However, the sitting room was looking less barren than usual tonight. Not only were Robin’s three houseplants, which she’d asked Murphy to keep alive while she was at Chapman Farm, standing on a side table, there was also a single framed print on the wall, and lit candles on the table among the foil trays of food.
‘You’ve decorated,’ she said.
‘D’you like it?’ he said.
‘It’s a map,’ said Robin, moving to look at the picture.
‘An antique map.’
‘Of London.’
‘But it’s antique. Which makes it classy.’
Robin laughed and turned to look at her plants.
‘And you’ve kept these really—’
‘I’m not gonna lie. Two of them died. I bought replacements. That one –’ he pointed at the philodendron which Strike had bought Robin as a housewarming present ‘– must be bloody hard to kill. It’s the sole survivor.’
‘Well, I appreciate the replacements,’ said Robin, ‘and thank you for saving Phyllis.’
‘Did they all have names?’
‘Yes,’ said Robin, though this wasn’t actually true. ‘But I won’t be calling the new ones after dead ones. Too morbid.’
She now noticed Murphy’s laptop sitting on the table, beside the curry and plates.
‘Are the videos on there?’
‘Yeah,’ said Murphy.
‘Have you watched them?’
‘Yeah. D’you want to wait until after we’ve had dinner to—?’
‘No,’ said Robin. ‘I’d rather get it over with. We can watch while we’re eating.’
So they sat down together at the table. As Murphy poured her a glass of wine and Robin heaped her plate with chicken and rice, he said,
‘Listen, before we watch – what they’re saying is clearly bullshit.’
‘Weirdly, I already know that,’ said Robin, trying to sound light-hearted.
‘No, I mean, it’s clearly bullshit,’ said Murphy. ‘They aren’t convincing – there’s only one who sounds like she might be for real, but then she goes off on a bloody weird tangent.’
‘Who?’
‘Becca some—’
‘Pirbright,’ said Robin. Her pulse had started racing again. ‘Yes, I’m sure Becca’s convincing.’
‘She just speaks more naturally than the others. If she didn’t go off into the batshit stuff at the end, you’d think she was credible. You’ll see what I mean when we watch it.’
‘Who else gave statements?’
‘An older woman called Louise and a younger one called Vivienne.’
‘Louise gave evidence against me?’ said Robin furiously. ‘I’d have expected it of Vivienne, she’s desperate to be a spirit wife, but Louise?’
‘Look, with both of them, it’s like they’re working off a script. I couldn’t get footage of the kid accusing you, my contact wouldn’t hand it over. Can’t really blame him – it’s a seven-year-old. I shouldn’t even have these. But I’m told the kid behaved as though he’d been coached.’
‘OK,’ said Robin, taking a large swig of wine. ‘Show me Becca.’
Murphy clicked on a folder, then on one of the video files inside, and Robin saw a police interview room, viewed from above. The camera was fixed in a corner near the ceiling. A large, solid-looking policeman was visible, back to the camera, so that his tonsure-like bald patch caught the light.
‘I think that’s one of the guys who interviewed me at Felbrigg Lodge,’ said Robin.
Murphy pressed play. A female officer led Becca into the room and gestured her towards an empty chair. Becca’s dark hair was as shiny as ever, her creamy skin unblemished, her smile diffident and humble. In her clean blue tracksuit and very white trainers, she might have been a youth leader at some harmless summer camp.
The male officer told Becca the interview was being recorded and she nodded. He asked for her full name, and then how long she’d lived at Chapman Farm.
‘Since I was eight,’ said Becca.
‘And you look after the children?’
‘I’m not often involved directly in childcare, but I oversee our home-schooling programme,’ said Becca.
‘Oh, please,’ Robin said to the onscreen Becca. ‘What home-schooling programme? “The pure spirit knows acceptance is more important than understanding”.’
‘… involve?’ said the female officer.
‘Making sure we’re complying with all Ofsted—’
‘Total shit,’ Robin said loudly. ‘When do materialist inspectors get into Chapman Farm?’
Murphy paused the video.
‘What?’ said Robin.
‘If you keep talking over her,’ said Murphy mildly, ‘you’re not going to hear it.’
‘Sorry,’ said Robin in frustration. ‘I just – it’s hard, hearing their crap again. Those kids aren’t being educated, they’re being brainwashed. Sorry. Go on. I’ll keep quiet.’
She took a large mouthful of curry and Murphy restarted the video.
‘—requirements. Members with particular skill sets take classes, after being background checked, obviously. We’ve got a couple of fully qualified primary school teachers, but we’ve also got a professor who’s introducing the children to basic philosophical concepts, and a very talented sculptor who leads them in art projects.’ Becca gave a deprecating little laugh. ‘They’re probably getting the best primary-age education in the country! We’ve been so lucky with the people who join us. I remember, last year, I was worried our maths teaching might be a little behind, and then we had a maths postgrad arrive at the farm and he looked over the children’s work and told me he’d seen worse scores at A-Level!’
Robin remembered the Portakabin where those closed-down children sat with their shaven heads, mindlessly colouring pictures of the Stolen Prophet with his noose around his neck. She remembered the dearth of books in the classroom and the spelling on the picture captioned ‘Aks tre’.
Yet Becca’s manner was indeed convincing. She came across as an enthusiastic and diligent educator, a little nervous about speaking to the police, of course, but with nothing at all to hide, and determined to do her duty.
‘It’s just incredibly troubling,’ she said earnestly. ‘We’ve never had anything like this happen before. Actually, we aren’t even certain her name was really Rowena Ellis.’
Robin now saw the real Becca peeping out from behind the careful, innocent façade: her dark eyes were watchful, trying to wheedle information out of the police. From the datestamp on the video, she knew this interview had taken place late on the afternoon following her escape from Chapman Farm: at that point, the church must have been scrambling for information on who Robin had really been.
‘What makes you think she was using a fake name?’ asked the female officer.
‘One of our members heard her answering to “Robin”,’ said Becca, watching the officers for any reaction. ‘Not that that’s necessarily indicative – I mean, we had another woman at the farm once, who used a fake name, but she couldn’t have been more—’
‘Let’s go back to the beginning,’ said the male officer. ‘Where were you when the incident took place?’
‘In the kitchens,’ said Becca, ‘helping prepare dinner.’
Robin, who’d never once seen Becca help prepare dinner or do any of the more menial tasks around the farm, bit back another scathing comment. Doubtless this activity had been selected to present a hard-working, down-to-earth persona.
‘When did you first become aware that something had happened?’
‘Well, Vivienne came into the kitchen, looking for Jacob—’
‘How could Jacob have been walking?’ said Robin angrily. ‘He was dying! Sorry,’ she added quickly, as Murphy’s hand moved towards the mouse. She took a gulp of wine.
‘—and Louise had been supervising some of the children on the vegetable patch, and Jacob hurt himself with a trowel. Apparently Rowena offered to take him into the kitchens to wash the cut and put a sticking plaster on it – we keep a first aid kit in there.
‘When they didn’t come back, Vivienne went to look for them, but of course, they hadn’t come into the kitchen at all. I thought it was strange, but I wasn’t worried at that point. I told Vivienne to return to the other children, and I’d go and look for Rowena and Jacob, which I did. I thought perhaps Jacob had needed the bathroom, so that’s where I looked first. I opened the door and—’
Becca shook her head and closed her dark eyes: a woman shocked and scandalised.
‘I didn’t understand what I was seeing,’ she said quietly, opening her eyes again. ‘Rowena and Jacob were there, he had his pants and trousers down, crying – they weren’t in a cubicle, they were in the sink area. When he saw me, he ran to me and said, “Becca, Becca, she hurt me!”’
‘And what did Rowena do?’
‘Well, she just pushed past me without saying anything. I was obviously much more concerned about Jacob, at the time. I said I was sure Rowena hadn’t hurt him on purpose, but then he told me about how she’d pulled his trousers and pants down and exposed his genitalia, and then she was trying to take a picture—’
‘How?’ exploded Robin. ‘What was I taking a picture with? I wasn’t allowed a bloody phone or a – sorry, don’t pause, don’t pause,’ she added hastily to Murphy.
‘—and hit him round the head, when he wouldn’t stand still,’ Becca said. ‘And, I mean, we take child safeguarding incredibly seriously within the church—’
‘Sure you do,’ said Robin furiously, unable to control herself, ‘toddlers wandering around in nappies at night—’
‘—never had any instances of sexual abuse at Chapman Farm—’
‘Strange words,’ shouted Robin, to the onscreen Becca, ‘from a woman who said her brother sexually abused her there!’
Murphy paused the video again.
‘You all right?’ he said gently, putting a hand on Robin’s shoulder.
‘Yes – no – well, obviously, I’m not,’ said Robin, standing up and running her hands through her hair. ‘It’s bullshit, it’s all bullshit, and she—’
She pointed at the onscreen Becca, who was frozen with her mouth open, but Robin couldn’t find words to adequately express her contempt.