‘Got it,’ said Strike. ‘Thanks for your time.’
He sat for another minute, thinking. Of course, the phone call from an unknown woman posing as Reaney’s wife might have had nothing whatsoever to do with Reaney’s suicide attempt; the connection might just be an assumption of Shanker’s mate’s.
His mobile rang again: the office number.
‘Hi Pat.’
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Will you be coming back to the office this afternoon?’
‘In a bit. I’m having a late lunch at the Flying Horse. Why?’
‘I wanted a word with you.’
‘What kind of word?’ said Strike, frowning as he rubbed his sore eyes.
‘Well,’ said Pat, ‘I don’t think you’re going to like it.’
‘What is it?’ said Strike, now on the verge of losing his temper.
‘I just need to tell you something.’
‘Can you tell me what it is now?’ said Strike, whose neck was rigid with tension.
‘I’d rather say it face to face.’
What on earth the office manager needed to communicate in person Strike couldn’t imagine. However, he had a dim idea that if he employed a human resources person they’d advise him to accede to the request, and possibly not swear at Pat.
‘Fine, come up to the pub, I’m waiting for a burger,’ he said.
‘All right. I’ll see you in five minutes.’
The office manager and Strike’s burger arrived at exactly the same time. Pat took the seat Bijou had just vacated and Strike’s unease increased, because the expression on Pat’s monkeyish face was frightened, and she was clutching her handbag tightly on her lap, as though in self-protection.
‘Want a drink?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Pat.
Much as he wanted his chips, Strike felt he ought to hear Pat out before eating.
‘Go on,’ he said. ‘What’s up?’
Pat swallowed.
‘I’m sixty-seven.’
‘You’re what?’
‘Sixty-seven. Years old,’ she added.
Strike merely looked at her.
‘I lied,’ croaked Pat. ‘On my CV.’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘You did.’
‘Well, I had to. Nobody wants anyone my age.’
Strike suspected he might know the reason Pat had suddenly come clean.
‘I’m fired, aren’t I?’ she said.
‘Oh Christ, don’t cry,’ said Strike, seeing her lip tremble: one bawling woman a day was enough. ‘Littlejohn knows this, I take it?’
‘How did you know that?’ gasped Pat.
‘Has he been blackmailing you?’
‘Not until just now,’ said Pat, retrieving a handkerchief from her handbag and pressing it against her eyes. ‘He told me he knew, right after he started with us. I couldn’t tell you without admitting how old I am, could I?
‘But I was in the loo just now and when I went in the office he was there, and he had the Edensor file and I think he was going to take photos of it, because he had his phone out. I said to him, “What the hell d’you think you’re doing?” and he closed the file and said, “You didn’t see that, and I’ll forget you’re a pensioner, all right?”’
‘You don’t think he got pictures?’
‘No, I heard him pass the loo. He wouldn’t have had time.’
Strike picked up a couple of chips and ate them, while Pat watched him. When Strike didn’t speak, she repeated,
‘I’m fired, aren’t I?’
‘You should’ve told me.’
‘You wouldn’t have hired me if I’d told the truth,’ said Pat, tears now falling faster than she could wipe them away.
‘I’m not talking about then, I’m talking about now. Stop bloody crying, you’re not fired. Where’m I going to get another manager like you?’
‘Oh,’ said Pat, and, pressing the handkerchief to her face, she began to cry in earnest.
Strike got to his feet and went to the bar, buying a glass of port, which was Pat’s preferred drink, and returning to set it down in front of her.
‘Why the hell d’you want to keep working at sixty-seven?’
‘’Cause I like working,’ gulped Pat, frantically wiping her face. ‘I get bored, sitting at home.’
‘Me too,’ said Strike, who’d been making certain deductions while at the bar. ‘So how old’s your daughter?’
‘Just turned fifty,’ muttered Pat. ‘I had her young.’
‘That’s why you bit my head off when I asked?’
Pat nodded.
‘Is she on Facebook?’
‘Never off it,’ said Pat, reaching for her port with an unsteady hand.
‘Then—’
‘Yeah. I’ll ask Rhoda. She’ll like helping,’ said Pat, taking a shaky sip of port.
‘Where’s Littlejohn now?’
‘He left. I made sure he’d really gone before I called you. He got in a taxi at the end of the road. He wasn’t happy I caught him. He’s off for a week now,’ said Pat, blowing her nose. ‘They’re going to Greece on holiday.’
‘By the time I’ve finished with him he’ll wish he’d bloody stayed there.’
He started on his burger. When Pat had finished her drink, she said,
‘Better get back, I was halfway through next week’s rota… thanks, Cormoran.’
‘You’re welcome,’ said Strike, through a mouthful of burger. Pat left.
Strike knew full well he was guilty of an inconsistency. He’d damned Littlejohn on the principle that where there was one lie, there were more, but he was confident that Pat’s lie hadn’t been born of a fundamental lack of honesty. Quite the reverse: she was often far too honest for his liking. In the early days of her employment he’d have jumped at the chance to fire her, but time had brought about a complete revolution in his feelings: now, he’d have been extremely loath to lose her. Nevertheless, he thought, as he reached absently for more chips, he might delay the pay rise he’d been planning to give her. Forgiveness was one thing, but it was a poor management strategy to reward employees for coming clean only when they were forced to do so.
For the next ten minutes, Strike was left alone to enjoy his burger. When at last he’d finished eating, he reached for his mobile and called Shanker back.
‘I want to trace the call Reaney got, before he overdosed. D’you know any bent screws up in Bedford?’
‘There’s always bent screws, Bunsen,’ said Shanker, cynical as ever.
‘Five hundred for you and five hundred for them, if they can give me any solid information about that call,’ said Strike recklessly, ‘particularly the number it was made from.’
71
Even in the midst of danger there come intervals of peace…
If we possess enough inner strength, we shall take advantage of these intervals…
The I Ching or Book of Changes
In spite of Robin’s gentle probing, Jiang had revealed nothing more about Daiyu or Jacob during their search for Mazu’s mother-of-pearl fish, nor had he told Robin which person had allegedly reappeared at Chapman Farm after a long absence. All she’d learned for certain was that Jiang’s inner life was dominated by two preoccupations: a sense of injury that his brother had gone so far in the church while he was relegated to the status of farmhand and chauffeur, and a prurient interest in the sex lives of other church members, which appeared to spring from the frustration he felt at his own exclusion from the Retreat Rooms. However, their meeting in the woods had definitely left Jiang feeling more kindly towards Robin than hitherto, and this was some comfort, because Robin felt she needed all the allies she could get.
She had no doubt that Becca had hidden Mazu’s fish beneath her mattress. Robin had seen Becca’s expression of confusion and anger when the fish was found in the long grass by a triumphant Walter, and her immediate, accusatory glance at Robin. Exactly what had provoked Becca to try and incriminate her, Robin didn’t know, but her best guess was that Becca, like Taio, suspected some kind of alliance had been forged between Emily and Robin in Norwich, and that she was consequently determined to see Robin disgraced, punished, or even moved on from Chapman Farm.
Becca was a formidable enemy to have made. Robin worried that it might not take much to break the silence of Lin, Jiang or Vivienne if Becca pressed them for any incriminating information they might have on Robin. Unauthorised trips to the woods, possession of a torch, the fact that she’d answered to her real name: Robin had enough respect for Becca’s intelligence to know it wouldn’t take her long to guess that ‘Rowena’ was an undercover investigator. While Robin had told Strike about the pendant in her last letter, she’d again omitted mention of Lin discovering her in the woods, and her foolish slip in front of Vivienne.
As if this wasn’t enough to fret about, Robin was also aware that for every day she failed to seek Taio out and offer him sex, her status at Chapman Farm was worsening. Taio glowered at her from afar as she moved round the farm, and she was starting to fear an outright demand for spirit bonding which, if refused, would certainly produce some kind of crisis. Yet hour to hour, day to day, Robin clung on, in the hope she might yet get more information out of Emily or Jiang, or find an opportunity to talk to Will Edensor.
Meanwhile, Noli Seymour, Dr Zhou and the rest of the church Principals had all descended on the farm. Robin understood from overheard conversations that the Manifestation of the Drowned Prophet, which was fast approaching, usually drew the entire council to the church’s birthplace. While Dr Zhou remained cloistered in his luxurious office and Giles Harmon continued to spend most of each day typing in his bedroom, visible to everyone who crossed the courtyard, Noli and a couple of the men donned white tracksuits like the ordinary members. While they didn’t lower themselves to sleeping in the dormitories, all three could be seen moving around the farm working at various tasks, each with an air of conscious virtue and often with an ineptitude that would have drawn fierce criticism down upon any other church member.
Robin, who was still existing in a strange limbo somewhere between high-level recruit and manual worker, was sent to help cook dinner one evening, after a long session on church doctrine led by Mazu. She entered the kitchen to see Will Edensor chopping a mound of onions. Having donned an apron, she headed to help him without waiting to be given orders.