‘Let him go to McCabes,’ said Strike indifferently. ‘He’s an arsehole. Anyway, until we’ve got a replacement for Littlejohn, we haven’t got the manpower.’
He ticked ‘Hampstead’ off the list.
‘Which brings us to Patterson Inc.’
‘Or, as they’re now known, Royally Fucked Inc,’ said Barclay. ‘Patterson’s been charged, did ye see that?’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘Turns out, if you’re going to illegally bug an office, best not to do it to a leading barrister. Hope Patterson enjoys prison food. Anyway, I’ve now had three job applications from people struggling to get off the sinking Patterson ship. I’ll check with Shah and see if any of them are worth an interview. I’m happy to forgo the pleasure of working with Navabi, given how shit she is at surveillance. However, her pitch for the job was that she’d be the ideal person to get into Zhou’s clinic.’
‘The fuck does she know we’re trying to get in there?’ asked Barclay.
‘Because she was in there herself, while Patterson Inc were still doing the UHC case, and that explains Littlejohn’s insistence he had something else for me – presumably she told him what she saw in there.’
‘You’re not going to get anything out of Littlejohn now,’ said Midge.
‘I know,’ said Strike, crossing ‘Patterson’ off the list, ‘but this makes me even keener than I was to get a woman into that bloody clinic – it’s got to be a woman, Navabi said it was ninety per cent women there. I just don’t think you fit the profile, Midge,’ Strike added, as the subcontractor opened her mouth, ‘we need someone—’
‘I wasn’t gonna suggest me,’ said Midge, ‘I was gonna say, we’ve got the ideal person.’
‘Robin can’t do it, she—’
‘I know that, Strike, I’m not fookin’ stupid. Tasha.’
‘Tasha,’ repeated Strike.
‘Tasha. She’s the type, isn’t she? Actress, got a bit of money. Her play’s finished as well. She’d do it for us, no problem. She’s dead grateful for—’
‘Still in touch with her, are you?’ said Strike.
Barclay and Robin both reached for their coffees and drank in perfect synchronicity.
‘Yeah,’ said Midge. ‘She’s not a client any more. Not a problem, is it?’
Strike caught Pat’s eye.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not a problem.’
102
Inquire of the oracle once again
Whether you possess sublimity, constancy, and perseverance;
Then there is no blame.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
The meeting had concluded. Pat returned to the office with Barclay, who had receipts to file, and Midge left to ask Tasha Mayo whether she’d be prepared to enjoy a week at the exclusive clinic of Dr Andy Zhou, expenses paid by the agency.
‘Want a coffee?’ Strike asked Robin.
‘OK,’ said Robin, even though she’d just had two.
They walked together to Frith Street and Bar Italia, which lay across the road from Ronnie Scott’s jazz club, and which Strike preferred to Starbucks. While he was buying their drinks, Robin sat at one of the round metal tables, watching the passers-by and wishing she was any one of them.
‘You all right?’ Strike said, once he’d set the drinks on the table and sat down. He knew perfectly well what the answer was, but was unable to think of any other opening. Robin took a sip of her cappuccino before saying,
‘I just keep thinking about her daughters.’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘I know.’
Both watched the cars pass for a moment or two, before Strike said,
‘Look—’
‘Don’t tell me we didn’t make it happen.’
‘Well, I am going to tell you that, because we didn’t.’
‘Strike—’
‘She did it. She chose to do it.’
‘Yes – because of us.’
‘We asked questions. That’s the job.’
‘That’s exactly what Ryan said. “That’s the job.”’
‘Well, he’s not wrong,’ said Strike. ‘Do I feel good about what happened? No. But we didn’t put the rope round her neck. She did that herself.’
Robin, who’d done a lot of crying when not at work in the last two days, had no tears left to shed. The terrible burden of guilt she’d carried with her ever since Strike had told her that the mother of two had been found hanged in the family’s garage wasn’t eased by his words. She kept visualising the picture stuck to Carrie Curtis Woods’ fridge door, of two figures hand in hand in princess dresses: Me and Mummy.
‘We went to interview her,’ said Strike, ‘because a seven-year-old child who was in her care vanished off the face of the earth. D’you think Carrie should’ve been able to walk away from that and never answer any questions, ever again?’
‘She’d already answered questions from the police and at the inquest. It was over, it was behind her, she had a happy life and a family, and we went raking it all up again… I feel as though they’ve made me one of them,’ Robin added quietly.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’ve become an agent of infection for the church. I carried the virus back to Carrie and this time she didn’t survive it.’
‘With respect,’ said Strike, ‘that’s complete bollocks. We’re just going to ignore the neon elephant in the room, are we? If Carrie was going to kill herself because of what the church did to her, it’d have happened in the last two decades. This wasn’t about the church. There was something she didn’t want to face, something she couldn’t stand people knowing, and that’s not our fault.’
‘But—’
‘What I want to know,’ said Strike, ‘is who called her that morning, before we arrived. Did the police ask you about that mobile number her husband didn’t recognise?’
‘Yes,’ said Robin dully. ‘It could have been anyone. Wrong number.’
‘Except that she called it back, after we left.’
‘Oh,’ said Robin. ‘They didn’t tell me that.’
‘They didn’t tell me, either. I read it upside down on the notes of the guy who was interviewing me. Reaney got a call shortly after I interviewed him, and he then started amassing sleeping pills. I never checked whether he’d had one before I met him, but it looks like the church is warning people we’re on the prowl, and demanding to be told what was said, afterwards.’
‘That implies the church knew we were going to Cherie’s that day.’
‘They could’ve seen she was back from holiday, from Facebook, and wanted to tell her to take the meeting when we turned up. I had the feeling when we introduced ourselves she wasn’t completely surprised to see us. Panicked, yeah. Not entirely surprised.’
Robin made no answer. Strike watched her take another sip of coffee. She’d tied back her hair; the expensive haircut she’d had before going to the Rupert Court Temple had long since grown out, and it hadn’t yet occurred to Robin to visit a hairdresser.
‘What d’you want to do?’ said Strike, watching her.
‘What d’you mean?’ she said.
‘D’you want to take another few days off?’
‘No,’ said Robin. More time to spend dwelling on her guilt about Carrie and her anxiety about the child abuse charges was the very last thing she wanted.
‘D’you feel up to talking about the case?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Get anything on Walter Fernsby’s and Marion Huxley’s kids?’
‘Not much,’ said Robin, forcing herself to focus. ‘I spoke to Marion’s elder daughter and, bottom line, it definitely can’t be Marion who’s gone back to the farm after years away. While her husband was alive, she hardly ever left Barnsley. After Marion disappeared, the family checked the PC she used at work, and she’d been watching Wace videos non-stop. They think she must have attended a meeting. Now they’re getting letters from Marion that don’t sound like her, telling them she wants to sell the undertakers and give all the profits to the UHC.’
‘And Walter?’
‘The only child I’ve been able to contact is his son, Rufus. He works for the Institute of Civil Engineers. The moment I mentioned Walter, he hung up.’
‘Maybe he’s been getting the same “sell everything, I want to give it to the church” letters as Marion’s daughter?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Well, I found something last night, too, after Hampstead Heath went home.’
Strike pulled out his phone, typed in a couple of words, then handed it to Robin, who found herself looking at a picture of a tall man with a long jaw and steel-grey hair, who was pictured mid-speech on stage, his arms stretched wide. Robin didn’t immediately understand why she was being shown the picture until she saw the caption: Joe Jackson of the UHC, speaking at the Climate Change Conference, 2015.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Joe, from the Polaroids?’
‘Could well be. He’s based at the San Francisco centre these days. He’s the right kind of age. He might not look much like the type to have a skull tattoo now, but there are plenty of people wandering around with tattoos they wish they hadn’t got when they were younger. Schoolmate of mine in Cornwall got his first girlfriend’s name tattooed on his neck. She dumped him as soon as she saw it.’
Robin didn’t smile. Instead she said quietly, her eyes on Ronnie Scott’s,
‘I feel as though we’re up against something we can’t fight. They’ve got it stitched up, and it’s genius, really. No wonder people either self-destruct or never talk once they get out. They’ve either had sex with underage teens, or participated in abuse, or watched people die in agony. People who stay are either too frightened or ground down to think of escaping, or they’re like Becca and him –’ she gestured towards Strike’s phone, ‘– true believers. They rationalise the abuse, even if they’ve suffered from it. I’ll bet you anything, if we went to Joe Jackson and asked him whether he’d ever been made to put on a pig mask and sodomise a man with a low IQ, he’d deny it, and not even because he’s frightened. He must have got quite high up in the hierarchy, if he’s giving speeches like that. He’ll have shut down part of his brain. Watching Becca on that tape… she