The Running Grave

Ching/The Well

THE WELL. The town may be changed,

But the well cannot be changed.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

1

… the superior man is careful of his words

And temperate in eating and drinking.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

February 2016

Private detective Cormoran Strike was standing in the corner of a small, stuffy, crowded marquee with a wailing baby in his arms. Heavy rain was falling onto the canvas above, its irregular drumbeat audible even over the chatter of guests and his newly baptised godson’s screams. The heater at Strike’s back was pumping out too much warmth, but he couldn’t move, because three blonde women, all of whom were around forty and holding plastic glasses of champagne, had him trapped while taking it in turns to shout questions about his most newsworthy cases. Strike had agreed to hold the baby ‘for a mo’ while the baby’s mother went to the bathroom, but she’d been gone for what felt like an hour.

‘When,’ asked the tallest of the blondes loudly, ‘did you realise it wasn’t suicide?’

‘Took a while,’ Strike shouted back, full of resentment that one of these women wasn’t offering to hold the baby. Surely they knew some arcane female trick that would soothe him? He tried gently bouncing the child up and down in his arms. It shrieked still more bitterly.

Behind the blondes stood a brunette in a shocking pink dress, who Strike had noticed back at the church. She’d talked and giggled loudly from her pew before the service had started, and had drawn a lot of attention to herself by saying ‘aww’ loudly while the holy water was being poured over the sleeping baby’s head, so that half the congregation was looking at her, rather than towards the font. Their eyes now met. Hers were a bright sea-blue, and expertly made up so that they stood out like aquamarines against her olive skin and long dark brown hair. Strike broke eye contact first. Just as the lopsided fascinator and slow reactions of the proud grandmother told Strike she’d already drunk too much, so that glance had told him that the woman in pink was trouble.

‘And the Shacklewell Ripper,’ said the bespectacled blonde, ‘did you actually physically catch him?’

No, I did it all telepathically.

‘Sorry,’ said Strike, because he’d just glimpsed Ilsa, his godson’s mother, through the French doors leading into the kitchen. ‘Need to give him back to his mum.’

He manoeuvred past the disappointed blondes and the woman in pink and headed out of the marquee, his fellow guests parting before him as though the baby’s wails were a siren.

‘Oh, God, I’m sorry, Corm,’ said fair-haired, bespectacled Ilsa Herbert. She was leaning up against the side talking to Strike’s detective partner Robin Ellacott, and Robin’s boyfriend, CID officer Ryan Murphy. ‘Give him here, he needs a feed. Come with me,’ she added to Robin, ‘we can talk – couldn’t grab me a glass of water, could you, please?’

Fucking great, thought Strike, watching Robin walk away to fill a glass at the sink, leaving him alone with Ryan Murphy who, like Strike, was well over six feet tall. There, the resemblance ended. Unlike the private detective, who resembled a broken-nosed Beethoven, with dark, tightly curling hair and a naturally surly expression, Murphy was classically good looking, with high cheekbones and wavy light brown hair.

Before either man could find a subject of conversation, they were joined by Strike’s old friend Nick Herbert, a gastroenterologist, and father of the baby who’d just been assaulting Strike’s eardrums. Nick, whose sandy hair had begun receding in his twenties, was now half bald.

‘So, how’s it feel to have renounced Satan?’ Nick asked Strike.

‘Bit of a wrench, obviously,’ said the detective, ‘but we had a good run.’

Murphy laughed, and so did somebody else, right behind Strike. He turned: the woman in pink had followed him out of the marquee. Strike’s late Aunt Joan would have thought the pink dress inappropriate for a christening: a clinging, wraparound affair with a low V neckline and a hemline that showed a lot of tanned leg.

‘I was going to offer to hold the baby,’ she said in a loud, slightly husky voice, smiling up at Strike, who noticed Murphy’s gaze sliding down to the woman’s cleavage and back up to her eyes. ‘I love babies. But then you left.’

‘Wonder what you’re supposed to do with a christening cake?’ said Nick, contemplating the large, uncut slab of iced fruitcake that lay on the island in the middle of the kitchen, topped with a blue teddy bear.

‘Eat it?’ suggested Strike, who was hungry. He’d had only a couple of sandwiches before Ilsa had handed him the baby and, as far as he could see, his fellow guests had demolished most of the available food while he’d been trapped in the marquee. Again, the woman in pink laughed.

‘Yeah, but are there supposed to be pictures taken first, or what?’ said Nick.

‘Pictures,’ said the woman in pink, ‘definitely.’

‘We’ll have to wait, then,’ said Nick. Looking Strike up and down through his wire-rimmed glasses, he asked, ‘How much have you lost now?’

‘Three stone,’ said Strike.

‘Good going,’ said Murphy, slim and fit in his single-breasted suit.

Fuck off, you smug bastard.

2

Six in the fifth place means…

The companion bites his way through the wrappings.

If one goes to him,

How could it be a mistake?

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Robin was sitting on the end of the double bed in the marital bedroom. The room, which was decorated in shades of blue, was tidy except for two drawers lying open at the base of the wardrobe. Robin had been acquainted with the Herberts long enough to know Nick would have left them like this: it was one of his wife’s perennial complaints that he neither pushed in drawers nor closed cupboard doors.

Lawyer Ilsa was currently settled in a rocking chair in the corner, the baby already gulping greedily at her breast. As she came from a farming family, Robin was unfazed by the snuffling noises the baby was making. Strike would have found them vaguely indecent.

‘It makes you so damn thirsty,’ said Ilsa, who’d just gulped down most of her glass of water. Having handed Robin the empty glass she added, ‘I think my mum’s drunk.’

‘I know. I’ve never met anyone happier to be a grandmother,’ said Robin.

‘True,’ sighed Ilsa. ‘Bloody Bijou, though.’

‘Bloody what?’

‘The loud woman in pink! You must’ve noticed her, her tits are virtually hanging out of her dress. I detest her,’ said Ilsa vehemently, ‘she’s got to be the centre of attention all the bloody time. She was in the room when I invited two other people at her chambers, and she just assumed I meant her, too, and I couldn’t think of any way of telling her no.’

‘Her name’s Bijou?’ said Robin incredulously. ‘As in residence?’

‘As in man-hungry pain in the arse. Her real name’s Belinda,’ said Ilsa, who then affected a booming, sultry voice, ‘“but everyone calls me Bijou”.’

‘Why do they?’

‘Because she tells them to,’ said Ilsa crossly, and Robin laughed. ‘She’s having an affair with a married QC, and I hope to God I don’t meet him in court any time soon, because she’s told us way too much about what they get up to in bed. She’s quite open about trying to get pregnant by him, to get him to leave his wife… but maybe I’m bitter… well, I am bitter. I don’t need women who’re size eight around me, right now. This is a size sixteen,’ she said, looking down at her navy dress. ‘I’ve never been this big in my life.’

‘You’ve just given birth and you look absolutely lovely,’ said Robin firmly. ‘Everyone’s been saying so.’

‘See, this is why I like you, Robin,’ said Ilsa, wincing slightly at the enthusiastic sucking of her son. ‘How’re things going with Ryan?’

‘Good,’ said Robin.

‘What’s it been now? Seven months?’

‘Eight,’ said Robin.

‘Hm,’ said Ilsa, now smiling down at her baby.

‘What’s that mean?’

‘Corm’s hating it. His face when you and Ryan were holding hands outside the church. And I notice Corm’s lost a ton of weight.’

‘He had to,’ said Robin, ‘because his leg got so bad last year.’

‘If you say so… Ryan doesn’t drink at all?’

‘No, I told you: he’s an alcoholic. Sober two years.’

‘Ah… well, he seems nice. He wants kids,’ added Ilsa, shooting a glance at her friend. ‘He was telling me so, earlier.’

‘We’re hardly going to start trying for a baby when we’ve known each other barely eight months, Ilsa.’

‘Corm’s never wanted kids.’

Robin ignored this comment. She knew perfectly well that Ilsa and Nick had hoped for several years that she and Strike would become more to each other than detective partners and best friends.

‘Did you see Charlotte in the Mail?’ asked Ilsa, when it became clear Robin wasn’t going to discuss Strike’s paternal urges or lack thereof. ‘With that Thingy Dormer?’

‘Mm,’ said Robin.

‘I’d say “poor bloke”, but he looks tough enough to handle her… mind you, so did Corm, and that didn’t stop her fucking up his life as badly as she could.’

Charlotte Campbell was Strike’s ex-fiancée, with whom he’d been entangled on and off for sixteen years. Recently separated from her husband, Charlotte was now featuring heavily in gossip columns alongside her new boyfriend, Landon Dormer, a thrice-married, lantern-jawed billionaire American hotelier. Robin’s only thought on seeing the most recent paparazzi pictures of the couple was that Charlotte, though as beautiful as ever in her red slip dress, looked strangely blank and glassy-eyed.

There was a knock on the bedroom door, and Ilsa’s husband entered.

‘The consensus,’ Nick told his wife, ‘is that we take pictures before cutting the christening cake.’

‘Well, you’ll have to give me a bit longer,’ said the harried Ilsa, ‘because he’s only had one side.’

‘And in other news, your friend Bijou’s trying to chat up Corm,’ Nick added, grinning.

‘She’s not my bloody friend,’ retorted Ilsa, ‘and you’d better warn him she’s a complete nutcase. Ouch,’ she added crossly, glaring down at her son.

Down in the crowded kitchen, Strike was still standing beside the uncut christening cake, while Bijou Watkins, whose Christian name Strike had asked her to repeat because he hadn’t believed it the first time, was subjecting him to a rapid-fire stream of gossip relating to her job punctuated by cackles of laughter at her own jokes. She spoke very loudly: Strike doubted whether there was anyone in the kitchen who wasn’t able to hear her.

‘… with Harkness – you know George Harkness? The QC?’

‘Yeah,’ lied Strike. Either Bijou imagined that private detectives routinely attended court cases, or she was one of those people who imagine that everyone is as interested in the minutiae and personalities of their profession as they are.

‘… so I was on the Winterson case – Daniel Winterson? Insider trading?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, glancing around the kitchen. Ryan Murphy had disappeared. Strike hoped he’d left.

‘… and we couldn’t afford another mistrial, obviously, so Gerry said to me, “Bijou, I’ll need you in your push-up bra, we’ve got Judge Rawlins…”’

She cackled again as a few male guests looked around at Bijou, some smirking. Strike, who hadn’t expected the turn the conversation had taken, found himself glancing down at her cleavage. She had an undeniably fabulous figure, small-waisted, long-legged and large-breasted.

‘… you know who Judge Rawlins is, right? Piers Rawlins?’

‘Yeah,’ Strike lied again.

‘Right, so, he’s a real one for the ladies, so I’m walking into court like this…’

She pressed her breasts together with her upper arms and emitted a throaty laugh again. Nick, who’d just reappeared in the kitchen, caught Strike’s eye and grinned.

‘… and so, yeah, we were pulling out all the stops, and when the verdict came in, Gerry said to me, OK, next time it’ll have to be no knickers and you just keep bending over to pick up your pen.’

She burst out laughing for the third time. Strike, who could just imagine how his two female co-workers, Robin and ex-policewoman Midge Greenstreet, would react if he started suggesting these strategies for getting information out of witnesses or suspects, settled for a perfunctory smile.

At this moment, Robin reappeared in the kitchen, alone. Strike’s eyes followed her as she slid through the crowd to Nick to tell him something. He’d rarely seen Robin wear her strawberry blonde hair up, and it suited her. Her light blue dress was far more demure than Bijou’s and looked new: bought in tribute to Master Benjamin Herbert, Strike wondered, or for the benefit of Ryan Murphy? As he watched, Robin turned, saw him, and smiled over the sea of heads.

‘’Scuse me,’ he said, cutting off Bijou mid-anecdote, ‘need to talk to someone.’

He picked up two of the pre-poured glasses of champagne standing beside the christening cake and cleaved his way through the jumble of laughing, drinking friends and relatives to where Robin was standing.

‘Hi,’ he said. There’d been no chance to talk at the church, though they’d stood side by side at the font, jointly renouncing Satan. ‘Want a drink?’

‘Thanks,’ said Robin, taking the glass. ‘Thought you didn’t like champagne?’

‘Couldn’t find any lager. Did you get my email?’

‘About Sir Colin Edensor?’ said Robin, dropping her voice. In unspoken agreement, the pair edged away from the fray into a corner. ‘Yes. Funnily enough, I was reading an article about the Universal Humanitarian Church the other day. You realise their headquarters are about ten minutes from our office?’

‘Rupert Court, yeah,’ said Strike. ‘There were girls out with collecting tins in Wardour Street last time I was there. How d’you fancy meeting Edensor with me on Tuesday?’

‘Definitely,’ said Robin, who’d been hoping Strike would suggest this. ‘Where’s he want to meet?’

‘The Reform Club, he’s a member. Murphy have to leave?’ Strike asked casually.

‘No,’ said Robin, looking around, ‘but he had to make a work call. Maybe he’s outside.’

Robin resented feeling self-conscious as she said this. She ought to be able to talk naturally about her boyfriend with her best friend, but given Strike’s lack of warmth on the rare occasions Murphy called for her at the office, she found it difficult.

‘How was Littlejohn yesterday?’ asked Strike.

‘All right,’ said Robin, ‘but I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as quiet.’

‘Makes a nice change after Morris and Nutley, doesn’t it?’

‘Well, yes,’ said Robin uncertainly, ‘but it’s a bit unnerving to sit next to someone in a car for three hours in total silence. And if you say anything to him, you get a grunt or a monosyllable.’

A month previously, Strike had succeeded in finding a new subcontractor for the detective agency. Slightly older than Strike, Clive Littlejohn, too, was ex-Special Investigation Branch, and had only recently left the army. He was large and square, with heavy-lidded eyes that gave an impression of perennial weariness, and salt-and-pepper hair that he continued to wear military short. At interview, he’d explained that he and his wife wanted a more stable life for their teenage children, after the constant upheavals and absences of army life. On the evidence of the past four weeks, he was conscientious and reliable, but Strike had to admit his taciturnity was taken to an unusual extreme, and he couldn’t remember so far seeing Littlejohn crack a smile.

‘Pat doesn’t like him,’ said Robin.

Pat was the agency’s office manager, an implausibly black-haired, chain-smoking woman of fifty-eight who looked at least a decade older.

‘I don’t go to Pat for character judgement,’ said Strike.

He’d noticed the officer manager’s warmth towards Ryan Murphy whenever the CID man turned up to pick Robin up from the office and didn’t appreciate it. Irrationally, he felt everyone at the agency should feel as hostile to Murphy as he did.

‘Sounds as though Patterson really messed up the Edensor case,’ said Robin.

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, with an unconcealed satisfaction that stemmed from the fact that he and the head of the rival detective agency, Mitch Patterson, detested each other. ‘They were bloody careless. I’ve been reading up on that church since I got Edensor’s email and I’d say it’d be a big mistake to underestimate them. If we take the job, it might mean one of us going in under deep cover. I can’t do it, the leg’s too distinctive. Probably have to be Midge. She’s not married.’

‘Nor am I,’ said Robin quickly.

‘This wouldn’t be like you pretending to be Venetia Hall or Jessica Robins, though,’ said Strike, referring to undercover personas Robin had adopted during previous cases. ‘It wouldn’t be nine-to-five. Might mean you couldn’t have contact with the outside world for a while.’

‘So?’ said Robin. ‘I’d be up for that.’

She had a strong feeling that she was being tested.

‘Well,’ said Strike, who had indeed found out what he wanted to know, ‘we haven’t got the job yet. If we do, we’ll have to decide who fits the bill best.’

At this moment, Ryan Murphy reappeared in the kitchen. Robin automatically stepped away from Strike, to whom she’d been standing close, so as to keep their conversation private.

‘What’re you two plotting?’ asked Murphy, smiling, though his eyes were alert.

‘No plot,’ said Robin. ‘Just work stuff.’

Ilsa now reappeared in the kitchen, holding her finally sated, sleeping son.

‘Cake!’ shouted Nick. ‘Godparents and grandparents here for pictures, please.’

Robin moved into the heart of the party as people crowded into the kitchen from the marquee. For a moment or two, she’d been reminded of the tensions of her former marriage: she hadn’t liked Murphy’s question, nor had she appreciated Strike pushing to find out whether she was committed to the job as much as the single Midge.

‘You hold Benjy,’ said Ilsa, when Robin reached her. ‘Then I can stand behind you. I’ll look thinner.’

‘You’re being silly, you look great,’ murmured Robin, but she accepted her sleeping godson and turned to face the camera, which was being held by Ilsa’s red-faced uncle. There was much jostling and repositioning behind the island on which the christening cake stood: camera phones were held high. Ilsa’s tipsy mother trod painfully on Robin’s foot and apologised to Strike instead. The sleeping baby was surprisingly heavy.

‘Cheese!’ bellowed Ilsa’s uncle.

‘It suits you!’ called Murphy, toasting Robin.

Out of the corner of her eye, Robin saw a blaze of shocking pink: Bijou Watkins had found her way to Strike’s other side. The flash went off several times, the baby in Robin’s arms stirred but slept on, and the moment was captured for posterity: the proud grandmother’s bleary smile, Ilsa’s anxious expression, the light reflected on Nick’s glasses so that he looked vaguely sinister, and the slightly forced smiles on the faces of both godparents, who were pressed together behind the blue icing teddy bear, Strike ruminating on what Murphy had just said, Robin noticing how Bijou leaned into her detective partner, determined to feature in the picture.

3

To be circumspect and not to forget one’s armour is the right way to security.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Strike arrived back in his attic flat in Denmark Street at eight that evening, with the gassy sensation champagne always gave him, feeling vaguely depressed. Usually he’d have grabbed a takeaway on the way home, but on leaving hospital after a three-week stay the previous year he’d been given strict instructions about weight loss, physiotherapy and giving up smoking. For the first time since his leg had been blown off in Afghanistan, he’d done as the doctors ordered.

Now, without much enthusiasm, he put vegetables in a newly purchased steamer, took a salmon fillet out of the fridge and measured out some wholegrain rice, all the time trying not to think about Robin Ellacott, and succeeding only in so far as he remained aware of how difficult it was not to think about her. He might have left hospital with many good resolutions, but he’d also been burdened with an intractable problem that couldn’t be solved by lifestyle changes: a problem that, in truth, he’d had far longer than he cared to admit, but which he’d finally faced only when lying in his hospital bed, watching Robin leave for her first date with Murphy.

For several years now, he’d told himself that an affair with his detective partner wasn’t worth risking his most important friendship for, or jeopardising the business they’d built together. If there were hardships and privations attached to a life lived resolutely alone in a small attic flat above his office, Strike had considered them a price well worth paying for independence and peace after the endless storms and heartache of his long, on-off relationship with Charlotte. Yet the shock of hearing that Robin was heading off for a date with Ryan Murphy had forced Strike to admit that the attraction he’d felt towards Robin from the moment she’d first taken off her coat in his office had slowly mutated against his will into something else, something he’d finally been forced to name. Love had arrived in a form he didn’t recognise, which was doubtless why he’d become aware of the danger too late to head it off.

For the first time since he’d met Robin, Strike had no interest in pursuing a separate sexual relationship as a distraction from and a sublimation of any inconvenient feelings he might have for his partner. The last time he’d sought solace with another woman, beautiful as she’d been, he’d ended up with a stiletto heel puncture on his leg and a sense of grim futility. He still didn’t know whether, in the event of Robin’s relationship with Murphy ending, as he devoutly hoped it would, he’d force a conversation he’d once have resisted to the utmost, with a view to ascertaining Robin’s own true feelings. The objections to an affair with her remained. On the other hand (‘It suits you!’ that prick Murphy had said, seeing Robin with a baby in her arms), he feared the business partnership might break up in any case, because Robin would decide marriage and children appealed more than a detective career. So here stood Cormoran Strike, slimmer, fitter, clearer of lung, alone in his attic, poking broccoli angrily with a wooden spoon, thinking about not thinking about Robin Ellacott.

The ringing of his mobile came as a welcome distraction. Taking salmon, rice and vegetables off the heat, he answered.

‘Awright, Bunsen?’ said a familiar voice.

‘Shanker,’ said Strike. ‘What’s up?’

The man on the phone was an old friend, though Strike would have been hard pressed to remember his real name. Strike’s mother, Leda, had scraped the motherless and incurably criminal sixteen-year-old Shanker off the street after he’d been stabbed and brought him home to their squat. Shanker had subsequently become a kind of stepbrother to Strike, and was probably the only human being who’d never seen any flaws in the incurably flighty, novelty-chasing Leda.

‘Need some ’elp,’ said Shanker.

‘Go on,’ said Strike.

‘Need to find a geezer.’

‘What for?’ said Strike.

‘Nah, it ain’t what you fink,’ said Shanker. ‘I ain’ gonna mess wiv ’im.’

‘Good,’ said Strike, taking a drag on the vape pen that continued to supply him with nicotine. ‘Who is he?’

‘Angel’s farver.’

‘Whose father?’

‘Angel,’ said Shanker, ‘me stepdaughter.’

‘Oh,’ said Strike, surprised. ‘You got married?’

‘No,’ said Shanker impatiently, ‘but I’m living wiv ’er mum, in’ I?’

‘What is it, child support?’

‘Nah,’ said Shanker. ‘We’ve just found out Angel’s got leukaemia.’

‘Shit,’ said Strike, startled. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘An’ she wants to see ’er real dad an’ we ain’ got no idea where ’e is. ’E’s a cunt,’ said Shanker, ‘just not my kind o’ cunt.’

Strike understood this, because Shanker’s contacts throughout the criminal world of London were extensive, and could have found a professional con with ease.

‘All right, give me a name and date of birth,’ said Strike, reaching for a pen and notebook. Shanker did so, then asked,

‘’Ow much?’

‘You can owe me one,’ said Strike.

‘Serious?’ said Shanker, sounding surprised. ‘Awright, then. Cheers, Bunsen.’

Always impatient of unnecessary phone talk, Shanker then hung up and Strike returned to his broccoli and salmon, sorry to hear about the ill child who wanted to see her father, but nevertheless reflecting that it would be useful to have a favour in hand with Shanker. The small tip-offs and bits of information Strike got from his old friend, which were sometimes useful when Strike needed bait for police contacts, had escalated sharply in price as Strike’s agency had become more successful.

Meal made, Strike carried his plate to the small kitchen table, but before he could sit down his mobile rang for a second time. The call had been forwarded from the office landline. He hesitated before picking it up, because he had a feeling he knew who he was about to hear.

‘Strike.’

‘Hey, Bluey,’ said a slightly slurred voice. There was a lot of background noise, including voices and music.

It was the second time Charlotte had phoned him in a week. As she no longer had his mobile number, the office line was the only way of contacting him.

‘I’m busy, Charlotte,’ he said, his voice cold.

‘I knew you’d say that… ’m’in a horrible club. You’d hate it…’

‘I’m busy,’ he repeated, and hung up. He expected her to call again, and she did. He let the call go to voicemail as he shrugged off his suit jacket. As he did so, he heard a rustle in his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper that shouldn’t have been there. Unfolding it, he saw a mobile number and the name ‘Bijou Watkins’. She must be pretty deft, he thought, to have slipped that into his pocket without him feeling it. He tore the piece of paper in half, binned it, and sat down to eat his meal.

4

Nine in the third place means:

When tempers flare up in the family,

Too great severity brings remorse.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

At eleven o’clock on the last Tuesday in February, Strike and Robin travelled together by taxi from their office to the Reform Club, a large, grey nineteenth-century building that stood on Pall Mall.

‘Sir Colin’s in the coffee room,’ said the tailcoated attendant who took their names at the door, and led them across the vast atrium. Robin, who’d thought she looked reasonably smart in black trousers and a sweater, which would also work for her surveillance job later, now felt slightly underdressed. White marble busts stood sentinel on square plinths and large oil paintings of eminent Whigs looked benignly down from gold frames, while columns of fluted stone rose from the tiled floor to the first-floor balcony, then up to a vaulted glass ceiling.

The coffee room, which had implied a small and cosy space, proved to be an equally grand dining room, with green, red and gold walls, long windows and gilt chandeliers with frosted glass globes. Only one table was occupied, and Robin recognised their potential client at once, because she’d looked him up the previous evening.

Sir Colin Edensor, who’d been born into a working-class family in Manchester, had enjoyed a distinguished career in the civil service, which had culminated in a knighthood. Now patron of several charities concerned with education and child welfare, he had a quiet reputation for intelligence and integrity. Over the past twelve months his name, which had hitherto appeared only in broadsheets, had found its way into the tabloids, because Edensor’s scathing remarks about the Universal Humanitarian Church had drawn fire from a wide range of people, including a famous actress, a respected author and sundry pop culture journalists, all of whom depicted Edensor as a rich man furious that his son was squandering his trust fund to help the poor.

Sir Colin’s wealth had come to him through his marriage to the daughter of a man who’d made many millions from a chain of clothing stores. The couple appeared to have been happy together given that the marriage had lasted forty years. Sally had died barely two months previously, leaving behind three sons, of whom William was the youngest by ten years. Robin assumed the two men sitting with Sir Colin were his elder sons.

‘Your guests, Sir Colin,’ said the attendant, without actually bowing, though his tone was hushed and deferential.

‘Good morning,’ said Sir Colin, smiling as he got to his feet and shook hands with the detectives in turn.

Their prospective client had a thick head of grey hair and the sort of face that engenders liking and trust. There were laughter lines on his face, his mouth was naturally upturned at the corners and the brown eyes behind his gold-rimmed bifocals were warm. His accent was still perceptibly Mancunian.

‘These are Will’s brothers, James and Edward.’

James Edensor, who resembled his father, except that his hair was dark brown and he looked rather less good-humoured, stood up to shake hands, whereas Edward, who had blond hair and large blue eyes, remained seated. Robin noticed a scar running down Edward’s temple. A walking stick was propped against his chair.

‘It’s very good of you to see us,’ said Sir Colin, when all had sat down. ‘Would you like anything to drink?’

When Strike and Robin declined, Sir Colin cleared his throat slightly, then said,

‘Well… I should probably start by saying I’m not sure you’re going to be able to help us. As I told you over the phone, we’ve already tried using private detectives, which didn’t go well. It might even have made things worse. However, you were highly recommended to me by the Chiswell family, who I know of old. Izzy assured me that if you didn’t think you’d be able to help, you’d tell me so at once – which I thought a high compliment.’

‘We certainly don’t take cases we consider hopeless,’ said Strike.

‘In that case,’ said Sir Colin, putting his fingers together, ‘I’ll outline the situation and you can give me your expert opinion. Yes, please, go ahead,’ he added, answering Strike’s unasked question as the detective reached for his notebook.

Even if he hadn’t known Sir Colin’s previous profession, Strike would’ve known he was a man well-practised in giving information in an organised, cogent fashion, so he merely readied his pen.

‘I think it’s best to start with Will,’ said the civil servant. ‘He’s our youngest child and he was – I don’t like to say an accident, but Sally was forty-four when she fell pregnant with him and didn’t realise for quite a while. But we were delighted, once we got over the shock.’

‘James and I weren’t,’ interjected Edward. ‘Nobody likes to think their forty-something parents are up to that when they’re not looking.’

Sir Colin smiled.

‘All right, well, let’s just say it was a shock all round,’ he resumed. ‘But we all doted on Will once he’d arrived. He was a lovely little boy. Will’s always been very clever, but by the time he was six or seven we were worried there was something slightly off. He had passionate enthusiasms – obsessions, you might almost say – and disliked upsets to his routine. Things other children took in their stride unsettled him. He didn’t like big groups. At children’s parties he’d be found upstairs quietly reading or playing on his own. We were a little bit anxious about him, so we took him to see a psychologist and he was diagnosed as being on the mild end of the autistic spectrum. We were told it was nothing dramatic, nothing serious. The psychologist also told us he’s got a very high IQ. That wasn’t really a surprise: his ability to process information and his recall were both extraordinary and his reading age was at least five years ahead of his actual one.

‘I’m telling you all this,’ Sir Colin went on, ‘because I believe Will’s particular combination of abilities and quirks explain, at least partially, how the UHC was able to recruit him. There’d been a previous incident which worried us a lot, and which should have been a warning.

‘When Will was fourteen he fell in with a couple of boys at school who told him they were radical socialists, waging a kind of general war on authority. Will was quite vulnerable to people who seemed to like him, because at that point he’d never had many very close friends. He bought into their philosophy of general disruption and started reading all sorts of socialist theory. Only when they convinced him to set fire to the chapel did we realise what was going on. He came within a hair’s breadth of being expelled, and only a late-stage admission from a schoolmate saved him. She knew these boys were perpetuating a tease on Will for the fun of seeing how far they could persuade him to go.

‘We sat him down after that, Sally and I,’ said Sir Colin, ‘and had a very long talk with him. It became clear to us that Will had difficulty telling when people might be duplicitous. He’s quite black and white and expects other people to be as straightforward as he is, which was an irresistible temptation to the boys who put him up to arson.

‘That incident aside, though, Will never got in trouble, and the older he got, the more easily he seemed to make friends. Characteristically, he went and bought books to research autism, and he could be very funny about it. By the time he came to his final year at school, Sally and I were confident he’d be fine at university. He’d already proven he could make good friends and his grades were outstanding.’

Sir Colin took a sip of coffee. Strike, who appreciated the way in which the civil servant was relating the information, posed no questions, but waited for him to continue.

‘Then,’ Sir Colin said, setting down his cup, ‘three months before Will was due to leave for Durham, Ed was involved in a very serious car crash.’

‘A lorry’s brakes failed,’ explained Ed. ‘It crashed right through some traffic lights and hit my car.’

‘God,’ said Robin. ‘Were you—?’

‘He was in a coma for five days,’ said Sir Colin, ‘and had to learn to walk again. As you can imagine, all Sally’s and my attention was on Ed. Sally was virtually living at the hospital.

‘I blame myself for what happened next,’ said Sir Colin. Both his sons made to protest, but Sir Colin said, ‘No, let me say it. Will went off to university, and I wasn’t checking in with him as often as I would have done. I should’ve asked more questions, shouldn’t have taken things at face value. He mentioned people he was having drinks with, told me he’d joined a couple of societies, his coursework didn’t seem a problem – but then he disappeared. Simply packed up and vanished.

‘His tutor alerted us and we were extremely worried. I went up to the university myself and spoke to some of his friends, who explained that he’d been to a UHC talk held at the university, where he got talking to some members who gave him some literature to read, and asked him to attend a service, which he did. The next thing that happened was that he reappeared in his college, stripped his room and took off. Nobody has seen him since.

‘We tracked him down via the temple in Rupert Court and found out he was at Chapman Farm, in Norfolk. That’s where the UHC originated and it’s still their largest indoctrination centre. Members aren’t permitted mobile phones, so the only way to contact Will was to write to him, which we did. Eventually, under threat of the police, we managed to force the church to let us meet Will at their Central Temple in Rupert Court.

‘That meeting went extremely badly. It was like talking to a stranger. Will was totally unlike himself. He met everything we said with what I now know to be standard UHC talking points and jargon, and he refused point-blank to leave the church or resume his studies. I lost my temper, which was a big mistake, because it played right into the church’s hands and enabled them to paint me as his enemy. I should’ve done what Sally was doing: simply pour out love and show we weren’t trying to control or mislead him, which of course is what the church Principals were saying about us.

‘If I’d let Sally handle things, we might have had a chance of getting him out, but I was angry – angry he was throwing away his university career, and angry he’d caused so much fuss and worry when we still didn’t know whether Ed was going to be wheelchair-bound for the rest of his life.’

‘What year was this?’ Strike asked.

‘2012,’ said Sir Colin.

‘So he’s been in there nearly four years?’

‘Correct.’

‘And you’ve only seen him once since he joined?’

‘Once face to face, and otherwise only in photographs taken by Patterson Inc. Ed’s seen him, though.’

‘We didn’t talk,’ said Ed. ‘I tried to approach him last year in Wardour Street and he just turned tail and ran back into the Rupert Court Temple. I’ve walked the area a few times since and I’ve spotted him from a distance, out with his collecting tin. He looks ill. Emaciated. He’s the tallest of all of us and he must be several stone underweight.’

‘Apparently they’re chronically underfed at Chapman Farm,’ said Sir Colin. ‘They do a lot of fasts. I found out a lot about the inner workings of the church through a young ex-member called Kevin Pirbright. Kevin grew up in the church. He was there from the age of three.’

‘Yeah,’ said James, who for the last few minutes had given the impression of a man struggling to keep a guard on his tongue. ‘He had an excuse.’

There was a moment of charged silence.

‘Sorry,’ said James, though he didn’t look it, but then, evidently unable to hold the words back, he said forcefully,

‘Look, Will might have been too much of an idiot not to realise setting fire to a school chapel won’t solve world poverty, but come on. Come on. Of all the times to join a cult, he chooses the exact moment we’re waiting to find out whether Ed’s going to be paraplegic for the rest of his life?’

‘Will doesn’t think like that,’ said Ed.

‘No, because he’s a self-centred, monomaniacal little shit,’ said James hotly. ‘He knows perfectly well what he’s doing and he’s had plenty of opportunities to stop doing it. Don’t go thinking he’s some innocent halfwit,’ he threw at Strike and Robin. ‘Will can be bloody patronising to anyone who isn’t as clever as he is and you should hear him in an argument.’

‘James,’ said Ed quietly, but his brother ignored him.

‘My mother died on New Year’s Day. One of her last conscious acts was to write a letter to Will, begging him to let her see him one more time. Nothing. Nothing back. He let her die fretting about him, desperate to see him, and he didn’t turn up for the funeral, either. That was his choice and I’ll never forgive him for it. Never. There. I’ve said it,’ said James, slapping his hands to his thighs before getting to his feet. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do this,’ he added, and before anyone else could speak, he’d marched out of the room.

‘I thought that was going to happen,’ muttered Ed.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Sir Colin to Strike and Robin. His eyes had become wet.

‘Don’t worry about us,’ said Strike. ‘We’ve seen far worse.’

Sir Colin cleared his throat again and said, with a slight tremor in his voice,

‘Sally’s very last conscious act was to beg me to get Will out… do excuse me,’ he added, as tears began to leak from beneath the bifocals and he groped for a handkerchief.

Ed struggled up to move into the seat beside his father. As he moved around the table, Strike saw he still had a pronounced limp.

‘C’mon, Dad,’ he said, placing a hand on Sir Colin’s shoulder. ‘’S’all right.’

‘We don’t usually behave like this in public,’ Sir Colin told Strike and Robin, striving for a smile as he mopped his eyes. ‘It’s just that Sally… it’s all still very… very recent…’

With what Robin felt was deplorable timing, an attendant now arrived beside their table to offer lunch.

‘Yes, very good idea,’ said Sir Colin huskily. ‘Let’s eat.’

By the time menus had been provided and food ordered, Sir Colin had regained his composure. Once the waiter was out of earshot he said,

‘Of course, James is right, up to a point. Will’s got a formidable intellect and he’s a devil in a debate. I’m simply trying to explain that there’s always been a – a worrying naivety allied to Will’s very powerful brain. He’s thoroughly well intentioned, he truly wants to make the world a better place, but he also likes certainty and rules to cleave to. Before he found the prophets of the UHC, it was socialism, and before that he was a very tiresome Cub Scout – tiresome for the Cub leaders, because he didn’t like noisy games, but equally tiresome for us, with his endless good turns, and wanting to debate whether it was a good turn if it was something he’d been asked to do, or whether he had to think up his own acts of benevolence for them to qualify.

‘But Will’s real problem,’ said Sir Colin, ‘is that he doesn’t see evil. It’s theoretical to him, a faceless world force to be eradicated. He’s utterly blind to it when he’s up close.’

‘And you think the UHC’s evil?’

‘Oh yes, Mr Strike,’ said Sir Colin quietly. ‘Yes, I’m afraid I do.’

‘Have you tried visiting him? Arranging another meeting?’

‘Yes, but he’s refused. Only church members are allowed at Chapman Farm and when Ed and I tried to attend a service at the Rupert Court Temple to talk to Will, we were refused entry. It’s a registered religious building, so they have a legal right to bar visitors. We deduced from the fact we weren’t allowed in that the church have pictures of Will’s family members and have instructed church officials to keep us out.

‘As I told you on the phone, that’s how Patterson Inc messed things up. They sent the same man who’d been staking out Chapman Farm to the temple. Chapman Farm has cameras all around the perimeter, so the church authorities already knew what the man looked like, and when he arrived in Rupert Court they told him they knew who he was and who he worked for, and that Will was aware I was having private detectives follow him. At that point I terminated my contract with Patterson Inc. They’d not only failed to find out any information that would help me extract Will, they’d reinforced the church’s narrative against our family.’

‘Will’s still at Chapman Farm then, is he?’

‘As far as we know, yes. He sometimes goes out collecting money in Norwich and London. He occasionally stays overnight at the Rupert Court Temple, but otherwise he’s at the farm. Kevin told me recruits who don’t progress to running seminars and prayer meetings usually remain in the indoctrination centres – or spiritual retreats, as the church calls them. Apparently there’s a lot of hard labour at Chapman Farm.’

‘How did you meet this –’ Strike checked his notes ‘– Kevin Pirbright?’

‘I contacted him through his blog about the UHC,’ said Sir Colin.

‘Would he be amenable to talking to us?’

‘I’m sure he would have been,’ said Sir Colin quietly, ‘but he’s dead. He was shot in August of last year.’

‘Shot?’ repeated Strike and Robin simultaneously.

‘Yes. A single bullet to the head at home in his flat in Canning Town. It wasn’t suicide,’ said Sir Colin, forestalling Strike’s question. ‘There was no gun found at the scene. Patterson spoke to a police contact: they believe it was a drug-related killing. Apparently Kevin was dealing.’

‘Were you aware of that?’

‘No, but I wouldn’t have been… I think the poor chap wanted to impress me,’ said Sir Colin sadly. ‘Wanted to seem more well balanced than he really was. He didn’t have anyone else, because the rest of his family are still in the UHC. I never visited his flat and it was only towards the end that he admitted how much of a toll it was taking on him, writing about everything that had happened to him, trying to piece together his memories for his book about the UHC. I should’ve realised, I ought to have got him some kind of counselling. Should’ve remembered he was a damaged human being, instead of treating him as a kind of weapon to be used against the church.

‘I didn’t hear from him at all in the month before he was shot. Sally’s illness had been declared terminal, and I’d ticked Kevin off for behaving erratically and unhelpfully: I mean, in ways that were damaging to himself, quite apart from my wish to get Will out of the UHC. He made a scene at Giles Harmon’s book signing, swearing and shouting. I was constantly trying to impress upon him that those kinds of tactics could only backfire, but he was very angry, very bitter.’

‘Do you think it was a drug-related hit?’

Ed glanced sideways at his father, who hesitated before saying,

‘I was in rather an overwrought state when I heard he’d been shot and… if I’m honest, my thoughts certainly went straight to the UHC.’

‘But you’ve changed your mind?’

‘I have, yes. They don’t need guns; they’ve got expensive lawyers. They’re expert at shutting down criticism: articles by sympathetic journalists, celebrities doing PR… Kevin was very small fry, really, even if he’d managed to finish his book. They’d already forced him to take down every serious allegation he made on his blog, and they’d also made accusations of abuse against him.’

‘What kind of abuse?’

‘Sexual,’ said Sir Colin. ‘They claimed he’d abused his sisters. According to a letter Kevin received from the Council of Principals, both girls had made fairly detailed allegations against him. Now, I know as well as anyone that sexual abuse is endemic. One of the charities I work with helps survivors, so I’m only too familiar with the statistics and I’m not deluded: plenty of apparently charming people do terrible things behind closed doors. Obviously, I can’t discount the possibility that Kevin did abuse those girls, but one would have thought, if the church truly believed him guilty, they’d have informed the police, not written Kevin a threatening letter. On balance, I think it was just one more attempt to frighten him, and given what Kevin told me about the internal workings of the church, I think it likely his sisters were intimidated into signing those statements… I wanted to attend Kevin’s funeral,’ Sir Colin said sadly, ‘but it wasn’t possible. I made enquiries: his mother, who’s still inside the church, chose to bury him at Chapman Farm. I must admit, I found that very upsetting… Kevin had fought so hard to leave…’

Their food now arrived. Strike, who’d ordered seabass rather than the steak he really fancied, asked,

‘Can anything be done legally, with regards to Will?’

‘Believe me, I’ve tried,’ said Sir Colin, picking up his knife and fork. ‘Will’s got a trust fund, which was left to him by Sally’s father. He’s now taken out half the money in there and given it to the UHC. I wanted to have him assessed by a psychiatrist, but when the church got wind of that they arranged for him to see one of their own, who gave Will a completely clean bill of health. He’s of age and he’s been declared mentally competent. It’s a total impasse.

‘I’ve tried to interest political contacts in the church and the way it’s operating, but everyone seems afraid of taking it on, given the celebrity followers and its much-vaunted charitable work. There’s one MP I strongly suspect of being a member. He agitates for them in Parliament and becomes very aggressive towards anyone who criticises them. I’ve tried to interest some of my press contacts in an in-depth exposé, but they’re shy of being sued as well. Nobody wants to touch it.

‘Kevin was keen to take the UHC to court on the grounds of their abuse of him and his family. Sally and I were more than happy to fund the case, but my lawyers felt the chances of Kevin succeeding were very slim. It wasn’t just that he’d already been forced to admit to mistakes on his blog; he had some very odd beliefs.’

‘Such as?’

‘He was convinced the spirit world was real. As a matter of fact, he thought the UHC could conjure the dead. Patterson tried to find other people who might testify and drew a complete blank.’

‘Have you ever considered taking Will back by force? Grabbing him off Wardour Street?’

‘Sally and I discussed doing so, as a last resort,’ Sir Colin admitted, ‘but we were scared out of the idea when we found out what happened to a young man whose family did exactly that, back in 1993. His name was Alexander Graves. He came from a wealthy family, too. His father literally kidnapped him off the street when he was out collecting money. Graves was in a very poor mental state when they got him out, and a couple of days later hanged himself at the family home.

‘I’ve read extensively about mind control in the last few years,’ Sir Colin continued, his food growing cold as he talked. ‘I know far more than I did in the beginning about the techniques the UHC are using, and how effective they are. Kevin told me a lot of what goes on in there and it’s classic cult manipulation: restriction of information, control of thoughts and emotions and so on. I understand now why Will changed so rapidly. He’s literally not in his right mind.’

‘He can’t be,’ agreed Ed. ‘Not to come when Mum was dying, not to attend her funeral. James and his wife had twin boys last year, and he’s never even met them.’

‘So what exactly are you looking to achieve in hiring us?’ asked Strike.

Sir Colin set down his knife and fork to reach under his chair for an old black briefcase, from which he extracted a slim folder.

‘Before the UHC’s lawyers made Kevin bowdlerise his blog, I printed out copies. There are also two long emails from Kevin in here, which explain his family’s involvement in the church and some incidents he witnessed or was involved in. He mentions people and places, and makes at least one criminal allegation about Jonathan Wace, the UHC’s founder. If any of the other people Kevin mentions in these documents could be persuaded to talk, or even to testify, especially about coercion or mind control, I might be able to do something, legally. At a bare minimum, I’d like to persuade the UHC to let me see Will again.’

‘But ideally, you’d like to get him out?’

‘Of course,’ said Sir Colin, ‘but I accept that might not be realistic.

‘Patterson Inc’s report’s in here, too, for what it’s worth. They focused mainly on observing Will’s movements and the comings and goings at Rupert Court and Chapman Farm. Their idea was to get abusive or intimidating behaviour on camera, or an indication from Will that he was unhappy or being coerced. A couple of their people approached him in the street, undercover, and tried to engage him in conversation, but he insisted he was perfectly happy and tried to recruit them or persuade them to hand over cash… so: what do you think?’ said Sir Colin, looking from Strike to Robin and back again. ‘Is our case hopeless?’

Before Strike could answer, Robin had held out her hand for the documents Sir Colin had brought with him.

‘No,’ she said. ‘We’d be very happy to help.’

5

Six in the fifth place means:

Giving duration to one’s character through perseverance.

This is good fortune for a woman…

The I Ching or Book of Changes

‘It’s fine,’ said Strike an hour later, in response to Robin’s apology for accepting the case without consulting him. ‘I’d’ve said it myself, but I had a mouthful of potato.’

The two partners had retired to a nearby pub after leaving the Edensors. The Golden Lion was small, Victorian and ornately decorated, and they were sitting on high leather barstools at a round table.

‘I was looking at the UHC’s website last night,’ said Robin, who was drinking orange juice, because she needed to leave for her surveillance job shortly. ‘They own a lot of prime real estate. That place in Rupert Court must’ve cost them a fortune, bang in the middle of the West End, and that’s before you get to the temples and centres in Birmingham and Glasgow. Can they be making all that money legally?’

‘Well, they’re flogging self-realisation courses up and down the country at five hundred quid a day and prayer retreats at a grand a time. They’ve got ten thousand-odd members collecting money for them, donating a fifth of their salaries and making legacies in their favour. All that’ll mount up. You’d think the Inland Revenue would be all over them, so either they’re clean, or they’ve got a shit-hot accountant who knows how to hide the dodgy stuff. But taking cash from idiots isn’t a crime, unfortunately.’

‘You agree with James, do you? Will’s an idiot?’

Strike took a sip of beer before answering.

‘I’d say people who join cults generally have something missing.’

‘What about Giles Harmon? Rich, successful writer, really clever…’

‘I’m with Orwell,’ said Strike. “Some ideas are so stupid, only intellectuals believe them”… you know, I can’t see any way of doing this properly other than getting someone into Chapman Farm undercover.’

Robin had spent the last couple of days preparing for this very conversation.

‘That means attending the Rupert Court Temple first. I’ve looked into it: you can’t just turn up at Chapman Farm, you have to be invited there, which means being recruited at one of the temples. Whoever turns up at Rupert Court will need a fully worked-up persona with backstory, which they use from their first contact with church members, and I think they should look as though they’ve got a lot of money, to make them a really attractive prospect for recruitment.’

Strike, who knew perfectly well he was listening to a pitch, said, ‘And I’m guessing you don’t think Barclay, Shah or Littlejohn would be convincing as wealthy God-botherers.’

‘Well,’ said Robin, ‘I doubt Barclay would last an hour before starting to take the piss out of it all. Littlejohn would be perfect if the church was a silent order—’

Strike laughed.

‘—and Dev’s got small kids, so he’s not going to want to be away for weeks. Midge is a possibility, but she’s never gone undercover before. I know I haven’t, not like this,’ Robin said quickly, before Strike could make that point, ‘but I’ve never had a cover broken, not even when I was being Venetia Hall every day, in the House of Commons.’

‘And what if the job lasts weeks?’ said Strike.

‘Then it lasts weeks,’ said Robin, with a slight shrug.

It so happened that Strike had already decided Robin was the best person for the job, but he had a secondary motive for accepting her proposal. A few weeks’ enforced separation while she was at Chapman Farm might just put a bit of strain on her relationship with Ryan Murphy, and there was little Strike wanted more than that. However, as he didn’t want to agree too readily, lest he be suspected of an ulterior motive, he merely nodded and said, ‘OK, well, that could work. It needs thinking through, though.’

‘I know. I can’t wear a wig at Chapman Farm, so I’m thinking of a radical haircut.’

‘Really?’ said Strike, without thinking. He liked her hair.

‘I’ll have to, I’ve been walking around in the vicinity of Rupert Court for a few years now. The last thing we need is anyone recognising me, especially if they’ve seen me coming in and out of the office.’

‘OK, fair point,’ said Strike, ‘but no need to shave your head.’

‘I’m not trying to get into the Hare Krishnas,’ said Robin. ‘I was thinking maybe short and a nice bold colour. A privately educated girl who wants to look a bit alternative, but not so radical it’ll scare her parents into stopping footing her bills. Maybe she’s had a recent bad break-up and, you know, now she wants a sense of purpose and something to fill the space where she thought a wedding was going to be.’

‘You have given this a lot of thought,’ said Strike, with a grin.

‘Of course I have. I want the job.’

‘Why?’ asked Strike. ‘Why d’you want it so much?’

‘I’ve always been interested in mind control. We touched on it on my course at uni.’

Robin had been studying psychology before she dropped out of university. Their uncompleted degrees were one of the things she and Strike had in common.

‘OK, well, that all sounds good. Work out a full cover and we can readjust the rota so you prioritise Saturday mornings at temple.’

‘The only problem is clothes,’ said Robin. ‘I don’t look like I’ve got loads of money, clothes-wise.’

‘You always look great,’ said Strike.

‘Thank you,’ said Robin, flushing slightly, ‘but if I’m going to convince the UHC I’ve got a lot of money, stuff like this,’ she held up her shoulder bag, which was six years old, ‘won’t cut it. I s’pose I could hire a couple of designer outfits and handbags. I’ve never done it, but I know you can.’

‘Might be able to help with that,’ said Strike, unexpectedly. ‘You could borrow stuff from Pru.’

‘Who?’

‘My sister,’ said Strike. ‘Prudence. The therapist.’

‘Oh,’ said Robin, intrigued.

She’d only ever met two of Strike’s eight half-siblings, and those only briefly. His family was, to say the least, complicated. Strike was the illegitimate son of a rock star he’d met only twice, and a deceased mother habitually described in the press as a super-groupie. While Robin knew Strike had finally agreed to meet his half-sister Prudence for the first time some months previously, she’d had no idea they were now on such terms that she might lend expensive clothing to his detective partner.

‘I think you’re about the same…’ Strike made a vague gesture rather than say ‘size’. ‘I’ll ask her. You might have to go round to her house to try it on.’

‘No problem,’ said Robin, slightly taken aback. ‘That’d be great, if Prudence won’t mind lending stuff to a total stranger.’

‘You’re not a total stranger, I’ve told her all about you,’ said Strike.

‘So… it’s going well, then?’ said Robin. ‘You and Prudence?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike. He took another sip of beer. ‘I like her a lot more than any of my father’s other kids – low bar, admittedly.’

‘You like Al,’ said Robin.

‘Vaguely. He’s still pissed off at me because I wouldn’t go to that bloody party for Rokeby. Where’re you heading after this?’

‘Taking over from Dev in Bexleyheath,’ said Robin, as she checked the time on her phone. ‘Actually, I should get going. What about you?’

‘Afternoon off. I’ll scan this stuff back at the office and email it to you,’ said Strike, indicating the cardboard folder of documents Colin Edensor had handed Robin.

‘Great,’ said Robin. ‘See you tomorrow, then.’

6

Six in the fourth place means:

A tied-up sack.

No blame, no praise.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Robin spent the six-minute walk from the Golden Lion to Green Park station doing the thing she’d resolutely schooled herself over the past eight months not to do: thinking about Cormoran Strike in any context other than work and friendship.

The long-delayed realisation that she was in love with her work partner had burst in upon Robin Ellacott the previous year upon finding out that he was having an affair he’d carefully concealed from her. At that point, Robin had decided that the only thing to do was to fall out of love, and it was in that spirit, a few weeks later, that she’d agreed to a first date with Ryan Murphy.

Since then, she’d done her utmost to keep an inner door firmly closed on whatever she might feel for Strike, hoping love would wither and die for lack of attention. In practice, this meant turning her thoughts firmly away from him when alone, and refusing, ever, to make comparisons between him and Murphy, as Ilsa had tried to do on the day of the christening. When, in spite of her best efforts, certain unwelcome memories intruded – the way Strike had hugged her on her wedding day, or the dangerous, drunken moment outside the Ritz bar on her thirtieth birthday, when he’d moved to kiss her – she reminded herself that her detective partner was a man perfectly happy with a single life punctuated by affairs with (usually gorgeous) women. He was forty-one years old, had never married, voluntarily lived alone in a spartan attic over the office, and had a deeply entrenched tendency to erect barriers to intimacy. While some of this reserve had relaxed where Robin was concerned, she hadn’t forgotten how quickly it had returned after that night at the Ritz. In short, Robin had now concluded that whatever she might once have wanted, Strike hadn’t ever wanted it at all.

It was therefore a pleasure and a relief to be with Murphy, who so clearly wanted to be with her. Aside from the fact that the CID man was handsome and intelligent, they had investigative work in common, which made a very welcome contrast to the well-paid accountant she’d divorced, who’d never understood Robin’s preference for what Matthew had considered an eccentric, insecure career. Robin was also enjoying having a sex life again: a sex life, moreover, that was considerably more satisfactory than that she’d had with her ex-husband.

Yet there remained something between her and Ryan that she found hard to identify. Guardedness perhaps expressed it best, and it sprung, she was sure, from the fact that each had a fractured marriage in their past. Both knew just how badly people in the most intimate relationships could hurt each other, and treated each other carefully in consequence. Wiser than she’d been during her years with Matthew, Robin made sure she didn’t talk too much about Strike when with Ryan, didn’t mention Strike’s war record, or tell any anecdotes that cast him in too amusing or attractive a light. She and Murphy had now shared plenty of details of their respective histories, but Robin was aware that she, like Ryan, was offering an edited version. Perhaps that was inevitable, once you reached your thirties. It had been so very easy to open her heart to Matthew, whom she’d met at school: though she’d believed at the time she was telling all her secrets, she looked back and realised how little, at the time, she’d had to tell. It had taken Robin six months to talk to Ryan about the brutal rape that had ended her university career, and she’d omitted mention of the fact that a major factor in the failure of her marriage had been Matthew’s persistent jealousy and suspicion of Strike. For his part, Ryan never talked much about his drinking years, and had given her what she suspected was a sanitised account of the way he and his ex-wife had split up. She assumed these things would be discussed eventually, if the relationship continued. In the meantime, a private life without jealous rows and grinding resentment made a very nice change.

All this being so, brooding on the emotional subtext of Strike’s conversation could do nobody any good, and made Robin feel disloyal to Murphy. Strike probably felt safe to say things like ‘you always look great’ and ‘I’ve told my sister all about you’ because she was now in a steady relationship with another man. As she descended into the station, she told herself firmly that Strike was her best friend, nothing more, and forced her thoughts back onto the job in Bexleyheath.

7

This hexagram indicates a situation in which the principle of darkness, after having been eliminated, furtively and unexpectedly obtrudes again from within and below.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Strike had meant to return to the office once he’d finished his pint, but the Golden Lion was so pleasant, it occurred to him that he could just as easily read the documents provided by Colin Edensor there, where there was also beer. He therefore bought himself a second pint and took the first opportunity to leave his barstool for a vacated leather bench at a lower table, where he flipped open the folder. At the top of the pile of paper inside was a lengthy email to Sir Colin from the late Kevin Pirbright.

Dear Colin,

Apologies in advance if this is long, but you asked about my family’s involvement with the Universal Humanitarian Church and how I came to leave etc, so here it is.

My mother joined the UHC when I was 3 and my sisters were 6 and 8. It’s important to say that my mother – I was raised to call her Louise, because the UHC forbids naming blood relationships – isn’t stupid. She grew up poor and never got the chance to go to university or anything, but she’s bright. She married my dad really young but he left the family when I was 1. I remember Louise being very pretty when she was younger.

I don’t know when she first heard Jonathan Wace speak, but I know she fell in love with him. Loads of the women in the UHC are crazy about him. Anyway, she packed up our council house and took us off to Chapman Farm. (I’ve had to piece all this together from stuff my sisters told me later, because I’ve got no memory of our life before the UHC.)

After that, we had nowhere to go other than UHC accommodation. This is really common. People sink everything into the church, as proof of their commitment to their new lives. Some members even sell their houses and give all the money to the church.

Chapman Farm is where the UHC was founded. The five prophets are buried there and because it’s in deep countryside as opposed to a city, it tends to be where members are sent for re-indoctrination if they need it. There are other centres and my older sister Becca spent three years at the one in Birmingham (she’s quite high up in the church now), and Emily was allowed to go out collecting money, but Louise and I never left the farm.

The UHC teaches that normal family relationships or monogamous sexual relationships are a form of materialist possession. If you’re a good person, you’re spirit-bonded to everyone inside the church and you love them all just the same. Louise tried to stick to that once we were inside, but the three of us always knew she was our real mother. Most of the kids’ education consisted of reading UHC tracts and memorising them, but Louise taught me, Becca and Emily things like our times tables on the sly, while we were cleaning out the chickens.

When I was very young, I literally thought Jonathan Wace was my father. We all called him ‘Papa J’ and I knew about family relationships because they appeared in the Bible and other holy books we studied. It was only gradually I realised I wasn’t actually related to Papa J. It was really confusing for a small kid but you just went with it, because everyone else did.

Mazu Wace, Papa J’s wife, grew up at Chapman Farm. She was there in the Aylmerton Community days—

Strike stopped reading, staring at the last four words.

The Aylmerton Community days.

The Aylmerton Community.

Aylmerton Community.

The rundown barns, the children running riot, the Crowther brothers striding across the yard, the strange round tower standing alone on the horizon like a giant chess piece: he saw it all again. His stoned mother trying to make daisy chains for little girls; nights in ramshackle dormitories with no locks on the door; a constant sense that everything was out of control, and a childish instinct that something was wrong, and that an undefinable danger lurked close by, just out of sight.

Until this moment, Strike had had no idea that Chapman Farm was the same place: it had been called Forgeman Farm when he’d lived there, with a motley collection of families who were working the land, housed in a cluster of rundown buildings, their activities directed by the Crowther brothers. Even though there’d been no hint of religion at the Aylmerton commune, Strike’s disdain for cults sprang directly from the six months at Forgeman Farm, which had constituted the unhappiest period of his unstable and fragmented childhood. The commune had been dominated by the powerful personality of the elder Crowther brother, a rangy, round-shouldered, greasy-haired man with long black sideburns and a handlebar moustache. Strike could still visualise his mother’s rapt face as Malcolm Crowther lectured the group by firelight, outlining his radical beliefs and personal philosophies. He remembered, too, his own ineradicable dislike of the man, which had amounted to a visceral revulsion.

By the time the police raided the farm, Leda had already moved her family on. Six months was the longest Leda could ever bear to remain in one place. Reading about the police action in the papers once back in London, she’d refused to believe that the community wasn’t being persecuted for their pacifism, the soft drugs and their back-to-the earth philosophy. For a long time she’d insisted the Crowthers couldn’t possibly have done the things for which they were eventually charged, not least because her own children told her they’d escaped unscathed. Only after reading accounts of the trial had Leda reluctantly come to accept that this had been more luck than judgement; that her pastoral fantasy had indeed been a hotbed of paedophilia. Characteristically, she’d shrugged off the whole episode as an anomaly, then continued the restless existence that meant her son and daughter, when not dumped on their aunt and uncle in Cornwall, moved constantly between different kinds of insecure housing and volatile situations of her choosing.

Strike drank a third of his fresh pint before focusing his attention once more on the page in front of him.

Mazu Wace, Papa J’s wife, grew up at Chapman Farm. She was there in the Aylmerton Community days and it’s like her private kingdom. I don’t think she’s ever visited the Birmingham or Glasgow centres and she only goes up to the London Temple occasionally. I was always terrified of Mama Mazu, as church members are supposed to call her. She looks like a witch, very white face, black hair, long pointed nose and weird eyes. She always wore robes instead of the tracksuits the rest of us had to wear. I used to have nightmares about Mazu when I was little, where she was peering in at me through keyholes or watching me from skylights.

Mazu’s thing was control. It’s really hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t met her. She could make people do anything, even hurt themselves, and I never once saw anyone refuse. One of my earliest memories from Chapman Farm is a teenager called Jordan whipping himself across the face with a leather flail. I remember his name, because Jonathan Wace used to sing the spiritual ‘Roll, Jordan, Roll’ whenever he saw him. Jordan was much bigger than Mazu, and he was on his knees and his face was covered in welts, and he kept whipping himself until she said it was time to stop.

In spite of everyone telling me how good and holy Mazu was, I always thought she was a terrible person. Looking back now, hating Mazu was the beginning of me questioning the entire church, although at the time I just thought Mazu was mean, not that the entire church culture was rotten.

Mazu never liked Louise and always made sure she was given the worst jobs at the farm, outside in all weathers. As I got older, I realised this was because Jonathan and my mother were sleeping together. Mazu never liked the women Jonathan was sleeping with.

Explaining how I woke up is complicated.

A few years after we joined the UHC, a new family moved into Chapman Farm, the Dohertys: mother, father and three kids. Deirdre Doherty got pregnant again while they were living at the farm, and gave birth to a fourth kid, a daughter Mazu called Lin. (Mazu gets naming rights over all kids born at Chapman Farm. She often asks the I Ching what the baby should be called. ‘Lin’ is the name of one of the hexagrams.)

I was 12 when the father, Ralph, took off in the middle of the night, taking the three oldest kids with him. We were all summoned into temple next morning, and Jonathan Wace announced that Ralph Doherty was materialist and egomotivated, whereas his wife, who’d stayed behind with Lin, was a shining example of pure spirit. I can remember us all applauding her.

I was really confused and shocked by Ralph and the kids leaving, because I’d never known anyone do it before. We were all taught that leaving the church would ruin your life, that materialist existence would literally kill you after having been pure spirit, that you’d end up going crazy and probably committing suicide.

Then, a few months after Ralph had left, Deirdre was expelled. That shocked me even more than Ralph leaving. I couldn’t imagine what sin Deirdre could have committed to make the UHC force her out. Usually, if someone did something wrong, they got punished. If a person got really ill, they might be allowed to leave to get medical help, but the UHC didn’t usually let people go unless they’d broken down so much they couldn’t work.

Deirdre left Lin behind when she went. I should have been glad, because Lin would still be able to grow up pure spirit rather than ruining her life in the materialist world. That’s how most of the members saw it, but I didn’t. Although I didn’t have a normal parent–child relationship with Louise, I knew she was my mother and that meant something. I secretly thought Deirdre should have taken Lin with her, and that was the first serious crack in my religious belief.

I found out why Deirdre was expelled by total accident. I was on Punishment for kicking or pushing another kid. I can’t remember the details. I was tied to a tree and I was to be left there all night. Two adults went past. Electric torches are forbidden at the Farm, so I don’t know who they were, but they were whispering about why Deirdre had been expelled. One was telling the other one that Deirdre had written in her journal that Jonathan Wace had raped her. (All church members over the age of nine are expected to keep journals as part of their religious practice. Higher-ups read them once a week.)

I knew what rape was, because we were taught that it was one of the terrible things that happened out in the materialist world. Inside the church, people have sex with anyone who wants it, as a way of enhancing spiritual connections. We were taught that rape was different, a violent form of materialist possession.

I can’t tell you how hearing that Deirdre had accused Papa J of rape made me feel. This is how indoctrinated I was: I remember thinking I’d rather have to be tied to that tree for a full week than have heard what I’d just heard. I’d been raised to think Jonathan Wace was the closest thing to God on earth. The church teaches that allowing bad thoughts about our leader or the church itself means the Adversary is working inside you to resurrect the false self, so I tried chanting, there in the dark, which is one of the techniques you’re taught to stop negative thoughts, but I couldn’t forget what I’d just heard about Papa J.

From then on, I got more and more screwed up. I couldn’t tell anyone what I’d overheard: for one thing, if Mazu heard me telling a story like that, God knows what she’d have made me do to myself. I tried to suppress all my bad thoughts and doubts, but the crack in my belief was getting wider and wider. I started noticing the hypocrisy, the control, the inconsistencies in the teaching. They preached love and kindness, but they were merciless on people for things they couldn’t help. For instance, Lin, Deirdre’s daughter, started stammering when she was really small. Mazu mocked her for it constantly. She said Lin could stop if she wanted to, and she needed to pray harder.

My eldest sister Becca was on a completely different course from the rest of us by this time, travelling round the country with Wace and helping run seminars and self-realisation courses. My other sister Emily was very envious of Becca. She sometimes got to join mission outings, but not as often as Becca did.

They both looked down on me and Louise, who were the no-hopers only fit to stay on the farm.

I got really bad acne in my teens. When UHC members go out in public, they’re supposed to look groomed and attractive, but Lin, Louise and I weren’t allowed out even to collect money on the street, because we didn’t fit the church image, me with my acne and Lin with her stammer. Louise went grey early and looks a lot older than she is, probably from working outside all the time.

The next bit is hard to write. I now know I started planning to quit the church when I was nearly 23, but as you never celebrated birthdays in there it wasn’t until I got out and found my birth records that I even knew what day I was born.

It took over a year for me to actually go, partly because I needed to get up my courage. I can’t emphasise how much the church dins into you that you won’t be able to survive outside, that you’re bound to go crazy and kill yourself, because the materialist world is so corrupt and cruel. But the main thing holding me back was that I wanted Louise to come with me. There was something wrong with her joints. I hadn’t heard of arthritis before I left the church but I think it must be that. They were swollen and I know she was in pain a lot of the time. Of course, she was told this was a sign of spiritual impurity.

One day when she and I were assigned livestock duty together, I started telling her my doubts. She started literally shaking then told me I should go to temple and pray for forgiveness. Then she started chanting to block out what I was saying. Nothing I said got through to her. In the end she just ran away from me.

I was terrified she’d tell the Principals I was having doubts and knew I needed to leave immediately, so I crawled out through a fence in the early hours of the following morning, after stealing some cash from one of the charity boxes. I genuinely feared I’d drop dead once I was outside on the dark road, alone, that the Drowned Prophet would come for me, out of the trees.

I used to hope Louise would follow me out, that me going would wake her up, but it’s been nearly four years, and she’s still inside.

Sorry, this has been really long, but that’s the whole story – Kevin

The first email finished there. Strike picked up the second and, after fortifying himself with more beer, continued to read.

Dear Colin,

Thanks very much for your email. I don’t feel brave, but I really appreciate you saying it. But you might not think it any more, once you read this.

You asked about the prophets and the Manifestations. This is really hard for me to write about, but I’ll tell you as much as I can.

I was only 6 when Daiyu Wace drowned, so I haven’t got very clear memories of her. I know I didn’t like her. She was Mazu’s princess and always got special treatment and lot more leeway than the rest of the little kids.

One of the teenage girls living at the farm took Daiyu on the vegetable run early one morning (the church sold farm produce to local shops) and they stopped off at Cromer beach on the way back. They both went in for a swim, but Daiyu got into difficulties and drowned.

Obviously, that’s a huge tragedy and it’s not surprising Mazu was devastated, but she went pretty weird and dark afterwards, and in hindsight, I think that’s where a lot of her cruelty towards my mother and kids in general came from. She especially didn’t like girls. Jonathan had a daughter from his previous marriage, Abigail. Mazu got her moved out of Chapman Farm to one of the other UHC centres after Daiyu’s death.

I can’t say for sure when the idea of Daiyu being a kind of deity started, but over time, Jonathan and Mazu turned her into one. They called her a prophet and claimed she’d said all these spiritually insightful things, which then became part of church doctrine. Even Daiyu’s death was somehow holy, like she’d been such pure spirit she dissolved from the material world. My sister Becca used to claim Daiyu had had the power of invisibility. I don’t know if Becca actually believed this, or just wanted to curry favour with Jonathan and Mazu, but the idea that Daiyu had been able to dematerialise even before she drowned got added to the myth, too.

There were already two people buried at Chapman Farm when Daiyu died. I never knew the first guy. He was an American called Rusty Andersen, who used to live on a patch of ground on the edge of the Aylmerton Community. He was an army veteran and he sounds like what you’d call a survivalist these days. Mazu and Jonathan claimed Andersen had joined the church before he died, but I don’t know whether that’s true. He was hit and killed by a drunk driver on the road outside the farm one night, and they buried him at the farm.

The other man buried on the land was called Alexander Graves, who died in his twenties. He was definitely part of the church. I vaguely remember him being odd and chanting all the time. Graves’ family kidnapped him when he was out on the street collecting money for the UHC, but soon after they took him back to the family home, he killed himself. He’d left a will saying he wanted to be buried at the farm, so he was.

We all knew Andersen’s and Graves’ stories, because they were used as object lessons by Jonathan and Mazu, illustrations of the danger of leaving the farm/church.

Over time, Andersen and Graves became prophets, too – it was like Daiyu needed company. Andersen became the Wounded Prophet and Graves the Stolen Prophet, and their supposedly holy sayings became part of church doctrine, too.

The fourth prophet was Harold Coates. He was a struck-off doctor who’d been on the land since the Aylmerton Community days, too. Even though the church bans all medicines (along with caffeine, sugar and alcohol), Coates was allowed to grow herbs and treat minor injuries, because he was one of us. They made Coates the Healer Prophet almost as soon as he was buried.

The last prophet was Margaret Cathcart-Bryce, who was the filthy-rich widow of some businessman. She was over 70 when she arrived at the farm, and completely infatuated with Jonathan Wace. Her face had been lifted so many times it was tight and shiny, and she wore this big silver wig. Margaret gave Wace enough money to start doing a massive renovation of Chapman Farm, which was really run down. Margaret must have lived at the farm for 7 or 8 years before she died and left everything she had to the Council of Principals. She then became the Golden Prophet.

Once they got their hands on all of Margaret’s money, they built a pool with a statue of Daiyu in the middle of it, in the new courtyard. Then they dug up the four bodies that were already buried there, and reburied them in tombs around the pool. The new graves didn’t have their real names, only their prophet names. There was no tomb for Daiyu, because they never recovered her body. The inquest found she hit a rip tide near the shore and just got sucked straight out to sea. So the statue in the pool is her memorial.

All five of the prophets were incorporated into the religion, but Daiyu/The Drowned Prophet was always the most important one. She was the one who could bless you, but she’d curse you if you strayed.

This next bit is difficult for people who haven’t seen the proof to understand.

Spirits are real. There is an otherworld. I know that for a fact. The UHC is evil and corrupt, but that doesn’t mean some of what they believe isn’t true. I’ve seen supernatural happenings that have no ‘rational’ explanation. Jonathan and Mazu are bad people and I still question whether what they were summoning were spirits or demons, but I saw them do it. Glasses shattering that nobody had touched. Objects levitating. I saw Jonathan chant, then lift a truck unaided, right off the ground. They warned us wrongdoing would result in the Adversary sending demons to the farm, and I think I saw them, once: human forms with heads of pigs.

The day of each prophet’s death is marked by their Manifestation. You’re not allowed to attend a Manifestation until you’ve turned 13, and talking about it to outsiders is absolutely forbidden. I’m not comfortable writing down details of the Manifestations. I can only tell you that I’ve seen absolute proof that the dead can come back. That doesn’t mean I think the prophets themselves were truly holy. I only know they come back on the anniversaries of their deaths. The Manifestation of the Stolen Prophet is always pretty frightening but the Manifestation of the Drowned Prophet is the worst by far. Even knowing it’s coming up changes the atmosphere at Chapman Farm.

I don’t know whether the Drowned Prophet can materialise anywhere other than the farm, but I do know she and the others still exist in the otherworld and I’m afraid of calling her forth by breaking confidence around the Manifestations.

Maybe you think I’m crazy, but I’m telling the truth. The UHC is evil and dangerous, but there is another world and they’ve found a way into it.

Kevin

8

Nine in the fifth place means…

It furthers one to make offerings and libations.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Two days after they’d taken on the Edensor case, and having given a lot of thought to how best to proceed, Strike called Robin from the office. Robin, who was having a day off, had just arrived at the hairdressers. Having apologised to the stylist, who’d only just picked up her scissors, Robin answered.

‘Hi. What’s up?’

‘Have you been through all the Edensor documents I sent you?’

‘Yes,’ said Robin.

‘Well, I’ve been thinking about it and a good first step would be getting hold of census records, to find out who’s been living at Chapman Farm in the last twenty years. If we can track down ex-UHC members, we might be able to confirm some of the claims Pirbright made about what’s going on in there.’

‘You can only access census records up to 1921,’ said Robin.

‘I know,’ said Strike, who’d been perusing the National Archives online, ‘which is why I’m buying Wardle a curry tonight. Want to come? I tipped him off about that tosser who’s paying for everything with fake tenners, and he agreed to try and get hold of the full police report into Pirbright’s shooting in return. I’m buying him curry to soften him up, because I want to persuade him to get us the census records, as well.’

‘I’m sorry, I can’t come,’ said Robin, ‘Ryan’s got theatre tickets.’

‘Ah,’ said Strike, reaching for his vape pen. ‘OK, just thought I’d ask.’

‘Sorry,’ said Robin.

‘No problem, it’s your day off,’ said Strike.

‘I’m actually about to have my hair cut,’ said Robin, out of a desire to show that she was still working on the case, even if she couldn’t meet Strike’s police contact that evening.

‘Yeah? What colour have you decided on?’

‘Don’t know,’ said Robin. ‘I’ve only just sat down.’

‘OK, well, I was also going to ask whether you could come over to Prudence’s tomorrow evening. She’s happy to lend you some clothes.’

Unless Murphy’s got tickets for the fucking opera, of course.

‘That’d be great,’ said Robin. ‘Where does she live?’

‘Strawberry Hill. I’ll text you the address. We’ll have to meet there, I’m tailing Bigfoot until five.’

This plan agreed, Strike hung up and sat scowling, while taking deep drags on his vape. The idea of Murphy buying theatre tickets aggravated him; it suggested a dangerous degree of effort. Eight months into the relationship, the policeman should surely have stopped pretending he’d rather watch a play than have a decent meal followed by sex. Pushing himself up from the partners’ desk, Strike moved into the outer room, where the office manager, Pat, was typing away at her desk. Evidently she’d heard part of his conversation with Robin through the open door, because she asked, electronic cigarette clamped, as usual, between her teeth,

‘Why d’you call him Bigfoot?’

‘Because he looks like Bigfoot,’ said Strike, as he filled the kettle.

The man in question was the wealthy owner of a software company, whose wife believed him to be visiting sex workers. Having been forced to share a crowded lift with him during his last bout of surveillance, Strike could testify to the fact that the target was not only extremely tall, hairy and unkempt, but smelled as though his last shower was a distant memory.

‘Funny how beards come and go,’ said Pat, still typing.

‘It’s called shaving,’ said Strike, reaching for mugs.

‘Ha ha,’ said Pat. ‘I mean fashions. Sideburns and that.’

An unwelcome memory of Malcolm Crowther sitting by the campfire at Forgeman Farm surfaced in Strike’s mind: Crowther had a small girl and was encouraging her to stroke his handlebar moustache.

‘Want a cup of tea?’ Strike said, dismissing the mental image.

‘Go on, then,’ Pat replied, in the deep, gravelly voice that often caused callers to mistake her for Strike. ‘That Hargreaves woman still hasn’t paid her invoice, by the way.’

‘Call her,’ said Strike, ‘and tell her we need her to settle up by the end of the month.’

‘That’s Monday.’

‘And she’s got millions.’

‘Richer they are, slower they pay.’

‘Some truth in that,’ admitted Strike, setting down Pat’s mug on her desk before returning to the inner office and closing the door.

He spent the next three hours trying to track down the absent father of Shanker’s common-law stepdaughter. The man had had multiple addresses over the past five years, but Strike’s research finally led him to conclude the man was now going by his middle name, probably to avoid being tracked down for child maintenance, and living in Hackney. If he was indeed the right person, he was working as a long-distance haulage driver, which doubtless suited a man keen to evade his parental responsibilities.

Having sent subcontractor Dev Shah an email asking him to put the Hackney address under surveillance and take pictures of whoever entered or left it, Strike set off for dinner with Eric Wardle.

Strike had decided a standard, cheap curry house wouldn’t be sufficient to soften up his policeman friend, from whom he intended to ask a census-related favour. He’d therefore booked a table at the Cinnamon Club, which lay a short taxi ride away.

The restaurant had once been the Westminster Library, so its many white-tableclothed tables stood in a large, airy room with book-lined walls. Strike, who was first to arrive, removed his suit jacket, loosened his tie, ordered a pint and sat down to read the day’s news off his phone. He realised Wardle had arrived only when the policeman’s shadow fell over the table.

‘Bit of a step up from the Bombay Balti,’ commented the policeman, as he sat down opposite Strike.

‘Yeah, well, business has been good lately,’ said the latter, slipping his phone back into his pocket. ‘How’re you doing?’

‘Can’t complain,’ said Wardle.

When they’d first met, Strike’s friend Eric Wardle had been boyishly handsome. Though still good looking, his once full head of hair was receding, and he looked as though he’d aged by more than the six years that had actually passed. Strike knew it wasn’t only hard work that had etched those grooves around Wardle’s mouth and eyes; he’d lost a brother, and his wife, April, had left him six months previously, taking their three-month-old baby with her.

Talk ran along conventional lines while both perused the menu, and only once the waiter had brought Wardle a pint and taken their order did the policeman hand a folder across the table.

‘That’s everything I could get on the Kevin Pirbright shooting.’

‘Cheers,’ said Strike. ‘How’s our counterfeiting friend doing?’

‘Arrested,’ said Wardle, raising his pint in a toast, ‘and I think he’s going to be persuadable into dobbing in the higher-ups, as well. You might well have secured me a long-overdue promotion, so dinner’s on me.’

‘I’d rather you paid me in kind,’ Strike replied.

‘Knew you hadn’t booked this place on a whim,’ sighed Wardle.

‘Let’s order and I’ll explain.’

Once they had their starters, Strike asked the favour he’d come for: Wardle’s assistance in accessing census records the general public couldn’t.

‘Why the interest in this Chapman Farm?’

‘It’s the headquarters of the Universal Humanitarian Church.’

‘Oh,’ said Wardle. ‘That place. April went to one of their meetings a few years ago. A friend of hers from yoga class got interested in it and took her along. The friend ended up joining. April only went the once, though.’

Wardle chewed and swallowed before adding,

‘She was a bit weird about it, afterwards. I took the piss and she didn’t like it, but I was only saying it because I never had any time for the woman who took her. She was into crystals and meditation and all that shit. You know the type.’

Strike, who well remembered Leda’s intermittent phases of chanting cross-legged in front of a jade Buddha, said he did, and asked,

‘April thought there was something in it, then, did she?’

‘I think she got defensive because she knew how much her yoga friends got on my tits… probably shouldn’t’ve been an arsehole about it,’ Wardle admitted, chewing morosely. ‘So, which census records d’you want?’

‘All from ’91 onwards.’

‘Bloody hell, Strike.’

‘I’m trying to trace ex-members.’

Wardle raised his eyebrows.

‘You want to watch yourself.’

‘Meaning?’

‘They’ve got a reputation for going hard after people who try and discredit them.’

‘So I’ve heard.’

‘What trumped-up reason do I give the census office? They don’t give out information easily.’

‘So far I’ve got coercive control, physical assaults, one allegation of rape and a good bit of child abuse.’

‘Christ almighty. Why not chuck in murder and get the full set?’

‘Give me time, I’ve only been on the case two days. Speaking of which: this shooting of Pirbright—’

‘Same gun used in two previous drug-related shootings. I wasn’t on the case, never heard of the bloke until you rang me, but I’ve looked over the stuff,’ said Wardle, nodding at the file. ‘Looks pretty clear cut. He’d have to have been out of his head, the state of his room. Have a look at the photo on the top.’

Strike pushed away his empty plate, opened the folder and took out the picture.

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah, there’s probably some in there, underneath the rest of the crap.’

The pictures showed a small and squalid room, clothes and rubbish lying everywhere. Pirbright’s body lay covered in a plastic sheet in the middle of the floor. Somebody – Strike assumed Pirbright – had scribbled words all over the walls.

‘Nice example of junkie décor,’ said Wardle, as the waiter returned to remove their plates.

‘Anything stolen? He was supposed to have been writing a book on the UHC.’

‘Looks like he was writing it on the walls,’ said Wardle. ‘That’s the room exactly as his landlord found it. They found a bag of hash and a roll of twenties in the bottom of the wardrobe.’

‘They think he was killed over a bag of hash?’

‘That might’ve been all they left behind. He’d probably nicked gear from someone he shouldn’t have, or pissed off the wrong punter.’

‘Where’s this place?’

‘Canning Town.’

‘Prints?’

‘Only Pirbright’s.’

‘How did the killer get in and out, any idea?’

‘We think they used a skeleton key to get in the front door.’

‘Organised of them,’ said Strike, taking out his notebook and starting to write.

‘Yeah, it was fairly slick. Guy on the same floor claimed he heard Pirbright talking to someone before he let them in. Probably thought he was about to make a sale. The neighbour heard a muffled bang and Pirbright’s music stopped playing. The killer must’ve used a silencer because otherwise half the street would’ve heard a shot, but it’s credible the neighbour heard it, because the dividing walls in the building weren’t much more than plywood. The music ending fits, too, because the bullet passed right through Pirbright and hit that old radio you can see in pieces.’

Strike scrutinised the picture of Pirbright’s room again. The shattered radio lay in fragments on a very small desk in the corner. Two leads were plugged into the socket beside it.

‘Something else was there.’

‘Yeah, looks like a laptop lead. Laptop was probably the only thing in the room worth nicking. Don’t know what he was bothering with a radio for, if he had a laptop.’

‘He was skint and he might not have been familiar with downloading music,’ said Strike. ‘From what I’ve learned about Chapman Farm, he might as well have grown up in the late eighteen hundreds, for all the experience he had with technology.’

Their curries now arrived. Strike pushed the police file aside, but kept his notebook open beside him.

‘So the neighbour hears the shot and the music stopping. What then?’

‘Neighbour goes and knocks on the door,’ said Wardle thickly, through a mouthful of lamb pasanda, ‘but gets no answer. We think the knocking spooked the killer into leaving via the window, which was found open with marks consistent with gloved hands on the outer sill.’

‘How high was the window?’

‘First floor, but there was an easy landing on a big communal bin directly below.’

‘Nobody saw them coming out of the window?’ asked Strike, who was still making notes.

‘The tenants whose windows faced out back were all out or busy inside.’

‘CCTV any help?’

‘They got a small bit of footage of a stocky bloke in black walking away from the area, who could possibly have been carrying a laptop in a reusable shopping bag, but no clear view of the face. And that’s literally all I know,’ said Wardle.

Strike replaced the photograph in the police file as Wardle asked,

‘Robin still seeing Ryan Murphy?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike.

‘You know he’s an alcoholic?’

‘Is he?’ said Strike, masking his expression by drinking more beer. Robin told him so little about her relationship that he hadn’t previously known this. Perhaps, he thought (with a leap of something strongly resembling hope), Robin didn’t know, either.

‘Yeah. On the wagon now, though. But he was a mean drunk. Real arsehole.’

‘In what way?’

‘Aggressive. Made a pass at anyone in a skirt. Tried it on with April one night. I nearly fucking punched him.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Oh yeah,’ repeated Wardle. ‘No surprise his wife walked out.’

But his expression saddened after he’d said it, remembering, perhaps, that Murphy wasn’t the only person whose wife had left him.

‘He’s dried out now, though, has he?’ asked Strike.

‘Yeah,’ said Wardle. ‘Where are the bogs in here?’

After Wardle had left the table, Strike set down his knife and flipped open the police file again, still forking beef Madras into his mouth. He extracted the post-mortem findings on Kevin Pirbright’s corpse, skipping the fatal injury to the head, and concentrating on the lines concerning toxicology. The pathologist had found a low level of alcohol in the body, but no trace of illegal drugs.

9

But in abolishing abuses one must not be too hasty. This would turn out badly because the abuses have been in existence so long.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Robin’s neck felt exposed and chilly as she travelled by train to Prudence’s house in Strawberry Hill the following evening. She sincerely hoped the accountant would let her claim at least half the cost of her new haircut as a business expense, because it was the most expensive she’d ever had. Chin-length, with a long, graduated fringe, with the ends bleached and then dyed pale blue. After one look of shock, Murphy had beamed and told her he liked it upon meeting the previous evening, which, true or not, had made her feel slightly less self-conscious as they entered the Duke of York Theatre, to watch The Father.

‘Blue, eh?’ were Strike’s first words, when Robin got into the BMW outside Strawberry Hill station. ‘Looks good.’

‘Thanks. I’m hoping it also says, “Hi, I’ve got more money than sense.”’

‘Maybe once you’ve got the posh clothes on,’ said Strike, pulling out of the car park.

‘How was Bigfoot?’ Robin asked, as they drove past a long line of solid Edwardian villas.

‘Disappointingly celibate,’ said Strike. ‘But for a man who’s worth a couple of million, you’d think he could afford a comb.’

‘You really don’t like scruffiness, do you?’ said Robin, amused.

‘Not in people who have a choice. How hard is it to bloody wash?’

Strike took a right turn before saying,

‘Dev found the bloke Shanker’s after, by the way.’

‘Oh good,’ said Robin. While she was under no illusions about Shanker’s deeply criminal nature, he happened to have once helped her escape an assault by a large murder suspect, for which she remained grateful. ‘How’s the little girl doing?’

‘He didn’t say, but hopefully seeing her dad will cheer her up… here we go…’

Earlier than Robin had expected, they turned into the drive of a particularly large Edwardian house, which not only made Robin feel slightly intimidated, but also made her think ruefully of her own flimsily built flat, in which she had to endure the almost constant noise of the music from the man upstairs.

The front door opened before they reached it, revealing Strike’s half-sister, who was the daughter of a well-known actress and the rock star who’d also fathered Strike. Prudence was wearing a plain black dress that looked unexceptional to Strike, but which Robin guessed would have cost the equivalent of her own monthly mortgage repayment.

Like Sir Colin Edensor, Prudence had the kind of face it was hard to dislike, or so thought Robin. Though not quite as beautiful as her actress mother, she was very attractive, with freckled skin and long, wavy black hair. Eyes that slanted upwards at the corners and a small, smiling mouth added a slightly Puckish look. Though by no means overweight, she was curvy, something Robin, who’d been afraid she’d be stick thin and flat-chested, saw with relief.

‘Come in, come in! It’s so nice to meet you,’ said Prudence, beaming as she shook Robin’s hand.

‘You, too. My hair isn’t usually like this,’ Robin said, and then wished she hadn’t. She’d just caught sight of her reflection in Prudence’s hall mirror. ‘It’s all part of my cover.’

‘Well, it looks great,’ said Prudence, before turning to Strike and hugging him.

‘Blimey, bruv, well done. There’s less of you every time I see you.’

‘If I’d known it would make everyone this happy, I’d’ve got the other leg amputated.’

‘Very funny. Come on through to the sitting room. I’ve just opened some wine.’

She led the two detectives into a large room of exquisite taste. Beautifully proportioned, with large black and white photographs on the walls, stacked bookcases and a low, dark leather sofa on a tubular metal frame, it managed to be simultaneously stylish and welcoming.

‘So,’ said Prudence, gesturing Strike and Robin to the sofa and settling into a large cream armchair before pouring two extra glasses of wine, ‘clothes. Do I get to ask what they’re for?’

‘Robin needs to look like a rich girl who’s at enough of a loose end to joint a cult.’

‘A cult?’

‘Well, that’s what some people would say it is,’ temporised Robin. ‘They’ve got a kind of compound in the countryside, and I’m hoping to be recruited so I can get in there.’

To both detectives’ surprise, Prudence’s smile disappeared and was replaced with a look of concern.

‘This wouldn’t be the UHC, would it?’

Startled, Robin glanced at Strike.

‘That’s a very swift bit of deduction,’ he said. ‘Why d’you think it would be them?’

‘Because it started in Norfolk.’

‘You’ve got a client who was in there,’ said Strike, on a sudden hunch.

‘I don’t bandy around clients’ identifying details, Cormoran,’ said Prudence, her voice mock-stern as she pushed his glass towards him across the coffee table.

‘Pity,’ said Strike lightly. ‘We need to find ex-members.’

Prudence looked intently at him for a moment or two, then said,

‘Well, as I’ve got a duty of confidentiality, I can’t—’

‘I was being glib,’ Strike reassured her. ‘I’m not after a name and address.’

Prudence took a sip of wine, her expression grave. Finally, she said,

‘I don’t think you’ll find it very easy, getting ex-members to talk. There’s a lot of shame attached to having been coerced in that way, and often significant trauma.’

Seeing them face to face, Robin spotted her partner’s resemblance to Jonny Rokeby for the first time. He and his half-sister shared the same defined jaw, the same spacing of the eyes. She wondered – she who had three brothers, all of the same parentage – what it felt like, to make a first acquaintance with a blood relative in your forties. But there was something more there than a faint physical resemblance between brother and sister: they appeared, already, to have established an unspoken understanding.

‘All right,’ said Prudence, under Strike’s semi-jocular questioning, ‘I do treat an ex-UHC member. As a matter of fact, when they first disclosed what had happened to them, I didn’t think I was the right person to help them. It’s specialised work, deprogramming people. Some over-indulge in things they were deprived of inside – food and alcohol, for instance. Some indulge in risky behaviours, as a reaction to being so controlled and monitored. Readjusting to a life of freedom isn’t easy, and being asked to disinter things they suffered, or were forced to do, can be immensely distressing.

‘Luckily, I knew of an American therapist who’s worked with a lot of cult survivors, so I got in touch with him. He did a few virtual sessions with the client, which helped hugely, and I’ve now taken over, with some continued assistance from the American. That’s how I know about the UHC.’

‘How did the client get out?’ asked Strike.

‘Why? Is that what you’ve been hired to do, get someone out?’

Strike nodded.

‘Then you need to be very careful,’ said Prudence seriously. ‘If they’re anything like my client, they’ll be exceptionally fragile and you’ll do more harm than good if you’re heavy-handed. You’ve got to understand: people in cults have been rewired. Expecting them to just snap back to normal isn’t realistic.’

‘How did your client manage it?’

‘They… didn’t leave by choice,’ said Prudence hesitantly.

‘You mean they were expelled?’

‘It wasn’t a question of… they had health issues,’ said Prudence, ‘but I can’t say more than that. Suffice to say, the UHC doesn’t let members leave through the front door unless they’ve stopped being of use. You’ll need to be very careful, Robin. Have you ever read Robert Jay Lifton? Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism? Or Combatting Cult Mind Control, by Steven Hassan?’

Robin shook her head.

‘I’ll lend you my copies. I’ll give them to you before you go. Being able to identify their techniques will help you resist them.’

‘Robin’s smart,’ said Strike. ‘She’s not going to buy whatever they’re selling.’

‘Being clever’s no protection, not on its own,’ said Prudence. ‘Restricted food, enforced chanting, rigid control over your physical environment, digging into your psyche for the places they can apply most pressure, love-bombing you one minute, tearing you down the next… nobody’s invulnerable to that, clever or not…

‘Anyway,’ said Prudence, standing up, ‘let’s try on some clothes.’

‘This is really kind of you, Prudence,’ Robin said, as the therapist led her upstairs.

‘It isn’t,’ said Prudence, now smiling again. ‘I’ve been dying to meet you, given that you’re clearly the most important person in Corm’s life.’

The words gave Robin a sensation like an electric shock in the pit of her stomach.

‘He’s – he’s really important to me, too.’

They passed the open door of a very messy bedroom, which Robin could tell belonged to a teenager even before a black-haired girl in a mini-skirt came bounding out of it, clutching a leather jacket in one hand, and a satchel in the other.

‘Ooh,’ she said, blinking at Robin. ‘Cool hair!’

Without waiting for a response she hurried past them, running downstairs. Prudence called after her,

‘Text me when you need picking up!’

‘I will,’ shouted the girl, and they heard her call, ‘Laters, new uncle,’ before the front door slammed.

‘That was Sylvie,’ said Prudence, leading Robin into a large bedroom of luxurious simplicity, and then into a mirrored dressing room lined with clothing racks. ‘Corm said you’d need two or three outfits?’

‘Ideally,’ said Robin. ‘I promise I’ll be very careful with them.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that, I’ve got far too many clothes… it’s my weakness,’ Prudence admitted, with a guilty smile. ‘Sylvie’s just got old enough to start borrowing stuff I can’t get away with any more, so I’m kind of hanging off giving it all to charity. What size shoes do you take?’

‘Six,’ said Robin, ‘but—’

‘Perfect. Same as me.’

‘—you really don’t have to—’

‘If you’re trying to look wealthy, accessories count,’ said Prudence. ‘Quite exciting really, helping someone go undercover. Corm’s very cagey about what you two get up to – professionally, I mean,’ she added.

She began pulling out day dresses and various tops and handing them to Robin, who saw labels she could never have afforded: Valentino, Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent.

‘… and that would really suit you,’ Prudence said five minutes later, adding a Chloé dress to the heavy load Robin was already holding. ‘Right, try it all on and see what works. You’ll be completely private in here, Declan’s not home for another hour.’

As the bedroom door closed behind Prudence, Robin put the pile of clothes down on the double bed, then took off her sweater and jeans, looking around at the room as she did so. From the oak floorboards and the wide mahogany sleigh bed to the sleek, modern chandelier, long gauze curtains and wall-mounted flat-screen television, everything spoke of good taste and plenty of money. Strike might be living like this, Robin thought, if he’d swallow his pride and rage, and accept his father’s largesse – though, of course, she couldn’t be sure it was Jonny Rokeby who’d bought this house.

Downstairs, Prudence had rejoined Strike in the sitting room, holding two books.

‘For Robin,’ she said, putting them on the coffee table between them.

‘Cheers,’ he said, as she refilled his wine glass. ‘Listen, can I ask you something?’

‘Go on,’ said Prudence, sitting down opposite him.

‘Did this client of yours ever witness supernatural events at Chapman Farm?’

‘Corm, I can’t talk about that.’

‘I’m not going to go looking for your client,’ he assured her. ‘I’m just interested.’

‘I’ve probably said too much already,’ said Prudence.

‘I get it,’ said Strike. ‘No more questions.’

Leaning forwards, he picked up Combatting Cult Mind Control, turned it over and read the blurb on the back.

‘You’ve got me more worried about Robin going in there now than I was half an hour ago,’ he admitted.

‘Good,’ said Prudence. ‘Sorry, I don’t mean “good, you’re worried”, I just think it’s best she understands what she’s getting into.’

‘Why the hell do people join cults?’ mused Strike. ‘Why would anyone give over that amount of control of their lives?’

‘Because they don’t realise total control is where it’s going to end,’ said Prudence. ‘It happens incrementally, step by step, after they’ve been offered approval and validation and a sense of purpose… surely you can see the allure of discovering a profound truth? The key to the universe?’

Strike half-shrugged.

‘OK, well, what about believing you can make a real difference to the world: alleviate suffering, cure social ills, protect the weak?’

‘Why d’you need to be in a cult to do any of that?’

‘You don’t,’ said Prudence, smiling, ‘but they’re very good at convincing people membership is the best possible way of achieving paradise on earth, not to mention heaven afterwards.

‘The only kind of people the UHC probably couldn’t do much with, not that they’d want to recruit them in the first place, are apathetic, couch-potato types. The UHC’s after idealists they can turn into evangelists, although I believe they have lower grades of recruit at Chapman Farm, just to get the actual farming done… my poor client knows only too well that other people think they’re stupid and weak-willed for having fallen for it all, which is part of the reason they feel so much shame. But the truth is, being idealistic and intellectually inquiring makes you much more vulnerable to ideologies like the UHC’s… will you two stay for dinner? It’s pasta, nothing fancy.’

‘You don’t have to feed us as well,’ said Strike.

‘I want to. Please stay, Declan will be home soon. Robin seems lovely, by the way.’

‘Yeah, she is,’ said Strike, glancing up at the ceiling.

Upstairs, Robin had decided on her three outfits, though she still felt diffident about taking such expensive clothes away with her. She’d just got back into her own jeans and top when Prudence knocked on the door.

‘Come in,’ called Robin.

‘Chosen?’

‘Yes. If it’s OK, I’d like to borrow these.’

‘Great,’ said Prudence, scooping up the rest of the clothes and heading back towards the rails to put them back on hangers. ‘You know what?’ she said, over her shoulder, ‘You should just keep them. It’s easier.’

‘Prudence – I can’t,’ said Robin weakly. She knew perfectly well that the clothes she’d selected were worth at least two thousand pounds, even second-hand.

‘Why not? If you’d wanted this,’ said Prudence, holding up the Chloé dress, ‘I’d’ve asked for it back, because Declan really likes me in it, but honestly, I easily can do without what you’ve chosen. I’ve already got too much stuff, you can see that. Please,’ she said, as Robin opened her mouth to protest again, ‘it’ll be the first time any of us have been allowed to give Corm anything, even by proxy. Now let’s find shoes.’

‘I really don’t know what to say,’ Robin said, flummoxed. She was worried Strike wouldn’t be happy she’d accepted the gift. As though she’d read Robin’s mind, Prudence said,

‘I know Corm’s touchy as hell about taking anything from Dad, but none of this was bought by Jonny Rokeby, I promise. I make very good money and Declan earns a mint. Come here and choose shoes,’ she added, beckoning Robin back into the dressing room. ‘These look great with that dress. Try them.’

As Robin slid a foot into a Jimmy Choo pump, she asked,

‘Are you close to your dad?’

‘Um…’ said Prudence, now on her knees as she rifled through her boots, ‘… I suppose as close as you can ever be with someone like him. He’s kind of juvenile. They say you remain forever stuck at the age you got famous, don’t they? Which means Dad’s never really aged out of his late teens. His whole mindset’s instant gratification and letting other people pick up the pieces. I am fond of him, but he’s not a parent in the usual sense, because he’s never really needed to look after himself, let alone anyone else. I can see exactly why Corm’s pissed off at him, though. You could hardly imagine two more different people. Try these,’ she added, handing Robin a pair of boots. As Robin pulled them on, Prudence added,

‘Dad’s got a genuinely guilty conscience about Corm. He knows he behaved really badly. He tried to reach out a couple of years ago. I don’t know exactly what was said—’

‘Rokeby offered him money to meet,’ said Robin baldly.

Prudence winced.

‘Oh God, I didn’t know that… Dad would’ve thought that was generous or something… bloody idiot… he’s so used to throwing money at problems… Those look too tight.’

‘They are, a bit,’ Robin admitted, unzipping the boots again. ‘You know,’ she added impulsively, ‘I’m really glad you and Cormoran are in touch. I think you might be… I don’t know… what he’s missing.’

‘Really?’ said Prudence, looking pleased. ‘Because I’ve wanted to meet him for years. Years. It isn’t easy, being the biracial illegitimate among the rest of them. We all get on all right, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve always been sort of half-in, half-out of the Rokeby clan, and knowing Corm was out there, not giving a damn, making his own way…

‘Of course, he’s perennially scared I’m going to start psychoanalysing him,’ added Prudence, now handing Robin a pair of Manolo Blahniks. ‘I’ve explained to him multiple times that I wouldn’t be able to, even if I wanted. The relationship’s too… it’s just too complicated… he’s been a kind of talisman to me for a long time. Just the idea of him. You can’t be objective with somebody like that, ever… You’ll stay for dinner, won’t you? I’ve just asked Corm.’

‘I – are you sure?’ said Robin, feeling slightly overwhelmed.

‘God, yes, it’ll be fun. Declan really likes Corm and he’ll be thrilled to meet you. OK, so you’re going to take these three, right?’ said Prudence, setting aside another few hundred pounds’ worth of footwear. ‘Now let’s find a handbag…’

Downstairs in the silent sitting room, Strike was again poring over the photograph of Kevin Pirbright’s room that Wardle had given him, and which he’d brought with him to show Robin. For several minutes, he’d been squinting at it, trying to make out a few things that puzzled him. Finally he glanced around and spotted exactly what he required: an antique magnifying glass lying decoratively on top of a pile of art books.

Ten minutes later, Robin reappeared in the sitting room and emitted a surprised laugh.

‘What?’ said Strike, looking up.

‘Sherlock Holmes, I presume?’

‘Don’t mock it until you’ve tried it,’ said Strike, holding out both photo and magnifying glass. ‘This is Kevin Pirbright’s room, as the police found it. Wardle got it for me.’

‘Oh,’ said Robin. She sat back down on the sofa beside Strike and took both picture and magnifying glass from him.

‘Have a shufti at what he’s written on the walls,’ said Strike. ‘See whether you can read any of it. That picture’s all we’ve got, unfortunately, because I called the landlord this afternoon. Once the police had finished with it, he repainted the room.’

Robin moved the magnifying glass to and fro, trying to make out the scrawled words. She was concentrating so hard, the sound of the front door banging open made her jump.

‘Hi, new uncle,’ said a dark teenaged boy, poking his head into the room. He seemed disconcerted to find Robin there, as well.

‘Hi, Gerry,’ said Strike. ‘This is my detective partner, Robin.’

‘Oh,’ said the boy, looking vaguely embarrassed. ‘Cool. Hi.’

He disappeared again.

Robin resumed her close examination of the photo. After a minute’s intense concentration, she began to read aloud.

‘“Five prophets”… what’s that over the mirror? Is it “retribution”?’

‘I think so,’ said Strike, shifting closer to her on the sofa, so their thighs were almost touching.

Many of the scrawls on Pirbright’s walls were illegible, or too small to read from the photograph, but here and there, a word stood out.

‘“Becca”,’ read Robin. ‘“Sin”… “stra” something… straw? “I think that’s “plot”, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike.

‘“The night before”… the night before… I can’t read the rest…’

‘Nor can I. What d’you make of that?’

Strike was pointing at something on the wall over the unmade bed. As both leaned in to look closer, Strike’s hair brushed Robin’s and she felt another small electric shock in the pit of her stomach.

‘It looks,’ she said, ‘as though someone’s tried to scrub something off… or… have they chipped away the plaster?’

‘That’s what I thought,’ said Strike. ‘Looks to me like someone’s literally gouged some of the writing off the wall, but they didn’t take it all. Wardle told me Pirbright’s neighbour came banging on the door after hearing his music stop. Possibly that persuaded the killer to leave via the window, before they’d had time to remove the whole thing.’

‘And they left that,’ said Robin, looking at the last remnant of what seemed to have been a sentence or phrase.

Written in capitals and circled many times was a single, easily legible word: PIGS.

10

Six in the second place means:

Contemplation through the crack of the door.

Furthering for the perseverance of a woman.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Largely because of Prudence’s warnings, Strike spent the next two evenings reading Combatting Cult Mind Control in his attic flat. As a result, he insisted on Robin spending longer than usual on creating her undercover persona before making her first appearance at the Rupert Court Temple. While he had total confidence in Robin’s ability to think on her feet, some of what he’d read, and particularly Prudence’s warning that the church sought out weak places in members’ psyches the better to manipulate them, had left him feeling uneasy.

‘There shouldn’t be any points of resemblance between your own life and Rowena’s,’ he told her, Rowena Ellis being the pseudonym Robin had chosen (it was always easier, especially when exhausted or caught off guard, to have a pseudonym that was vaguely familiar). ‘Don’t go drawing on your real past. Stick with pure fiction.’

‘I know,’ said Robin patiently, ‘don’t worry, I’ve thought about that already.’

‘And don’t change your accent too much. That’s the kind of thing that slips when you’re knackered.’

‘Strike, I know,’ she said, half-irritated, half-amused. ‘But if I don’t get in there soon, this haircut’s going to have grown out and I’ll have to get it redone.’

On the Friday before her planned appearance in character at the UHC’s London temple, Strike insisted on testing Robin at the office by asking questions about Rowena’s schooling, university career, family, friends, hobbies, pets, ex-fiancé and the details of her supposedly cancelled wedding, all of which Robin answered without pausing or hesitating. Finally, Strike asked why ‘Rowena’ had come to the Rupert Court Temple.

‘A friend of mine showed me an interview with Noli Seymour,’ said Robin, ‘all about universality and diversity, so I agreed to come. It seemed interesting. I’m not committing to anything, of course!’ she added, with a convincing show of nerves. ‘I’m only here to have a look!’

‘Bloody good,’ admitted Strike, sitting back in his chair at the partners’ desk and reaching for his mug of tea. ‘All right: all systems go.’

So the following morning, Robin rose early in her flat in Walthamstow, ate breakfast, dressed in a pair of Valentino trousers, an Armani shirt and a Stella McCartney jacket, slung a Gucci bag over her shoulder, then set off for central London, feeling both nervous and excited.

Rupert Court, as Robin already knew, having worked in the area for years, was a narrow alleyway hung with glass lamps that connected Rupert Street and Wardour Street at the point where Chinatown and Soho converged. On one side of the passageway were various small businesses, including a Chinese reflexologist. Most of the other side was taken up by the temple. It had probably once been a nondescript commercial building housing restaurants or shops, but the lower windows and doors had been blocked up, leaving only one massive entrance. As far as Robin could see over the heads of the many people queuing patiently to get in, the heavy double doors had been given an ornate, carved and embellished frame of red and gold, the colours echoing the Chinese lanterns strung across Wardour Street behind her.

As she shuffled closer to the door with the rest of the crowd, she covertly examined her fellow temple-goers. Although there was a smattering of older worshippers, the average age seemed to be between twenty and thirty. If some looked a little eccentric – there was one young man with blue dreadlocks – most were remarkable only for their ordinariness: no fanatical glares, no vacant stares, no outré garb or strange mutterings.

Once close enough to see the entrance clearly, Robin saw that the red and gold carvings surrounding the door represented animals: a horse, a cow, a rooster, a pig, a pheasant, a dog and a sheep. She’d just had time to wonder whether this was an oblique reference to the UHC’s agricultural birthplace when she spotted the dragon with bright gold eyes.

‘Welcome… welcome… welcome…’ two smiling young women were saying, as congregants passed over the threshold. Both were wearing orange sweatshirts emblazoned with the church’s logo, which comprised the letters ‘UHC’ displayed within two black hands which were making the shape of a heart. Robin noticed how the two women were scrutinising the approaching faces, and wondered whether they were trying to match up mental images with those they considered undesirables, like Will Edensor’s family.

‘Welcome!’ sang the blonde girl on the right, as Robin passed her.

‘Thanks,’ said Robin, smiling.

The interior of the temple, of which Robin had already seen pictures online, was even more impressive in reality. The aisle leading between rows of cushioned pews was carpeted in scarlet, and led to a raised stage behind which was a large screen almost the size of a cinema’s. This was currently showing a static image of tens of thousands of people wearing different colours, predominantly red and orange, standing in front of what looked like a holy building or palace in India.

Whether or not the aureate glow emanating from the walls and cornices was due to genuine gold leaf, Robin didn’t know, but it reflected the light from low-hanging orbs of glass, which contained multiple bulbs, like bunches of glowing grapes. Naive figures had been hand-painted all around the upper portion of the walls, holding hands like the paper dolls Robin’s mother had once taught her to cut out, as a child. Every ethnicity was represented there, and Robin was reminded of Disneyland Paris, which she’d visited in 2003 with her then boyfriend, later husband, Matthew, and the ride called ‘It’s a Small World’, in which barges rolled mechanically around canals, and dolls from all over the world sang canned music at the visitors.

The pews were already filling rapidly, so Robin slid into an available space beside a young black couple. The man looked tense, and his partner was whispering to him. While Robin couldn’t hear everything the girl was saying, she thought she caught the words, ‘keep an open mind’.

On a shallow shelf attached to the pew in front of Robin lay a number of identical pamphlets, one of which she picked up.

Welcome to the Universal Humanitarian Church!

Our Mission, Our Values, Our Vision

Robin slipped the pamphlet into her bag to read later and glanced around, trying to spot Will Edensor. There was no shortage of good-looking young attendants in orange sweatshirts bustling around the temple, showing people to seats, or chatting and joking with visitors, but there was no sign of him.

Noticing a few congregation members looking upwards, Robin now turned her attention to the ceiling. A mural had been painted there, which was of a very different style to the doll-like people painted around the walls. This looked like Disney’s take on Michelangelo. Five gigantic figures in swirling robes were flying across a Technicolor dawn, and Robin deduced that these were the five prophets of whom Kevin Pirbright had written in his long email to Sir Colin Edensor.

The figure directly overhead Robin was dark-haired, bearded and wearing orange. He appeared to be bleeding from a cut on his forehead and there were bloodstains on his robes. This was surely the Wounded Prophet. Then there was a benevolent-looking old man with a white beard and blue robes who held the rod of Asclepius, a staff wrapped with a serpent: the Healer Prophet. The Golden Prophet was depicted as a silver-haired woman whose yellow robes billowed out behind her; she wore a beatific expression, and was scattering jewels upon the earth.

The fourth figure was a gaunt, unsmiling young man with shadowed eyes. He wore crimson robes and, to Robin’s slight consternation, had a noose around his neck, the rope flying behind him. This, Robin assumed, was the Stolen Prophet, Alexander Graves, who’d hanged himself a week after being forcibly kidnapped back by his family. She found it both strange and sinister that the church had chosen to depict him with a sunken face and the means of his destruction around his neck.

However, it was the central figure that drew most of Robin’s attention. Smaller and slighter than the four others, she had long black hair, wore white robes, and even though she was depicted as airborne, she was trailing waves in her wake. The Drowned Prophet’s oval face had a severe beauty, but, whether because of a trick of the light or not, the narrow eyes showed no irises, but appeared to be entirely black.

‘Are you here alone?’ said a voice beside Robin, who started. The young blonde woman who’d welcomed her at the door was smiling down at her.

‘Yes,’ said Robin, ‘my friend was supposed to come with me but she’s got a hangover!’

‘Oh dear,’ said the girl, still smiling.

‘I know, I was a bit annoyed,’ said Robin, with a laugh. ‘She’s the one who wanted to come!’

She’d planned all this, of course: best not to look too keen, too desperate to ask questions; better by far to let her clothes and several hundred pounds’ worth of handbag make their own alluring impression.

‘There are no accidents,’ said the blonde, beaming down at Robin. ‘I’ve learned that. No accidents. You’ve chosen a really auspicious day to come, as well, if this is your first visit. You’ll understand once service begins.’

The blonde walked away, still smiling, as a loud bang to the rear of the temple signalled the closing of the doors. A bell rang somewhere, giving one single deep peal, and the congregation fell silent. The orange-sweatshirted attendants had retreated to standing positions along the walls.

Then, to Robin’s surprise, the first notes of a well-known pop song began to play over hidden speakers: David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’.

The static image on the cinema screen had unfrozen and the orange-clad temple attendants began clapping in time and singing along with the song, as did some of the congregation.

Onscreen, the camera was moving through laughing people throwing coloured powders at each other, and Robin, who’d lived in multicultural London long enough to know, thought she recognised the festival of Holi. The temple lights were slowly dimming, and within a minute the only light was emanating from the cinema screen, where joyful Hindus of both sexes continued to laugh and chase each other, and rainbow colours flew through the air, and they seemed to be dancing to Bowie’s song and personifying its lyrics, each of them a king or a queen who, in this glorious mass, could ‘beat them’, whoever they were…

The film cast flickering, multicoloured lights over the faces of the congregation. As the song faded out, so too did the film, to be replaced by a static image of the Hindu God Shiva, sitting cross-legged with a snake wrapped around his neck, a garland of orange flowers hanging down over his bare chest. A brilliant white spotlight now appeared on the stage, into which a man stepped, and as the brightness had made the surrounding darkness seem so deep, he appeared to have come out of thin air. Some of those watching broke into applause, including all of the beaming attendants, who also emitted a few whoops of excitement.

Robin recognised the man standing in the spotlight at once: he was Jonathan Wace, known to his adherents as ‘Papa J’, the founder of the Universal Humanitarian Church, making an unusual in-person appearance at one of his temples. A handsome, tall and fit-looking man in his mid-sixties, he could have passed in this light for a couple of decades younger, with his thick, dark shoulder-length hair threaded with silver, his large, dark blue eyes and square jaw with a dimple in his chin. His smile was thoroughly engaging. There was no suggestion of bombast or theatricality in the way he acknowledged the applause, but, on the contrary, a warm and humble smile, and he made a deprecatory gesture, as though to calm the excitement. He was clad in a full-length orange robe embroidered in gold thread, and wore a microphone headset, so that his voice carried easily over the two-hundred-strong crowd in front of him.

‘Good morning,’ he said, placing his hands together in the attitude of prayer and bowing.

‘Good morning,’ chorused at least half the congregation in return.

‘Welcome to today’s service, which, as some of you will know, is a particularly important one for members of the Universal Humanitarian Church. Today, the nineteenth of March, marks the beginning of our year. Today is the Day of the Wounded Prophet.

‘This,’ said Wace, gesturing towards the image onscreen, ‘is the kind of image most of us associate with a divinity. Here we see Shiva, the benign and beneficent Hindu God, who contains many contradictions and ambiguities. He’s an ascetic, yet also a God of fertility. His third eye gives him insight, but may also destroy.’

The image of Shiva now faded from the cinema screen, to be replaced with a blurry black and white photograph of a young American soldier.

‘This,’ said Wace, smiling, ‘isn’t what most of us think of when imagining a holy man. This is Rusty Andersen, who as a young man in the early seventies was sent to war in Vietnam.’

The image of Rusty Andersen faded and was replaced by grainy footage of explosions and men running with rifles. Low, ominous music was now playing over the temple loudspeakers.

‘Rust, as his friends called him, witnessed and endured atrocities. He was forced to commit unspeakable acts. But when the war was over…’ The music became lighter, more hopeful. ‘He went home for the last time, packed his guitar and his belongings, and went wandering in Europe.’

The screen now showed a succession of old photographs, Andersen’s hair becoming longer in each one. He was busking on what looked like the streets of Rome; making the peace sign in front of the Eiffel Tower; walking with his guitar on his back through the London rain, past Horse Guards Parade.

‘Finally,’ said Wace, ‘he arrived in a little Norfolk village called Aylmerton. There, he heard of a community living off the land, and he decided to join them.’

The screen faded to black, the music faded away.

‘The community Rust joined was, sadly, not everything he hoped it would be,’ said Wace, ‘but a simple life, living close to nature, remained his ideal. When that first community broke up, Rust continued to live in the cabin he’d built himself, self-sufficient, self-reliant, still dealing with the trauma left by the war he’d been forced to fight.

‘It was then that I met him for the first time,’ said Wace, as a swell of new music filled the temple, now joyous, uplifting, and a picture of Rusty Andersen and a thirty-something Jonathan Wace filled the screen. Though Robin guessed they weren’t too many years apart in age, the weather-beaten Andersen looked far older.

‘He had a wonderful smile, Rust,’ said Wace, with a catch in his voice. ‘He held fiercely to his solitary existence, though occasionally I’d cross the fields to persuade him to come and eat with us. A new community was starting to form on the land, one that centred not only on a natural, but a spiritual life. But spirituality held no attraction for Rust. He’d seen too much, he told me, to believe in man’s immortal soul or God’s goodness.

‘Then, one night,’ said Wace, as the photograph enlarged slowly, so that Rust Andersen’s face filled the entire screen, ‘this broken warrior and I went walking together from dinner at the farm, back across the fields to his cabin. We were arguing, as ever, about religion and man’s need for the Blessed Divinity and at last I said to Rust, “Can you know, for sure, that nothing lies beyond this life? Can you be certain that man returns to the darkness, that no divine force acts around us, or inside us? Can you not even admit the possibility of such things?”

‘And Rust looked at me,’ said Wace, ‘and, after a long pause, replied, “I admit the possibility.”

‘“I admit the possibility,”’ repeated Wace. ‘The power of those words, from a man who’d turned resolutely away from God, from the divine, from the possibility of redemption and salvation! And as he said those astonishing words, I saw something in his face I’d never seen before. Something had awoken in him, and I knew in that moment that his heart had opened to God at last, and I, whom God had helped so much, could show him what I’d learned, what I’d seen, which made me know – not think, not believe, not hope, but know – that God is real and that help is always there, though we may not understand how to reach it, or how to even ask for it.

‘Little did I realise then,’ said Wace, as the music darkened again, and Andersen’s smiling face began to fade from the screen, ‘that Rust and I would never have that conversation, that I’d never get the chance to show him the way… because within twenty-four hours, he was dead.’

The music stopped. The silence in the temple was now absolute.

‘A car hit him out on the road outside our farm. A drunk driver killed Rust in the early hours of the following morning, while Rust was taking an early walk, which he often did, being an insomniac, and a man who thought best alone. Rust was killed instantly.’

Another picture filled the screen: of a group standing with heads bowed, over a freshly dug and covered mound of earth, outside Rust Andersen’s cabin.

‘We buried him at the farm, where he’d found a measure of comfort in nature and in solitude. I was distraught. It was an early test of my faith and, I freely admit, I couldn’t see why the Blessed Divinity would let this happen, so soon after the possibility of Their revelation to a troubled soul like Rust. It was in this state of despair that I set to work to clear out Rust’s cabin… and on his bed, I found a letter. A letter addressed to me, in Rust’s handwriting. After all these years, I still know it by heart. This is what Rust wrote, hours before his death:

Dear Jonathan,

Tonight, I prayed, for the first time since I was a little boy. It occurred to me that if there is a possibility that God is real, and that I can be forgiven, then I’d be a fool not to talk to Him. You told me he’d send me a sign if he was there. That sign has come. I won’t tell you what it was, because you might think it stupid, but I knew it when it happened, and I don’t believe it was coincidence.

Now I’m experiencing something I haven’t felt in years: peace. Perhaps it will last, perhaps it won’t, but even to have this feeling, once more before I die, has been like a glimpse of heaven.

I’m not good at talking about my feelings, as you know, and I don’t even know whether I’ll give you this letter, but setting all this down feels like the right thing to do. I’m going for a walk now, after a night of no sleep, but this time, for the best of reasons.

Yours,

Rust.

Beside Robin, the young black woman was wiping away tears.

‘And a few short hours after that, while I slept, Rust was taken home,’ said Jonathan Wace. ‘He died hours after the sign he’d been given, which had caused him a night of joy and of the peace that had been denied him so long…

‘It was only later, while I was still grieving for him, still trying to make sense of the events of that night, that I realised Rust Andersen had died at the time of Holi, an important Hindu festival.’

Now the cinema screen behind Wace was again showing the film of joyful people in colourful robes, throwing powder at each other, laughing and dancing, packed tightly together in the street.

‘Rust didn’t like crowds,’ said Wace. ‘He wandered on from city to city after Vietnam, looking for his peace. At last, he settled on a patch of uninhabited land, and he eschewed human company. The joy of communing with other people was one he partook of sparingly and usually unwillingly, only out of need for money, or food. And as I thought about Holi, and I thought about Rust, I thought how incongruous it was that he should have returned to God at such a time… but then I saw how wrong I was. I understood.

‘Rust would find Holi in the life beyond. All that he’d missed: connection, laughter, joy, would be there for him in heaven. The Blessed Divinity had sent Rust a sign, and in taking Rust on that day, the Divinity had spoken through him to all who knew him. “Rust has no further to seek. He has achieved what he was set upon the earth to do: to gain knowledge of me, which in turn, teaches you. Celebrate the divine in the confident belief that one day, you too will find the happiness he sought.”’

The riotous colours faded again from the cinema screen and a picture of many divine figures took their place, including Shiva, Guru Nanak, Jesus and Buddha.

‘But what is the Blessed Divinity? Of whom am I speaking, when I speak of God? Which of these, or countless others, should you pray to? And my answer is: all, or none. The divine exists, and men have tried to draw the divine in their own image, and through their own imaginations, since the dawn of time. It doesn’t matter what name you give Them. It doesn’t matter what form of words you give your worship. When we see beyond the boundaries that separate us, boundaries of culture and religion, which are manmade, our vision clears, and we can at last see the beyond.

‘Some of you here today are non-believers,’ said Wace, smiling again. ‘Some of you came out of curiosity. Some doubt, many disbelieve. Some of you might even have come to laugh at us. And why not laugh? Laughter is joyous, and joy comes from God.

‘If I tell you today that I know – know beyond doubt – that there is life beyond death, and a divine force that seeks to guide and help any human who seeks it, you’ll demand proof. Well, I say, you are right to ask for proof. I’d rather face an honest sceptic than a hundred who believe they know God, but are really in thrall to their own piety, their insistence that only they, and their religion, have found the right way.

‘And some of you will be discouraged if I say to you that nothing on this earthly plane comes without patience and struggle. You wouldn’t expect to know or understand the laws of physics in an instant. How much more complex is the originator of those physical laws? How much more mysterious?

‘Yet you can take a first step, now. A first step towards proof, towards the absolute certainty I possess.

‘All that’s needed is to say the words the Wounded Prophet spoke, a quarter of a century ago, which gave him the sign he needed, and which led to his exultation, and his ascension to heaven. Will you say only this: “I admit the possibility”?’

Wace paused, smiling. Nobody had spoken.

‘If you want a sign, speak the words now: “I admit the possibility.”’

A few scattered voices repeated the words, and a titter of nervous laughter followed.

‘Together, then!’ said Wace, now beaming. ‘Together! “I admit the possibility!”’

‘I admit the possibility,’ repeated the congregation, including Robin.

The attendants began applauding, and the rest of the congregation followed suit, swept up in the moment, some of them still laughing.

‘Good!’ said Jonathan, beaming at them all. ‘And now – at the risk of sounding like the lowest of low rent magicians –’ more laughter, ‘– I want you all to think of something. Don’t speak it aloud, don’t tell anyone else, just think: think of a number or a word. A number, or a word,’ he repeated. ‘Any number. Any word. But decide on it now, inside the temple.’

Forty-eight, thought Robin, at random.

‘Soon,’ said Wace, ‘you’ll leave this temple and go about your life. If it should happen that that word, or that number, forces itself upon your notice before midnight tonight – well, it could be coincidence, couldn’t it? It could be chance. But you’ve just admitted the possibility that it is something else. You’ve admitted the possibility that the Blessed Divinity is trying to talk to you, to make Their presence known to you, through the chaos and distractions of this worldly clamour, to speak to you by the only means They have at Their disposal at this time, before you begin to learn Their language, before you’re able to strip away the dross of this earthly plane, and see the Ultimate as plainly as I, and many others, do…

‘If nothing else,’ said Wace, as the images of deities on the cinema screen behind him faded, and Rust Andersen’s smiling face reappeared, ‘I hope the story of the Wounded Prophet will remind you that even the most troubled may gain peace and joy. That even those who have done dreadful things may be forgiven. That there is a home to which all may be called, if they only believe it is possible.’

With that, Jonathan Wace gave a little bow of the head, the spotlight vanished and, as the congregation began to applaud, the temple lamps began to glow again. But Wace had already gone, and Robin had to admire the speed with which he’d absented himself from the stage, which, indeed, gave him the air of a magician.

‘Thank you, Papa J!’ said the blonde girl who’d spoken to Robin earlier, mounting the stage and still applauding as she beamed around. ‘And now,’ she said, ‘I’d like to say a word or two about the UHC’s mission here on earth. We seek a fairer, more equal society and we work to empower the most vulnerable. This week,’ she said, moving aside to let a new film appear on the cinema screen, ‘we’re collecting for the UHC’s Young Carers’ Project, which provides holidays for young people who’re caring for chronically ill and disabled family members.’

As she talked, a number of film clips began playing, showing a group of teenagers, firstly running along a beach together, then singing around a campfire, then abseiling and canoeing.

‘At the UHC we believe not only in individual spiritual enlightenment, but also in working for the betterment of conditions for marginalised people, both inside and outside the church. If you’re able to do so, please consider giving a donation to our Young Carers’ Project on the way out, and if you’d like to find out more about the church and our mission, don’t hesitate to talk to one of the attendants, who’d be delighted to help. I’ll leave you now with these beautiful images of some of our latest humanitarian projects.’

She walked off the stage. As the doors hadn’t opened, most of the congregation remained seated, watching the screen. The temple lights remained dim, and David Bowie began to sing again as the stationary congregation watched further film clips, showing homeless people eating soup, beaming children raising their hands in a classroom in Africa, and adults of diverse races having some kind of group therapy.

We could be heroes, sang David Bowie, just for one day.

11

Six in the fifth place…

Shock goes hither and thither…

However, nothing at all is lost.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Strike, who was eager to hear how Robin’s first trip to the temple had gone, didn’t receive her first few attempts to contact him because he was sitting on the Tube, with a carrier bag from Hamleys on his lap. Robin’s fifth attempt to contact him finally came through when he’d left the train at Bromley South, and was on the point of pressing her number.

‘Sorry,’ was his first word. ‘Didn’t have reception. I’m on my way to Lucy’s.’

Lucy was the half-sister with whom Strike had grown up, because she was his mother’s child, rather than his father’s. While he loved Lucy, they had very little in common, and outsiders tended to express disbelief that they were related at all, given that Lucy was small and blonde. Strike was undertaking today’s visit out of a sense of duty, not pleasure, and was anticipating a difficult couple of hours.

‘How was it?’ he asked, setting off along the road under a sky that was threatening rain.

‘Not what I expected,’ admitted Robin, who’d walked several blocks away from the temple before finding a café with seats outside where, due to the chilliness of the day, she had no eavesdroppers. ‘I thought it’d be a bit more fire and brimstone, but not at all, it’s wall-to-wall social justice and being free to have doubts. Very slick, though – films shown on a cinema screen and David Bowie playing over the—’

‘Bowie?’

‘Yes, ‘Heroes’ – but the big news is that Papa J was there in person.’

‘Was he, now?’

‘He’s very charismatic.’

‘He’d need to be,’ grunted Strike. ‘Anyone try and recruit you?’

‘Not explicitly, but a blonde woman, who I think knows how much Prudence’s clothes must’ve cost, intercepted me on the way out. Said she hoped I’d enjoyed myself and asked whether I had any questions. I said it had all been very interesting, but I didn’t show massive interest. She said she hoped she’d see me there again.’

‘Playing hard to get,’ said Strike, who’d just felt the first spot of icy rain on his face. ‘Good call.’

‘I had to bung a twenty pound note into the collecting bucket on the way out,’ said Robin, ‘given that I’m carrying a five hundred quid handbag. I made sure the boy on the door saw how much I was giving, though.’

‘Take it out of our petty cash,’ said Strike.

‘And I – wow,’ said Robin, half-laughing, half-startled.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I – nothing.’

Two young American men – tall, well-nourished, bearded and baseball-capped – had just taken a table two away from Robin. One was wearing a polo shirt, the other, a NASCAR T-shirt emblazoned with the name Jimmie Jones, and a large 48.

‘Nothing important, I’ll tell you later,’ said Robin. ‘Just wanted to touch base. I’ll let you go, if you’re off to Lucy’s. See you Monday.’

Strike, who didn’t particularly want to forfeit the distraction of talking to Robin while he headed towards an encounter he was dreading, said goodbye, then continued walking, his feeling of foreboding growing ever deeper. Lucy had sounded thrilled that he was coming over, which made the prospect of delivering his news even less palatable.

The large magnolia tree in Lucy and Greg’s front garden was, naturally, sporting no flowers on this cool March day. Strike knocked on the door, which was opened almost immediately by his favourite nephew, Jack.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Strike. ‘You’ve grown about eight inches since I last saw you.’

‘Be weird if I’d shrunk,’ said Jack, grinning. ‘You’re thinner.’

‘Yeah, well, I needed shrinking,’ said Strike, wiping his feet on the doormat. ‘You’ll understand once you reach my age… I got those for you, Luke and Adam,’ he added, handing Jack the carrier bag.

Lucy now appeared in the hall, and on hearing these words, beamed at Strike. She’d previously expressed displeasure that he so obviously favoured her middle son.

‘This is a lovely surprise,’ she said, hugging her brother. ‘Luke’s out at football with Greg, but Adam’s upstairs. Come through, I’ve just taken banana bread out of the oven.’

‘Smells great,’ said Strike, following her into the kitchen, with its glass doors overlooking a lawn. ‘Give me a small bit. I’m still a stone off my target weight.’

‘I’m so glad you called, because I’m a bit worried about Ted,’ said Lucy, taking a couple of small plates out of the cupboard. Ted was their widowed uncle, who lived in Cornwall. ‘I rang him this morning and he told me the same story he told me last time I called, word for word.’

‘Think he’s lonely,’ said Strike, sitting down at the kitchen table.

‘Maybe,’ said Lucy doubtfully, ‘but I’ve been thinking I might nip down and see him. Would you come, too?’

‘Yeah, with a bit of notice,’ said Strike, who was experiencing the familiar sense of constriction Lucy often gave him, whereby he was asked to commit immediately to future arrangements, and often had to deal with her irritability when he couldn’t instantly fall in with her plans. Today, however, Lucy merely set a slice of banana bread down in front of him, followed shortly afterwards by a mug of tea.

‘So, why the visit? Not that I’m not pleased to see you.’

Before Strike could respond, both Jack and Adam appeared, each holding an Air Storm Firetek Bow, which had been bought by Strike with the express purpose of getting Lucy’s sons out into the garden while he talked to her.

‘This is awesome,’ said Adam to Strike.

‘Glad you like it,’ said Strike.

‘Corm, you shouldn’t have!’ said Lucy, clearly delighted that he had. Given the number of times he’d forgotten his nephews’ birthdays, Strike was well aware these gifts might be said to be overdue. ‘Pity it’s raining,’ said Lucy, glancing out of the window at the garden.

‘Not much,’ said Strike.

‘I want to try it,’ said Jack, confirming his position as his uncle’s favourite. ‘I’ll put on my wellies,’ he threw at his mother, as he hurried out of the kitchen again. To Strike’s relief, Adam followed his older brother.

‘So, why are you here?’ Lucy asked again.

‘I’d rather talk once the boys can’t hear us,’ said Strike.

‘Oh my God – are you ill?’ said Lucy, in panic.

‘No, of course not,’ said Strike. ‘I just—’

Jack and Adam came hurrying back into the kitchen, both carrying wellington boots.

‘And coats, boys,’ said Lucy, torn now between apprehension at what Strike was about to tell her, and the needs of her sons.

At last, when the two boys disappeared into the rain with their coats on, Strike cleared his throat.

‘OK, I wanted to talk to you about a case I’ve just taken on.’

‘Oh,’ said Lucy, who looked slightly reassured. ‘Why?’

‘Because if we’re successful, which is long odds at the moment, but if we are, there’s a chance it’ll be in the press. And if that happens, there’s also a slim chance that there’ll be something about us – you and me – in there. That something might be dug up.’

‘Like what?’ said Lucy, in a slightly brittle voice. ‘They’ve done it all already, haven’t they? “Son of super-groupie.” “Notorious good-time girl Leda Strike.”’

‘This wouldn’t just be about Mum,’ said Strike.

He noticed Lucy’s slight tightening of expression. She hadn’t called Leda ‘Mum’ since she was fourteen and was explicit, these days, about the fact that she’d considered their late aunt, Joan, her true mother.

‘What, then?’ said Lucy.

‘Well,’ said Strike, ‘I’ve been hired to investigate the Universal Humanitarian Church.’

‘So?’

‘So, their headquarters are where the Aylmerton Community used to be.’

Lucy slumped back in her chair as though the words had hit her physically, her expression blank. At last, she swallowed and said,

‘Oh.’

‘I got a hell of a shock when I realised that’s where they started,’ said Strike. ‘I only found out once we’d taken the case and—’

To his horror, Lucy had begun noiselessly crying.

‘Luce,’ he said, putting out a hand, but she’d withdrawn her own from the table, and now wrapped her arms around herself. This was a far worse reaction than Strike had imagined; he’d anticipated anger and resentment that he was once again exposing her to gossip at the school gates about her unorthodox past.

‘Christ,’ said Strike, ‘I didn’t—’

‘Didn’t what?’ said Lucy, with a trace of anger, tears now trickling down her face.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Strike. ‘I got a shock myself, when I saw—’

Lucy got to her feet and blundered towards the side where kitchen roll stood on a metal stand. Ripping off several pieces she mopped her face, took a deep breath and said, clearly fighting to regain control,

‘I’m sorry. I just – I didn’t expect—’

She broke down completely. Strike pushed himself up from the table and walked towards her. He half-expected her to push him away, but she let him put his arms around her and pull her close, so that she was sobbing into her brother’s chest. They’d stood thus for barely a minute when the front door opened.

Lucy pushed Strike away at once, hastily wiping her face. With false gaiety she called out,

‘How did it go, Luke, did you win?’

‘Yeah,’ called Luke back from the hall, and Strike noticed that his voice had broken since he’d last seen the boy. ‘Three–one. They were pathetic.’

‘Fantastic! If you’re muddy, get straight in the shower,’ called Lucy. ‘Uncle Corm’s here,’ she added.

Luke made no response to this, but ran straight upstairs.

Strike’s brother-in-law now entered the kitchen, his tracksuit bottoms damp. Strike supposed he must coach or manage his son’s team. Greg was a quantity surveyor for whom Strike entertained feelings that had never quite reached the level of liking.

‘Everything all right?’ he said, looking from Strike to Lucy.

‘Just been talking about Ted,’ said Lucy, to explain her reddened eyes and heightened colour.

‘Oh. Well, I’ve been telling her, it’s only natural he’s getting a bit forgetful,’ Greg told Strike dismissively. ‘What’s he now, eighty-odd?’

‘Seventy-nine,’ said Lucy.

‘Well, that’s eighty-odd, isn’t it?’ said Greg, heading for the loaf of banana bread.

‘Come through to the living room,’ Lucy told Strike, picking up her tea. ‘We can talk it all over there.’

Greg, who evidently had no desire to talk about his uncle-in-law’s well-being, made no objection at being excluded from the conversation.

The living room, with its beige three-piece suite, was unchanged since the last time Strike had been in there, except that his nephews’ school photos had been updated. A large picture of Uncle Ted and Aunt Joan, dating from the eighties, stood in pride of place on a shelf. Strike well remembered the couple looking like that: Joan’s hair as big as Elnett could make it, stiff in the sea breezes, Ted, the largest and strongest member of the local lifeboat men. As Strike sat down on the sofa, he felt as though he should turn the picture to face the wall before dragging up memories of the Aylmerton Community, because his aunt and uncle had dedicated so much of their lives to trying to protect the niece and nephew whom Leda dumped on them, then removed, as unpredictably as she did everything.

Having shut the door carefully on the rest of her family, Lucy sat down in an armchair and placed her mug of tea on a side table.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.

‘Don’t apologise,’ said Strike. ‘Believe me, I know.’

‘Do you?’ she said, with an odd note in her voice.

‘It was a fucking terrible place,’ said Strike. ‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten.’

‘Are any of the people who were at the Aylmerton Community still there?’

‘Only one, as far as I know,’ said Strike. ‘She claims to have been a victim of the Crowthers. She’s married to the church’s leader.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Mazu,’ said Strike.

‘Oh God,’ said Lucy, and she covered her face with her hands again.

Horrible suspicions were now assailing Strike. He’d believed nothing more serious than feeling scared and sometimes hungry had happened to either of them at the Aylmerton Community; that they’d narrowly escaped what had later been all over the press. In his memory, he’d always been with Lucy, sticking close, trying to make sure she wasn’t invited anywhere by either of the Crowther brothers. From their adjoining mattresses on the floor, brother and sister had whispered at night about how much they hated the place, about how much they wished Leda would take them away. That was all that had happened, surely? That was what he’d believed, for years.

‘Luce?’ he said.

‘Don’t you remember her?’ said Lucy savagely, dropping her hands. ‘Don’t you remember that girl?’

‘No,’ said Strike truthfully.

His memory was usually excellent, but Aylmerton was a blur to him, more feeling than fact, an ominous black memory hole. Perhaps he’d deliberately tried to forget individuals: better by far to consign the whole lot to a faceless slough that need never be waded through, now it was all over.

‘You do. Very pale. Pointed nose. Black hair. Always wearing kind of tarty clothes.’

Something shifted in Strike’s memory. He saw a pair of very brief shorts, a thin halter-neck top and straggly, dark, slightly greasy hair. He’d been twelve: his hormones hadn’t yet reached the adolescent peak at which the slightest sign of unsupported breasts caused uncontainable, sometimes mortifyingly visible, excitement.

‘Yeah, that rings a bell,’ he said.

‘So she’s still there?’ said Lucy, now breathing fast. ‘At the farm?’

‘Yeah. As I say, she married—’

‘If she was a victim,’ said Lucy, through clenched teeth, ‘she sure as hell spread it around.’

‘Why d’you say that?’ said Strike.

‘Because she – because she—’

Lucy was shaking. For a couple of seconds she said nothing, then a torrent of words exploded from her.

‘D’you know how glad I was, knowing I was having a boy, every single time they scanned me? Every single time. I didn’t want a girl. I knew I’d’ve been a lousy mother to a girl.’

‘You’d’ve been—’

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ said Lucy fiercely. ‘I’d have barely let her out of my sight! I know it happens to boys too, I know it does, but the odds – the odds – it was only the girls at Aylmerton. Only the girls.’

Lucy continued to breathe very hard, intermittently dabbing her eyes with kitchen roll. Strike knew it was cowardice, because he could tell Lucy needed to tell him, but he didn’t want to ask any more questions, because he didn’t want to hear the answers.

‘She took me to him,’ said Lucy at last.

‘To who?’

‘Dr Coates,’ said Lucy. ‘I fell over. She must’ve been fifteen, sixteen. She had me by the hand. I didn’t want to go. “You should see the doctor.” She was half-dragging me.’

Another brief silence unrolled through the room, but Strike could feel Lucy’s rage battling with her habitual reserve and her determination to pretend that the life to which Leda had subjected them was as long dead as Leda herself.

‘Did he,’ said Strike slowly, ‘touch—’

‘He pushed four fingers inside me,’ said Lucy brutally. ‘I bled for two days.’

‘Oh fuck,’ said Strike, wiping his face with his hand. ‘Where was I?’

‘Playing football,’ said Lucy. ‘I was playing, as well. That’s how I fell. You probably thought she was helping me.’

‘Shit, Luce,’ said Strike. ‘I’m so—’

‘It’s not your fault, it’s my so-called mother’s fault,’ spat Lucy. ‘Where was she? Getting stoned somewhere? Screwing some long-haired weirdo in the woods? And that bitch Mazu shut me in with Coates, and she knew. She knew. And I saw her doing it to other little girls. Taking them to the Crowthers’ rooms. That’s what I talk about most in therapy, why I didn’t tell anyone, why I didn’t stop other little girls getting hurt—’

‘You’re in therapy?’ blurted out Strike.

‘Christ Almighty, of course I’m in therapy!’ said Lucy, in a furious whisper, as somebody, probably Greg, now full of banana cake, walked past the sitting room door and headed upstairs. ‘After that bloody childhood – aren’t you?’

‘No,’ said Strike.

‘No,’ repeated Lucy bitterly, ‘you don’t need it, of course, so self-sufficient, so un-messed-up—’

‘I’m not saying that,’ said Strike. ‘I’m not – bloody hell—’

‘Don’t,’ she snapped, arms wrapped around her torso again. ‘I don’t want – never mind, it doesn’t matter. Except it does matter,’ she said, tears trickling down her face again, ‘I can’t forgive myself for not speaking up. There were other little girls being led away by that Mazu bitch, and I never said anything, because I didn’t want to say what had happened to m—’

The sitting room door opened. Strike was astonished by the abrupt change in Lucy, as she wiped her face dry and straightened her back in an instant, so that when Jack entered, panting and wet-haired, she was smiling.

‘These are great,’ Jack told Strike, beaming, as he held up his bow.

‘Glad to hear it,’ said Strike.

‘Jack, go dry yourself off and then you can have some banana bread,’ said Lucy, for all the world as though she were perfectly happy, and for the very first time in their adult lives, it occurred to Strike that his sister’s determination to cling to stability and her notion of normality, her iron-clad refusal to dwell endlessly on the awful possibilities of human behaviour, was a form of extraordinary courage.

Once the door had closed on Jack, he turned back to Lucy, and said quietly, and almost sincerely,

‘I wish you’d told me this before.’

‘It would’ve upset you. Anyway, you’ve always wanted to believe Leda was wonderful.’

‘I haven’t,’ he said, now being completely honest. ‘She was… what she was.’

‘She wasn’t fit to be a mother,’ said Lucy angrily.

‘No,’ said Strike heavily. ‘I think you’re probably right, there.’

Lucy stared at him for a few seconds in blank astonishment.

‘I’ve waited years to hear you say that. Years.’

‘I know you have,’ said Strike. ‘Look, I know you think I think she was perfect, but of course I bloody don’t. D’you think I look at the kind of mother you are, and remember what she was, and can’t see the difference?’

‘Oh Stick,’ said Lucy tearfully.

‘She was what she was,’ repeated Strike. ‘I loved her, I can’t sit here and say I didn’t. And she might’ve been a fucking nightmare in loads of ways, but I know she loved us, too.’

‘Did she?’ said Lucy, wiping her eyes with kitchen roll.

‘You know she did,’ said Strike. ‘She didn’t keep us safe, because she was so bloody naive she was barely fit to open a front door on her own. She fucked up our schooling because she hated school herself. She dragged fucking terrible men into our lives because she always thought this one was going to be the love of her life. None of it was malicious, it was just bloody careless.’

‘Careless people do a lot of damage,’ said Lucy, still drying her tears.

‘Yeah, they do,’ said Strike. ‘And she did. Mostly to herself, in the end.’

‘I didn’t – I didn’t want her to die,’ sobbed Lucy.

‘Jesus, Luce, I know you didn’t!’

‘I always thought one day I’d have it all out with her – and then it was too late, and she was g-gone… and you say she loved us, but—’

‘You know she did,’ said Strike. ‘You do, Luce. Remember that serial story she used to make up for us? What the fuck was it called?’

‘The Moonbeams,’ said Lucy, still sobbing.

‘The Moonbeam family,’ said Strike. ‘With Mummy Moonbeam and…’

‘… Bombo and Mungo…’

‘She didn’t show love like most mothers,’ said Strike, ‘but she didn’t do anything like other people. Doesn’t mean love wasn’t there. Doesn’t mean she wasn’t fucking irresponsible, either.’

For a couple of minutes there was silence again, but for Lucy’s steadily decreasing sniffs. At last, she wiped her face with both of hands and looked up, eyes red.

‘If you’re investigating that so-called church – what’s it called?’

‘The UHC.’

‘Just make sure you get that bitch Mazu,’ said Lucy in a low voice. ‘I don’t care if she was abused herself. I’m sorry, I don’t. She enabled them to do it to other girls. She was pimping for them.’

Strike considered telling her that getting Mazu wasn’t what he’d been hired to do, but instead said,

‘If I get the opportunity, I definitely will.’

‘Thank you,’ mumbled Lucy, still wiping her puffy eyes. ‘Then it’d be worth you taking the job.’

‘Listen, there was something else I wanted to tell you,’ he said, wondering, even as he heard himself say it, what the hell he was playing at. The impulse came, in a confused way, from a desire to be honest, as she’d been honest, to stop hiding from her. ‘I – er – I’ve made contact with Prudence. You know – Rokeby’s other illegitimate.’

‘Have you?’ said Lucy, and to his amazement – he’d hidden the burgeoning relationship from her out of fear that she’d feel jealous, or that she was being replaced – she was smiling through her tears. ‘Stick, that’s great!’

‘Is it?’ he said, thrown.

‘Well, of course it is!’ she said. ‘How long have you two been in touch?’

‘Dunno. A few months. She visited me in hospital when I – you know—’

He gestured with his thumb towards the lung that had been punctured by a cornered killer.

‘What’s she like?’ said Lucy, who appeared curious and interested, but in no way resentful.

‘Nice,’ said Strike. ‘I mean, she’s not you—’

‘You don’t need to say that,’ said Lucy, with a shaky laugh. ‘I know what we went through together, I know nobody else will ever understand that. You know, Joan always wanted you to make it up with Rokeby.’

‘Prudence isn’t Rokeby,’ said Strike.

‘I know,’ said Lucy, ‘but it’s still good you’re seeing her. Joan would be happy.’

‘I didn’t think you’d take it like this.’

‘Why not? I see my dad’s other kids.’

‘Do you?’

‘Of course I do! I didn’t want to go on about it, because—’

‘You thought I’d be hurt?’

‘Probably because I felt guilty that I’ve got a relationship with my dad and half-siblings, and you haven’t,’ said Lucy.

After a short pause, she said,

‘I saw Charlotte in the paper, with her new boyfriend.’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, ‘well, she likes a certain lifestyle. That was always a problem, me being broke.’

‘You don’t wish—?’

‘Christ, no,’ said Strike. ‘That’s dead and buried.’

‘I’m glad,’ said Lucy. ‘I’m really glad. You deserve so much better. You’ll stay for lunch, won’t you?’

Given the revelations of the morning, Strike felt he had no choice but to agree.

12

The inferior thing seems so harmless and inviting that a man delights in it; it looks so small and weak that he imagines he may dally with it and come to no harm.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Strike made an uncharacteristic effort to appear cheerful while at lunch, tolerating his brother-in-law and eldest nephew with a grace he’d rarely shown before. He didn’t rush away afterwards, but stayed until the rain had passed off, when the whole family went into the back garden and watched Luke, Jack and Adam play with their Firetek Bows, even feigning good humour when Luke, in what Strike refused to believe was an accident, discharged his dart into the side of his uncle’s face, eliciting roars of laughter from Greg.

Only once he’d left the house did Strike allow his face to slacken, losing the determined grin he’d worn for much of the last couple of hours. Having firmly resisted Lucy’s offers of a lift, he walked back to the station under a grey sky, brooding on everything he’d just heard.

Strike was a mentally resilient man who’d survived plenty of reverses in his life, not least the loss of part of his right leg. One of the tools of self-discipline he’d forged in youth and honed in the army was a habit of compartmentalisation that rarely failed him, but right now, it wasn’t working. Emotions he didn’t want to feel and memories he generally suppressed were closing in on him, and he, who detested anything that smacked of self-indulgence, travelled back towards Denmark Street brooding so deeply that he barely registered the passing Tube stations and realised, almost too late to disembark, that he was already at Tottenham Court Road.

By the time he arrived back at his attic flat, he felt as grimly unhappy as he’d been for a long time. In consequence, he poured himself a double whisky, refilled his vape pen, sat down at his kitchen table and stared into space while alternately downing Scotch and exhaling vapour in the direction of his draughty window.

He’d rarely felt as angry at his mother as he did this afternoon. She’d died of what had been ruled an accidental overdose when Strike was nineteen, an overdose which Strike believed to this day had been administered by her far younger husband. His reaction to the news had been to drop out of university and join the military police, a decision he knew his unconventional mother would have found both inexplicable and vaguely comical. But why? he demanded of the Leda in his head. You knew I wanted order, and boundaries, and a life without endless fucking mess. If you hadn’t been what you were, maybe I wouldn’t be what I am. Maybe I’m reaping what you sowed, so don’t you fucking laugh at the army, or me, you with your paedophile mates and the squatters and the junkies…

These thoughts of Leda led inevitably to thoughts of Charlotte Campbell, because he knew that plenty of armchair psychologists, including close friends and family members, thought he’d been so irreparably damaged by Leda’s parenting, he’d been inevitably drawn to a similarly chaotic and unstable woman. This had always irritated Strike, and it irritated him now as he sat with his whisky, staring out of his attic window, because it so happened that there’d been profound differences between his ex-fiancée and his late mother.

Leda had had a bottomless compassion for underdogs and an incurable optimism about human nature that had never failed her. That, indeed, had been the problem: her naive, unconquerable conviction that genuine evil was only found in the repressions of small-town respectability. She might have taken endless risks, but she wasn’t self-destructive: on the contrary, she’d fully expected to live to a hundred.

Charlotte, on the other hand, was profoundly unhappy, and Strike suspected he was the only person who truly knew the depths of her misery. The surface of Charlotte’s life might look glamorous and easy, because she was extraordinarily beautiful, and came from a rich and newsworthy family, but her real value to the gossip columns was her instability. There were several suicide attempts in Charlotte’s past, and a long history of psychiatric evaluations. He’d seen the press pictures of her, dead-eyed in her red slip dress, and his only thought had been that she’d probably taken something to get her through another night of revelry, a supposition backed up by the fact that she’d called his office at midnight on the same night, leaving an incoherent message on the answer machine, which he’d deleted before anyone else could hear it.

Strike was well aware that Lucy, and some of his friends, believed him trapped perpetually in the shadow cast by those two dark caryatids, Leda and Charlotte. They wanted him to stride out into the sunlight, free at last, to find a less complicated woman, and a love untainted by pain. But what was a man supposed to do if he thought he might finally be ready to do that, and it was too late? Alone of the women jostling in his thoughts, Robin brought feelings of warmth, though they were tinged with a bitterness no less easier to bear because it was self-directed. He should have spoken up, should have forced a conversation about their respective feelings before Ryan Murphy swooped in and carried off the prize Strike had complacently thought was his for the taking.

Fuck this.

The sky outside the window was rapidly darkening. He got up from the table, went into his bedroom, returned to the kitchen with his notebook and laptop, and opened both. Work had always been his greatest refuge, and the sight of an email from Eric Wardle headed Census information at the top of his inbox felt like an immediate reward for turning away from alcohol, and back to investigation.

Wardle had done him proud. The last three censuses for Chapman Farm were attached: 1991, 2001 and 2011. Strike typed out a brief message of thanks to Wardle, then opened the first attachment, scanning the list of names provided.

After an hour and a half of online cross-referencing, and having found a bonus in the form of an interesting article about the church dating from 2005, dusk was drawing in. Strike poured himself a second whisky, sat back down at his table and contemplated the immediate results of his research: a list of names, only one of which so far had an address beside it.

He contemplated his mobile, thinking back on the days he’d occasionally called Robin at home, while she was still married. Those calls, he knew, had sometimes caused trouble, given Matthew’s resentment of his wife’s growing dedication to the job. It was Saturday night: Robin and Murphy might be at a restaurant, or the bloody theatre again. Strike took another swig of whisky, and pressed Robin’s number.

‘Hi,’ she said, answering on the second ring. ‘What’s up?’

‘Got a moment to talk? I’ve been digging information out of the census.’

‘Oh, great – Wardle came through?’

Strike heard the rattle of what he thought might be a saucepan.

‘Sure you’re not busy?’

‘No, it’s fine, I’m cooking. Ryan’s coming over for dinner, but he’s not here yet.’

‘I might have a couple of leads. There’s a woman called Sheila Kennett who lived at Chapman Farm with her late husband until the nineties. She’s knocking on a bit, but I’ve got an address for her in Coventry. Wondering whether you’d mind driving up there and interviewing her. Old lady – better you than me.’

‘No problem,’ said Robin, ‘but it’ll have to be week after next, because Midge is away from Wednesday and I’m covering for her.’

‘OK. I’ve also found an article written by a journalist called Fergus Robertson, who got an ex-member of the UHC to speak to him anonymously in 2006. There are a lot of “allegeds”: violence used against members, misappropriation of funds. They protect their sources, journalists, but I thought there might be stuff Robertson couldn’t put in, for fear of litigation. Fancy coming with me if he agrees to talk?’

‘Depends when it is,’ said Robin, ‘I’ve got a heavy week on the new stalker case, but – ouch—’

‘You OK?’

‘Burned myself – sorry, I – hang on, that’s Ryan.’

He heard her walking away towards the door. Slightly despising himself, Strike hung on: he really wanted Ryan Murphy to arrive and find Robin on the phone to him.

‘Hi,’ he heard her say, and then came Murphy’s muffled voice, and the unmistakeable sound of a kiss. ‘Dinner’s nearly done,’ she said, and Murphy said something, Robin laughed, and said ‘No, it’s Strike,’ while her detective partner sat frowning in front of his laptop.

‘Sorry, Cormoran,’ said Robin, her mouth to the receiver again, ‘carry on.’

‘I haven’t found contact details for anyone else who lived at Chapman Farm yet, but I’ll keep digging and email you what I’ve got,’ said Strike.

‘It’s Saturday night,’ said Robin. ‘Take a break. No!’ she added, laughing, and he assumed this was directed at Murphy, whose laughter he could also hear. ‘Sorry,’ she said again.

‘No problem, I’ll let you go,’ he said, as she had earlier, and before she could reply, he hung up.

Thoroughly irritated at himself, Strike slapped his laptop closed and got up to examine the contents of his healthily stocked fridge. As he took out a packet of what he was starting to think of as ‘more fucking fish’ to check the sell-by date, his mobile rang. He returned to the table to check before answering, because if it was another call forwarded from the office phone, he wasn’t going to answer: the last thing he needed right now was Charlotte. Instead, he saw an unfamiliar mobile number.

‘Strike.’

‘Hi,’ said a bold, husky voice. ‘Surprise.’

‘Who’s this?’

‘Bijou. Bijou Watkins. We met at the christening.’

‘Oh,’ said Strike, a memory of cleavage and legs blotting out darker thoughts, and this, at least, was welcome. ‘Hi.’

‘I s’pose you’ve got plans,’ she said, ‘but I’m all dressed up and my friend I was s’posed to be meeting tonight’s ill.’

‘How did you get my number?’

‘Ilsa,’ said Bijou, with the cackle of laughter he remembered from the Herberts’ kitchen. ‘Told her I needed a detective, for a case I’m working on… I don’t think she believed me,’ she added, with another cackle.

‘No, well, she’s quick like that,’ said Strike, holding the mobile a little further from his ear, which made the laugh slightly less jarring. He doubted he could stand that for long.

‘So… want a drink? Or dinner? Or whatever?’

He looked down at the cellophaned tuna in his hand. He remembered the cleavage. He’d given up smoking and takeaways. Robin was cooking dinner for Ryan Murphy.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Why not?’

13

Nine at the beginning means:

The footprints run crisscross.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

The extreme taciturnity of Clive Littlejohn, the agency’s newest subcontractor, was starting to grate on people other than Robin.

‘There’s something wrong wi’ him,’ Littlejohn’s fellow subcontractor, Barclay, told Robin on Wednesday morning, as both sat watching the entrance to a block of flats in Bexleyheath from Barclay’s car.

‘Better him than Morris or Nutley,’ said Robin, loyally parroting Strike’s line.

‘That’s a low fuckin’ bar,’ said Barclay.

‘He’s doing the job OK,’ said Robin.

‘He just fuckin’ stares,’ said Barclay. ‘Doesn’t blink. Like a fuckin’ lizard.’

‘I’m pretty sure lizards blink,’ said Robin. ‘Wait – is that one of them?’

‘No,’ said Barclay, leaning forwards to squint through the windscreen at a man who’d just exited the building. ‘He’s fatter than ours.’

Inside the block of flats they were watching lived two brothers in their forties who, unfortunately for the agency’s newest investigation, closely resembled each other. One of them – a few days’ surveillance hadn’t yet identified which – was stalking an actress called Tasha Mayo. The police weren’t taking the matter seriously enough for the client, who was starting to become, in her own words, ‘freaked out’. A series of trivial incidents, at first merely irksome, had lately turned sinister with the posting of a dead bird through the woman’s letter box, and then with the gluing up of the keyhole on her front door.

‘I mean, I know the police are overstretched,’ Tasha had told Robin, while the latter was taking down the details of the case at the office. ‘I get that, and I know there’s been no direct threat, but I’ve told them who I think’s doing it, I’ve given them a physical description and where he lives and everything, because he’s told me most of his life story in segments. He’s always hanging around the stage door and I’ve signed about fifteen posters and bits of paper. Things turned nasty when I told him I hadn’t got time for another selfie. And he keeps turning up places I go. I just want it to stop. Someone keyed my car last night. I’ve had enough. I need you to catch him in the act.’

This wasn’t the first stalking case the agency had tackled, but none had yet involved dead birds, and Robin, who felt sympathetic towards the client, was hoping to catch the perpetrator sooner rather than later.

‘Midge fancies her,’ said Barclay, watching the suspect’s window.

‘Who, Tasha Mayo?’

‘Aye. Did ye see that film she was in, about those two Victorian lesbians?’

‘No. Was it good?’

‘Fuckin’ dreadful,’ said Barclay. ‘Hour and a half of poetry and gardening. The wife loved it. I didn’t, because apparently I’m an insensitive prick.’

Robin laughed.

‘Midge could be in with a shot,’ Barclay went on. ‘Tasha Mayo’s bisexual.’

‘Is she?’

‘According to the wife. That’d be the wife’s specialist subject on Mastermind: sex lives o’ the stars. She’s a walking fuckin’ encyclopaedia on it.’

They sat in silence for a few minutes before Barclay, still staring up at the fourth floor, asked,

‘Why aren’t they working for a living?’

‘No idea,’ said Robin.

‘Be handy if we could nail them on a benefits scam. Nice bit o’ community service. He wouldn’t have time tae go after her, then.’

‘Community service would end eventually,’ said Robin, sipping her coffee. ‘Trouble is, I don’t know how you stop someone being obsessed.’

‘Punch them?’ suggested Barclay, and after a moment’s thought he added, ‘D’ye think Littlejohn’d say something if I punched him?’

‘Maybe try and find a topic of mutual interest first,’ said Robin.

‘It’s fuckin’ bizarre,’ said Barclay, ‘never talking. Just sitting there.’

‘That’s one of them,’ Robin said, replacing her coffee in the cupholder.

A man had just left the building, walking with his hands in his pockets. Like his brother, he had an unusually high forehead, which was why Barclay had nicknamed the pair the Frankenstein brothers, which had been swiftly abbreviated to Frank One and Frank Two. Shabbily dressed in an old windcheater, jeans and trainers, he was heading, Robin guessed, towards the station.

‘OK, I’ll take him,’ she said, picking up the backpack she usually took on surveillance, ‘and you can stay here and watch the other one.’

‘Aye, all right,’ said Barclay. ‘Good luck.’

Robin, who was wearing a beanie hat to cover her distinctive new haircut, followed Frank One on foot to Bexleyheath station and, after a short wait, got into the same train compartment, where she kept him under covert observation from several seats away.

After a couple of minutes, Robin’s mobile rang and she saw Strike’s number.

‘Morning. Where are you?’

‘With one of the Franks,’ she said quietly. ‘We’re heading into London.’

‘Ah. Well, I just wanted to tell you, I’ve persuaded that journalist I mentioned to talk to me. Fergus Robertson, meeting him later at the Westminster Arms. Have you read his article yet?’

‘Yes,’ said Robin, ‘and I read his follow-up, too, about what the church did to him after the first one was published. They don’t like criticism, do they?’

‘I’d say that’s an understatement,’ said Strike. ‘In other news, I’ve just spotted Will Edensor. He’s collecting in Soho again today.’

‘Oh wow, really?’

‘Yeah. I didn’t approach him, just to be on the safe side, but he looks bloody terrible. He’s over six foot tall and probably weighs less than you do.’

‘Did he look happy? All the temple attendants were beaming non-stop.’

‘No, definitely not happy. I’ve also got Pat to have a look at the rota. You could go up to Coventry in the latter half of next week, if that suits you. I’ve got Sheila Kennett’s number – the old woman who lived at Chapman Farm for years. If I text it to you, could you ring her? See whether she’d be amenable to an interview?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Robin.

She’d barely returned her phone to her pocket when it rang again: Ilsa.

‘Hi,’ said Robin, ‘what’s up?’

‘What the hell is he playing at?’ said Ilsa hotly.

‘What’s who playing at?’

‘Corm!’

‘I don’t—’

‘He’s slept with bloody Bijou Watkins! Well – I say “slept” – apparently it was standing up, against her bedroom wall.’

Robin realised she was gaping, and closed her mouth.

‘He – hasn’t mentioned it to me.’

‘No, I’ll bet he bloody hasn’t,’ said Ilsa angrily. ‘She made up some bullshit reason to get his number off me, and I couldn’t think of any way of not giving it to her, but I thought he’d have the sense, after meeting her and seeing what she’s like, of not going within a hundred miles of her. You need to warn him: she’s insane. She can’t keep her bloody mouth shut, half of Chambers will have heard all the details by now—’

‘Ilsa, I can’t tell him who to sleep with. Or shag standing up against a bedroom wall,’ Robin added.

‘But she’s a total nutcase! All she wants is a rich husband and a baby, she’s completely open about it!’

‘Strike’s not rich,’ said Robin.

‘She might not realise that, after all those high-profile cases he keeps solving. You’ve got to warn him—’

‘Ilsa, I can’t. You warn him, if you want to. His sex life’s hardly my business.’

Ilsa groaned.

‘But why her, if he wants a displacement fuck?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Robin, completely honestly, and then, dropping her voice, she asked, ‘and what d’you mean, a “displacement fuck”?’

‘Oh, please,’ said Ilsa irritably. ‘You know perfectly well what—shit, that’s my QC, I’ll have to go. Bye.’

This conversation left Robin watching Frank One’s reflection in the dirty train window, prey to many conflicting emotions she wasn’t sure she wanted to disentangle. A very vivid mental picture had presented itself to her while Ilsa talked, of Bijou in her shocking pink dress, long tanned legs wrapped around Strike, and it wasn’t immediately possible to erase the image, especially as her imagination had given Strike quite a hairy arse.

The train stopped at last at Waterloo East. Robin followed her target on foot and then onto a Tube train, where he disembarked at Piccadilly Circus.

They were now so close to Theatreland that Robin’s hopes were rising that she’d picked the right brother to follow. However, instead of heading towards Shaftesbury Avenue and the theatre where Tasha Mayo’s play was showing, Frank One walked into Soho, and ten minutes later, entered a comic-book shop.

As everyone she could see through the windows was male, Robin decided she’d made herself conspicuous by following him, so she retreated a few yards and took out her phone to call the number Strike had sent her.

An out-of-breath voice, slightly cracked, either from age, smoking, or both, answered.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello, is that Mrs Kennett?’ said Robin.

‘Yes. Who’s this?’

‘My name’s Robin Ellacott. I’m a private detective.’

‘You’re a what?’ said the elderly woman.

‘A private detective,’ said Robin.

Understandably, there was a short pause.

‘What d’you want?’ said the voice on the end of the line suspiciously.

‘I’ve been hired by somebody who’s very concerned about a relative of theirs, who’s a member of the Universal Humanitarian Church. I was hoping you might talk to me about the UHC. Just for background. You used to live at Chapman Farm, didn’t you?’

‘How d’you know that?’ said Sheila Kennett sharply; she certainly seemed to have all her faculties.

‘Just from records,’ said Robin, deliberately vague: she didn’t want to bandy about the fact that Strike had obtained census reports.

‘That was a long time ago,’ said Sheila Kennett.

‘We’re really just after background,’ said Robin. ‘I think you were there at the same time as the Pirbright family?’

‘I was, yeah,’ said Sheila, still sounding suspicious.

‘Well, we’re looking into some claims Kevin Pirbright made about the church, so we wondered whether—’

‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’

‘I – yes, he is,’ said Robin.

‘Yeah, I saw it in the paper. Wondered if it was our Kevin,’ said Sheila. ‘Have they got who did it yet?’

‘Not as far as I know,’ said Robin.

There was another short pause.

‘All right,’ said Sheila. ‘I don’t mind talking. I’ve got nothing to lose, not any more.’

‘That’s wonderful,’ said Robin, then thought how insensitive that had sounded and added, ‘I mean, thank you. You’re up in Coventry, aren’t you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How would next Thursday suit you? A week tomorrow?’

‘Yeah, all right,’ said Sheila. ‘Robin, did you say your name was?’

‘That’s right. Robin Ellacott.’

‘Man’s name,’ said Sheila. ‘Why did your parents give you a man’s name?’

‘I’ve never asked,’ said Robin, with a laugh.

‘Hm. All right then. What time?’

‘Would midday be all right?’ asked Robin, rapidly calculating the distance to Coventry.

‘Yeah. All right. I’ll have the kettle on.’

‘Thank you so much. I’ll see you then!’ said Robin.

Robin texted Strike to tell him she’d arranged the interview with Sheila Kennett, then crossed the road, the better to watch the comic-book storefront.

The day was cool and cloudy, and Robin was glad of her beanie hat. She’d only just registered how close she was to the Rupert Court Temple when she spotted four young people with collecting tins, heading into Berwick Street.

Robin recognised Will Edensor at once. He looked ill and defeated, not to mention very thin. The shadows under his eyes, which Robin could see even from the other side of the street, gave him an unpleasant likeness to the image of the Stolen Prophet she’d seen on the temple ceiling. Like his companions, he was wearing an orange tabard printed with the church’s logo, which was repeated on their collecting tins.

The other man in the group seemed to be giving instructions. Unlike the other three, he was overweight, and wore his hair in a straggly bob. He pointed along the street, and the two girls headed off obediently in the direction indicated, whereas Will remained where he was. His demeanour made Robin think of a donkey, used to abuse, and no longer capable of protest.

The second man turned back to Will and delivered what looked like a lecture, through which Will nodded mechanically without making eye contact. Robin yearned to get close enough to hear what was going on, but dared not make herself recognisable to either of them. Before the lecture had finished, Frank One emerged from the comic-book shop, and Robin had no choice but to follow.

14

Nine in the second place means:

Penetration under the bed.

Priests and magicians are used in great number.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

The Westminster Arms, where Strike had agreed to meet journalist Fergus Robertson, lay close beside Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. As Strike walked towards the pub he felt small twinges of pain emanating from the back of his stump. Although his hamstring had previously been torn, it hadn’t given any trouble for the last few months, largely because it was being asked to support a lot less weight. He knew exactly what had caused this mild recurrence of symptoms: the necessity of holding up Bijou Watkins, who’d expressed a loud and drunken preference for being nailed up against the bedroom wall the moment they’d entered her flat on Saturday night.

The pain in his leg turned his thoughts back to that evening. He supposed two and a half hours of mindless conversation had been justified in light of the ten minutes of frills-free sex that had followed. She’d looked better than she felt – her impressive breasts, as he’d discovered in the bedroom, were fake – but the upside of finding her obnoxious was a total absence of guilt about his lack of response to the three texts she’d sent him since, all of which had been strewn with emojis. His oldest friend, Dave Polworth, would have called that breaking even, and Strike was inclined to agree.

On entering the Westminster Arms, Strike spotted Fergus Robertson, who he’d Googled earlier, sitting in a corner at a table for two, typing on a laptop. A short, rotund and almost entirely bald man whose shining pate reflected the light hanging over the table, Robertson was currently in his shirtsleeves, vigorously chewing gum as he worked. Strike fetched himself a drink, noting a junior minister at the bar, before heading for Robertson, who kept typing until Strike arrived at the table.

‘Ah,’ said the journalist, looking up. ‘The famous detective.’

‘And the fearless reporter,’ said Strike, sitting down.

They shook hands across the table, Robertson’s curious blue eyes scanning Strike. He gave off an air of rough good humour. A pack of Nicorette chewing gum lay beside the laptop.

‘You know Dominic Culpepper, I hear,’ Robertson said, referring to a journalist who Strike disliked.

‘I do, yeah. He’s a tit.’

Robertson laughed.

‘I heard you shagged his cousin.’

‘Can’t remember that,’ lied Strike.

‘Got a view on Brexit?’

‘None whatsoever,’ said Strike.

‘Shame,’ said Robertson. ‘I need another three hundred words.’

He flipped down the screen on his laptop.

‘So… going after the UHC, are you?’ Robertson sat back in his chair, still chewing, lacing his short fingers together over a large beer belly. ‘Do I get exclusive rights to the story if you find a body under the temple floor?’

‘Can’t guarantee that,’ said Strike.

‘Then what’s in it for me?’

‘The satisfaction of a good turn done,’ said Strike.

‘Do I look like a Boy Scout?’

‘If I find out anything newsworthy that doesn’t compromise my client,’ said Strike, who’d anticipated this conversation, ‘you can have it.’

‘I’ll hold you to that,’ said Robertson, unlacing his fingers to pop another piece of nicotine gum out of its packet, shoving it in his mouth and then drinking more beer.

‘You haven’t been scared off writing about them, then?’ said Strike.

‘Not if you can get me some solid information. They’re a bunch of cunts. I’d be fucking delighted to help bring them down.’

‘They gave you a hard time, I gather?’

‘Nearly lost my job over that piece,’ said Robertson. ‘Lawyers up my arse, paper shitting itself, my ex-wife getting anonymous calls to the house—’

‘Really?’

‘Oh, yeah. And you should’ve seen what the fuckers did to my Wikipedia page.’

‘Got a Wikipedia page, have you?’ said Strike, surprised.

‘I didn’t have before I tangled with them, but after my piece went out, the UHC made one for me. “Disgraced journalist Fergus Robertson.” “Notorious alcoholic Fergus Robertson.” “Domestic abuser F—” I never laid a finger on my ex,’ added Robertson, a little defensively. ‘So, yeah: if you get anything provable, I’ll fucking print it and they’ll rue the fucking day they went after me.’

Strike took out his notebook and pen.

‘What made you look into them in the first place?’

‘I started digging into the fat cats and the celebs who’ve joined.’

‘What’s in it for them?’

‘For the fat cats, they get to rub shoulders with the celebs. For the latter, the UHC lines up photo ops: no work needed, just turn up an’ get your picture taken with young carers or the homeless. People like Noli Seymour like to look spiritual, you know. Then you’ve got Dr Zhou.’

‘I hadn’t heard of him until I read your article.’

‘Take it you don’t watch breakfast TV?’

Strike shook his head.

‘He’s got a regular slot on one of the shows. Looks like Bruce Lee, if he’d been in a car accident. He’s got a clinic in Belgravia where he sees people with more money than sense. All kinds of bullshit. Cupping. Hypnosis. Past life regression.’

‘You said in the piece he was recruiting for the UHC from his clinic.’

‘I think he’s one of the main points of entry for the big donors. That was one of the things the UHC lawyers made me retract.’

‘The ex-member you talked to for the article—’

‘Poor little cow,’ sighed Robertson, not unkindly. ‘She was the only one I could get to talk.’

‘How long was she in there?’

‘Five and a half years. Tagged along to a meeting with a male schoolfriend. The friend left after the first week and she stayed. She’s a lesbian,’ said Robertson, ‘and Daddy didn’t like her liking women. The UHC was selling itself as being all about inclusivity, so you can see how she fell for it. She’s from a very wealthy family. The church milked her of most of her inheritance before they spat her out again.’

‘And she told you she’d been beaten?’

‘Beaten, starved, made to go with men, yeah – but I couldn’t get any of it corroborated, which is why every other word is “alleged”.’ Robertson took another sip of beer, then said, ‘I couldn’t use a lot of what she told me, because I knew the paper would have a massive lawsuit on its hands. ’Course, that nearly happened anyway. Should’ve slung the whole lot in, it would’ve come to the same.’

‘She claimed funds were being misappropriated?’

‘Yeah, mainly cash. She told me that if they were collecting on the street, they had to make a certain amount before they were allowed to stop. Bear in mind they’ve got people out doing that in London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Munich, San Francisco – did you know they’re in Germany and the States, as well?’

‘Yeah, I saw that on their website.’

‘Yeah, so, she said the kids collecting have got to get a hundred quid before they’re allowed to sit down or eat. She told me nobody knew where it all ended up, but old Papa J does himself very well. He’s rumoured to have a property in Antigua, where the Principals go for spiritual retreats. No bloody Chapman Farm for them.’

‘So you held some stuff back because it was too hot to print, did you?’

‘Had to. I wanted to protect the source. I knew people would think she was a loon if I used everything she was claiming.’

‘Would this have been supernatural stuff?’

‘Already know about that, do you?’ said Robertson, jaws still working hard on his nicotine gum. ‘Yeah, exactly. Drowned Prophet.’

‘Ex-members seem pretty scared of the Drowned Prophet.’

‘Well, she comes after them if they leave, see.’

‘Comes after them,’ repeated Strike.

‘Yeah. The membership’s taught if they reveal the Divine Secrets, she’ll come and get them.’

‘What are the Divine Secrets?’

‘She wouldn’t tell me.’

Robertson now downed the rest of his beer.

‘Two days after she talked to me, she saw the Drowned Prophet floating outside her bedroom window in the early hours of the morning. She rang me, hysterical, saying she’d said too much and the Drowned Prophet had come to get her, but I should still print the story. I tried to talk her down. Told her she needed a therapist, but she was having none of it. She kept saying, “There’s something you don’t know, there’s something you don’t know.” Got off the phone, locked herself in her parents’ bathroom and slit her wrists in the bath. She survived – just.’

‘Shit,’ said Strike.

‘Yeah. Her father blamed me, the fucking prick – he was still being a shit to her for joining the cult and giving them all her money, so on the one side I had the source’s family claiming I tipped her into suicide, and on the other, UHC threatening to bankrupt the paper for what they say are fake claims, and I’m stuck in the middle with my job hanging by a thread.’

‘Where’s the girl now?’

‘New Zealand, last I heard. The suicide attempt panicked her family, the father finally stopped bullying her and got her some help. Packed her off to some relatives down under. Fresh start.’

‘Did you put it to her that whatever supernatural stuff she’d seen in the church must’ve been faked?’

‘Yeah, but she wouldn’t have it.’ Robertson now extracted a large ball of chewed gum out of his mouth, pressed it into one of the empty slots in the packet, took out a fresh piece and began chewing again. ‘She swore she’d seen ghosts and magic – but they didn’t call it magic, obviously. Pure spirits, that was the terminology. Pure spirits could do supernatural stuff.’

‘So what was too hot to print?’

‘I could use another pint,’ said Robertson, pushing his empty glass towards the detective.

Strike heaved a sigh, but got back to his feet, his hamstring throbbing.

When he’d returned to the table and set down the fresh pint in front of Robertson, the journalist said,

‘D’you know who Margaret Cathcart-Bryce was?’

‘Rich old woman, left her entire fortune to the UHC in 2004, buried at Chapman Farm, now known as the Golden Prophet.’

‘That’s the one,’ said Robertson. ‘Well, it wasn’t a good death.’

‘Meaning?’

‘They don’t believe in medicine in the UHC. My source told me Cathcart-Bryce died in fucking agony, begging for a doctor. She said the Waces were scared that if they let one in to see her, she’d’ve been taken into hospital, which would’ve meant next of kin being alerted. They didn’t want some distant relative showing up and persuading her to change her will. If I could’ve proved that… but no corroboration. You can’t sling something like that in without checking it out. I tried to get hold of some of Cathcart-Bryce’s relatives, but the closest she had was a great-nephew in Wales. He’d already resigned himself to the fact he wasn’t getting a sniff of her money and didn’t give a fuck what had happened to her. Hadn’t seen the old dear in years.’

Strike made a note of all this, before asking,

‘Anything else?’

‘Yeah,’ said Robertson. He glanced around and lowered his voice. ‘Sex.’

‘Go on,’ said Strike.

‘They called it “spirit bonding”, which basically means fucking whoever you’re told to fuck. The girls prove they’ve above material considerations by putting out for anyone they’re told to.’

‘Really?’ said Strike.

‘It only starts happening once you’re in properly. Don’t want to scare them off too early. But my source told me, once they’re full members, they’re not supposed to refuse anyone who wants it. I went as close to talking about it as I could, in the piece – plenty of “it is rumoured” and “sources claim” – but my editor didn’t want any of the better-known members suing us for saying they were raping anyone, so I had to take all that out.’

Strike made a further note before saying,

‘Was your source the only ex-member you could persuade to talk?’

‘Yeah,’ said Robertson. ‘Everyone else I tried told me to fuck off. Some of them were ashamed,’ he said, taking another sip of beer, ‘embarrassed they ever fell for it. They’ve gone back to normal lives and don’t want their pasts all over the papers. You can’t blame them. Others were still a real mess. There were a couple I couldn’t trace. Might’ve died.’

‘Don’t s’pose you kept a list of ex-members?’

‘I did, yeah,’ said Robertson.

‘Have you still got it?’

‘Might have it somewhere… quid pro quo, though, right? I get the scoop, if you get a story?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘All right, I’ll see if I can dig it out…’

Robertson chomped on his gum for a brief spell, before saying,

‘So, when did Sir Colin Edensor hire you?’

‘I don’t identify my clients to journalists,’ said Strike, with no change of expression.

‘Worth a punt,’ said Robertson, eyes twinkling. ‘Edensor’s been pretty vocal about the church in the last couple of years.’

‘Has he?’

‘I s’pose there might some other rich kids in there, though,’ said Robertson, watching Strike closely. ‘Other than Will Edensor.’

‘S’pose there might,’ said Strike non-committally, looking over his notes. ‘She told you, “There’s something you don’t know”? And this was something other than Cathcart-Bryce being denied a doctor, was it?’

‘Yeah, she’d already told me about the old girl,’ said Robertson, who now flipped open his laptop again. ‘Sure you haven’t got a view on Brexit? How would it affect the private detective trade, if we leave the EU?’

‘Not at all,’ said Strike, getting to his feet.

‘So I can put down Cormoran Strike as a Brexiteer, can I?’

‘You can fuck off, is what you can do,’ said Strike, and he left the journalist chuckling behind him.

15

In friendships and close relationships an individual must make a careful choice. He surrounds himself either with good or with bad company; he cannot have both at once.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

‘God, it’s horrible out there,’ were Robin’s first words to Strike the next time they met, which was on Easter Monday.

Storm Katie was currently ravaging London, knocking down trees and pylons, and Robin’s colour was high, her hair windblown. The windows of the office were gently rattling as the wind howled down Denmark Street.

‘I did text you, offering to catch up by phone,’ said Strike, who’d just put the kettle on.

‘I was probably already on the Tube,’ said Robin, tugging off her coat and hanging it up. ‘I didn’t mind coming in. Quite bracing, really.’

‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d got smacked in the head by a flying bin,’ said Strike, who’d just been watching plastic cones tumbling down Charing Cross Road. ‘Coffee?’

‘Great,’ said Robin, trying to detangle her hair with her fingers. ‘Pat got the day off?’

‘Yeah. Bank holiday. One good thing about this weather, it’ll probably keep the Frank brothers in.’

‘Hopefully,’ agreed Robin. ‘In other good news, I think I’m getting closer to being recruited.’

‘Really?’ said Strike, looking round.

‘Yes. That blonde woman I met last time made a beeline for me the moment I walked in on Saturday. “Oh, I’m so glad you came back!” I told her I’d read their pamphlet and found it interesting—’

‘Was it?’

‘No. It’s mostly generalities about self-fulfilment and changing the world. I’m still playing it cool. I told her friends of mine were trying to warn me off the UHC, telling me there were rumours circulating about the place, about it not being what it seemed.’

‘What did she say to that?’

‘That she was sure I wasn’t closed-minded enough not to give the church a fair hearing and that she could tell I was a free thinker and a very independent person.’

‘Very astute of her,’ said Strike, with a smirk. ‘Papa J there?’

‘No. Apparently I got very lucky seeing him last time, because he doesn’t often appear in person these days. We got Becca Pirbright instead – Kevin’s older sister.’

‘Yeah?’ said Strike, as he opened the fridge and took out milk. ‘What’s she like?’

‘Very polished and chirpy. Perfect teeth – she looks American. You definitely wouldn’t know her brother was shot through the head a few months ago. If she hadn’t been wearing orange robes, you’d have thought she was a motivational speaker. Pacing up and down, lots of big gestures.

‘Oh, and Noli Seymour was there. The actress. That caused a bit of excitement, when she walked in. Lots of whispering and pointing.’

‘Special treatment?’

‘Very. One of the temple attendants went running towards her and tried to lead her to a seat at the front. She made kind of a fuss about not taking it and sliding into a space in the middle. Very humble. She made such a fuss about being humble, everyone was looking at her by the time she took her seat.’

Strike grinned.

‘I read your note about your meeting with Fergus Robertson,’ Robin went on.

‘Good,’ said Strike, handing Robin a mug and leading the way through to the inner office. ‘I wanted to talk to you about that.’

Robin thought she knew what was coming. One of the reasons she’d been so determined to battle her way through Storm Katie to talk to Strike face to face was a suspicion that he was about to suggest – notwithstanding the hours of work she’d put in to create Rowena Ellis’s persona, and the expensive new haircut – that one of the subcontractors should go undercover at Chapman Farm, instead of her.

‘So, you read about the spirit bonding stuff?’ Strike asked, as both took their seats opposite each other at the partners’ desk.

‘We’re using the UHC’s euphemism, are we?’ said Robin, eyebrows raised.

‘All right, if you prefer: did you read about women being coerced into sleeping with whoever the church says they should sleep with?’

‘I did, yes,’ said Robin.

‘And?’

‘And I still want to go in.’

Strike said nothing, but stroked his chin, looking at her.

‘They’re using emotional coercion, not physical force,’ Robin said. ‘I won’t be indoctrinated, will I? So that’s not going to work on me.’

‘But if you’re shut up in there, and that’s the condition of maintaining your cover—’

‘If it comes to actual attempted rape, I’ll leave and go straight to the police,’ said Robin calmly. ‘Mission accomplished: we’ve got something on the church.’

Strike, who’d expected this attitude, still didn’t like it.

‘What’s Murphy’s view on this?’

‘What the hell’s it got to do with Ryan?’ said Robin, with an edge to her voice.

Recognising his strategic error, Strike said, ‘Nothing.’

There was a brief silence, in which rain pounded against the window and wind whistled through the guttering.

‘All right, well, I thought we should divide up these ex-members so we can work our way through them, see if any will talk,’ said Strike, breaking eye contact to open a file on his computer. ‘I’ve sent you the census names already. Robertson sent me his list last night. There was only one name I didn’t already have: Cherie Gittins. He never managed to trace her, but I found out a bit about her online. She was the girl who took Daiyu Wace swimming on the day she drowned, but I can’t find any trace of her after 1995.’

‘Want me to have a look?’ said Robin, flipping open her notebook.

‘Couldn’t hurt. In better news, I’ve found the Doherty family – the dad who left with three of the kids, and the mother who was expelled later.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, but I’ve had a hard “no” to an interview from the father and two of the kids. The father was bloody aggressive about it. The other kid – I say kid, they’re all adults now – hasn’t got back to me yet. That’s Niamh, the eldest. I can’t find any trace of the mother, Deirdre, and I’m wondering whether she’s changed her name or gone abroad. No death certificate that I can find. I haven’t had much luck with Jordan, either – that’s the bloke Kevin Pirbright claims was whipped across the face with a leather flail. He’s not on any of the census reports, so he must’ve come and gone between censuses.

‘But I might have found Jonathan Wace’s older daughter, Abigail. If I’m right, she switched to using her mother’s maiden name, Glover, after she left the church, and she’s a firefighter.’

‘A literal—?’

‘Hose, siren, the works, if I’ve got the right woman. Unmarried, no kids that I can see, and she’s living in Ealing. I also think I’ve identified the gay girl who joined up in her teens, the one Robertson spoke to for his article.’

‘Already?’

‘Yeah. She’s on the census for 2001 and her name’s Flora Brewster. Age and dates tally. Her Facebook page is full of pictures of New Zealand and she comes from a very wealthy family. Her grandfather started a massive construction company: Howson Homes.’

‘“You’ll-Be-Oh-So-Happy-in-a-Howson-Home”?’ said Robin, as the jingle from a nineties advert she didn’t know she’d remembered came back to her.

‘Until the dividing walls fall down, yeah. Not famous for being well built, Howson Homes.’

‘Have you contacted her?’

‘No, because her Facebook account’s inactive; she hasn’t posted anything there for over a year, but I have found a guy called Henry Worthington-Fields, who’s a Facebook friend of hers living in London. I think it’s possible he’s the guy who got her into it, who only stayed a week. He talks about having an old friend the church nearly destroyed. Very angry, very bitter, dark hints about criminality. I’ve sent him a message, but nothing back so far. If he’s willing to talk, I might be able to find out what lay behind Flora’s comment to Fergus Robertson, “There’s something you don’t know.”’

‘I was thinking about that girl – Flora – after I read your email,’ said Robin. ‘That makes two people who killed themselves, or tried to, right after leaving the church. It’s as though they leave with invisible suicide vests on them. Then the Drowned Prophet shows up and makes them detonate it.’

‘Fanciful way of putting it,’ said Strike, ‘but yeah, I know what you mean.’

‘Did I tell you Alexander Graves is painted on the temple ceiling with a noose around his neck?’

‘No, you didn’t.’

‘It’s sick, isn’t it? They’re close to glorifying suicide, putting that on the ceiling. Equating it to martyrdom for the church.’

‘I’d imagine it suits the UHC fine to have quitters finish themselves off. Self-solving problem.’

‘But it adds weight to what Prudence said, doesn’t it? About not taking Will Edensor out too quickly, not expecting him to just snap back to—’

At that moment, they heard a jingle on the landing, and the door to the outer office opened. Strike and Robin both looked round, surprised: nobody else should have been there, given that that Midge was on holiday and all other subcontractors on jobs.

There in the doorway stood Clive Littlejohn, stocky and solid in his rain-speckled coat, his crewcut unchanged by the high winds. His heavy-lidded eyes blinked at the partners visible through the open inner door. Otherwise, he remained expressionless and stationary.

‘Morning,’ said Strike. ‘Thought you were on the new client’s husband?’

‘Ill,’ said Littlejohn.

‘Is he?’

‘She texted.’

‘So… you needed something?’

‘Receipts,’ said Littlejohn, putting his hand into the inside of his coat and drawing out a small wad of paper, which he laid on Pat’s desk.

‘Right,’ said Strike.

Littlejohn stood for another second or two, then turned and left the office, closing the glass door behind him.

‘It’s like he gets taxed per syllable,’ said Robin quietly.

Strike said nothing. He was still frowning towards the glass door.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Robin.

‘Nothing.’

‘Yes, there is. Why are you looking like that?’

‘How was he planning to get in? I changed the rota last night so we could have a catch-up, otherwise I’d’ve been tailing Frank Two and you wouldn’t have had any reason to be here – especially during a near hurricane,’ Strike added, as the rain thumped against the window.

‘Oh,’ said Robin, now looking blankly after Littlejohn as well. ‘Did you hear keys before the door opened?’

‘He hasn’t got a key,’ said Strike. ‘Or he shouldn’t have.’

Before either could say anything else, Robin’s mobile rang.

‘Sorry,’ she said to Strike, on checking it. ‘It’s Ryan.’

Strike got up and headed into the outer office. His ruminations on Littlejohn’s strange behaviour were disrupted by Robin’s voice, and her burst of laughter. Evidently evening plans were being changed, due to the weather. Then his own mobile rang.

‘Strike.’

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

‘Fine,’ said Strike, while Robin lowered her voice in the inner office, and his feeling of irritation increased. ‘What’s up?’

‘Look, I hope you don’t think I’m interfering.’

‘Tell me what you’ve got to say, then I’ll tell you if you’re interfering,’ said Strike, without bothering to sound too friendly.

‘Well, you’re about to get a call from Bijou.’

‘Which you know, because—?’

‘Because she just told me. Actually, she told me, and three other people I was having a conversation with.’

‘And?’

‘She says you haven’t answered her texts, so—’

‘You’ve called to tell me off for not answering texts?’

‘God, no, the reverse!’

In the inner office, Robin was laughing at something else Ryan had said. The man simply couldn’t be that fucking funny.

‘Go on,’ Strike said to Ilsa, striding towards the inner door and closing it rather more firmly than was necessary. ‘Say your piece.’

‘Corm,’ said Ilsa quietly, and he could tell she was trying not to be overheard by colleagues, ‘she’s crazy. She’s already told—’

‘You’ve called to give me unsolicited advice on my love life, is that right?’

Robin, who’d just finished her call with Ryan, got to her feet and opened the door in time to hear Strike say,

‘—no, I don’t. So, yeah, don’t interfere.’

He hung up.

‘Who was that?’ said Robin, surprised.

‘Ilsa,’ said Strike curtly, walking back past her and sitting back down at the partners’ desk.

Robin, who suspected she knew what Ilsa had just called about, settled back into her chair without saying anything. Noticing this unusual lack of curiosity, Strike made the correct deduction that Ilsa and Robin had already discussed his night with Bijou.

‘Did you know Ilsa was planning to tell me how to conduct my private life?’

‘What?’ said Robin, startled by both question and tone. ‘No!’

‘Really?’ said Strike.

‘Yes, really!’ said Robin, which was true: she might have told Ilsa to talk to Strike, but she hadn’t known she was going to do it.

Strike’s mobile now rang for a second time. He hadn’t bothered to save Bijou’s number to his contacts, but, certain who he was about to hear, he answered.

‘Hi, stranger,’ said her unmistakeably loud, husky voice.

‘Hi,’ said Strike. ‘How’re you?’

Robin got up and walked into the next room, on the pretext of fetching more coffee. Behind her, she heard Strike say,

‘Yeah, sorry about that, been busy.’

As it was Robin’s determined habit these days not to think about her partner in any terms other than those of friendship and work, she chose to believe the mingled feelings of annoyance and hurt now possessing her were caused by Strike’s irritability and the near slamming of the office door, while she’d been talking to Ryan. It was entirely his business if he wanted to sleep with that vile woman again, and more fool him if he didn’t realise she was after him for the fortune he didn’t possess, or the baby he didn’t want.

‘Yeah, OK,’ she heard Strike say. ‘I’ll see you there.’

Making a determined effort to look neutral, Robin returned to the partners’ desk with fresh coffee, ignoring her partner’s air of truculent defiance.

16

The line at the beginning has good fortune, the second is favourable; this is due to the time.

The third line bears an augury of misfortune, the fifth of illness…

The I Ching or Book of Changes

For the next couple of days, Strike and Robin communicated only by matter-of-fact texts, with neither jokes nor extraneous chat. Robin was more annoyed with herself for dwelling on the door slamming and the accusation that she’d been gossiping with Ilsa behind her partner’s back than she was at Strike for doing either of these two things.

Strike, who knew he’d behaved unreasonably, made no apology. However, a nagging sense of self-recrimination was added to his irritation at Ilsa, and both were intensified by his second date with Bijou.

He’d known he was making a mistake within five minutes of meeting her again. While she’d roared with laughter at her own anecdotes and talked loudly about top QCs who fancied her, he’d sat in near silence, asking himself what the hell he was playing at. Determined at least to get what he’d come for, he left her flat a few hours later with a faint feeling of self-disgust and a strong desire never to set eyes on her again. The only small consolation was that his hamstring hadn’t suffered this time, because he’d indicated a preference for being horizontal while having sex.

While it was hardly the first time Strike had slept with a woman he wasn’t in love with, never before had he screwed someone he actively disliked. The whole episode, which he now considered firmly closed, had intensified rather than alleviated his low mood, forcing him back up against his feelings for Robin.

Little did Strike know that Robin and Murphy’s relationship had suffered its first serious blow, a fact that Robin had no intention whatsoever of sharing with her business partner.

The row happened on Wednesday evening in a bar near Piccadilly Circus. Robin, who was due to leave for Coventry at five o’clock the following morning, hadn’t really fancied a mid-week trip to the cinema in the first place. However, as Murphy had already bought the tickets, she felt she couldn’t object. He seemed determined not to slide into a pattern whereby they merely met at each other’s flats for food and sex. Robin guessed this was due to a fear of taking her for granted or getting into a rut, which she’d deduced, from oblique comments, had been a complaint of his ex-wife’s.

The trigger for their argument was a casual remark of Robin’s about her planned stay at Chapman Farm. It then became clear that Murphy was labouring under a misapprehension. He’d thought she’d only be gone for seven days if she managed to be recruited, and was shocked to discover that, in reality, she’d committed to an open-ended undercover job that might last several weeks. Murphy was nettled that Robin hadn’t explained the situation fully, while Robin was irate at the fact he hadn’t listened properly. It might not be Murphy’s fault that he was bringing back unpleasant memories of her ex-husband’s assumed right to dictate the limits of her professional commitment, but the comparison was unavoidable, given that Murphy seemed to think Strike had pressured Robin into doing this onerous job, and she hadn’t been assertive enough to refuse.

‘I happen to want to do it,’ Robin told Murphy, speaking in an angry whisper, because the bar was crowded. The moment they should have left for the cinema had slid past twenty minutes previously, unnoticed. ‘I volunteered because I know I’m the best person for the job – and for your information, Strike’s been actively trying to persuade me out of it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it might take so long,’ said Robin, lying by omission.

‘And he’s going to miss you, is that what you’re saying?’

‘You know what, Ryan? Sod off.’

Indifferent to the curious looks of a group of girls standing nearby, who’d been casting the handsome Murphy sidelong glances, Robin dragged her coat back on.

‘I’m going home. I’ve got to get up at the crack of dawn to drive to Coventry, anyway.’

‘Robin—’

But she was already striding towards the door.

Murphy caught up with her a hundred yards down the road. His apology, which was fulsome, was made within sight of the cupid-topped Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain where her ex-husband had proposed, which did nothing to dispel Robin’s sense of déjà vu. However, as Murphy gallantly took all the blame on himself, Robin felt she had no choice but to relent. Given that Hail, Caesar! was already half over, they went instead for a cheap Italian meal and parted, at least superficially, on good terms.

Nevertheless, Robin’s mood remained low as she set off north in her old Land Rover the following morning. Yet again, she’d been forced to face the difficulty of reconciling any kind of normal personal life with her chosen line of work. She’d thought it might be easier with Ryan, given his profession, but here she was again, justifying commitments she knew he wouldn’t have given a second thought to, had he been the one making them.

Her journey up the M1 was uneventful and therefore offered few distractions from her unsatisfactory musings. However, as she approached Newport Pagnell service station, where she’d been planning to stop for a coffee, Ilsa called. The Land Rover didn’t have Bluetooth, so Robin waited until she was in Starbucks before ringing Ilsa back.

‘Hi,’ she said, trying to sound more cheerful than she felt, ‘what’s up?’

‘Nothing, really,’ said Ilsa. ‘Just wondered whether Corm’s said anything to you.’

‘About Bijou?’ said Robin, who couldn’t be bothered to pretend she didn’t know what Ilsa was talking about. ‘Other than accusing me of talking to you behind his back, no.’

‘Oh God,’ groaned Ilsa. ‘I’m sorry. I was only trying to warn him—’

‘I know,’ sighed Robin, ‘but you know what he’s like.’

‘Nick says I should apologise, which is nice bloody solidarity from my husband, I must say. I’d like to see Nick’s face if Bijou gets herself knocked up on purpose. I don’t s’pose you know—?’

‘Ilsa,’ said Robin, cutting across her friend, ‘if you’re about to ask me whether I quiz Strike on his contraceptive habits—’

‘You realise she told me – with five other people within earshot, incidentally – that she took a used condom out of the bin, while she was having an affair with that married QC, and inserted it inside herself?’

‘Jesus,’ said Robin, startled, and very much wishing she hadn’t been given this information, ‘well, I – I suppose that’s Strike’s lookout, isn’t it?’

‘I was trying to be a good friend,’ said Ilsa, sounding frustrated. ‘However much of a dickhead he is, I don’t want him paying child support to bloody Bijou Watkins for the next eighteen years. She’d make a nightmarish mother, nearly as bad as Charlotte Campbell.’

By the time Robin got back in the Land Rover, she felt more miserable than ever, and it took a considerable effort of will to refocus her attention on the job in hand.

She arrived in Sheila Kennett’s road at five minutes to twelve. As she locked up the Land Rover, Robin wondered how, given what Kevin Pirbright had said about church members sinking all of their money into the UHC, Sheila had managed to afford even this small bungalow, shabby though it looked.

When she rang the doorbell she heard footsteps of a speed that surprised her, given that Sheila Kennett was eighty-five years old.

The door opened to reveal a tiny old woman whose thinning grey hair was worn in a bun. Her dark eyes, of which both irises showed marked arcus senilis, were enormously enlarged by a pair of powerful bifocals. Slightly stooped, Sheila wore a loose red dress, navy carpet slippers, an oversize hearing aid, a tarnished gold wedding ring and a silver cross around her neck.

‘Hello,’ said Robin, smiling down at her. ‘We spoke on the phone. I’m Robin Ellacott, the—’

‘Private detective, are you?’ said Sheila, in her slightly cracked voice.

‘Yes,’ said Robin, holding out her driving licence. ‘This is me.’

Sheila blinked at the licence for a few seconds, then said,

‘That’s all right. Come in, then,’ and moved aside for Robin to pass into the hall, which was carpeted in dark brown. The bungalow smelled slightly fusty.

‘You go in there,’ said Sheila, pointing Robin into the front room. ‘Want tea?’

‘Thank you – can I help?’ asked Robin, as she watched the fragile-looking Sheila shuffling away towards the kitchen. Sheila made no answer. Robin hoped the hearing aid was turned up.

The peeling wallpaper and the sparse, shabby furniture spoke of poverty. A green sofa sat at right angles to a faded tartan chair with a matching footstool. The television was old, and beneath it sat an equally antiquated video player, while a rickety bookcase held a mixture of large-print novels. The only photograph in the room stood on top of the bookcase, and showed a 1960s wedding. Sheila and her husband, Brian, whose name Robin knew from the census reports, were pictured standing outside a registry office. Sheila, who’d been very pretty in her youth, wore her dark hair in a beehive, her full-skirted wedding dress falling to just beneath her knees. The picture was made touching by the fact that the slightly goofy-looking Brian was beaming, as though he couldn’t believe his luck.

Something brushed Robin’s ankle: a grey cat had just entered the room and was now staring up at her with its clear green eyes. As Robin bent to tickle it behind the ears, a tinkling sound announced the reappearance of Sheila, who was holding an old tin tray on which were two mugs, a jug and a plate of what Robin recognised as Mr Kipling’s Bakewell slices.

‘Let me,’ said Robin, as some of the hot liquid had already spilled. Sheila let Robin lift the tray out of her hands and set it on the small coffee table. Sheila took her own mug, placed it on the arm of the tartan armchair, sat down, put her tiny feet on the stool, then said, peering at the tea tray,

‘I forgot the sugar. I’ll go—’

She began to struggle out of the chair again.

‘That’s fine, I don’t take it,’ said Robin hastily. ‘Unless you do?’

Sheila shook her head and relaxed back into her chair. When Robin sat down on the sofa, the cat leapt up beside her and rubbed itself against her, purring.

‘He’s not mine,’ said Sheila, watching the cat’s antics. ‘He’s next door’s, but he likes it here.’

‘Clearly,’ said Robin, smiling, as she ran her hand over the cat’s arched back. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Smoky,’ said Sheila, raising her mug to her mouth. ‘He likes it here,’ she repeated.

‘Would you mind if I take notes?’ asked Robin.

‘Write things down? That’s all right,’ said Sheila Kennett. While Robin took out her pen, Sheila made a kissing sound in the direction of Smoky the cat, but he ignored her, and continued to rub his head against Robin. ‘Ungrateful,’ said Sheila. ‘I gave him tinned salmon last night.’

Robin smiled again before opening her notebook.

‘So, Mrs Kennett—’

‘You can call me Sheila. Why’ve you done that to your hair?’

‘Oh – this?’ said Robin self-consciously, raising a hand to the blue edges of her bob. ‘I’m just trying it out.’

‘Punk rock, is it?’ said Sheila.

Deciding against telling Sheila she was approximately forty years out of date, Robin said,

‘A bit.’

‘You’re a pretty girl. You don’t want blue hair.’

‘I’m thinking of changing it back,’ said Robin. ‘So… could I ask when did you and your husband go to live at Chapman Farm?’

‘Wasn’t called Chapman Farm then,’ said the old lady. ‘It was Forgeman Farm. Brian and me were hippies,’ said Sheila, blinking at Robin through the thick lenses of her glasses. ‘You know what hippies are?’

‘Yes,’ said Robin.

‘Well, that’s what me and Brian was. Hippies,’ said Sheila. ‘Living on a commune. Hippies,’ she said yet again, as though she liked the sound of the word.

‘Can you remember when—?’

‘Sixty-nine we went there,’ said Sheila. ‘When it was all starting. We grew pot. Know what pot is?’

‘I do, yes,’ said Robin.

‘We used to smoke a lot of that,’ said Sheila, with another little cackle.

‘Who else was there at the beginning, can you remember?’

‘Yes, I can remember all that,’ said Sheila proudly. ‘Rust Andersen. American, he was. Living in a tent up the fields. Harold Coates. I remember all that. Can’t remember yesterday sometimes, but I remember all that. Coates was a nasty man. Very nasty man.’

‘Why d’you say that?’

‘Kids,’ said Sheila. ‘Don’t you know about all that?’

‘Are you talking about when the Crowther brothers were arrested?’

‘That’s them. Nasty people. Horrible people. Them and their friends.’

The cat’s purrs filled the room as it lolled on its back, Robin stroking it with her left hand.

‘Brian and me never knew what they were up to,’ said Sheila. ‘We never knew what was going on. We were busy growing and selling veg. Brian had pigs.’

‘Did he?’

‘He loved his pigs, and his chickens. Kids running around everywhere… I couldn’t have none of my own. Miscarriages. I had nine, all told.’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ said Robin.

‘Never had none of our own,’ repeated Sheila. ‘We wanted kids, but we couldn’t. There was loads of kids running around at the farm, and I remember your friend. Big lad. Bigger than some of the older boys.’

‘Sorry?’ said Robin, flummoxed.

‘Your partner. Condoman Strike or something, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right,’ said Robin, looking at her curiously, and wondering whether the old lady, who might repeat herself a lot, but had seemed basically alert, was in fact senile.

‘When I told Next Door you was coming to see me, she read me out an article about you and him. He was there, with his sister and his mum. I remember, because my Brian fancied Leda Strike and I could tell, and we had rows about it. Jealous. I’d see him watching her all the time. Jealous,’ Sheila repeated. ‘I don’t think Leda would’ve looked at my Brian, though. He was no rock star, Brian.’

Sheila gave another cracked laugh. Doing her best to dissemble her shock, Robin said,

‘Your memory’s very good, Sheila.’

‘Oh, I remember all what happened on the farm. Don’t remember yesterday sometimes, but I remember all that. I helped little Ann give birth. Harold Coates was there. He was a doctor. I helped. She had a rough old time. Well… she was only fourteen.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah… free love, see. It wasn’t like it is now. It was different.’

‘Was the baby—?’

‘It was all right. Mazu, Ann called her, but Ann took off, not long after. Left her at the commune. Didn’t like being a mother. Too young.’

‘So who looked after Mazu?’ asked Robin, ‘Her father?’

‘Don’t know who her father was. I never knew who Ann was going with. People were sleeping with whoever. Not me and Brian, though. We were trying to have our own kids. Busy on the farm. We didn’t know everything that was going on,’ said Sheila, yet again. ‘Police come into the farm, no warning. Somebody tipped them off. We was all questioned. My Brian was at the station for hours. They searched all the rooms. Went through all our personal things. Me and Brian left after that.’

‘Did you?’

‘Yeah. Awful,’ said Sheila, and yet again, she emphasised, ‘We didn’t know. We never knew. It’s not like they were doing it in the yard. We were busy with the farming.’

‘Where did you go, when you left?’

‘Here,’ said Sheila, indicating the bungalow with her mottled hand. ‘This was my mum and dad’s place. Ooh, they were angry about all the things in the papers. And Brian couldn’t get a job. I got one. Office clerk. I didn’t like it. Brian missed the farm.’

‘How long were you away, Sheila, can you remember?’

‘Two years… three years… then Mazu wrote to us. She said it was all better and they had a good new community. Brian was good at the farming, see, that’s why she wanted him… so we went back.’

‘Can you remember who was there, when you returned?’

‘Don’t you want a cake?’

‘Thank you, I’d love one,’ lied Robin, reaching for a Bakewell slice. ‘Can I—?’

‘No, I got them for you,’ said Sheila. ‘What did you just ask me?’

‘About who was at Chapman Farm, when you went back there to live.’

‘I don’t know all the names. There was a couple of new families. Coates was still there. What did you ask me?’

‘Just about the people,’ said Robin, ‘who were there when you went back.’

‘Oh… Rust Andersen was still in his cabin. And the Graves boy – posh, skinny boy. He was new. He’d go up Rust’s place and smoke half the night. Pot. D’you know what pot is?’ she asked, again.

‘I do, yes,’ said Robin, smiling.

‘It doesn’t do some people any good,’ said Sheila wisely. ‘The Graves boy couldn’t handle it. He went funny. Some people shouldn’t smoke it.’

‘Was Jonathan Wace at the farm, when you went back?’ asked Robin.

‘That’s right, with his little girl, Abigail. And Mazu had a baby: Daiyu.’

‘What did you think of Jonathan Wace?’ asked Robin.

‘Charming. That’s what I thought, then. He took us all in. Charming,’ she repeated.

‘What made him come and live at the farm, d’you know?’

‘No, I don’t know why he came. I felt sorry for Abigail. Her mum died, then her dad brought her to the farm, and next minute she’s got a sister…’

‘And when did the whole idea of a church start up, can you remember?’

‘That was because Jonathan used to give us talks about his beliefs. He had us meditating and he started making us go out on the street and collect money. People would come and listen to him talk.’

‘Lots more people started coming to the farm, did they?’

‘Yeah, and they were paying. Some of them were posh. Then Jonathan started going on trips, giving his talks. He left Mazu in charge. She’d grown her hair down to her waist – long black hair – and she was telling everyone she was half-Chinese, but she was never Chinese,’ said Sheila scathingly. ‘Her mum was as white as you and me. There was no Chinese man, ever, at Chapman Farm. We never told her we knew she was lying, though. We were just happy to be back at the farm, me and Brian. What did you ask me?’

‘Just about the church, and how it began.’

‘Oh… Jonathan was running courses, with his meditation and all his Eastern religions and things, and then he started taking services, so we built a temple at the farm.’

‘And were you happy?’ asked Robin.

Sheila blinked a few times before saying,

‘It was happy sometimes. Sometimes it was. But bad things happened. Rust got hit by a car one night. Jonathan said it was a judgement, for all the lives Rust took in the war… and then the Graves boy’s family came and grabbed him off the street, when he was out in Norwich, and we heard he’d hanged himself. Jonathan told us that’s what would happen to all of us, if we left. He said Alex had got a glimpse of truth, but he couldn’t cope with the world outside. So that was a warning for us, Jonathan said.’

‘Did you believe him?’ asked Robin.

‘I did then,’ said Sheila. ‘I believed everything Jonathan said, back then. So did Brian. Jonathan had a way of making you believe… a way of making you want to make everything all right, for him. You wanted to look after him.’

‘To look after Jonathan?’

‘Yeah… you should’ve seen him crying, when Rust and Alex died. He seemed to feel it worse than all the rest of us.’

‘You said it was happy at the farm sometimes. Were there other times when—?’

‘Nasty things started happening,’ said the old lady. Her lips had started to tremble. ‘It was Mazu, not Jonathan… it wasn’t Jonathan. It was her.’

‘What kind of nasty things?’ asked Robin, her pen poised over her notebook.

‘Just… punishments,’ said Sheila, her lips still trembling. After a few seconds’ silence, she said,

‘Paul let the pigs out, by accident and Mazu made people hit him.’

‘Can you remember Paul’s surname?’

‘Draper,’ said Sheila, after a slight pause. ‘Everyone called him Dopey. He wasn’t normal. Bit retarded. They shouldn’t have had him looking after the pigs. He left the gate open. Dopey Draper.’

‘Do you know where he is now?’

Sheila shook her head.

‘Do you remember a boy called Jordan whipping himself?’

‘There was lots of times people was whipped. Yeah, I remember Jordan. Teenager.’

‘Would you happen to remember his surname, Sheila?’

Sheila thought a little, then said,

‘Reaney. Jordan Reaney. He was a rough sort. Been in trouble with the police.’

As Robin made a note of Jordan’s surname, the cat beside her, bored of inattention, leapt lightly off the sofa and stalked out of the room.

‘Everything got worse after Daiyu died,’ said Sheila, unprompted. ‘You know who Daiyu was?’

‘Jonathan and Mazu’s daughter,’ said Robin. ‘She drowned, didn’t she?’

‘That’s right. Cherie took her to the beach.’

‘This is Cherie Gittins?’ asked Robin.

‘That’s right. Silly girl, she was. Daiyu bossed her around.’

‘Would you happen to know what happened to Cherie after Daiyu died, Sheila?’

‘Punished,’ said Sheila. She now looked very distressed. ‘All them who were involved were punished.’

‘What d’you mean, “all of them”, Sheila?’

‘Cherie, and the ones who didn’t stop it. The ones who saw them leaving in the truck that morning – but they didn’t know! They thought Daiyu had permission! My Brian, and Dopey Draper, and little Abigail. They was all punished.’

‘Hit?’ asked Robin tentatively.

‘No,’ said Sheila, suddenly agitated. ‘Worse. It was wicked.’

‘What—?’

‘Never you mind,’ said Sheila, her small hands balled into shaking fists. ‘Least said about that… but they knew Brian was ill when they did it to him. He kept losing his balance. Jonathan had been telling him to go and pray in temple, and then he’d be better. But after they punished him, he was much worse. He couldn’t see properly, and they still made him get up and go collecting on the street… and in the end,’ said Sheila, her agitation increasing, ‘Brian was screaming and moaning. He couldn’t get out of bed. They carried him into the temple. He died on the temple floor. I was with him. He’d been quiet for a whole day, and then he died. All stiff on the temple floor. I woke up next to him and I knew he was dead. His eyes were open…’

The old lady began to weep. Robin, who felt desperately sorry for her, glanced around the room for a sign of a tissue.

‘Tumour,’ sobbed Sheila. ‘That’s what he had. They opened him up to find out what it was. Tumour.’

She wiped her nose on the back of her hand.

‘Let me…’ said Robin, getting up and leaving the room. In the small bathroom off the hall, which had an old pink sink and bath, she pulled off a length of toilet roll and hurried back to the sitting room to give it to Sheila.

‘Thanks,’ said Sheila, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose as Robin sat back down on the sofa.

‘Is that when you left for good, Sheila?’ Robin asked. ‘After Brian died?’

Sheila nodded, tears still trickling out from behind the bifocals.

‘And they threatened me, trying to stop me going. They said I was a bad person and they’d tell everyone I’d been cruel to Brian, and they said they knew I’d taken money, and they’d seen me hurting the animals on the farm… I never hurt an animal, I never did…

‘Wicked,’ she said, with a sob. ‘Wicked, they are. I thought he was so good, Jonathan. He said to me, “Brian was nearly better, Sheila, but he wasn’t pure spirit yet, and that’s why he died. You stopped him being pure spirit, shouting at him and not being a good wife.” He wasn’t nearly better,’ said Sheila, with another sob. ‘He wasn’t. He couldn’t see properly and he couldn’t walk right, and they did terrible things to him and then they were yelling at him because he hadn’t collected enough money on the street.’

‘I’m so sorry, Sheila,’ said Robin quietly. ‘I really am. I’m so sorry.’

A loud mew pierced the silence. Smoky the cat had reappeared.

‘He’s after food,’ said Sheila tearfully. ‘It isn’t time,’ she told the cat. ‘You’ll have me in trouble with Next Door if I start giving you lunch.’

Sheila seemed exhausted. Robin, who didn’t want to leave her in this state, turned the conversation gently to cats and their vagrant habits. After ten minutes or so, Sheila had regained her composure sufficiently to talk about her own cat, who’d been run over in the street outside, but Robin could tell her distress still lay close to the surface and felt it would be cruel to press for further reminiscences.

‘Thank you so much for talking to me, Sheila,’ she said at last. ‘Just one last question, if you don’t mind. Do you know when Cherie Gittins left Chapman Farm? Would you have any idea where she is now?’

‘She left not long after Brian died. I don’t know where she went. It was her fault it all happened!’ she said, with a resurgence of anger. ‘It was all her fault!’

‘Is there anything I can do for you, before I go?’ asked Robin, returning her notebook to her bag. ‘Maybe call your neighbour? It might be good to have some company.’

‘Are you going to stop them?’ asked Sheila tearfully, ignoring Robin’s suggestion.

‘We’re going to try,’ said Robin.

‘You need to stop them,’ said Sheila fiercely. ‘We were hippies, Brian and me, that’s all. Hippies. We never knew what it was all going to turn into.’

17

For youthful folly it is the most hopeless thing to entangle itself in empty imaginings.

The more obstinately it clings to such unreal fantasies, the more certainly will humiliation overtake it.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

‘You got a hell of a lot out of her,’ said Strike. ‘Excellent work.’

Robin, who was sitting in the parked Land Rover eating a tuna sandwich she’d bought from a nearby café, hadn’t been able to resist calling Strike after leaving Sheila. He sounded considerably less grumpy than the last time they’d spoken.

‘Awful, though, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Nobody getting her poor husband any medical help.’

‘Yeah, it is. Trouble is, he made the choice not to go to hospital, didn’t he? So it’d be very hard to make a criminal charge stick. It’s not like Margaret Cathcart-Bryce, who was actively asking for a doctor.’

‘Allegedly asking,’ said Robin. ‘We’ve got no corroboration for that.’

‘Yeah, that’s the problem,’ said Strike, who was currently standing in the street outside the Frank brothers’ block of flats. ‘What we really need is something criminal that had multiple eyewitnesses who’re prepared to stand up in court and talk, which I’m starting to think is going to be a bloody tall order.’

‘I know,’ said Robin. ‘I can’t see Sheila’s accounts of beatings and whippings being believed after all this time without corroboration. I’ll start looking for Paul Draper and Jordan Reaney, though.’

‘Great,’ said Strike. ‘With luck, they can confirm their own and each other’s assaults – oh, here he comes.’

‘Who?’

‘One of the Franks. I can’t tell them apart.’

‘Frank One’s got a bit of a squint and Frank Two’s balder.’

‘It’s Two, then,’ said Strike, watching the man. ‘Hope he’s heading for central London, otherwise I’ll have to get Dev to take over from me early. I’m interviewing the Facebook friend of housing heiress Flora Brewster at six. He called me last night.’

‘Oh, great. Where are you meeting him?’

‘The Grenadier pub, Belgravia,’ said Strike, setting off after his target, who was heading for the station. ‘His choice. Apparently it’s near his place of work. He also claims we’ve got a mutual friend.’

‘Probably a client,’ said Robin. The number of very rich Londoners who’d come to the agency for help had been steadily increasing, year on year, and they’d recently done jobs for a couple of billionaires.

‘So that’s all Sheila said, is it?’ asked Strike.

‘Er – yes, I think so,’ said Robin. ‘I’ll write up my notes and email them to you.’

‘Great. Well, I’d better go, we’re heading for a train. Safe travels.’

‘OK, bye,’ said Robin, and hung up.

She sat for a moment, contemplating the last bit of her sandwich, which was very dry, before putting it back into its paper bag and reaching instead for a yoghurt and a plastic spoon. Her slight hesitation before answering Strike’s last question was due to the fact that she’d omitted mention of his presence at the Aylmerton Community as a boy. Robin assumed that Strike didn’t want to talk about that, given that he hadn’t revealed it himself.

Unaware how close he’d come to a conversation he definitely didn’t want to have, Strike spent the journey into London feeling slightly less disgruntled at the world after restoring friendly relations with Robin. His mood was further elevated, though for less sentimental reasons, when Frank Two led him to Notting Hill, then made his way to the very terrace of pastel-coloured houses where their client, actress Tasha Mayo, lived.

‘He’s been skulking behind parked cars, looking up at her windows,’ Strike told Dev Shah an hour later, when the latter turned up to take over surveillance. ‘I’ve taken a few pictures. He hasn’t glued up any keyholes yet.’

‘Probably waiting for night time,’ said Shah. ‘More romantic.’

‘Have you spoken to Littlejohn lately?’ Strike asked.

‘“Spoken”,’ repeated Shah, musingly. ‘No, I don’t think you could call it speaking. Why?’

‘What d’you think of him?’ said Strike. ‘Off the record?’

‘Weird,’ said Shah flatly, looking directly at his boss.

‘Yeah, I’m starting to—’

‘Here she is,’ said Shah.

The door of the actress’s house had opened and a slight, short-haired blonde stepped out onto the pavement, a holdall over her shoulder. She set off at a brisk walk in the direction of the Tube, reading something off her phone as she went. The younger Frank took off in pursuit, his mobile raised: he seemed to be filming her.

‘Creepy fucker,’ were Shah’s last words before setting off, leaving Strike free to proceed to the Grenadier.

Henry Worthington-Fields’ chosen venue for his meeting with Strike was a pub the detective had visited years previously, because it had been a favourite of Charlotte’s and her well-heeled friends. The smartly painted frontage was red, white and blue; flower baskets hung beside the windows and a scarlet guard’s box stood outside the door.

The interior was exactly as Strike remembered it: military prints and paintings on the walls, highly polished tables, red leather benches and hundreds of banknotes in different currencies pinned up on the ceiling. The pub was supposed to be haunted by a soldier who’d been beaten to death after being discovered cheating at cards. The money left by visitors was to pay the ghost’s debt, but this hadn’t worked, as the spectral soldier continued to haunt the pub – or so the tourist-friendly story went.

Aside from a couple of Germans, who were discussing the banknotes on the ceiling, the clientele was English, the men mostly dressed in suits or the kinds of coloured chinos favoured by the upper classes, the women in smart dresses or jeans. Strike ordered himself a pint of zero-alcohol beer and sat down to drink it while reading Fergus Robertson’s article about the forthcoming Brexit referendum off his phone, glancing up regularly to see whether his interviewee had yet arrived.

Strike guessed Henry Worthington-Fields’ identity as soon as he entered the pub, mainly because he had the wary look common to those about to speak to a private detective. Henry was thirty-four years old, though he looked younger. Tall, thin and pale, with a mop of wavy red hair, he wore horn-rimmed glasses, a well-tailored, single-breasted pin-striped suit and a flamboyant red tie patterned with horseshoes. He looked as though he worked either in an art gallery, or as a salesman of luxury goods, either of which would have fitted with the Belgravia location.

Having bought himself what looked like a gin and tonic, Henry peered at Strike for a second or two, then approached his table.

‘Cormoran Strike?’ His voice was upper class and very slightly camp.

‘That’s me,’ said Strike, holding out a hand.

Henry slid onto the bench opposite the detective.

‘I thought you’d be, like, hiding behind a newspaper. Eyeholes cut out or something.’

‘I only do that when I’m following someone on foot,’ said Strike, and Henry laughed: a nervous laugh, which went on a little longer than the joke warranted.

‘Thanks for meeting me, Henry, I appreciate it.’

‘That’s OK,’ said Henry.

He took a sip of gin.

‘I mean, when I got your message, I was kind of freaked out, like, who is this guy? But I looked you up, and Charlotte told me you’re a good person, so I—’

‘Charlotte?’ repeated Strike.

‘Yeah,’ said Henry. ‘Charlotte Ross? I know her from the antiques shop where I work – Arlington and Black? She’s redecorating her house, we’ve found a couple of really nice pieces for her. I knew from looking you up that you two used to – so I rang her – she’s lovely, she’s, like, one of my favourite clients – and I said, “Hey, Charlie, should I talk to this guy?” or whatever, and she said, “Yeah, definitely”, so – yeah – here I am.’

‘Great,’ said Strike, determinedly keeping both tone and expression as pleasant as he could make them. ‘Well, as I said in my message, I noticed you’ve been quite outspoken about the UHC on your Facebook page, so I—’

‘Yeah, so, OK,’ said Henry, shifting uncomfortably in his seat, ‘I need to say – I wanted to say, like, before we get into it – it’s kind of a condition, actually – you won’t go after Flora, will you? Because she’s still not right. I’m only talking to you so she doesn’t have to. Charlotte said you’d be OK with that.’

‘Well, it’s not really Charlotte’s call,’ said Strike, still forcing himself to sound pleasant, ‘but if Flora’s having mental health problems—’

‘She is, she’s never been right since she left the UHC. But I really feel, like – well, somebody needs to hold the UHC accountable,’ said Henry. ‘So I’m happy to talk, but only if you don’t go near Flora.’

‘Is she still in New Zealand?’

‘No, it didn’t work out, she’s back in London, but – seriously – you can’t talk to her. Because I think it might tip her over the edge. She can’t stand talking about it any more. Last time she told anyone what happened she tried to kill herself, afterwards.’

Notwithstanding Henry’s fondness for Charlotte (gay men, in Strike’s experience, were the most likely to see no flaw in his beautiful, funny and immaculately dressed ex), Strike had to respect Henry for his wish to protect his friend.

‘OK, agreed. So: have you ever had direct contact with the UHC yourself?’

‘Yeah, when I was eighteen. I met this guy in a bar, and he said I should come along to Chapman Farm, to do a course. Yoga and meditation and stuff. He was hot,’ Henry added, with yet another nervous laugh. ‘Good-looking older guy.’

‘Did he talk about religion at all?’

‘Not like – more like spirituality, you know? He made it sound interesting and cool. Like, he was talking about fighting, like, materialism and capitalism, but he also said you could learn – I know this sounds crazy, but kind of learn… not magic, but to make things happen with your own power, if you studied enough… I’d just finished school, so… I thought I’d go along and see what it was about and – yeah, I asked Flora to come with me. We were school friends, we were at Marlborough together. We were kind of like – we were both gay or whatever, and we were into stuff nobody else was, so I said to Flora, “Come with me, we’ll just do a week there, it’ll be a laugh.” It was just, like, something to do in the holidays, you know?’

‘Are you all right with me taking notes?’

‘Er… yeah, OK,’ said Henry. Strike took out his notebook and pen.

‘So, you were approached in a bar – where was this, London?’

‘Yeah. It isn’t there any more, the bar. It wasn’t far from here, actually.’

‘What was the man called who invited you, can you remember?’

‘Joe,’ said Henry.

‘Was this a gay bar?’

‘Not a gay bar,’ said Henry, ‘but the guy who ran it was gay, so, yeah… it was a cool place, so I thought, like, this guy, Joe, must be cool, too.’

‘And this was in 2000?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How did you and Flora travel to Chapman Farm?’

‘I drove, thank God,’ added Henry fervently, ‘because then I had the car there, so I could get away. Most of the other people had come on a minibus, so they had to wait for the minibus to take them back. I was really fucking glad I took my car.’

‘And what happened when you got there?’

‘Er – well, you had to check in all your stuff and they gave you these tracksuits to wear, and after we changed, they made us all sit down in this barn, or whatever, and Flora and I were looking sideways at each other, and we were, like, cracking up. We were thinking, “What the fuck have we done, coming here?”’

‘Then what happened?’

‘Then we went to this big communal meal, and before the food arrived, they played “Heroes”, by David Bowie. Over speakers. Yeah, and then… he came in. Papa J.’

‘Jonathan Wace?’

‘Yeah. And he talked to us.’

Strike waited.

‘And, I mean, you can see how people fall for it,’ said Henry uneasily. ‘While he was talking, it was like, he was saying, people chase things, all their lives, that never make them happy. People die miserable, and frustrated, and they never, kind of, realise it was all there for them to find. Like, the true way, or whatever. But he said, people get, like, buried in all this materialistic bullshit… and he was really… he’s got something,’ said Henry. ‘He wasn’t, like, some big shouty guy – he wasn’t what you’d think. Flora and I felt like – we discussed it, afterwards – he was, like, one of us.’

‘What d’you mean by that?’

‘Like, he got what it’s like, to be… what it feels like, not to be… like, to be different, you know? Or maybe you don’t, I don’t know,’ Henry added, with a laugh and a shrug. ‘But Flora and I weren’t taking the piss any more, we kind of… yeah, anyway, we went off to our dormitories. Separate, obviously. They put men and women in different dorms. It was kind of like being back in boarding school, actually,’ said Henry, with another little laugh.

‘Next day, they woke us up at, like, 5 a.m. or something, and we had to go and do meditation before breakfast. Then, after we’d eaten, we got split into separate groups. I wasn’t with Flora. They split up people who knew each other.

‘And after that it was, like, really intense. You hardly had a minute to think and you were never alone. There were always UHC people with you, talking to you. You were either in a lecture, or you were chanting in the temple, or you were helping work the land, or feeding the livestock, or making stuff to sell on the street, or cooking, and people were constantly reading UHC literature to you… oh yeah, and there were discussion groups, where you all sat around and listened to one of the UHC people talk and you asked questions. You had activities until, like, 11 o’clock at night, and you were so tired at the end of the day, you could hardly think, and then it all started at 5 a.m. again.

‘And they taught you these techniques that – like, if you had a negative thought, like, about the church, or about anything, really, you had to chant. They called it killing the false self, because, like, the false self is going to struggle against the good, because it’s been indoctrinated by society to think certain things are true, when they’re not, and you’ve got to fight your false self constantly to keep your mind open enough to accept the truth.

‘It was just a couple of days, but it felt like a month. I was so tired, and really hungry most of the time. They told us that was deliberate, that fasting sharpens perception.’

‘And how did you feel about the church, while all this was going on?’

Henry drank more gin and tonic before saying,

‘For the first couple of days, I was thinking, I can’t wait for this to fucking end. But there were a couple of guys in there, proper members, who were really friendly and helped me do stuff, and they seemed really happy – and it was, like – it was a different world, you kind of lost – lost your bearings, I s’pose. Like, they’re constantly telling you how great you are, and you started wanting their approval,’ said Henry uncomfortably. ‘You couldn’t help it. And all this talk about pure spirit – they made it sound like you’d be a superhero or something, once you were pure spirit. I know that sounds insane, but – if you’d been there – it didn’t sound insane, the way they were talking.

‘On the third day, Papa J gave another big speech in the temple – it wasn’t the kind of temple like they’ve got now, because this was before the really big money started coming in. The farm temple was just another barn, then, but they’d made it the nicest building and painted the inside with all these different symbols across religions, and put an old bit of carpet down where we all sat.

‘Papa J talked about what will happen if the world doesn’t wake up, and basically the message was: normal religions divide, but the UHC unites, and when people unite across cultures, and when they become the highest version of themselves, they’ll be an unstoppable force and they can change the world. And there were loads of black and brown people at Chapman Farm, as well as white people, so that seemed, like, proof of what he was saying. And I – you just believed him. It sounded – there was nothing there you could, like, disagree with – ending poverty and all that, and becoming your highest self – and Papa J was just, like, someone you’d want to hang out with. Like, he was really warm and he seemed – he was, like, the dad you’d have if you could choose, you know?’

‘So what changed your mind? Why did you leave, at the end of the week?’

The smile faded off Henry’s face.

‘Something happened and it kind of… kind of altered how I felt about them all.

‘There was this really heavily pregnant woman at the farm. I can’t remember her name. Anyway, she was with our group one afternoon when we were ploughing, with Shire horses, and it was bloody hard work, and I kept looking at her and thinking, should she be doing this? But, you know, I was eighteen, so what did I know?

‘And we’d just finished up the last bit we were supposed to be doing, and she kind of doubled over. She was kneeling in the earth in her tracksuit, and clutching her belly. I was terrified, I thought she was going to, like, give birth there and then.

‘And one of the other members knelt down beside her, but he didn’t help her or anything, he just started chanting loudly in her face. And then the others started chanting. And I was watching this, and I was thinking, “Why aren’t they helping her up?” But I was kind of… paralysed,’ said Henry, looking shamefaced. ‘It was, like – this is how they do things here and maybe… maybe it’ll work? So I didn’t – but she was looking really ill, and finally one of them ran off towards the farmhouse, while everyone else was still chanting at her.

‘And the guy who’d gone to get help came back with Wace’s wife.’

For the first time, Henry hesitated.

‘She’s… she was creepy. I liked Wace at the time, but there was something about her… I couldn’t see why they were together. Anyway, when she reached us, everyone stopped chanting, and Mazu stood over this woman and just… stared at her. She didn’t even speak. And the pregnant woman just looked terrified and she kind of struggled up, and she still looked like she was in a load of pain or was going to pass out, but she staggered off with Mazu.

‘And none of the others would look me in the eye. They acted like nothing had happened. I looked for the pregnant woman at dinner that evening, but she wasn’t there. I didn’t actually see her again, before I left.

‘I wanted to talk to Flora about what had happened, but I couldn’t get near enough and obviously she was in a different dormitory at night.

‘Then, on the last night, we had another talk from Papa J, in the temple. They turned out all the lights and he stood in front of this big water trough, which was lit up inside, like, with underwater lights, and he made the water do stuff. Like, it rose up when he commanded it to, and made spiral shapes, and then he parted it and made it come back together…

‘It spooked me,’ said Henry. ‘I kept thinking, “It’s got to be a trick,” but I couldn’t see how he was doing it. Then he made the water make a face, a human face. One girl screamed. And then all the water settled down again and they put on the temple lights, and Papa J said, “We had a spirit visitor at the end, there. They come, sometimes, especially if there are many Receptives gathered together.” And he said he thought the new intake must be particularly receptive for that to happen.

‘And then we were asked whether we were ready to reborn. And people walked forwards one by one and got into the trough, went under the water and were pulled out again, and everyone was clapping and cheering, and Papa J hugged them, and they went to stand beside the wall with the other members.

‘I was shitting myself,’ said Henry. ‘I can’t even explain – it was, like, the pressure to join, and to have all these people approve of you, was really intense, and everyone was watching, and I didn’t know what was going to happen if I said no.

‘And then they called Flora forwards, and she just walked straight to the trough, got in, went under, was pulled out and she went to stand against the wall, beaming.

‘And I swear, I didn’t know if I was going to have the strength to say no, but thank God there was this girl ahead of me, a black girl with a tattoo of the Buddha on the back of her neck, and I’ve never forgotten her, because if she hadn’t been there… so, they called her name, and she said, “No, I don’t want to join.” Like, really loud and clear. And the atmosphere just turned to ice. Everyone was, like, glaring at her. And Papa J was the only one who was still smiling, and he gave her this whole spiel about how he knew the material world had a strong allure, and basically, he was implying she wanted to go and work for Big Oil or something, instead of saving the world. But she didn’t budge, even though she got kind of tearful.

‘And then they called my name, and I said, “I don’t want to join, either.” And I saw Flora’s face. It was like I’d slapped her.

‘Then they called the last two people forwards, and they both joined.

‘Then, while everyone’s cheering and clapping all the new members, Mazu came up to me and the girl who’d said no and said, “You two come with me,” and I said, “I want to speak to Flora first, I came with her,” and Mazu said, “She doesn’t want to talk to you.” Flora was already being led off with all the members. She didn’t even look back.

‘Mazu took us back to the farmhouse and said, “The minibus won’t be leaving until tomorrow, so you’ll have to stay here in the meantime,” and she showed us this little room with no beds, and bars over the window. And I said, “I came in a car,” and I said to the girl, “D’you want a lift back to London?” and she agreed, so we went…

‘Sorry, I really need another drink,’ said Henry weakly.

‘It’s on me,’ said Strike, getting to his feet.

When he’d returned to the table with a fresh gin and tonic for Henry, he found the younger man wiping the lenses of his glasses with his silk tie, looking shaken.

‘Thanks,’ he said, putting his glasses back on, accepting the glass and taking a large swig. ‘God, just talking about it… and I was only there a week.’

Strike, who’d made extensive notes on everything Henry had just said, now flipped back a couple of pages.

‘This pregnant woman who collapsed – you never saw her again?’

‘No,’ said Henry.

‘What did she look like?’ asked Strike, picking up his pen again.

‘Er… blonde, glasses… I can’t really remember.’

‘Did you ever see violence used against anyone at Chapman Farm?’

‘No,’ said Henry, ‘but Flora definitely did. She told me, when she got out.’

‘Which was when?’

‘Five years later. I heard she was home, and I called her. We met up for a drink, and I was really shocked at how she looked. She was so thin. She looked really ill. And she wasn’t right. In the head.’

‘In what way?’

‘God, just in – in every way. She’d talk kind of normally for a bit, then she’d start laughing at nothing. Like, this really artificial laugh. Then she’d try and stop, and she said to me “That’s me putting on my happy face”, and – I don’t know if it was something they were forced to do, like, laugh if they felt sad or whatever, but it was fucking freaky. And she kept chanting. It was like she had no control over herself.

‘I asked her why she’d left and she told me bad things had gone down, but she didn’t want to talk about them, but after she’d had two drinks she, like, started spilling all this stuff. She said she’d been flogged, with a belt, and she told me about the sex stuff, like, she had to sleep with whoever they told her to, and she kept laughing and trying to stop herself – it was horrible, seeing her like that. And after a third drink,’ said Henry, dropping his voice, ‘she said she’d seen the Drowned Prophet kill somebody.’

Strike looked up from his notebook.

‘But she wouldn’t say – like, she didn’t give me details,’ said Henry quickly. ‘It might’ve been something she – not imagined, but – I mean, she wasn’t right. She was fucking terrified after she’d said it, though. She was drunk,’ said Henry, ‘she’d got rat-arsed on three drinks. She hadn’t had alcohol for five years, so obviously…’

‘Didn’t she tell you who’d been killed?’

‘No, the only thing she said was that more people than her had witnessed it. She said something like, “Everyone was there.” Then she got really, properly panicky, and told me she hadn’t meant it, and I should forget it, that the Drowned Prophet would come for her next, because she’d talked. I said, “It’s OK, I know you were just joking…”’

‘Did you believe that? That it was a joke?’

‘No,’ said Henry uncertainly, ‘she definitely wasn’t joking, but – like, nobody’s reported anything like that, have they? And if there were a load of witnesses, you’d think someone would have gone to the police, wouldn’t you? Maybe the church made it look like someone had been killed, to scare people?’

‘Maybe,’ said Strike.

Henry now checked the time on his watch.

‘I’m actually supposed to be somewhere in twenty minutes. Is that—?’

‘Just a couple more questions, if you don’t mind,’ said Strike. ‘This Joe individual, who recruited you. Did you see much of him, once you were at the farm?’

‘He was kind of around,’ said Henry. ‘But I never really got to talk to him again.’

‘What was he doing in a bar? Alcohol’s forbidden by the church, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah,’ said Henry. ‘I don’t know… maybe he was drinking a soft drink?’

‘OK… were there a lot of children around, at the farm?’

‘Quite a few, yeah. There were some families staying there.’

‘Can you remember a man called Harold Coates? He was a doctor.’

‘Er… maybe,’ said Henry. ‘Kind of an old guy?’

‘He’d have been fairly old by then, yes. Did you ever see him around the kids?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘OK, well, I think that’s everything,’ said Strike, now pulling a business card out of his wallet. ‘If you remember anything else, anything you’d like to tell me, give me a ring.’

‘I will,’ said Henry, taking the card before gulping down the rest of his second gin and tonic.

‘I appreciate you meeting me, Henry, I really do,’ said Strike, getting to his feet to shake hands.

‘No problem,’ said Henry, also standing. ‘I hope I’ve been some use. I’ve always felt so shit about having taken Flora there in the first place, so… yeah… that’s why I agreed to talk to you. Well, bye then. Nice meeting you.’

As Henry walked towards the door, a dark woman entered the pub, and with anger and a sense of absolute inevitability, Strike recognised Charlotte Ross.

18

Thunder and wind: the image of DURATION.

Thus the superior man stands firm

And does not change his direction.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Strike had suspected Charlotte was on her way from the moment Henry had mentioned their mutual connection. Heads were turning; Strike had watched this happen for years; she had the kind of beauty that ran through a room like an icy breeze. As she and Henry made exclamations of surprise (on Henry’s side, probably genuine) and exchanged pleasantries at the door, Strike gathered up his things.

‘Corm,’ said a voice behind him.

‘Hello, Charlotte,’ he said, with his back to her. ‘I’m just leaving.’

‘I need to talk to you. Please. For five minutes.’

‘Afraid I’ve got to be somewhere.’

‘Corm, please. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t – please,’ she said again, more loudly.

He knew she was capable of making a scene if she didn’t get what she wanted. She was a newsworthy woman, and he, too, was now of interest to the papers, and he feared that, if such a scene happened, there would be gossip, and maybe a leak to a journalist.

‘OK, I’ll give you five minutes,’ he said coldly, sitting back down with the last inch of his non-alcoholic beer.

‘Thank you,’ she said breathlessly, and immediately departed for the bar, to buy herself a glass of wine.

She returned within a couple of minutes, shrugged off her black coat to reveal a dark green silk dress, which was cinched at the waist with a heavy black belt, then took the seat Henry had just vacated. She was thinner than he’d ever seen her, though as beautiful as ever, even at the age of forty-one. Her long dark hair fell to beneath her shoulders; her mottled green eyes were fringed with thick, natural lashes, and if she was wearing make-up, it was too subtle to see.

‘I knew you’d be here, as you’ve probably gathered,’ she said, smiling, willing him to smile back, to laugh at her cunning. ‘I suggested this pub to Hen. He’s lovely, isn’t he?’

‘What d’you want?’

‘You’ve lost a ton of weight. You look great.’

‘What,’ Strike repeated, ‘do you want?’

‘To talk.’

‘About…’

‘This is difficult,’ said Charlotte, taking a sip of wine. ‘OK? I need a moment.’

Strike checked his watch. Charlotte glared at him over the rim of her wine glass.

‘OK, fine. I’ve just found out I’ve got cancer.’

Whatever Strike had expected, it wasn’t that. As unpalatable and possibly unjustified as the suspicion might have been, he found himself wondering whether she was lying. He knew her to be not only highly manipulative, but reckless – sometimes self-destructively so – in pursuit of what she wanted.

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said formally.

She looked at him, her colour slowly rising.

‘You think I’m lying, don’t you?’

‘No,’ said Strike. ‘That’d be a fucking despicable thing to lie about.’

‘Yes,’ said Charlotte, ‘it would. Are you going to ask me what kind, or how—?’

‘I thought you were about to tell me,’ said Strike.

‘Breast,’ she said.

‘Right,’ said Strike. ‘Well. I hope you’re OK.’

Tears filled her eyes. He’d seen her cry hundreds of times, out of distress, certainly, but also from rage, and being thwarted, and he wasn’t moved.

‘That’s all you’ve got to say?’

‘What else can I say?’ he said. ‘I do hope you’re OK. For your kids’ sake, apart from anything else.’

‘And that’s… that’s it?’ whispered Charlotte.

Once, she might have started screaming, indifferent to the presence of witnesses, but he could tell she knew that tactic would be unwise now that he wasn’t bound to her.

‘Charlotte,’ he said in a low voice, leaning towards her to make sure he wasn’t overheard, ‘I don’t know how many different ways I can make this clear to you. We’re done. I wish you well, but we’re finished. If you’ve got cancer—’

‘So you do think I’m lying?’

‘Let me finish. If you’ve got cancer, you should be focusing on your health and your loved ones.’

‘My loved ones,’ she repeated. ‘I see.’

She sat back against the leather bench and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. A couple of men at the bar were watching. Perhaps Charlotte, too, had sensed she had an audience, because she now covered her face with her hands and began to sob.

For fuck’s sake.

‘When were you diagnosed?’ he asked her, to stop her crying.

She looked up at once, mopping her sparkling eyes.

‘Last week. Friday.’

‘How?’

‘I went for a routine check on Tuesday, and… yeah, so they phoned me on Friday, and told me they’d found something.’

‘And they already know it’s cancer?’

‘Yes,’ she said, too fast.

‘Well, as I say… I hope you’re OK.’

He made to get up, but she reached across the table and grabbed his wrist tightly.

‘Corm, please hear me out. Seriously. Please. Please. This is life and death. I mean, that makes a person… you remember,’ she whispered, staring into his eyes, ‘after you got your leg blown off… I mean, my God… it makes you realise what’s important. After that, you wanted me. Didn’t you? Wasn’t I the only person in the world you wanted, then?’

‘Did I?’ said Strike, looking into her beautiful face. ‘Or did I just take what was on offer, because it was easiest?’

She recoiled, letting go of his wrist.

All relationships have their own agreed mythology, and central to his and Charlotte’s had been their shared belief that at the lowest point of his life, when he was lying in a hospital bed with half his leg and his military career gone, her return had saved him, giving him something to hold on to, to live for. He knew he’d just shattered a sacred taboo, desecrating what was for her not only a source of pride, but the foundation of her certainty that, however much he might deny it, he continued to love the woman who’d been generous enough to love a mutilated man now career-less and broke.

‘I hope you’ll be OK.’

He got to his feet before she could recover herself enough to retaliate, and walked out, half expecting a beer glass to hit him on the back of the head. By a happy stroke of providence, a vacant black cab slid into view as he stepped out onto the pavement and, barely two minutes after he’d left her, he was speeding away, back towards Denmark Street.

19

Nine at the top means:

The standstill comes to an end.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

‘… a conspiracy so vast, it is literally unseeable, because we live within it, because it forms our sky and our earth, and so the only way – the only way – to escape, is to step, quite literally, into a different reality, the true reality.’

It was Saturday morning. Robin had been sitting in the Rupert Court Temple for three quarters of an hour. Today’s speaker was the man she’d seen lecturing Will Edensor in Berwick Street, who’d introduced himself as Papa J’s son, Taio. This had earned him a smattering of applause, in which Robin joined while recalling Kevin Pirbright’s description of Taio as the UHC’s ‘volatile enforcer’.

Taio, who wore his hair in a dark, straggly bob, had the same large blue eyes as his father, and might also have had Jonathan’s square jaw, had he not been carrying several stone of extra weight, which had added a second chin below the first. He put Robin in mind of an overfed rat: his nose was long and pointed and his mouth unusually small. Taio’s speech was forceful and didactic, and while there were occasional murmurs of agreement from the congregation as he talked, nobody wept and nobody laughed.

In the front row of the temple sat the well-known novelist Giles Harmon, who Robin had recognised when he passed her in the entrance. A short man who wore his silver hair dandyishly long, Harmon had fine, almost delicate features, and carried himself self-consciously, like a man expecting to be watched. He’d been accompanied into the temple by a striking man of around forty, who had black hair, Eurasian features and a deep scar running down from the side of his nose, which was slightly crooked, to his jaw. The pair had moved up the aisle slowly, waving to acquaintances and temple attendants. Unlike Noli Seymour, the two men made no show of humility, but smiled approvingly as temple-goers made way for them, and moved a row back.

Get on with it, Robin thought wearily, as Taio continued to talk. Ryan had stayed over the previous evening, and after sex there’d been a lot of talk, primarily about the risks of going undercover. Robin was neither ignorant nor arrogant enough to think she stood in no need of advice, but her last thought before falling asleep was, thank God I didn’t tell you about the spirit bonding.

At long last, Taio Wace wound up his talk. The applause, while respectable, wasn’t as enthusiastic as it had been for either his father or Becca Pirbright. The temple lights brightened, and David Bowie began to sing again. Robin was deliberately slow to rise from her seat, fumbling over her Gucci handbag, hoping the blonde attendant was going to approach her again. Giles Harmon passed, nodding grandly to the left and right. His taller companion remained near the stage, the centre of a knot of people.

Robin lingered in the aisle, smiling vaguely, looking up at the Prophets painted on the ceiling as though it was the first time she’d seen them. She was almost directly beneath the Drowned Prophet in her white robes, with her malevolent black eyes, when a familiar voice said,

‘Rowena?’

‘Hi!’ said Robin. The blonde who’d previously approached her had appeared, beaming as before and holding a pile of pamphlets that were thicker than those that usually lay on the shelves on the backs of the pews. ‘It’s so great you’re here again!’

‘I know,’ said Robin, smiling back, ‘I don’t seem to be able to stay away, do I?’

As the blonde laughed, Robin became aware of someone standing immediately behind her. Turning, she found herself almost eye to eye with Taio Wace, and experienced a spasm of dislike. She couldn’t remember ever having felt such a strong, immediate antipathy to a man, and it took every ounce of her self-discipline to smile back at him, wide-eyed and friendly, and say,

‘That was so inspiring. Your talk, I mean. I really loved it.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, smiling complacently as he placed a hand lightly on her back. ‘Very glad you enjoyed it.’

‘This is Rowena, Taio,’ said the blonde. ‘I feel like she’s—’

‘Very much a Receptive,’ said Taio Wace, his hand still resting lightly on Robin’s bra strap. ‘Yes, that’s obvious.’

Robin felt a strong impulse to hit his arm away, but stood her ground, smiling.

‘Would you be interested in coming to one of our retreats?’ Taio asked.

‘That’s exactly what I was going to say!’ said the blonde, beaming.

‘What would that involve?’ said Robin, every nerve protesting against the continuing pressure of Taio Wace’s hand on her back.

‘A week of your time,’ he said, gazing into her eyes. ‘At Chapman Farm. To explore things a little more deeply.’

‘Oh, wow,’ said Robin, ‘that sounds interesting…’

‘I think you’d find it very stimulating,’ said Taio.

‘It’s really great,’ the blonde assured Robin. ‘Just to be with nature, and explore ideas and meditate…’

‘Wow,’ said Robin, again.

‘Could you get time off work?’ asked Taio, his hand still on Robin’s back.

‘I’m actually kind of between jobs at the moment,’ said Robin.

‘Perfect timing!’ trilled the blonde.

‘When would this be?’ asked Robin.

‘We’ve got a minibus leaving from outside Victoria Station at 10 a.m. next Friday,’ said the blonde. ‘We’ve actually got three groups coming to Chapman Farm that day. Here…’

She offered Robin one of the pamphlets in her hands.

‘That’s all the information you’ll need, what to bring…’

‘Thanks so much,’ said Robin, smiling. ‘Yes, I’d love to come!’

Taio Wace’s slid his hand down to the small of Robin’s back before breaking contact.

‘We’ll see you on Friday, then,’ he said, and moved away.

‘This is so great,’ said the blonde, embracing Robin, who laughed in surprise. ‘You wait. Honestly, I’ve just got a feeling about you. You’re going to go pure spirit really fast.’

Robin headed for the exit. Another female temple attendant was pressing one of the pamphlets on a thin, brown-skinned young man in glasses and a Spiderman T-shirt. The tall, handsome man with the scarred face was now chatting to one of the charity collectors on the door. As Robin made to pass him, his eyes flickered from her face to the pamphlet in her hand, and he smiled.

‘Looking forward to seeing you at the farm,’ he said, holding out a large, dry hand. ‘Dr Zhou,’ he added, in a tone that said but of course, you knew that.

‘Oh, yes, I can’t wait,’ said Robin, smiling at him.

She was back on Wardour Street before she let her face relax from its fixed smile. After glancing over her shoulder to make sure there were no temple attendants in her vicinity, Robin pulled her mobile out of her handbag and called Strike.

‘Third time lucky… I’m in.’