‘Shall we watch the rest after—?’ Murphy began.
‘No,’ said Robin, dropping back down into her seat, ‘sorry, I’m just so bloody angry. The boy she’s talking about isn’t Jacob! Where’s the real one? Is he dead? Is he starving away in the b-base—?’
Robin began to cry.
‘Shit,’ said Murphy, moving his chair so he could put his arms around her. ‘Robin, I shouldn’t’ve shown you this crap, I should’ve just told you they’re speaking a load of bollocks and you’ve got nothing to worry about.’
‘It’s fine, it’s fine,’ Robin said, pulling herself together. ‘I want to watch it… she might say something useful… the woman with the fake name…’
‘Cherie?’ said Murphy.
Robin pulled free of his hug.
‘She names her?’
‘Yeah, towards the end. That’s where it all goes a bit…’
Robin got up and strode to her bag to fetch her notebook and pen.
‘Cherie’s the woman Strike and I interviewed today.’
‘OK,’ said Murphy uncertainly. ‘Let’s fast-forward, watch the Cherie bit and forget the rest of it.’
‘Fine,’ said Robin, sitting back down with her notebook. ‘Sorry,’ she added, wiping her eyes again, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’
‘Yeah, it’s like you’ve just escaped from a cult or something.’
But Robin couldn’t adequately explain to Murphy how it felt to listen to these naked lies covering up terrible neglect, or the fabricated story of sexual abuse, when all she’d done was to care for and try to save a dying child; the gulf between what the UHC pretended to be, and what it really was, had never been more starkly apparent to her, and a small part of her would have liked to scream and throw Murphy’s laptop across the room, but instead she pressed out the nib of her pen, and waited.
Murphy fast-forwarded, and together they watched Becca gesticulating, shaking her head and nodding at double time.
‘Too far,’ muttered Murphy, ‘she brushed her hair off her face before…’
He rewound and finally pressed play.
‘… other woman with a false name?’ said the female police officer.
‘Oh,’ said Becca, sweeping her shining hair off her face, ‘yes. I mention her because she was an actual instrument of the divine.’
Robin could almost feel the two police officers resisting the urge to look at each other. The male policeman cleared his throat.
‘What d’you mean by that?’
‘Cherie was a messenger of the Blessed Divinity, sent to take Daiyu, our prophet, to the sea. Cherie confided her purpose to me—’
Robin began scribbling in her notebook.
‘—and I trusted her, and I was right to. What seemed wrong was right, you see? Papa J will confirm everything I’m saying,’ Becca continued, in exactly the same earnest and reasonable a tone as she’d used throughout the interview. ‘I’m pure spirit, which means I understand that what might seem devilish may be divine, and vice—’
‘See what I m—?’ began Murphy.
‘Shh,’ said Robin urgently, listening.
‘Cherie came, attained her purpose, and then she left us.’
‘Died, you mean?’ said the male officer.
‘There is no death, in the sense the material world means when it uses the word,’ said Becca, smiling. ‘No, she left the farm. I believe she’ll come back to us one day, and bring her little girls, too.’ Becca gave a small laugh. ‘I can tell this sounds strange to you, but that’s all right. Papa J always says—’
‘“I’d rather face an honest sceptic than a hundred who believe they know God, but are really in thrall to their own piety,”’ said Robin, repeating the words along with Becca.
‘I’m trying to explain,’ continued Becca, onscreen, ‘that my personal connection to the Drowned Prophet, and my relationship with the divine vessel, who suffered and was blameless, means I was very ready to hear Rowena’s explanation of what had happened. I would have extended understanding and compassion… but she didn’t stay to explain,’ said Becca, her smile fading. ‘She ran, and a man was waiting for her on the outskirts of the farm, in a car. He picked her up, and they drove away. So it’s hard not to think that she and this man were plotting something together, isn’t it? Were they hoping to abduct a child? Has she been trying to get pictures of naked children, to send to this man?’
‘The rest is just her crapping on about how fishy it was you ran for it,’ said Murphy, shutting down the video. ‘You all right?’
‘Yes,’ said Robin quietly, reaching for her wine. She drank half the glass before saying. ‘I suppose it’s just a shock.’
‘Of course it is, being accused—’
‘No, not that… I suppose I’ve just realised… she believes. She believes in the whole thing and – she genuinely she thinks she’s a good person.’
‘Well,’ said Murphy, ‘I s’pose that’s a cult for you.’
He closed the laptop.
‘Eat your curry.’
But Robin looked down at her notes.
‘I will. I just need to call Strike.’
100
Nine in the second place means:
Dragon appearing in the field.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Strike was walking slowly back up Charing Cross Road from Chinatown, where he’d eaten a solitary evening meal in a restaurant on Wardour Street. Looking down into the darkening street while eating his Singapore noodles, he’d watched a couple of people in blue tracksuits passing at a slow walk, deep in conversation, before turning into Rupert Court. He couldn’t make out their faces, but was ill-natured enough to hope they were fretting about the private detective who’d been undercover at their precious farm for four months.
A familiar faint depression settled over him as he made his way back to the office. The knowledge that Robin was currently at Murphy’s flat watching those interview tapes had formed a dispiriting backdrop to his meal. Vaping morosely as the traffic passed him, he acknowledged to himself that he’d thought Robin might call him after watching the interviews. Of course, Murphy was on hand to offer succour and support now…
His mobile rang. He pulled it out of his pocket, saw Robin’s number and answered.
‘Can you talk?’ she said.
‘Yeah, I’ve been doing it for years.’
‘Very funny. Are you busy?’
‘No. Go on.’
‘I’ve just watched the police interview with Becca Pirbright and she said some odd things about Cherie. Carrie, I mean.’
‘How the hell did Carrie come up?’
‘As an example of how the devilish may sometimes be divine.’
‘I’m going to need footnotes.’
‘She was explaining how she’d have been happy to hear my explanation of what I did to Jacob, because she once knew a divine vessel who did something that seemed awful but was actually – you get the gist. Then she said Carrie “confided her purpose” to her.’
‘Very interesting,’ said Strike.
‘And she knows Carrie’s got daughters. She said, “I believe she’ll come back to us one day, and bring her little girls, too.”’
Strike, who was crossing the road, pondered this for a few moments.
‘Are you still there?’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike.
‘What d’you think?’
‘I think that’s even more interesting than her “confiding her purpose” to an eleven-year-old.’
As he turned into Denmark Street he said,
‘So the church kept tabs on Cherie after she left? It’ll have taken them a fair bit of work, as I know. I told you Jordan Reaney got a mysterious phone call from Norfolk before trying to top himself, didn’t I?’
‘Yes – why’s that relev—? Oh… you mean the church kept tabs on him, too?’
‘Exactly,’ said Strike. ‘So do they do this to everyone who leaves, or only to people they know are particularly dangerous to them?’
‘They managed to trace Kevin to his rented flat, as well… you know they killed Kevin,’ Robin added, when Strike didn’t say anything.
‘We don’t know it,’ he said, as he unlocked the main door to the office. ‘Not yet. But I’ll accept it as a working hypothesis.’
‘And what about those letters Ralph Doherty kept tearing up after he and the kids left the farm, even after they’d moved to a different town and changed their surname?’
Strike started climbing the stairs.
‘So, what have all those people got in common, other than having been members of the UHC?’
‘They’re all connected to the drownings of Deirdre and Daiyu,’ said Robin.
‘Reaney’s connection’s tenuous,’ said Strike. ‘He overslept; that’s it. Kevin’s connection’s shaky, too. He was, what – six, when Daiyu died? And I doubt the church knows what Emily said to him about her suspicions. Was he old enough to attend the Manifestation where we think Deirdre drowned?’
‘Yes,’ said Robin, doing some rapid mental calculations. ‘He’d have been thirteen or fourteen when it happened.’
‘Which is strange,’ said Strike, ‘because he seemed to buy the line about her taking off of her own accord.’
‘OK,’ said Robin, who could hear Strike’s footsteps on the metal stairs, ‘well, I’ll see you tomorrow, anyway. I just wanted to tell you about Cherie.’
‘Yeah, thanks. Definitely something to think about.’
Robin rang off. Strike continued to climb until he reached the office door. He’d gone directly to Chinatown after Robin had dropped him off, which meant this was his first opportunity to examine the lock since Littlejohn had been fired. Strike turned on his phone torch and bent down.
‘I thought so, you fucker,’ he murmured.
The expensive new lock, which was skeleton-key resistant, had gained new scratches since that morning. A tiny fleck of paint had also been chipped away beside it. Somebody, Strike surmised, had made strenuous efforts to force the door.
He now looked up at the second precaution he’d taken against Patterson’s revenge. The tiny camera sat in a dark corner near the ceiling, almost invisible unless you knew what you were looking for.