‘Bloody hell,’ said Strike, ‘we’ve been told you’re bright, but this is impressive.’
Will neither looked at Strike nor acknowledged his words, except by a slight frown. Robin suspected this was because Will knew it must have been Sir Colin who’d told the two detectives his son was clever.
‘Water,’ said Pat, as Qing began to cough, because she’d stuffed so much pizza into her mouth.
Robin joined Pat at the sink to help her fill glasses.
‘Could you distract Qing,’ Robin whispered to the office manager, the sound of running water drowning her voice, ‘while Strike and I talk to Will in our office? He might not want to talk openly in front of her.’
‘No problem,’ said Pat, in the growl that was her whisper. ‘Say the name again?’
‘Qing.’
‘Kind of name’s that?’
‘Chinese.’
‘Huh… mind you, my great-granddaughter’s called Tanisha. Sanskrit,’ said Pat, with a slight eye roll.
When Pat and Robin had handed out glasses of water, Pat said gruffly,
‘Qing, look at these.’
She’d taken a block of bright orange Post-it notes out of her desk.
‘They come off, look,’ said Pat. ‘And they stick to things.’
Fascinated, the little girl slid off Will’s lap, but still clung to his knee. Having seen the other children at Chapman Farm, Robin was glad of this sign that Qing knew her father was a place of safety.
‘You can play with them, if you want,’ said Pat.
The little girl toddled uncertainly towards Pat, who held out the block to her, and rummaged for some pens. Strike and Robin’s eyes met again, and Strike stood up, holding his pizza.
‘Fancy coming through here a moment, Will?’ he asked.
They left the connecting door between the offices open, so that Qing could see where her father was. Strike brought his plastic chair with him.
Robin had forgotten that all the pictures relating to the UHC case were on the board on the inner office wall. Will stopped dead, staring at them.
‘Why have you got all these?’ he said, in an accusatory voice, and to Robin’s dismay, he backed away. ‘That’s the Drowned Prophet,’ he said, pointing at the Torment Town pictures, sounding panicked now. ‘Why have you drawn her like that?’
‘We didn’t draw her,’ said Strike, moving quickly to close the flaps of the board, but Will said suddenly,
‘That’s Kevin!’
‘Yes,’ said Strike. Changing his mind about closing up the board, he stepped away from it, allowing Will a clear view. ‘Did you know Kevin?’
‘Only for a few… he left, not long after I… why…?’
Will took a few steps closer to the board. Kevin’s picture, which Strike had taken from the newspaper archive, still had the caption attached: ‘Murder of Kevin Pirbright was drug-related, say police.’
‘Kevin killed himself,’ said Will slowly. ‘Why’re they saying…?’
‘He was shot by someone else,’ said Strike.
‘No, he killed himself,’ said Will, with some of the dogmatism he’d displayed the first time Robin had ever heard him talk, on the vegetable patch. ‘He committed suicide, because he was pure spirit, and couldn’t cope with the materialist world.’
‘There was no gun found at the scene,’ said Strike. ‘Somebody else shot him.’
‘No… they can’t have done…’
‘They did,’ said Strike.
Will was frowning. Then –
‘Pig demons!’ he said suddenly, pointing at the Polaroids.
Strike and Robin looked at each other.
‘Kevin told me they appear, if there are too many impure spirits at the farm.’
‘Those aren’t demons,’ said Strike.
‘No,’ said Will, with a trace of impatience. ‘I know that. They’re wearing masks. But that’s how Kevin described them to me. Naked, with pig heads.’
‘Where did he see them, Will, did he say?’ asked Robin.
‘In the barn,’ said Will. ‘He and his sister saw them, through a gap in the wood. I don’t want her looking at me,’ he added in a febrile voice, and Robin, who knew he meant the Drowned Prophet, strode to the board and covered it over.
‘Why don’t you sit down?’ said Strike.
Will did so, but he looked very wary as the other two also sat. They could hear Qing chattering to Pat in the outer office.
‘Will, you said you’ve done things that are criminal,’ said Strike.
‘I’ll tell the police all about that, once we’ve found Lin.’
‘OK,’ said Strike, ‘but as we’re—’
‘I’m not talking about it,’ said Will, turning red again. ‘You’re not the police, you can’t make me.’
‘Nobody’s going to make you do anything,’ said Robin, with a warning look at her partner, whose demeanour, even when trying to be sympathetic, was often more threatening than he realised. ‘We only want what you want, Will: to find Lin and make sure Qing’s OK.’
‘You’re doing more than that,’ said Will, with a nervous jab of the finger towards the covered board. ‘You’re trying to take the UHC on, aren’t you? That won’t work. It won’t, it definitely won’t. You’re messing with stuff you don’t understand. I know, if I tell the police everything, she’ll come for me. That’s a chance I’ll have to take. I don’t care if I die, as long as Lin and Qing are OK.’
‘You’re talking about the Drowned Prophet?’ Robin asked.
‘Yeah,’ said Will. ‘You don’t want her after you, as well. She protects the church.’
‘We won’t need to take on the UHC now,’ lied Robin. ‘All that stuff on the board – we were just trying to find ways to put pressure on the Waces, so your family could see you.’
‘But I don’t want to see them!’
‘No, I know,’ said Robin. ‘I’m just saying, there’s no point us going on with that part of the investigation –’ she pointed at the board ‘– now you’re out.’
‘But you’ll find Lin?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘What if she’s dead?’ Will burst out suddenly. ‘There was all that blood—’
‘I’m sure we’ll find her,’ said Robin.
‘It’ll be punishment on me, if she’s dead,’ said Will, ‘for what I did to my m-mum.’
He burst into tears.
Robin wheeled her chair out from behind the desk and drew nearer to Will, although she didn’t touch him. She guessed he’d seen his mother’s obituary online, in the internet café in Norwich. She said nothing, but waited for Will’s sobs to subside.
‘Will,’ she said, when at last she thought he was in a condition to take in what she was saying, ‘we’re only asking what you’ve done that might be criminal, because we need to know whether the church has got something on you that they could publish, before you’ve got a chance to talk to the police. If they do that, you could be arrested before we can find Lin, d’you see? And that would mean Qing being taken into care.’
Full of admiration for how Robin was handling this interview, Strike had to suppress a wholly inappropriate grin.
‘Oh,’ said Will, raising a grubby, tear-stained face. ‘Right. Well… they can’t publish it, without making themselves look really bad. It was either stuff we all had to do, or that I should’ve gone to the police about. They’re doing something really terrible in there. I didn’t realise how bad it was, ’til I had Qing.’
‘But you haven’t personally hurt anyone, have you?’
‘Yes, I have,’ he said miserably. ‘Lin. And – I’ll tell the police all of it, not you. Once we’ve got Lin, I’ll tell the police.’
Pat’s mobile rang and they heard her say,
‘Stay on the corner, I’ll come and get ’em off you.’ She appeared in the doorway. ‘Someone’ll have to look after Qing. That’s Kayleigh, with the clothes for her.’
‘That was—’ began Strike, but before he could say ‘quick’ for the second time that morning, Pat had disappeared. Qing now tottered into the inner office, in search of her father, demanding to go to the bathroom. By the time Will and Qing had returned from the landing, Pat had reappeared holding two bulging bags of second-hand children’s clothes, looking cross.
‘Bloody nosy, the lot of ’em,’ she complained, setting the bags on her desk.
‘Who?’ asked Robin, as Pat took out a small pair of dungarees, got awkwardly down on her knees and sized them up against a fascinated Qing.
‘My family,’ said Pat. ‘Always trying to find out what sort of office I work in. That was my granddaughter. Met her on the corner. No need for her to know what we do.’
‘You haven’t told any of them you work here?’
‘Signed an NDA, didn’t I?’
‘How did Kayleigh—?’
‘Her boyfriend brought ’em into town. She works up the road in TK Maxx. Told her it was urgent. Right, missus,’ she told Qing, ‘let’s get you into this clean stuff. You wanna do it,’ she asked Will, squinting up at him, ‘or shall I?’
‘I can do it,’ said Will, taking the dungarees, though looking slightly at a loss as to how they worked.
‘Robin can help you,’ said Pat. ‘Can I have a word?’ she added to Strike.
‘Can’t it—?’
‘No,’ she said.
So Strike followed Pat back into the room they’d just left, and Pat closed the door on Will, Qing and Robin.
‘Where’re they gonna stay?’ Pat demanded of Strike.
‘Here,’ said Strike, ‘I’ve just worked that out with Robin. They can go upstairs.’
‘That’s no good. They want looking after. They should come and stay with me.’
‘We can’t impose—’
‘It’s not imposing, I’m offering. We’ve got room, my Dennis won’t mind, and Dennis can be with them, while I’m at work. There’s a garden for the little girl and I can get her some toys off my granddaughters. They want looking after,’ repeated Pat, with a gimlet look that told Strike she didn’t consider him qualified for the job. ‘There’s no harm in that boy,’ said Pat, as though Strike had been arguing the contrary. ‘Just did a bloody silly thing. I’ll take care of them, ’til he’s ready to see his dad.’
104
There are dangers lurking… pay especial attention to small and insignificant things.
The I Ching or Book of Changes