‘Louise?’ said Robin, alarmed by the sound.
Louise doubled over, her bald head in her hands, and the noise became an animal screech.
‘Louise, don’t!’ said Robin frantically. ‘Please don’t!’
She grabbed Louise by the shoulders.
‘We’ll both be punished again,’ Robin said frantically, certain that screaming from the attic would be investigated by those downstairs, that their only safety was silence and obedience. ‘Stop it! Stop!’
The noise subsided. Louise merely rocked backwards and forwards on her chair, her face still hidden.
‘They’ll be expecting you to leave. Just tell me what to do for him,’ said Robin, her hands still on the older woman’s shoulders. ‘Tell me.’
Louise raised her head, her eyes bloodshot, her looks ruined, her bald head cut in a couple of places where, doubtless, she’d shaved it while exhausted, with her arthritic hands. Had she broken down at any other time, Robin would have felt more compassion than impatience, but all she cared about at this moment was to avoid any more scrutiny or punishment, and least of all did she want to be accused, again, of causing distress in another church member.
‘Tell me what to do,’ she repeated fiercely.
‘There are nappies in there,’ whispered Louise, tears still leaking out of her eyes as she pointed at one of the cardboard boxes, ‘and wipes over there. He won’t need food… give him water in a sippy cup.’ She pointed to one on the window sill. ‘Leave the newspaper down… he sometimes vomits. He has… he has fits sometimes, as well. Try and stop him banging himself on the bars. And there’s a bathroom opposite if you need it.’
Louise dragged herself to her feet and stood for a moment, looking down at the dying child. To Robin’s surprise, she pressed her fingers to her mouth, kissed them, then placed them gently on Jacob’s forehead. Then, in silence, she left the room.
Robin moved slowly towards the hard wooden chair Louise had vacated, her eyes on Jacob, and sat down.
The boy was clearly on the brink of death. This was the most monstrous thing she’d yet seen at Chapman Farm, and she didn’t understand why today, of all days, she’d been sent to care for him. Why order somebody in here who’d lied and broken church rules, and who’d admitted questioning their allegiance to the church?
Exhausted though she was, Robin thought she knew the answer. She was being made complicit in Jacob’s fate. Perhaps the Waces knew, in some long-repressed part of themselves, that hiding this child away, starving him and giving him no access to medical care except the ‘spirit work’ provided by Zhou would be considered criminal in the outside world. Those sent to watch over his steady decline, and who didn’t seek help for him, would surely be considered guilty by the authorities beyond Chapman Farm, if they ever found out what had happened. Robin was being further enfolded in self-silencing, damned by virtue of being in this room, and not seeking help for the child. He might die while she was watching over him, in which case the Waces would have something over her, forever. They’d say it was her fault, no matter the truth.
Quietly and completely unconsciously, Robin began to whisper.
‘Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu… Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu…’
With an effort, she stopped herself.
I mustn’t go mad. I mustn’t go mad.
85
Patience in the highest sense means putting brakes on strength.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Knowing he couldn’t remain in the vicinity of Chapman Farm by daylight without getting his car caught on camera, and certain Robin wouldn’t be able to reach the perimeter until night fell again, Strike had checked himself into one of the guest cabins of nearby Felbrigg Lodge, the only hotel for miles around. He’d intended to catch a few hours’ sleep, yet he, who was usually able to nap on any surface, including floors, found himself far too tightly wound to relax even when lying on the four-poster bed. It felt too incongruous to be lying in a comfortable, genteel room with leaf-patterned cream wallpaper, tartan curtains, a plethora of cushions and a ceramic stag head over the mantelpiece, when his thoughts were this agitated.
He’d talked blithely of ‘coming in the front’ if Robin was out of contact this long, but the absence of the plastic rock made him fear that she’d been identified as a private detective and had now been taken hostage. Taking out his phone, he looked up satellite pictures of Chapman Farm. There were a lot of buildings there, and Strike thought it odds on that some of them had basements or hidden rooms.
He could, of course, contact the police, but Robin had voluntarily entered the church and he might have to jump through a lot of procedural hoops to persuade them it was worth getting a warrant. Strike hadn’t forgotten that there were also UHC centres in Birmingham and Glasgow to which his partner might have been relocated. What if she became the new Deirdre Doherty, of whom no trace could be found, even though the church claimed she’d left thirteen years previously?
Strike’s mobile rang: Barclay.
‘What’s happening?’
‘She didn’t show up last night, either.’
‘Fuck,’ said Barclay. ‘What’s the plan?’
‘I’ll give it tonight, but if she doesn’t show, I’ll call the police.’
‘Aye,’ said Barclay, ‘ye’d better.’
When Barclay had hung up, Strike lay for a while, still telling himself he should sleep while he could, but after twenty minutes he gave up. Having made himself a cup of tea with the kettle provided, he stood for a few minutes looking out of one of the windows, through which he could see a wooden hot tub belonging to his cabin.
His mobile rang again: Shanker.
‘What’s up?’
‘You owe me a monkey.’
‘You’ve got intel on Reaney’s phone call?’
‘Yeah. It was made from a number wiv area code 01263. Woman contacted the prison, said she was ’is wife and it was urgent—’
‘It was definitely a woman?’ said Strike, scribbling down the number.
‘Screw says it sounded like one. They agreed a time for ’er to call ’im. Claimed she wasn’t at ’ome and didn’t want ’im ’aving ’er friend’s number. ’S’all I could get.’
‘All right, the monkey’s yours. Cheers.’
Shanker rang off. Glad to have something to do for a few minutes other than agonise about what had happened to Robin, Strike looked up the area code in question. It covered a large area including Cromer, Lion’s Mouth, Aylmerton, and even the lodge he was currently sitting in.
Having removed a few cushions, Strike sat down on the sofa, vaping, drinking tea and willing the hours to pass quickly, so he could return to Chapman Farm.
86
Six in the fourth place means:
Waiting in blood.
Get out of the pit.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Robin had been sitting with Jacob all day. He had, indeed, had a fit: she’d tried to stop him hurting himself against the cot bars, and finally he’d grown limp and she’d laid him gently back down. She’d changed his nappy three times, putting the soiled ones into the black bin bag sitting there for that purpose, and tried to give him water, but he seemed unable to swallow.
At midday she’d been brought food by one of the teenage girls who’d stood vigil outside the temple four nights previously. The girl said nothing to her, and kept her eyes averted from Jacob. Barring this one interruption, Robin was left entirely alone. She could hear people moving around in the farmhouse below, and knew she was only allowed this solitude because it would be impossible for her to creep back down the farmhouse stairs without being apprehended. Her fatigue kept threatening to overwhelm her; several times, she nodded off in the hard wooden chair and jerked awake as she slid sideways.
As the hours wore on, she took to reading pages of the newspaper spread over the floor in an attempt to stay awake. Thus she learned that the Prime Minister, David Cameron, had resigned after the country had voted to leave the EU, that Theresa May had now taken his place and that that Chilcot Inquiry had found that the UK had entered the Iraq War before peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted.
The information Robin had been denied for so long, information unfiltered by Jonathan Wace’s interpretation, had a peculiar effect on her. It felt as though it came from a different galaxy, making her feel her isolation even more acutely, yet at the same time, it pulled her mentally back towards the outer world, the place where nobody knew what ‘flesh objects’ were, or dictated what you wore and ate, or attempted to regulate the language in which you thought and spoke.
Now two contradictory impulses battled inside her. The first was allied to her exhaustion; it urged caution and compliance and urged her to chant to drive everything else from her mind. It recalled the dreadful hours in the box and whispered that the Waces were capable of worse than that, if she broke any more rules. But the second asked her how she could return to her daily tasks knowing that a small boy was being slowly starved to death behind the farmhouse walls. It reminded her that she’d managed to slip out of the dormitory by night many times without being caught. It urged her to take the risk one more time, and escape.
She was brought a second bowl of noodles and a glass of water at dinner time, this time by a boy who also kept his gaze carefully averted from Jacob and looked repulsed by the smell in the room, to which Robin had become acclimatised.
Dusk arrived, and Robin had now read almost all of the newspapers lying on the floor. Not wanting to put on the electric light in case it disturbed the child in the cot, she got up and moved to the small dormer window to continue reading an article about Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Having finished this, she turned the page over and saw the headline SOCIALITE DIED IN BATH, INQUEST TOLD, before realising that the picture below was of Charlotte Ross.