or a serial burglar and hadn’t been convicted of several stabbings, one of them fatal. At last, she said,

‘You understand that if you were to help this investigation, it would be publicised. You’d have helped put an end to something huge, and criminal. The fact that you’re ill would be publicised, too. Some of the people trapped inside the cult have wealthy families, people of influence. Let’s be honest – you haven’t got a prayer of a new liver unless something changes.’

He glanced at her, his sneer more pronounced.

‘You’re not gonna get that cult,’ he said, ‘whatever I tell you.’

‘You’re wrong,’ said Robin. ‘Just because Cherry didn’t drown Daiyu, doesn’t mean she didn’t do something nearly as bad. None of it could have happened without her collusion.’

By the tiniest tremor at the corner of Mills’ mouth, she could tell he was listening more closely.

‘What you don’t appreciate,’ said Robin, forcing herself to lean forwards, even though it meant getting closer to the source of Mills’ disgusting breath, ‘is that the cult centres around Daiyu’s death. They’ve turned her into a prophet who vanished in the sea, only to come back to life again. They’re pretending she materialises in their temple. Proof that she never really drowned means their religion’s founded on a lie. And if you’re the one who provides that proof, a lot of people, some of them very rich, are going to be deeply invested in you being well enough to testify. You might be their last hope of seeing their family members again.’

She had his full attention now. Mills sat in silence for a few more seconds before saying,

‘She never done it.’

‘Done what?’

‘Killed Dayoo, or whatever her name was.’

‘So what really happened?’ said Robin, taking the top off her pen.

This time, Isaac Mills answered.

125

The way opens; the hindrance has been cleared away.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Forty minutes later, Robin emerged from Wandsworth Prison in a state of elation. Pulling her mobile out of her bag, she noticed with frustration that it was almost out of power: either it hadn’t charged properly at Murphy’s the previous evening or, which she thought more likely given its age, she needed a new phone. Waiting until she was out of the vicinity of the stream of families now exiting the building, she called Strike.

‘You were right,’ said Robin. ‘Carrie confessed nearly all of it to Mills, mostly whenever she got drunk. He says she’d always deny it when she sobered up, but basically, he’s confirmed everything, except—’

‘Who planned it.’

‘How did you know?’

‘Because she was still scared enough of them to kill herself twenty-one years later.’

‘But Mills is very clear it was all a put-up job. Carrie faked the drowning, Daiyu was never on the beach. I know it’s not enough, hearsay from a dead woman—’

‘Still can’t hurt,’ said Strike. ‘Will he testify?’

‘Yes, but only because he’s got hemo-something and thinks he might get a new liver out of it.’

‘A new what?’

‘Liver,’ said Robin loudly, now heading for the bus stop.

‘I’ll get him one out of Aldi. Listen, have you seen the—?’

Robin’s phone went dead.

‘Shit.’

She hurried on towards the bus stop. She was supposed to be meeting Murphy at a bar in the middle of town at seven, but was now keen to find a way of speaking to Strike again, who’d sounded strangely keyed up before he got cut off. Unfortunately, she had no idea where he was. Speeding up, she tried to remember the rota: if he was at the office, or in his flat, she might have time to see him before going on to the West End.

The hour’s journey back towards Denmark Street seemed interminable. Robin kept shuffling through different scenarios in her mind, trying to see possible routes to their murderer in the light of Mills’ evidence, which confirmed Strike’s theory and would add substance to whatever other testimony they could get. However, she still saw pitfalls ahead, especially if the plastic-wrapped objects in the office safe yielded nothing useable.

She and Strike had concluded during the sleepless night they’d spent at the office that there were four people, aside from Isaac Mills, whose combined testimony might reveal exactly what happened to Daiyu, even if the originator of the plan denied it. However, all had strong reasons for not talking, and two of them probably didn’t realise that what they knew was significant. It was by no means certain they’d be able to take an axe to the roots of Jonathan Wace’s dangerous and seductive religion.

A little over an hour later, Robin arrived in Denmark Street, sweaty and dishevelled from haste, but on reaching the second landing her heart sank: the office door was locked and the lights were out. Then she heard movement above her.

‘What the fuck happened?’ said Strike, descending the stairs.

‘What d’you mean?’ said Robin, taken aback.

‘I’ve been worried fucking sick, I thought someone had grabbed you off the fucking street!’

‘My phone died!’ said Robin, who didn’t much appreciate this welcome, having just jogged up the street to see her partner. ‘And I was in Wandsworth in broad daylight – don’t start about guns,’ she said, correctly anticipating Strike’s next sentence. ‘You’d have heard the bang, wouldn’t you?’

As this was precisely what he’d been telling himself for the last sixty minutes, Strike bit back a retort. Nevertheless, finding it hard to shift gears immediately from acute anxiety to a normal conversational tone, he said angrily,

‘You need a new fucking phone.’

‘Thanks,’ said Robin, now almost equally cross, ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

A reluctant grin replaced Strike’s scowl, though Robin wasn’t that easily appeased.

‘You were asking me if I’d seen something when I got cut off,’ she said coolly. ‘I haven’t got long, I’m supposed to be meeting Ryan.’

Strike supposed he deserved that.

‘Come up here,’ he said, pointing towards his flat. ‘They raided Chapman Farm at six this morning.’

‘What?’ gasped Robin, climbing the stairs to the attic behind him.

‘A dozen coppers, Met and local force. Wardle’s with them. He called me at two. Couldn’t talk long, because they’re still interviewing people. They’ve already released a severely dehydrated and traumatised Emily Pirbright from a locked wooden box in the farmhouse basement.’

‘Oh no.’

‘She’ll be OK. They’ve taken her to hospital. It gets better,’ said Strike, as they entered the attic. ‘Shah’s just seen roughly the same number of coppers entering the Birmingham centre. No word on Glasgow yet, but I’m assuming it’s happening there, too.’

He led her through to his bedroom, a spartan place, like the rest of the small flat. The television at the foot of the bed had been paused on Sky News: a female reporter was frozen, open mouthed, in what Robin recognised as Lion’s Mouth. Behind her was the entrance to Chapman Farm, which now had two uniformed officers standing outside it.

‘Someone at the Met’s leaked,’ said Strike, picking up the remote. ‘Said there’d be glory in it, didn’t I?’

He pressed play.

‘… already seen an ambulance leaving,’ said the reporter, gesturing down the lane. ‘Police haven’t yet confirmed the reasons for the investigation, but we do know officers are here in large numbers and a forensic team arrived just over an hour ago.’

‘Jenny, some have called the UHC controversial, haven’t they?’ said a male voice.

‘Cautious,’ said the smirking Strike, as the female reporter nodded, finger pressed to her earpiece.

‘Yes, Justin, mainly in regard to its financial activities, though it must be said the church has never been convicted of any wrongdoing.’

‘Give it time,’ said Strike and Robin simultaneously.

‘And, of course, it’s got some very high-profile members,’ said the invisible Justin. ‘Novelist Giles Harmon, actress Noli Seymour – are any of them currently on the grounds, do you know?’

‘No, Justin, we’ve had no confirmation of who’s at the farm right now, although locals estimate there are at least a hundred people living here.’

‘And has there been any official statement from the church?’

‘Nothing as yet—’

Strike paused the news report again.

‘Just thought you’d like to see it,’ he said.

‘You were right,’ said Robin, beaming.

‘Almost enough to make you believe in God, isn’t it? I tipped off Fergus Robertson as soon as I heard from Wardle. I’ve given him a good few pointers as to where to get some scoops. Think it’s time to turn up the heat on Jonathan Wace as high as we can. Got time for a coffee?’

‘A quick one,’ said Robin, checking her watch. ‘Could I borrow a charger?’

This provided, and coffee made, they sat down at the small Formica table.

‘Becca’s still at the Rupert Court Temple,’ said Strike.

‘How d’you know?’

‘She took the service today, which I got Midge to attend, wigged up.’

‘I thought Midge was watching Hampstead?’

‘Oh, yeah, I forgot – she got pictures of him with a bloke on the heath last night.’

‘When you say “pictures”—’

‘I doubt they’ll be featuring on the family Christmas card,’ said Strike. ‘I’ll let the client know on Monday, because he’s home with her and the kids right now.’

‘Go on about Becca.’

‘She didn’t leave at the end of the service. Midge is still watching Rupert Court, minus her wig, obviously. She’s confident Becca’s still in there. Doors locked.’

‘Haven’t the police been?’

‘Presumably they’re more interested in the compounds.’

‘Is Becca alone?’

‘Dunno. She could well be planning to make a break for it – unless she fancies taking the Stolen Prophet’s way out, of course.’

‘Don’t say that,’ said Robin, thinking of Carrie Curtis Woods hanging in the family garage. ‘If we know where she is—’

‘We do nothing – nothing,’ said Strike firmly, ‘until we hear from Barclay.’

‘But—’

‘Did you hear me?’

‘For God’s sake, I’m not a bloody schoolchild!’

‘Sorry,’ said Strike. The residue of his hour’s anxiety hadn’t yet dispersed. ‘Look, I know you think I keep boring on about that gun, but we still don’t know where it is – which is a pain in the arse,’ he added, checking his watch, ‘because we’re on the clock, now the police have gone in. People are going to start arse-covering or making themselves unavailable for interview. They’ll have an excuse for only communicating through lawyers now, as well.’

‘D’you think they’ve got the Waces?’ said Robin, whose thoughts had roved irresistibly back to Chapman Farm. ‘They must have Mazu, at least. She never leaves the place. God, I’d like to be a fly on the wall when they start questioning her…’

Memories of people she’d got to know over her four months at the farm were revolving in her mind as though it was a zoetrope: Emily, Shawna, Amandeep, Kyle, Walter, Vivienne, Louise, Marion, Taio, Jiang… who’d talk? Who’d lie?

‘I had bloody Rosie Fernsby on the phone at lunchtime,’ said Strike.

‘What did she want?’

‘To go to a yoga class this afternoon. The glamour of being a hunted woman’s worn off.’

‘What did you say?’

‘That she’d have to stay put and cleanse her own bloody chakras. She chose to take it as a joke.’

‘Just as well. We do need her to testify.’

‘What she’s got to tell will take three minutes, if this comes to court,’ said Strike. ‘I’m trying to stop her getting bloody shot.’

Robin checked her watch.

‘I’d better go.’

As she got to her feet, Strike’s mobile buzzed.

‘Holy shit.’

‘What?’

‘Barclay’s done it, he’s in.’

Strike, too, rose.

‘I’m going to talk to Abigail Glover about Birmingham.’

‘Then,’ said Robin, as a feeling like fire flamed through her insides, ‘I’m going to talk to Becca.’

‘No, you’re fucking not,’ said Strike, pausing where he stood. ‘Midge doesn’t know who else might be in the temple.’

‘I don’t care,’ said Robin, already heading for her phone. ‘You realise she could be planning to head for San Francisco or Munich? Ryan, hi… no, listen, something’s come up… I know, I’ve seen on the news, but I can’t do dinner. Sorry… no… it’s just a witness who might get away unless I see her now,’ Robin said, meeting Strike’s frown with a frosty look of her own. ‘Yes… OK. I’ll ring you later.’

Robin hung up.

‘I’m doing it,’ she told Strike, before he could speak. ‘She’s not wriggling out of this. Not bloody Becca.’

‘All right,’ he said, ‘but you go in with Midge, all right? Not alone.’

‘Fine,’ said Robin. ‘Give me your skeleton keys in case she doesn’t open up when I knock. I think this is going to be what they call closure.’

126

In the royal hunts of ancient China it was customary to drive up the game from three sides, but on the fourth the animals had a chance to run off.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Robin parted from Strike in Tottenham Court Road, and arrived in Wardour Street ten minutes later. It was swarming with Saturday evening visitors to Chinatown, but she couldn’t see Midge. Her phone now charged sufficiently for at least one call, Robin called the subcontractor’s number.

‘Where are you? Strike told me you were watching the Rupert Court Temple.’

‘I was,’ said Midge, ‘but Becca’s left. I’m following her.’

‘Shit,’ said Robin, for the second time in as many hours. ‘No, I mean, it’s good that you’re still on her, but – is she alone? She hasn’t got a bag or anything, has she? Does she look as though she’s going on a trip?’

‘She’s alone, and there’s no bag,’ said Midge. ‘She might just be buying food. She’s looking at her phone a lot.’

‘I’ll bet she is,’ said Robin. ‘Will you keep me posted on where you are? I’m in the vicinity of the temple. Let me know if she’s on her way back.’

‘Will do,’ said Midge, and she rang off.

Deprived in the short term of her prey, frustrated and tense, Robin moved out of the way of a group of drunken men. Fiddling with the skeleton keys in her pocket, she contemplated the red and gold creatures over the door of the temple: the dragon, the pheasant, the sheep, the horse, the cow, the dog, the rooster, and, of course, the pig.

127

Heaven has the same direction of movement as fire, yet it is different from fire…

The I Ching or Book of Changes

It took Strike forty-five minutes to reach the fire station where Abigail was working that evening. It was a large, Art Deco building of grey stone, with the usual large, square openings below for the fire trucks.

Upon entering, Strike found a man in his forties scribbling a note at a desk in an otherwise deserted reception area. When Strike enquired whether Abigail Glover was currently on the premises, he said yes, she was upstairs. When Strike said his business was urgent, the fireman called upstairs on a wall-mounted phone, his expression amused. Strike wondered whether he had, again, been mistaken for one of Abigail’s boyfriends.

She descended the stairs a few minutes later, looked disconcerted and irritable, for which Strike couldn’t blame her; he, too, preferred not to be disturbed at work. She was wearing the regulation firemen’s overalls, though without the jacket. Her black top was tight-fitting, and he assumed she’d been mid-way through changing when he’d interrupted her.

‘Why’re you ’ere?’

‘I need your help,’ said Strike.

‘People norm’lly dial 999,’ said Abigail, to a snigger from her colleague.

‘It’s about Birmingham,’ said Strike.

‘Birmingham?’ Abigail repeated, frowning.

‘Yeah. Shouldn’t take long, but I think you’re the only person who can clarify a couple of points.’

Abigail cast a look behind her.

‘Earwiggin’, Richard?’

‘No,’ said the man. He disappeared upstairs perhaps a little faster than he’d have done otherwise.

‘All right,’ Abigail said, turning back to Strike, ‘but you’re gonna ’ave to ’urry up, ’cause my shift’s ended and I’ve got a date.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Strike.

She led him through a door to the right, which was evidently used for talks and meetings, because a number of steel-legged plastic chairs were stacked in corners. Abigail proceeded to a small table near a whiteboard at the far end, lifting down a chair for herself on the way.

‘It’s you, innit?’ she said to Strike, over her shoulder. ‘’Oo’s caused the shitstorm at Chapman Farm?’

‘Ah, you’ve seen,’ said Strike.

‘It’s all over the fuckin’ news, ’course I ’ave.’

‘I’d like to take credit,’ said Strike, also picking up a chair and taking it to the table, ‘but that’s mostly down to my detective partner.’

‘Did she get your client’s relative out, before she torched the place?’ asked Abigail, as both sat down.

‘She did, yeah,’ said Strike.

‘Blimey. You don’ wanna let ’er go in an ’urry.’

‘I don’t intend to,’ said Strike.

‘It’s gonna mean the press coming for me, though, innit?’ said Abigail, looking tense as she pulled a pack of nicotine gum out of her pocket and put a piece in her mouth.

‘Probably,’ said Strike. ‘I’m sorry about that.’

‘When Dick called just now, I fort, “This is it. A journalist’s come”… go on, then. What about Birmingham?’

‘We’ve found out your father was supposed to be taking Rosie Fernsby up to Birmingham the morning Daiyu disappeared, but he changed his plans.’

‘Rosie ’oo?’

She wasn’t at the farm long,’ said Strike. ‘Pretty girl. Dark, curvy – she was there with her father and twin brother.’

‘Oh, yeah… twins. Yeah, I remember them,’ said Abigail. ‘I’d never met twins before. I didn’t know you could have boy and girl ones… no fuckin’ education,’ she added bitterly. ‘Like I told you before.’

‘When we interviewed Cherie Gittins, she tied herself up in knots a bit about your father’s whereabouts.’

‘Found Cherie, didja? Bloody ’ell.’

‘Yeah, she was married and living in the West Country. Anyway, she seemed to attach a lot of significance to the question of whether or not your father was at the farm when Daiyu disappeared.’

‘Well, I dunno why she was confused. ’E was definitely there when the police come to say Daiyu ’ad drowned. I remember Mazu screaming and collapsin’ and ’im ’olding ’er up.’

‘When were you sent up to Birmingham, exactly?’ asked Strike.

‘Exactly? Dunno. After Daiyu’s inquest.’

‘Had there been any question of you going to Birmingham before Daiyu disappeared?’

‘They prob’lly discussed it when I wasn’ around,’ said Abigail, with a slight shrug. ‘Mazu wanted shot of me for years, and Daiyu dyin’ gave ’er an excuse to do it. I din’t give a shit, personally. I fort it’d probably be easier to escape from one of the other places, din’t fink eiver of ’em would be as ’ard to get in an’ out of as Chapman Farm, an’ I was right.’

‘Yeah, one of my operatives got into Birmingham without too much difficulty, on an out-of-date police ID.’

‘Find anyfing interesting?’

‘A lot of babies,’ said Strike.

‘’Spect there is a lot, now,’ said Abigail. ‘No birf control.’

‘How long were you at the farm, between Daiyu’s disappearance and leaving for Birmingham?’

‘Dunno. Week or two. Somefing like that.’

‘And when you were transferred to Birmingham, did anyone from Chapman Farm go with you?’

‘Yeah, bloke called Joe. ’E was older’n me an’ ’e was one of my farver and Mazu’s favourites. ’E wasn’ going up there ’cos ’e was being punished, though, ’e was gonna be second in command in the Birmingham Centre.’

‘And it was just you and Joe who were transferred that day, was it?’

‘Yeah, ’s far as I can remember.’

Strike turned a page in his notebook.

‘You remember Alex Graves’ family? Father, mother and sister?’

‘Yeah, I told you I did,’ said Abigail, frowning.

‘Well, Graves’ father thinks your father ordered Cherie Gittins to kill Daiyu.’

Abigail chewed her gum for a few seconds in silence, then said,

‘Well, that’s the sort of stupid fing people say, innit? When they’re angry. Why’s my farver s’posed to ’ave killed ’er?’

‘To get his hands on the quarter of a million pounds Graves left Daiyu in his will.’

‘You’re shittin’ me. She ’ad a qua’er of a million?’

‘If she’d lived, she’d also have inherited the Graves family home, which is probably worth ten times that.’

‘Jesus!’

‘You didn’t know she had that much money?’

‘No! Graves looked like a tramp, I never knew ’e ’ad any money of ’is own!’

‘Do you think a quarter of a million would be a sufficient motive for your father to want Daiyu dead?’

Abigail chewed her gum vigorously, still frowning, before saying,

‘Well… ’e’d’ve liked the money. ’Oo wouldn’t? But of course ’e didn’ fuckin’ tell Cherie to do it. ’E wouldn’t’ve wanted to upset Mazu.’

‘Your father sent you a message, when I met him.’

‘You’ve met ’im?’

‘Yeah. He invited me backstage after his Olympia rally.’

‘An’ ’e sent me a message?’ she said incredulously.

‘Yeah. “Popsicle misses you.”’

Abigail’s lip curled.

‘Bastard.’

‘Him, or me?’

‘’Im, obviously. Still tryna…’

‘To…?’

‘Tug the ’eartstrings. It’s been twenny fuckin’ years an’ not a fuckin’ word, an’ ’e finks I’ll fuckin’ melt if ’e says fuckin’ “Popsicle”.’

But he could tell she was disturbed by the thought of her father sending her a message, even if it was difficult to tell whether anger or pain predominated.

‘I can understand why you don’t like the idea of your father drowning people,’ he said. ‘Not even Daiyu.’

‘What d’you mean, “not even Daiyu”? Yeah, she was spoiled, but she was still a fuckin’ kid, wasn’ she? An’ what d’you mean “people”? ’E didn’t drown my muvver, I toldja that last time!’

‘You wouldn’t be the first person who found it hard to believe their own flesh and blood could do terrible things.’

‘I’ve got no fuckin’ problem believin’ my farver does terrible fuckin’ fings, fanks very much!’ said Abigail angrily. ‘I was there, I saw what was fuckin’ goin’ on, I know what they do to people inside that fuckin’ church! They did it to me, too,’ she said, thumping herself in the chest. ‘So don’ tell me I don’ know what my farver is, because I fuckin’ do, but ’e wouldn’t kill members of ’is own—’

‘You were family, and as you’ve just said, he did terrible things to you, too.’

‘’E didn’t – or not… ’e let bad stuff ’appen to me, yeah, but that was all Mazu, an’ it was mostly when ’e was away. If that’s all about Birmingham—’

She made to stand up.

‘Just a couple more points, if you don’t mind,’ said Strike, ‘and this first one’s important. I want to ask you about Becca Pirbright.’

128

Through repetition of danger we grow accustomed to it. Water sets the example for the right conduct under such circumstances… it does not shrink from any dangerous spot nor from any plunge, and nothing can make it lose its own essential nature. It remains true to itself under all conditions…

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Robin had now stood waiting in Wardour Street for nearly an hour. Midge had texted ten minutes previously that she was waiting for Becca to emerge from a chemist’s. Wardour Street was still full of people entering and leaving Chinese restaurants and supermarkets. The red and gold lanterns swung gently overhead in the breeze as the sun sank slowly behind the buildings.

Robin was banking on Midge giving her due warning that Becca was on her way back to the temple, so she could find a less obvious place to watch, but the longer Robin waited, the more the little battery life in her phone was leaking away.

She was afraid that if Becca spotted her, she’d turn tail and run. It might be better, she thought, to be waiting in the temple when Becca returned. That, after all, was Becca’s place of safety and her final destination; it would be far harder for her to refuse to talk there than in the street. After a few more moments of indecision, Robin texted her intention to Midge, then headed into Rupert Court.

None of the people walking up and down the narrow passage paid her the slightest attention as she removed the skeleton keys from her pocket. This, after all, was London: each to their own business, unless it became so noisy, violent or otherwise bothersome that passers-by felt duty bound to intervene. It took Robin five goes to find a key that would unlock the temple doors, but finally she managed it. Having slipped inside, she closed the doors quietly behind her and locked them again.

Becca had left the temple lights on their lowest setting, doubtless to make it easier for her to navigate when she returned. The place was deserted. The gigantic cinema screen facing Robin was black, which gave it a faintly forbidding look. The Disneyesque hand-holding figures that ran around the walls had blended into the shadows, but the ceiling figures were dimly visible: the Wounded Prophet in orange, with the blood on his forehead; the Healer Prophet in his blue robes, with his beard and serpent-wrapped staff; the Golden Prophet in yellow, scattering jewels as she flew; the Stolen Prophet in scarlet, with his noose around his neck; and lastly the Drowned Prophet, all in bridal white, with the stylised waves rising behind her.

Robin walked up the scarlet-carpeted aisle to stand beneath the image of Daiyu, with its malevolent black eyes. It was while she was still looking up at the figure that Robin heard something she hadn’t expected, and which made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up: the screaming of a baby, somewhere inside the temple.

She turned swiftly, trying to locate the source of the sound, then headed towards the stage. To the right of it was a door so well camouflaged in the gold temple wall that Robin hadn’t noticed it during the services she’d attended, distracted, no doubt, by the images of Gods, and of the church’s charitable work, shown onscreen. Robin felt for the flush pull handle and tugged.

The door opened. There was a staircase beyond, leading upstairs to what Robin knew were sleeping quarters. The baby’s cries grew louder. Robin began to climb.

129

The fate of fire depends on wood; as long as there is wood below, the fire burns above.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

‘So,’ said Strike, pausing in his note-taking to read back what Abigail had just told him, ‘in the two or three weeks you spent at the Birmingham centre, you definitely don’t remember any eleven-year-olds being transferred from Chapman Farm?’

‘No,’ said Abigail.

‘That tallies with my information,’ said Strike, ‘because my operative in Birmingham made enquiries about Becca Pirbright. They know who she is, because she’s a big shot in the church now, but they said she’d never lived there as a child.’

‘What’s it matter wevver she ever lived in Birmingham?’ said Abigail, perplexed.

‘Because that’s where her brother and sister believed she’d gone, after Daiyu disappeared. Becca returned to the farm three years later, and she was changed.’

‘Well, she would be, after free years,’ said Abigail, still looking puzzled.

‘But you can’t remember the Pirbright kids?’

‘No, they must’ve been a lot younger than me.’

‘Becca was five years younger.’

‘Then we’d’ve missed each uvver in the dorms.’

‘Dark,’ Strike prompted her. ‘Reasonably attractive. Shiny hair.’

Abigail shrugged and shook her head.

‘Their mother was called Louise.’

‘Oh,’ said Abigail slowly. ‘Yeah… I remember Louise. Really good-looking woman. Mazu ’ad it in for ’er the moment she arrived at the farm.’

‘Did she?’

‘Oh yeah. It was all bruvverly love an’ not bein’ possessive an’ shit, but Mazu fuckin’ ’ated all the women my farver was shagging.’

‘Was he calling them spirit wives in those days?’

‘Not to me,’ said Abigail restlessly. ‘Listen, can you get to the point? Only I’ve gotta meet Darryl an’ ’e’s pissed off at me at the moment ’cause ’e finks I’m not givin’ ’im enough attention.’

‘You don’t seem the type to be bothered by complaints like that.’

‘’E’s very good in the sack, if you must know,’ said Abigail coolly. ‘Is that it, then, on Becca and Birmingham?’

‘Not entirely. I’d have asked Cherie to clarify the next couple of points, but unfortunately I can’t, because she hanged herself hours after I interviewed her.’

‘She… wha’?’

Abigail had stopped chewing.

‘Hanged herself,’ repeated Strike. ‘It’s been a bit of a feature of this case, to tell you the truth. After I went to interview Jordan Reaney, he tried to kill himself, too. I’d shown both of them –’

He slid his hand into his coat pocket, extracted his mobile and brought up the pictures of the Polaroids.

‘– these. You can swipe right to see all of them. There are six.’

Abigail took the phone and looked through the pictures, her expression blank.

‘Are those the kinds of pig masks you were made to wear as punishments, by Mazu?’ asked Strike.

‘Yeah,’ said Abigail quietly. ‘That’s them.’

‘Were you ever forced to do anything like this?’

‘Christ, no.’

She pushed the phone back across the table, but Strike said,

‘Would you be able to identify the people in the pictures?’

Abigail drew the phone back towards her and examined them once again, though with obvious reluctance.

‘The tall one looks like Joe,’ she said, after staring for a while at the picture in which Paul Draper was being sodomised.

‘Did he have a tattoo?’

‘Dunno. I was never in the Retreat Rooms wiv ’im.’

She glanced up at Strike.

‘S’pose your partner found out about the Retreat Rooms, did she?’

‘Yes,’ said Strike. ‘D’you think this happened in one of them?’

‘No,’ said Abigail, dropping her gaze to the phone again. ‘The place looks too big. Looks more like a barn. There was never no one takin’ photographs or nuffing in the Retreat Rooms, no group stuff, nuffing like this. It was s’posed to be “spiritual”, what you did in there,’ she said, her mouth twisting. ‘Jus’ one man an’ one woman. An’ that,’ she said, pointing at the picture of the small man being sodomised, ‘was right out. My farver an’ Mazu didn’ like gays. They both ’ad a fing about it.’

‘Can you identify any of the others? The smaller man?’

‘Looks like Dopey Draper, poor sod,’ said Abigail quietly. ‘The girls, I dunno… s’pose that could be Cherie. She was blonde. An’ the dark one, yeah, that could be Rosie whatever-’er-name-was. You didn’t get many chubby girls at Chapman Farm.’

‘Can you remember anyone having a Polaroid camera?’ asked Strike, as Abigail pushed the phone back across the table to him.

‘No, it weren’t allowed. No phones or cameras, nuffin’ like that.’

‘The original Polaroids were found hidden in an old biscuit tin. Long shot, I know, but can you remember anybody at the farm having chocolate biscuits?’

‘’Ow d’you expec’ me to remember chocolate biscuits, all this time after?’

‘It’d be quite unusual to see biscuits at the farm, wouldn’t it? With sugar being banned?’

‘Yeah, but… well, I s’pose someone in the farm’ouse could’ve ’ad ’em, ’idden…’

‘Going back to where your father was, when Daiyu disappeared: there was a man seen on the beach by witnesses, shortly before Cherie emerged from the sea: a jogger. He never came forward when the story of the drowning hit the press. It was dark, so the only description I’ve managed to get is that he was large. Did your father like jogging?’

‘Wha’?’ said Abigail, frowning again. ‘You fink ’e pretended ’e was going to Birmingham, ordered Cherie to drown Daiyu, then gone jogging on the beach to check wevver she was doin’ it?’

‘No,’ said Strike, smiling, ‘but I wondered whether Cherie or anyone else at the farm ever mentioned the presence of the jogger on the beach when Daiyu disappeared.’

Abigail frowned at him for a moment, chewing her gum, then said,

‘Why d’you keep doin’ that?’

‘Doing what?’

‘Sayin’ Daiyu “disappeared”, not “drowned”.’

‘Well, her body was never found, was it?’ said Strike.

She looked at him, her jaws still working on her gum. Then, unexpectedly, she slipped her hand into the pocket of her work trousers and pulled out her mobile.

‘Not ordering a cab, are you?’ said Strike, watching her type.

‘No,’ said Abigail, ‘I’m tellin’ Darryl I might be a bit late.’

130

… flowing water, which is not afraid of any dangerous place but plunges over cliffs and fills up the pits that lie in its course…

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Robin was standing very still in the dimly lit upper floor of the temple. She’d been there for nearly five minutes. As far as she could tell, the baby, which was now silent, had been crying in a room at the very end of the corridor, which would look onto Rupert Court. Shortly after the baby’s wails had ceased, she’d heard what she thought was a television being turned on. Somebody was listening to a news report about the goings on at Chapman Farm.

‘… can see from the aerial picture, John, a forensic team is at work inside a tent in the field behind the temple and other buildings. As we reported earlier—’

‘Sorry to interrupt you, Angela, but this just in: a statement has been issued to the press on behalf of the head of the UHC, Jonathan Wace, who’s currently in Los Angeles.

‘“Today, the Universal Humanitarian Church has been subject to an unprecedented and unprovoked police action which has caused alarm and distress to church members living peacefully in our communities in the UK. The church denies any and all criminal wrongdoing and strongly deplores the tactics used by the police against unarmed, innocent people of faith. The UHC is currently taking legal advice to protect itself and its members from further violations of their right to religious freedom, as guaranteed by Article 18 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There will be no further statement at this time.”’

As far as Robin could tell, the room with the television was the only one that was occupied. Its door stood ajar, and the light from the screen spilled out into the corridor. She began to move carefully towards it, the sound of her footsteps masked by the voice of the journalists.

‘… started here in the UK, didn’t it?’

‘That’s right, John, in the late eighties. Now, of course, it’s spread to the Continent and North America…’

Robin had crept to the door of the inhabited room. Hidden in shadow, she peered through the gap.

The room would have been entirely dark but for the television and the moon-like lamp outside the window, which hung from the ceiling of Rupert Court. Robin could see the corner of what looked like a carry cot, in which the baby was presumably now lying, the end of a bed with a blue counterpane, a baby’s bottle on the floor and the edge of what looked like a hastily packed holdall, from which some white fabric protruded. However, her attention was fixed upon a woman who was kneeling on the floor with her back to the door.

She had dark hair, tied back in a bun, and wore a sweatshirt and jeans. Her hands were busy with something. When Robin looked at the woman’s reflection in the window, she saw that she had a book open in front of her and was rapidly counting out yarrow stalks. A white object hung on a black cord around her neck. Only when Robin focused on the reflected face did her heart begin to pound violently in her chest. With the familiar fear and repugnance she’d have felt on seeing a tarantula creeping across the floor, she recognised the long, pointed nose and dark, crooked eyes of Mazu Wace.

131

As water pours down from heaven, so fire flames up from the earth.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

The room had become steadily darker as Strike and Abigail talked. Now she got to her feet, flicked on a light, then returned to the detective and sat back down.

‘’Ow can she still be alive? That’s crazy.’

‘Just for the sake of argument,’ said Strike, ‘let’s say your father and Mazu wanted to put Daiyu beyond the reach of the Graves family, to prevent them getting a DNA sample from her and proving she was Alexander’s daughter, rather than your father’s. Aside from the fact that Mazu wanted to keep her daughter, the quarter of a million would have reverted to the Graves’ control if they got custody.

‘What if your father and Mazu faked Daiyu’s death, with Cherie as a willing accomplice? Let’s say, instead of drowning, Daiyu was removed from the farm long enough to have credibly changed her appearance. She then came back three years later under a different name, as a child who’d supposedly gone to Birmingham to be trained up as a future church leader. Memories grow vague. Teeth can be fixed. Nobody’s sure quite how old anyone is, in there. What if your father and Mazu passed Daiyu off as Becca Pirbright?’

‘Come off it,’ said Abigail. ‘’Er sister an’ bruvver would’ve known she wasn’ Becca! ’Er muvver would’ve known! People don’t change that much. They’d never ’ave got away wiv that!’

‘You don’t think people can be so brainwashed, they’ll go along with what the church elders tell them? Even if the counter-evidence is staring them in the face?’

‘It would’ve come out,’ insisted Abigail. ‘Daiyu would on’y’ve been – what? – ten when she got back? I’ll tell you this for free: Daiyu would never’ve kept ’er mouth shut about ’oo she really was. Pretend to be some ordinary kid, instead of Papa J an’ Mama Mazu’s daughter? No way.’

‘But that’s the thing,’ said Strike. ‘Becca wasn’t treated like an ordinary kid when she came back – far from it. She was fast-tracked to the heights of the church while the rest of her family were kept as dogsbodies at Chapman Farm. She’s the youngest Principal the church has ever had. Your father’s also made her a spirit wife.’

‘Well, there you bloody are, then!’ said Abigail. ‘’E’d be committing fuckin’ incest if ’e—’

‘Ah,’ said Strike, ‘but here’s where it gets interesting. Becca seems to have become a spirit wife around the time your half-brother Taio started showing a sexual interest in her. Robin’s also got it on good authority that Becca’s still a virgin.

‘Now,’ said Strike, to the clearly incredulous Abigail, ‘I don’t know about you, but I don’t buy the story that your father picked out Becca as a future church leader when she was only eleven, so four separate theories occur to me, to account for why she was treated so differently from everyone else.

‘One reason could be that your father’s a paedophile, and separating Becca from her family was his way of ensuring he could have sexual access to her.’

‘’E’s not a paedo,’ said Abigail. ‘Not… not a proper one.’

‘What d’you mean by that?’

‘’E’s not too fussy about age of consent, as long as they’re – you know – well developed, like that Rosie. Long as they look like women. But not eleven-year-olds,’ said Abigail, ‘no way. Anyway, Becca wouldn’t still be a virgin if ’e was fucking ’er, would she?’

‘I agree,’ said Strike. ‘That explanation doesn’t cut it for me, either. So if your father’s interest in Becca wasn’t sexual, we’re left with three possibilities.

‘Firstly: Becca’s really Daiyu. That can only be proved, obviously, if we get a DNA sample from Mazu. But there are objections to that theory, as you point out.

‘So we move on to the next possibility. Becca’s not Daiyu, but she is your father’s biological daughter, and with Daiyu gone, she was trained up to take her place.’

‘’Ang on,’ said Abigail, scowling. ‘No, ’ang on. Louise already ’ad kids, she brought ’em to the farm wiv ’er. Becca wasn’ born there.’

‘That doesn’t necessarily mean she’s not your half-sister. Nor, come to that, does Daiyu being born before you and your father went to live at the farm mean Daiyu wasn’t his child, either. You told me last time we met that your father moved around a lot when your mother was alive, and he’s done a lot of roaming around since going to live at the farm, as well. I think it’s naive to imagine that the only place your father has sex with other women is at Chapman—’

‘Daiyu wasn’ my fuckin’ sister. She was Graves an’ Mazu’s kid!’

‘Look,’ said Strike calmly. ‘I know you want to believe your father sincerely loved your mother—’

‘He fuckin’ did, all righ’?’ said Abigail, now growing pink again.

‘—but even men who love their wives have been known to be unfaithful. Were you and your parents on holiday in Cromer when your mother died, or were you living in the vicinity?’

‘Living,’ said Abigail reluctantly.

‘Don’t you think it’s possible your father and Mazu had already met, and started an affair, before your mother drowned? Isn’t it plausible he took you off to live at Chapman Farm so he could be with his mistress and have both his kids under the same roof? He’d hardly admit as much to his grieving daughter, would he?’

Abigail’s face had reddened. She looked angry.

‘The same applies to Louise,’ said Strike. ‘He could have fathered all her kids, for all you know. Business trips, interviewing for jobs, delivering luxury cars, overnight stays in different cities… I know you’d rather think your father’s promiscuity and infidelity started at Chapman Farm, but I’m trying to find out why Becca was singled out in a way no other eleven-year-old has been, before or since, and one very obvious explanation is that Jonathan Wace fathered her. He seems to value his own bloodline.’

‘You could’ve fooled me,’ snapped Abigail.

‘When I say “value”, I’m not suggesting this is a case of ordinary love. His aim seems to be to propagate the church with his own offspring. If one or two leave he probably thinks of it as a sustainable loss, given that the classroom at Chapman Farm is full of his descendants.

‘But there’s a simple way to prove all of this, or rule it out. I’ve got no authority to force DNA samples out of your father, Mazu or any of the Pirbrights, but if you were prepared—’

Abigail stood up abruptly, looking distressed, and walked out of the room.

Confident she’d return, Strike remained where he was. Taking out his phone, he checked for texts. One of them would have pleased him immensely, had he not read the second, and felt anger mixed with panic.

132

Water flows on uninterruptedly and reaches its goal: The image of the Abysmal repeated.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

The television in the upstairs temple room was no longer showing footage of Jonathan Wace or Chapman Farm. Instead, the presenter and two guests were discussing the likelihood of Britain formally leaving the EU in early 2017. Mazu paused in her manipulation of the yarrow stalks to mute the television, then continued counting.

She soon finished. Robin watched Mazu’s reflection stoop to make a last note on a piece of paper on the floor, then turn the pages of the I Ching to find the hexagram she’d made.

‘Which one did you get?’ said Robin loudly, stepping into the room.

Mazu jumped to her feet, her face ghastly white in the dim light cast by the television screen.

‘How did you get in here?’

‘I’ve gone pure spirit,’ said Robin, her heart beating so fast, she might just have run a mile. ‘The doors flew open for me, when I pointed at them.’

She was determined to seem unafraid, but it wasn’t easy. Her rational self insisted that Mazu was ruined, her power gone, that she cut a pathetic figure in her baggy sweatshirt and her dirty jeans, yet some of the terror this woman had inculcated over months remained. Mazu stood before her as the demon of fairy tales, the witch in the gingerbread cottage, mistress of agony and death, and she stirred in Robin the shameful, primitive fears of childhood.

‘So what’s the I Ching telling you?’ Robin said boldly.

To her disquiet, the familiar tight, false smile appeared on the woman’s face. Mazu ought not to be able to smile at this moment; she should be cowed and terrified

‘“Tun/Retreat,”’ she said quietly. ‘“The power of the dark is ascending.” It was warning me you were walking up the stairs.’

‘Funny,’ said Robin, her heart still hammering. ‘From where I’m standing, the power of the dark seems to be in freefall.’

As she said it, the light from the television momentarily brightened, and she saw the reason for Mazu’s confidence. A rifle, hitherto in shadow, was leaning up against the wall just behind her, within easy reach.

Oh, shit.

Robin took a step forwards. She needed to get closer to Mazu than a rifle barrel’s length, if she was to have any chance of not getting shot.

‘If you make an act of penitence now, Robin –’ This was the first time Mazu had ever used her real name, and Robin resented it, as though Mazu had somehow made it dirty, by having it in her mouth ‘– and as long as it’s given in a true spirit of humility, I’ll accept it.’ The dark, crooked eyes glinted like onyx in the gloom of the room. ‘I’d advise you to do so. Much worse will happen if you don’t.’

‘You want me to kiss your feet again?’ said Robin, forcing herself to sound contemptuous rather than scared. ‘Then what? You’ll drop the child abuse charges?’

Mazu laughed. Robin had never heard her do so before, even during the joyful meditation; a harsh caw erupted from her mouth, all pretence at refinement gone.

‘You think that’s the worst that can happen to you? Daiyu will come for you.’

‘You’re insane. Literally insane. There is no Drowned Prophet.’

‘You’ll find out your mistake,’ said Mazu, smiling. ‘She’s never liked you, Robin. She knew all along what you were. Her vengeance will be—’

‘Her vengeance will be non-existent, because she isn’t real,’ said Robin quietly. ‘Your husband lied to you. Daiyu never drowned.’

The smile vanished from Mazu’s face as though it had been slapped off. Robin was close enough now to smell the incense perfume that didn’t mask her unwashed smell.

‘Daiyu never went to the sea,’ said Robin, advancing inch by inch. ‘Never went to the beach. It was all bullshit. The reason her body never washed up is because it was never there.’

‘You are filth,’ breathed Mazu.

‘Should’ve kept a closer eye on her, shouldn’t you?’ said Robin quietly. ‘And I think you know that, deep down. You know you were a lousy mother to her.’

Mazu’s face was so pale, it was impossible to know whether she’d lost colour, but the crooked eyes had narrowed as her thin chest rose and fell.

‘I suppose that’s why you wanted a real Chinese baby girl of your own, isn’t it? To see whether you can do any better on a second att—?’

Mazu wheeled round and snatched up the gun, but Robin was ready: she seized Mazu around the neck from behind while trying to force her to drop the rifle, but it was like wrestling with an animal: Mazu had a brute strength that belied her age and size, and Robin felt as much revulsion as rage as they struggled, now terrified for the baby, in case the gun fired accidentally.

Mazu twisted one bare foot around Robin’s leg and succeeded in toppling both of them, but Robin still had her in a tight grip, refusing to let her pull free or far enough away to shoot. With every ounce of her strength, Robin managed to flip the older woman over onto her back and straddled her as they both struggled for possession of the rifle. A torrent of filthy curses issued from Mazu’s lips; Robin was a whore, trash, a demon, a slut, filth, shit—

Over the screams of Yixin, Robin heard her name shouted from somewhere inside the building.

‘HERE!’ she bellowed. ‘MIDGE, I’M HERE!’

Mazu forced the rifle upwards, catching Robin on the chin, and Robin drove it back down, hard, on the woman’s face.

‘ROBIN?’

‘HERE!’

The gun went off; the bullet shattered the window and blew out the lamp outside. Robin heard screams from Wardour Street; for a second time, she rammed the rifle down on Mazu’s face, and as blood spurted from the woman’s nose, Mazu’s grip loosened and Robin succeeded in wrenching the gun from her grasp.

The door banged open as Mazu raised her hands to her bleeding nose.

‘Jesus Christ!’ shouted Midge.

Panting, Robin scrambled off Mazu, holding the rifle. Only now did she realise she was holding part of the black cord of Mazu’s pendant in her hand. The mother-of-pearl fish lay broken on the floor.

Behind Midge, holding two Boots bags, was Becca Pirbright. Aghast, she looked from Mazu, whose hands were clasped to the nose Robin sincerely hoped she’d broken, to Robin, and back again.

‘Violence, Mazu?’ whispered Becca. ‘In the temple?’

Robin, who was still holding the rifle, let out a genuine laugh. Becca stared at her.

‘Can someone do something about that baby?’ said Midge loudly.

‘You do it,’ Robin told Becca, pointing the rifle at her.

‘You’re threatening to shoot me?’ said Becca, dropping the bags and moving to the carry cot. She scooped up the screaming Yixin and tried to soothe her, without much success.

‘I’m calling 999,’ said Midge, phone in hand.

‘Not yet,’ said Robin. ‘Just cover the door.’

‘Well, I’m telling Strike you’re all right, at least,’ said Midge, rapidly texting. ‘He’s not happy you came in here without back-up.’

Robin now looked Becca in the eye.

‘It was you I came for.’

‘What d’you mean, “came for”?’ said Becca.

She spoke as though Robin was unspeakably impertinent. No matter that she’d interrupted attempted murder, or that press were swarming at the gates of Chapman Farm, or that police were raiding the church – Becca Pirbright remained what she’d always been: utterly convinced of her own rectitude, confident that everything, even this, could be put right by Papa J.

‘You’re already facing child abuse charges,’ Becca said contemptuously, ineffectually trying to quell Yixin’s screams by jiggling her. ‘Now you’re taking us hostage at gunpoint.’

‘I don’t think that’s going to wash in court, coming from the person who colluded in covering up infanticide,’ said Robin.

‘You’re unbalanced,’ said Becca.

‘You’d better hope psychiatrists find you are. Where were you for three years, after Daiyu died?’

‘That’s no business—’

‘You weren’t in Birmingham. You were either in the Glasgow centre, or some rented property where Jonathan Wace could keep you well away from other people.’

Becca’s smile was patronising.

‘Rowena, you’re an agent—’

‘It’s Robin, but you’re damn right, I’m your adversary. Do you want to tell Mazu why you’re the only virgin spirit wife, or shall I?’

133

Nine at the top means…

One sees one’s companion as a pig covered with dirt,

As a wagon full of devils.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

The door behind Strike banged open again. Abigail, now divested of her fireman’s apparel and wearing jeans, marched towards him with a leather bag slung over her shoulder, grabbed her vacated chair, dragged it into the centre of the room, then clambered up onto it. Tall as she was, she had no difficulty in reaching the smoke alarm in the middle of the ceiling. With one twist, she’d taken off the lid and pulled out its batteries. Having replaced the lid, she jumped down off the chair and rejoined Strike at the table, pulling a pack of Marlboro Golds out of her bag. She sat down and lit one with a Zippo.

‘Is that allowed, in a fire station?’ he asked.

‘I don’t fuckin’ care,’ said Abigail, inhaling. ‘All right,’ she said, blowing smoke sideways, ‘you can ’ave DNA, if you want, an’ compare it to this Becca’s, but if she’s still in the church, I don’ see ’ow you’re gonna get it.’

‘My partner’s working on that right now,’ said Strike.

‘I was finkin’, upstairs.’

‘Go on,’ said Strike.

‘What you jus’ said, about all what Daiyu was gonna get, from Graves’ will. That ’ouse. You said it was worf millions.’

‘Yeah, it must be,’ said Strike.

‘Then the Graves lot ’ad a motive to get rid of ’er. Stop ’er gettin’ the ’ouse.’

‘Interesting you should say that,’ said Strike, ‘because that thought occurred to me, too. Daiyu’s aunt and uncle, who’ll inherit if Daiyu’s dead, have been doing their best to stop me investigating her disappearance. I went to see them in Norfolk the other day. It wasn’t a happy interview, especially after I told Phillipa I’d seen her at your father’s Olympia meeting.’

‘The fuck was she doing there?’

‘Something had clearly rattled her enough to make her desperate to speak to your father. Phillipa left a note for him, backstage at Olympia. I asked whether they’d received an unexpected, anonymous phone call recently, which spurred her into action.’

‘Wha’ made you ask that?’

‘Call it intuition.’

Abigail flicked ash onto the floor and kicked it away with her foot.

‘You’d get on wiv Mazu.’ She affected a malignant whisper. ‘“The divine vibration moves in me.” What was this phone call about?’

‘They didn’t want to tell me, but when I suggested that someone had called to say Daiyu’s still alive, Phillipa gave herself away. Turned white. You can see how a phone call like that would put the fear of God into them. No more family mansion for them, if Daiyu’s still breathing.

‘And I have to say,’ added Strike, ‘Nicholas Delaunay ticks quite a few boxes for me, as Kevin Pirbright’s killer. Ex-marine. Knows how to handle a gun, knows how to plan and execute an ambush. The person who murdered Kevin was pretty slick.’

Abigail took another drag on her cigarette, frowning.

‘I’m lost.’

‘I think Kevin Pirbright worked out the truth behind Daiyu’s disappearance before he died, and that’s why he was shot.’

Abigail lowered her cigarette.

‘’E knew?’

‘Yeah, I think so.’

‘’E never said nuffing to me about Daiyu.’

‘He didn’t mention it being an odd coincidence, Daiyu dying exactly where your mother did?’

‘Oh,’ said Abigail. ‘Yeah. ’E did say somefing abou’ that.’

‘Possibly Kevin only put it all together after he’d approached you,’ said Strike.

‘So ’oo called these Delaunay people?’

‘Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? I suspect it was the same person who called Jordan Reaney to find out what he might have let slip to me, and who called Carrie Curtis Woods, and tipped her into suicide.’

Strike’s mobile buzzed, not once, but twice, in quick succession.

‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘Been waiting for this.’

The first text was from Barclay, but he ignored it in favour of Midge’s.

Robin safe. Got Becca and Mazoo shut in temple.

Immensely relieved, Strike opened Barclay’s message, which comprised two words.

Got everything.

Strike sent two texts of his own back, returned his mobile to his pocket, then looked again at Abigail.

‘I said there were four possibilities, to explain Becca’s strange status in the church.’

‘Listen,’ said Abigail impatiently, ‘I’m sorry, but I told Darryl I was gonna be late, not that I was never gonna turn up.’

‘Is Darryl the tall, good-looking black guy with green eyes? Because I know he wasn’t the fat guy driving the red Corsa. That was your lodger, Patrick.’

The pupils of Abigail’s dark blue eyes enlarged suddenly, so that they became as opaque as Strike had seen her father’s.

‘I had to keep you talking,’ said Strike, ‘because there were things that needed doing while you were well out of the way.’

He paused to let her speak, but she said nothing, so he continued,

‘Would you like to hear some of the questions I’ve been pondering, about Daiyu’s drowning in the North Sea?’

‘Tell me what you like,’ said Abigail. She was striving to look unconcerned, but the hand holding her cigarette had begun to shake.

‘I started small,’ said Strike, ‘by wondering why she’d drowned exactly where your mother did, but the deeper into the investigation I got, the more unexplained things started cropping up. Who was buying Daiyu toys and sweets in her last few months at the farm? Why was she wearing a white dress rather than a tracksuit when last seen alive? Why did Carrie strip to her underwear, if they were only going in for a paddle? Why did Carrie run off to poke at something at the water’s edge, right before the police arrived? Who was the second adult, who was supposed to be in the dormitory the night Carrie helped Daiyu out of the window? Why did your father spirit Becca Pirbright away from the farm, after Daiyu vanished?’

Abigail, who’d already ground out her first cigarette under her heel, now took out a second. Having lit it, she blew smoke into Strike’s face. Far from resenting this, Strike took the opportunity to breathe in some nicotine.

‘Then I started thinking hard about Kevin Pirbright’s death. Who gouged some of the writing out of his bedroom wall, leaving only the word “pigs”, and who stole his laptop? Who was Kevin talking about, when he told an undercover detective he was going to meet a bully and “have things out” with them? What exactly did Kevin know – what had he pieced together – such that he deserved a bullet through the brain?

‘Now all of those things, separately, might have explanations. A junkie could’ve stolen his laptop. The kids in the dorm might’ve simply forgotten the second person in charge the last night Daiyu was seen there. But added together, there seemed to be a hell of a lot of unexplained occurrences.’

‘If you say so,’ said Abigail, but her hand was still shaking. ‘But—’

‘I haven’t finished. There was also the question of those phone calls. Who called Carrie Curtis Woods, before my partner and I visited her? Whom did she call back, after we’d left? Who phoned Jordan Reaney, from a call box in Norfolk to throw suspicion on the church, and put him in such a state of fear and alarm he tried to overdose? Who were those two people terrified of, and what had that person threatened them with, that made them both decide they’d rather die than face it? And who called the Delaunays, trying to make them scared Daiyu was still alive, to throw a red herring in my path, and make them even more obstructive?’

Abigail blew smoke towards the ceiling and said nothing.

‘I also wanted to know why there’s a circle of wooden posts in the woods at Chapman Farm that someone once tried to destroy, why there’s an axe hidden in a nearby tree, and why, close by the destroyed ring, somebody once tried to burn some rope.’

Abigail gave a little convulsive jerk at the word ‘rope’, but still said nothing.

‘Maybe you’ll find this more interesting with visual aids,’ said Strike.

Once again, he brought up the pictures of the Polaroids on the phone.

‘That’s not Joe Jackson,’ he said, pointing. ‘That’s Jordan Reaney. That,’ he said, pointing at the blonde, ‘is Carrie Curtis Woods, that’s Paul Draper, but that,’ he pointed at the chubby dark girl, ‘isn’t Rosie Fernsby. That’s you.’

The door behind Strike opened. A bearded man appeared, but Abigail shouted ‘Fuck off!’ and he withdrew precipitately.

‘Military-level discipline,’ said Strike approvingly. ‘Well, you learned from the best.’

Abigail’s irises were now two near-black discs.

‘Now,’ said Strike, ‘you had to identify the tall guy and the dark girl as Joe Jackson and Rosie, because Carrie had already pulled those names out of her arse when she was panicking. None of you realised any of those Polaroids were still hanging around, and none of you expected me to have them.

‘For a frankly embarrassing length of time, I kept asking myself who took those pictures. Not everyone in them looks happy, do they? It looked as though this had been done for punishment, or in service of some sadist’s kink. But finally, I saw what should’ve been obvious: there are never all four of you in one shot. You were all taking pictures of each other.

‘A little secret society of four. I don’t whether you enjoyed sticking two fingers up at the spirit bonding nonsense, or liked fucking for the fun of it, or were just passing on the lessons you’d learned from Mazu and your father, about the pleasures of compelling other people to participate in ritual humiliation and submission.’

‘You’re fucking cracked,’ said Abigail.

‘We’ll see,’ said Strike calmly, before holding up the picture of Draper being sodomised by Reaney. ‘The masks are a nice touch. Extra level of degradation, and also a bit of plausible deniability – you’ll have learned the value of that from your father. I note that you come out of this particular sex session pretty well. Fairly straightforward sex and a bit of vanity posing with your legs open. Nobody’s forcibly sodomising you.’

Abigail merely took another drag on her cigarette.

‘Having realised that you were taking pictures of each other, the obvious question is, why were the other three participating in what doesn’t seem to have been completely pleasurable for them? And the obvious answer is: you had all the power. You were Jonathan Wace’s daughter. Because I don’t buy the Cinderella crap you’ve been feeding me, Abigail. I’m sure Mazu disliked you – stepdaughter, stepmother, that’s hardly uncommon – but I think, as Papa J’s firstborn, you had a lot of leeway, a lot of freedom. You didn’t get to be that weight on the usual diet at Chapman Farm.’

‘That’s not me,’ said Abigail.

‘Oh, I’m not saying I can prove this girl’s you,’ said Strike. ‘But Rosie Fernsby’s very clear it’s not her. You tried to stop us talking to her, not because she was in these pictures, but because she wasn’t. And she remembers you clearly. She says you threw your weight around a lot – “porky” was how she described you, by strange coincidence. Naturally, she’d have been especially interested in you, because you were the daughter of the much older man she’d convinced herself she was in love with.

‘It was pretty stupid of you to tell me Mazu made people wear masks while crawling around on the ground. Obviously I understand where you got the idea, and that you were trying to add a nice flourish to your depiction of her as a sociopath, but nobody else has mentioned pig masks used in the context of punishment. It’s important not to use incriminating things in their wrong context, even in service of a cover story. Many a liar slips up that way. Signposts to things you might not want looked at.’

He paused again. Abigail remained silent.

‘So,’ said Strike, ‘there you are at Chapman Farm, throwing your weight around, with three vulnerable people at your beck and call: a juvenile criminal who’s hiding from the police, a boy who was mentally sub-par even before you helped kick the shit out of him, and a runaway girl who was never going to trouble Mensa.

‘As Papa J’s entitled firstborn, you were allowed out of the farm to buy things: chocolate, little toys, a Polaroid camera, pig masks – biscuits, if you fancied them. You could pick and choose, within the constraints of Mazu’s iron regime, which was probably more stringent when your father wasn’t around, what jobs you preferred. You might not have had the option to lie in bed all day eating biscuits, but you could decide whether – to take a random example – you wanted to share childcare duty overnight with Carrie, and who you wanted on early duty with you, in the morning.’

‘All of this,’ said Abigail, ‘is specker – specla—’

‘Speculation. You’ll have a lot of time on your hands in prison, serving life. You could do some Open Univ—’

‘Fuck you.’

‘You’re right, of course, this is all speculation,’ said Strike. ‘Until, that is, Jordan Reaney realises he’s up to his neck in the shit and starts talking. Until other people who remember you at Chapman Farm in the eighties and nineties come crawling out of the woodwork.

‘I think you and Daiyu were both spoiled and neglected at Chapman Farm, with a couple of important differences. Mazu genuinely detested you, and abused you during your father’s absences. You were grieving the loss of your mother. You were also obsessively envious of the attention your only remaining parent showed towards your bratty stepsister. You wanted to be Popsicle’s pet again and you didn’t like him cooing over Daiyu – or, more accurately, the money she was worth. You wanted retribution.’

Abigail continued to smoke in silence.

‘Of course,’ said Strike, ‘the problem you had inside Chapman Farm – as, indeed, you’ve had outside it – is that you couldn’t pick the people who were best for the job, you had to take what you could get, which meant your obedient pig-mask lackeys.

‘Daiyu had to be lulled into a false sense of security, and kept quiet while it was happening. Bribes of toys and sweets, secret games with the big kids: she didn’t want the treats or the attention to dry up, so she didn’t tell Mazu or your father what was going on. That was a kid who was starved of proper attention. Maybe she wondered why her big sister—’

‘She wasn’t my fuckin’ sister!’

‘—was suddenly being so nice to her,’ Strike continued, unperturbed, ‘but she didn’t question it. Well, she was seven years old. Why would she?

‘Reaney supposedly oversleeping the morning Daiyu disappeared smacked of collusion the moment I heard about it – collusion with Carrie, at the very least. You bought soporific cough medicine or similar, in sufficient quantities to drug the rest of the kids, on one of your trips outside the farm. You volunteered yourself and Carrie for dormitory duty, but you never showed up. You were waiting outside the window, for Carrie to pass Daiyu out to you.’

Abigail had begun to shake again. Her handsome head trembled. She tried to light a fresh cigarette from the stub of the old one, but had to give up, resorting to the Zippo again.

‘The idea of the faked drowning is obviously to provide a cast iron alibi for the murderer – or murderers, plural. Did you or Reaney actually do the deed? You’d have needed two people, I expect, to stop her screaming and finish her off. Then, of course, you needed to dispose of the body.

‘Paul Draper got in trouble for letting the pigs out, but that wasn’t an accident, it was part of the plan. Some of those pigs were smuggled out into the woods and put into a pen constructed of posts and rope. My partner informs me pigs can be pretty vicious. I’d imagine it took all four of you to get them where you wanted them, or did Dopey have particular pig expertise you called into service?’

Abigail didn’t answer, but continued to smoke.

‘So you’d corralled the pigs in the woods… and someone, of course, had got hold of a hatchet.

‘What did Daiyu think was going to happen, once you’d led her off into the trees, in the dark? Midnight feast? Nice new game you had for her? Were you holding her hand? Was she excited?’

Abigail was now shaking uncontrollably. She moved the cigarette to her lips, but missed the first time. Her eyes were jet black.

‘When did she realise it wasn’t a game?’ said Strike. ‘When you pinned her arms to her sides so Reaney could throttle her? I don’t think the hatchet can have come into play until she was dead. You couldn’t risk screams. It’s very quiet at Chapman Farm at night.

‘Have you ever heard of Constance Kent?’ Strike asked her.

Abigail merely stared at him, trembling.

‘She was sixteen when she stabbed her three-year-old half-brother to death. Jealous of her father preferring him to her. It happened in the 1860s. She served twenty years, then got out, went to Australia and became a nurse. Is that what the firefighter stuff was about? Trying to atone? Because I don’t think you’re completely conscience-free, are you? Not if you’re still having nightmares about hacking Daiyu to pieces so the pigs could eat her more easily. You told me you “hate it when there’s kids involved”. I’ll bet you do. I’ll bet it brings back worse bloody memories than Pirates of the Caribbean.’

Abigail was white. Her eyes, like her father’s, had become as black and empty as boreholes.

‘I give you credit for the lie you told Patrick after he heard you screaming in your sleep, but once again, your lie gives something away. A whip, used on Jordan Reaney. You remembered that, and you associated it with Daiyu’s death. Was he whipped because he should have been supervising Draper? Or because he’d failed to find the lost pigs?’

Abigail now dropped her gaze to the table top, rather than look at Strike.

‘So: Daiyu’s dead, you’ve left Reaney to clean up the last of the mess, with instructions to set the pigs free once they’ve eaten the body parts, and to destroy the makeshift pen. You hurry off for early duty. You’d picked your companions for that morning carefully, hadn’t you? Two men who’d be exceptionally easy to manipulate. “Did you see that, Brian? Did you see it, Paul? Carrie was driving Daiyu! Did you see her wave at us?” Because, obviously,’ said Strike, ‘the thing in the passenger seat – which had to be wearing the white dress, because Daiyu had worn her tracksuit into the woods – couldn’t have waved, could it?’

Abigail said nothing, but continued to smoke, her fingers trembling.

‘It took me far longer than it should have done to realise what was in that van with Carrie,’ Strike went on. ‘Especially as Kevin Pirbright had written it on his bedroom wall. Straw. All those straw figures, made annually for the Manifestation of the Stolen Prophet. If Jonathan Wace’s daughter wants to have some fun crafting with straw in a barn, who’s going to stop her? Wouldn’t have taken nearly as long to construct a miniature version, would it?

‘Carrie’s careful to let herself be seen in Cromer, carrying the figure in the white dress down towards the water in the dark, because it’s important to establish that she and Daiyu actually went to the beach. I interviewed the Heatons, the couple Carrie met on the beach, after she came back out of the water. They bought the whole thing, they never suspected there was no child; they saw the shoes and the dress and believed Carrie – although Mrs Heaton had her doubts about whether Carrie was genuinely distressed. She mentioned a bit of nervous giggling.

‘I didn’t twig about the straw figure when Mr Heaton told me the van was covered in “muck and straw”. Didn’t even catch on when his wife told me Carrie had run off to poke at something – seaweed, she thought – when the police turned up. Of course, the sun would’ve been coming up by then. Bit weird, for a clump of wet straw to be lying on the beach. Carrie would have wanted to break that up and throw it back into the sea.

‘Ever since the Heatons told me she was a champion swimmer, though, I’ve wondered whether that was relevant to the plan. It was, of course. You’d need to be a powerful swimmer to get right out into deep water, deep enough to make sure you weren’t going to send all that straw straight back to the beach, keep your head above water while you untied it, and stay afloat while you broke it all apart. Genius plan, really, and a very accomplished bit of business from Carrie.’

Abigail continued to stare at the table, her cigarette-holding hand still shaking.

‘But there were a few slip-ups along the way,’ said Strike. ‘Bound to be, with a plan that complicated – which leads us right back to Becca Pirbright.

‘Why, when Becca’s sister told her she’d seen Daiyu climbing out of the window, did Becca come up with a cock and bull story about invisibility? Why, when Becca’s brother said he’d seen you trying to burn something in the woods – I presume Reaney didn’t do the job of destroying the pig pen thoroughly enough, and you wanted to finish the job, even if it was raining – did Becca insist he shouldn’t snitch? Why was Becca helping you cover everything up? What could have convinced an eleven-year-old to keep quiet, and keep others quiet, when she could have run straight to your father and Mazu with these odd stories, and gained their approval?’

Abigail now raised her eyes to look at Strike, and he thought she wanted to hear the answer, because she didn’t know it herself.

‘If ever anyone manages to de-programme Becca, which might be impossible by now, I think she’ll tell quite a strange story.

‘I don’t think Becca’s first impulse, on hearing what her brother and sister had witnessed, would have been to go to her own mother, or to the church Principals. I think she’d have gone straight to Carrie, who she seems to have worshipped as the only mother figure she’d ever really known. Becca’s sister told my partner that Becca would have done literally anything for Carrie.

‘I think Carrie panicked when she heard there were witnesses to Daiyu going out of the window and you burning rope in the woods. She’d gone along with the fake drowning because she was terrified of you, but I think she hoped, even while she was enacting the plan, that the thing wasn’t really going to come off. She might have hoped you’d set her up for a practical joke, or that you’d get cold feet when it came to actually killing your stepsister in the woods.

‘I think, when Becca kept going to Carrie with odd little bits of information she’d gleaned from her siblings, and maybe strange happenings and behaviours she’d picked up on herself, Carrie panicked. She knew this clever little girl must be shut down and persuaded that every anomaly, every inexplicable event, has an explanation – an explanation that must be kept secret, because she was worried that if you found out Becca knew a bit too much, she’d be the next child to get chopped to bits in the woods.

‘Now, what do we know about Carrie?’ said Strike. ‘Good swimmer, obviously. Runaway. Has been indoctrinated for the previous two years in all the mystic crap at Chapman Farm. Loves kids, and is loved back.

‘I think she cobbled together some story about Daiyu’s spiritual destiny to explain anything weird Becca and her siblings might have noticed. I think she fed Becca a line about Daiyu not being really dead, that the things she or her siblings had witnessed had mystic explanations. She encouraged Becca to come to her with anything else she’d heard or noticed, so Carrie could tie them in with her nonsense story about dematerialisation and resurrection, in which she’d played her own pre-ordained part, and I think she told Becca all of this was going to be their special secret, as the Blessed Divinity wanted.

‘And Becca bought all of it. She kept silent when Carrie told her to, she shut her siblings down, she gave them pseudo-mystical explanations, or told them off for being grasses. Which means, ironically, that the myth of the Drowned Prophet began, not with your father or Mazu, but out of a teenager’s imagination, in service of covering up a murder and silencing a kid who was a danger to all of you.

‘And after the inquest was over, Carrie did a flit, changed her name and tried to forget what she’d colluded in and tried to cover up. I suspect it was at that point that the heartbroken Becca went to your father and told him the whole story. If I had to guess,’ said Strike, watching Abigail closely for her reaction, ‘your father took you aside at some point, probably after he’d talked to Becca.’

Abigail’s lips twitched, but she remained silent.

‘Your father must’ve known you should’ve been in the dormitory that night, and he definitely knew you were on early duty that day and saw the truck pass. He might’ve asked what you were burning in the woods. He’ll have already noted the strange coincidence of Daiyu dying exactly where his first wife did, as though someone was trying to rub his face in it, or even cast suspicion on him. Because he should’ve been on his way to Birmingham with a fifteen-year-old girl when Daiyu “drowned”, shouldn’t he? Whether the police brought him in for questioning about taking an underage girl he’d only known a week on a road trip, or about infanticide, it wouldn’t look very good for a church leader, would it?

‘No, I think your father suspected or guessed that you were behind Daiyu’s disappearance, but being who he is – an amoral narcissist – all he really cared about was hushing it up. He’d just been handed the story of Daiyu ascending to heaven through the divine vessel of Carrie Gittins and he definitely didn’t want his daughter banged up on suspicion of murder – very bad for business. Much better to accept the supernatural explanation, to comfort his distraught wife with this mystic bullshit. Bereaved people will clutch at that kind of stuff, or there wouldn’t be any bloody mediums. So your father strings Becca along; he says, yes, he knew all along Carrie wasn’t a bad person, that she was merely helping Daiyu fulfil her destiny, and how clever of Becca, for seeing the truth.

‘Then he, too, does a bit of expert grooming. Perhaps he told Becca that it had been foreseen that she would come to him as a divine messenger. Maybe he told her the spirit of the prophet lived on in her. He flattered her and groomed her exactly as you groomed Daiyu – but without the ending of the pigs and the axe, in the woods at night.

‘You were shunted off to Birmingham to keep you out of sight and out of trouble, and Becca was secreted somewhere safe, somewhere you couldn’t get at her, where your father indoctrinated her so thoroughly into obedience and chastity and unquestioning loyalty that she’s become a very useful tool for the church. I think she’s been kept in a state of virginity for no other reason than that Wace doesn’t want her getting too close to anyone but him, and also because she’s the one woman he doesn’t want Mazu getting jealous of – because Becca’s the keeper of the biggest secrets. Becca’s the one who could testify that the supernatural explanation for Daiyu’s disappearance came from Carrie, not your father, and she could also tell a story of how expertly Wace fed her vanity, to keep her from ever talking. From what Robin found out at Chapman Farm, Becca might well have moments of lucidity, but it doesn’t seem to overly trouble her. I don’t think there’s a more committed believer in the UHC than Becca Pirbright.’

Strike now sat back in his chair, watching Abigail, who now looked back at him with a strange, calculating expression on her pale face.

‘Are you about to say that’s all speculation, too?’ asked Strike.

‘Well, it is,’ said Abigail, her voice slightly hoarse, but defiant, nonetheless.

She dropped her third cigarette to the ground and lit a fourth.

‘Well, then, let’s move on to more provable matters,’ said Strike. ‘Kevin Pirbright, shot through the head a few days after he told someone he was going to meet the bully from the church. A Beretta 9000 firing bullets at my car. A balaclavaed figure, padded out in a man’s black jacket, trying to smash its way into my office with the butt of a gun. Those phone calls, and the resultant suicide attempts. A phone call made to the Delaunays from the same mobile used in the call to Carrie, telling them Daiyu’s still alive, trying to drag them into the frame of suspicion and to derail my investigation.

‘My conclusions are as follows,’ said Strike. ‘The person behind all of this has access to a motley selection of men to do her bidding. She’s either sleeping with them, or stringing them along so they think she will. I doubt any of them know what they’re doing it for: possibly I’m a jealous ex-boyfriend who needs watching. They can’t keep my agency under surveillance all the time, and nor can the woman giving the orders, because they’ve all got jobs.

‘I further conclude that the person directing operations is themselves fit, strong and addicted to adrenalin – the escape from Kevin Pirbright’s bedsit, the attempted break-in of my office, the tailing of my BMW by the blue Ford Focus, the shooting. That person is more efficient than any of her underlings and doesn’t mind narrow escapes.

‘I think this person is clever and capable of hard work when it’s in her interests. She kept tabs on Paul Draper, Carrie Curtis Woods and Jordan Reaney – although possibly me telling you Reaney was in the nick put you onto his current whereabouts.

‘But I don’t think Reaney told you about the Polaroids. I thought he must have done, initially, but I was wrong. Reaney knew he’d fucked up, though. His reaction had told me those Polaroids were even more significant than they looked. You threatened to turn him in for Daiyu’s murder if anything he’d said or done led to you, and he panicked, and overdosed. Reaney’s got more of a conscience than you’d think from his CV. Like you, he still has nightmares about chopping up that child and feeding her to the pigs in the dark.

‘The reason I know Reaney didn’t tell you about the pictures is Carrie wasn’t expecting them. The killer hadn’t been able to forewarn her, which meant she had to come up with a story on the spot. She knew she mustn’t identify you or Reaney, the two killers, so she pulled two names out of thin air. I note, too, that it was only after Carrie blabbed to you about the Polaroids that the masked gunman turned up at my office and tried to break in. You weren’t after the UHC file. You were after the pictures. Trouble is, in tracing Carrie, you missed a boyfriend and a name change between Chapman Farm and Thornbury. Isaac Mills is still with us, and he’s prepared to testify about what Carrie confessed to him when drunk.’

A sneer twisted Abigail’s mouth again.

‘It’s all hearsay an’ specker—’

‘Speculation? You really think so?’

‘You’ve got fuck all. It’s all fuckin’ fantasy.’

‘I’ve got the axe Jordan Reaney hid in a tree, an axe that’s been the subject of a lot of rumours among the kids at Chapman Farm. Your half-brother thought it had something to do with Daiyu. What had he overheard, that made him think that? Forensics have moved on a lot since the mid-nineties. It won’t be hard to pick up even a speck of human blood on that axe. I’ve also got a sample of earth from the middle of those broken posts. All a lab will need is a few bone fragments, even very small ones, and Mazu’s DNA will confirm their identity.

‘Now, you might well say, “even if Daiyu was murdered in the woods, how d’you prove it was me?” Well, one of my detectives has been at your flat with your lodger tonight. You’d have done better to kick Patrick out when you said you would. A useful dogsbody, I’m sure, but thick and mouthy. My detective found Kevin Pirbright’s laptop hidden inside a chair cushion in your bedroom. He found the bulky black men’s jacket you borrowed from Patrick to murder Kevin Pirbright and to try and break into my office. Most importantly, he’s found a Beretta 9000 stinking of smoke, sewn up inside a cushion on your bed. Strange, the things a firefighter might find in a burning flat, when they’ve finished dragging junkies out of harm’s way.’

Abigail’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. She remained frozen, with the cigarette between her fingers, as Strike heard a car pulling up outside the fire station and watched the driver get out. Evidently, Robin had acted on his instructions.

‘This,’ he said, turning back to Abigail, ‘is Detective Inspector Ryan Murphy of the Metropolitan Police. I wouldn’t make too much trouble when he arrests you. He was supposed to be having dinner with his girlfriend tonight, so he’ll be in a bad mood already.’