Strike chose not to mention that if, as he half-suspected, Wace was playing mind games rather than genuinely attempting covert surveillance, the church leader might equally decide to ramp up harassment in retribution for their face-to-face chat at Olympia.
‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news,’ Robin said. ‘I can’t be a hundred per cent certain, but I think Isaac Mills might be dead. Look: I found it an hour ago.’
She passed the printout of a small news item in the Telegraph dated January 2011 across the desk. It described an incident in which Isaac Mills, 38, had died in a head-on collision with a van which, unlike Mills, had been driving on the correct side of the road.
‘Right age,’ said Robin, ‘and wrong side of the road sounds like he was drunk or stoned.’
‘Shit,’ said Strike.
‘I’ll keep looking,’ said Robin, taking back the clipping, ‘because there are other Isaac Millses out there, but I’ve got a horrible feeling that was our man. Did you talk to Dev about taking Rosie Fernsby out for dinner, by the way?’
‘Did, yeah, he’s going to make a profile on Mingle Guru tonight. I had another thought about Rosie, actually. If that profile is hers, and she really has been travelling around India for the last few years, it makes sense that she hasn’t got a permanent base here. I wondered whether she might be housesitting while her mother’s in Canada.’
‘Nobody’s answered the landline in all the time I’ve tried. It just goes straight to voicemail.’
‘Even so, it wouldn’t be far out of our way, going through Richmond on the way back from Strawberry Hill. We could just knock on the door in Cedar Terrace and see what happens.’
Strike’s mobile rang. Expecting Lucy, he instead saw Midge’s number.
‘Everything all right?’
‘No,’ said Midge.
With a sense of foreboding, Strike switched the mobile to speakerphone and laid it down on the desk between him and Robin.
‘It’s not Tash’s fault,’ said Midge defensively, ‘OK? She hasn’t been able to get back to the annexe for the last couple of nights, so she seized a chance when she was coming back from a massage an hour ago.’
‘She was spotted?’ said Strike sharply.
‘Yeah,’ said Midge. ‘Some bloke who works there saw her tapping on the window.’
Strike’s and Robin’s eyes met. The latter, who feared Strike was about to explode, made a grimace intended to prevent any unhelpful outburst.
‘Obviously, Tash walked straight off,’ said Midge, ‘but the bad thing is—’
‘That’s not the bad thing?’ said Strike ominously.
‘Look, she’s done us a favour, Strike, and at least she’s found out Lin’s there!’
‘Midge, what else happened?’ said Robin, before Strike could retort.
‘Well, she had the note in the pocket of her robe, the one to show Lin, saying Will and Qing are out, and… and now she can’t find it. She thinks she might’ve taken the wrong robe when she left the massage room. Or, maybe, she’s dropped it.’
‘OK,’ said Robin, gesturing to Strike to withhold the stream of recriminations she knew he was bursting to deliver, ‘Midge, if she can pretend she’s lost a ring or something—’
‘She’s already gone back to the massage room to look, but she called me first because, obviously—’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike. ‘Obviously.’
‘Let us know what happens,’ said Robin. ‘Call us.’
‘Will do,’ said Midge. She rang off.
‘Fuck’s sake!’ said Strike, seething. ‘What did I tell Tasha? Take no risks, be ultra-cautious, then she goes to that fucking window by daylight—’
‘I know,’ said Robin, ‘I know.’
‘We should never have put an amateur in there!’
‘It was the only way,’ said Robin. ‘We had to use someone they’d never realise had a connection to us. Now we’ve just got to hope she gets that note back.’
Strike got to his feet and began to pace.
‘If they’ve found that note, Zhou’s probably scrambling to pull another Jacob – hide Lin and come up with an alternative blonde, fast. Fuck – this isn’t good… I’m going to call Wardle.’
Strike did so. Robin listened as her partner laid out the problem to his best police contact. As she could have predicted, Wardle needed quite a lot of explanation and repetition before he fully grasped what Strike was telling him.
‘If Wardle finds it hard to believe, I can just imagine how regular officers are going to react,’ said Strike bitterly, having hung up. ‘I don’t think they’ll see it as a top priority, rescuing a girl who’s living at a luxury spa. What’s the time?’
‘Time to go,’ said Robin, shutting down her computer.
‘Are we giving Pat a lift home?’
‘No, she’s meeting her granddaughter. Dennis is going to look after Qing while Will’s with us.’
So Strike and Robin walked together towards the garage where Strike kept his BMW. It was a warm evening; a pleasant change from the intermittent drizzle of the last few days. They’d just reached the garage when Strike’s mobile rang again: Lucy.
‘Hi, what did the GP say?’ he asked.
‘He thinks Ted’s had a mini-stroke.’
‘Oh, shit,’ said Strike, unlocking the car with his free hand.
‘They want to scan him. The earliest they can do is Friday.’
‘Right,’ said Strike, getting into the passenger’s seat while Robin took the wheel. ‘Well, if you like, I’ll go with him. You’re picking up all the slack here.’
‘Thanks, Stick,’ said Lucy. ‘I appreciate that.’
‘Thank Christ he was with you when it happened. Imagine if he’d been alone in St Mawes.’
‘I know,’ said Lucy.
‘I’ll take him for the scan, and afterwards we’ll talk plans, OK?’
‘Yes,’ said Lucy, sounding defeated. ‘OK. How are things with you?’
‘Busy,’ said Strike. ‘I’ll call you later.’
‘Everything all right?’ asked Robin, waiting until Strike had hung up until turning on the ignition.
‘No,’ said Strike, and as they set off up the road, he explained about Ted’s stroke, and his Alzheimer’s, and the burden Lucy was currently bearing, and the guilt he felt about not pulling his weight. In consequence, neither Strike nor Robin noticed the blue Ford Focus that pulled away from the kerb a hundred yards beyond the garage, as Robin accelerated.
The Ford’s speed was often adjusted, which varied the distance between it and the BMW, so that it was sometimes one, and sometimes as many as three cars behind them. Both detectives’ minds were so preoccupied with their separate, joint, general and specific anxieties that both failed to notice they were, again, being followed.
117
K’an represents the heart, the soul locked up within the body, the principle of light enclosed in the dark – that is, reason.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
It was only as Robin approached Prudence’s house that she registered, in some dim region of her mind, that she’d spotted a blue Ford Focus in her rear-view mirror at another point in the journey. She rounded the corner of Prudence’s street, and the blue car drove innocently past. Preoccupied with the imminent meeting between Will and Flora, Robin immediately forgot it again.
‘You’ll like Prudence,’ she said reassuringly to Will, who’d barely spoken during the journey. ‘She’s really nice.’
Will looked up at the large Edwardian house, shoulders hunched and arms folded, an expression of intense misgiving on his face.
‘Hi,’ said Prudence, when she opened the front door, looking understatedly elegant as ever in cream trousers and a matching sweater. ‘Oh.’
Her face had fallen on seeing Strike.
‘Problem?’ he asked, wondering whether she’d expected him to call and apologise after their last, heated phone call. As he considered himself entirely blameless in the matter of identifying Flora, the idea hadn’t occurred to him.
‘I assumed it would just be Robin,’ said Prudence, standing back to let them all in. ‘Flora isn’t expecting another man.’
‘Ah,’ said Strike. ‘Right. I could wait in the car?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Prudence, with a slight awkwardness. ‘You can go in the sitting room.’
‘Thanks,’ said Strike. He caught Robin’s eye, then headed wordlessly through the door to the right. Prudence opened a door on the left.
Like the sitting room, Prudence’s consulting room was tastefully decorated in neutral colours. A few decorative objects, including jade snuff bottles and a Chinese puzzle ball, were arranged on wall shelves. There was a sofa upholstered in cream, a flourishing palm tree in the corner and an antique rug on the floor.
A pale and very heavy woman of around thirty was sitting in a low, black, steel-framed chair. Every item she wore was dark and baggy. Robin noticed the thin white self-harm scars on her neck, and the way she was clutching both cuffs of her long-sleeved top, so as to hold them down over her hands. Her curly hair was arranged to cover as much of her face as possible, though a pair of large, beautiful brown eyes were just visible.
‘Have a seat, Will,’ said Prudence. ‘Anywhere you like.’
After a moment’s indecision, he chose a chair. Robin sat down on the sofa.
‘So: Flora, Will, Will, Flora,’ said Prudence, smiling as she sat down too.
‘Hi,’ said Flora.
‘Hi,’ muttered Will.
When neither of them showed any further inclination for interacting with each other, Prudence said,
‘Flora was in the UHC for five years, Will, and I think you were in for—’
‘Four, yeah.’
Will’s eyes were darting around the room, lingering on some of the objects.
‘How long have you been out?’ he shot suddenly at Flora.
‘Um… eleven years,’ said Flora, peering at Will through her fringe.
Will got up so suddenly, Flora gasped. Pointing at her, Will snarled at Robin,
‘It’s a trap. She’s still working for them.’
‘I’m not!’ exclaimed Flora indignantly.