‘Go, GO!’
As Robin slammed her foot to the floor, she saw a flashing blue light on the other side of the road.
‘Where’s the Ford? Where’s the Ford?’
‘Can’t see—’
‘What are you going that way for?’ Robin yelled at the passing police car, which was going in the opposite direction. ‘Hold on—’
She steered a hard left at speed into another narrow street.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Strike, whose face had hit what remained of the windscreen, and who couldn’t believe she’d made the turn.
‘And again!’ said Robin, the BMW tipping slightly as she took a right.
‘They’ve gone,’ said Strike, looking at the wing mirror and as he wiped away the blood trickling down his face. ‘Slow down – you’ve lost them… fuck.’
Robin decelerated. She turned another corner, then steered into a parking space and braked, her hands gripping the wheel so tightly she had to make a conscious effort to let go. They could hear sirens in the distance.
‘You all right, Will?’ asked Strike, looking back at the young man now lying in the dark footwell, covered in glass.
‘Yeah,’ said Will faintly.
A group of young men were walking up the dark street towards them.
‘You’ve got a crack in your windscreen, love,’ said one of them, to hearty guffaws from his mates.
‘You all right?’ Strike asked Robin.
‘Better than you,’ she answered, looking at the cut on his face.
‘Windscreen, not bullet,’ said Strike, drawing out his mobile and keying in 999.
‘D’you think they got him?’ Robin asked, looking over her shoulder in the direction of the sirens.
‘We’ll find out soon enough. Police,’ he told the operator.
119
Nine in the fifth place means:
Resolute conduct.
Perseverance with awareness of danger.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
‘This is the fifth time we’ve spoken to the police about the UHC and suspicious activity around our office,’ said Strike. ‘I appreciate that you don’t have all that information immediately to hand, I know I’m giving you a lot of back story you might think is irrelevant, but I’m not going to lie: I’d appreciate it if you stopped looking at me like I’m a fucking idiot.’
It was two o’clock in the morning. It had taken an hour for Strike’s heart rate to slow to an appropriate rate for a stationary forty-one-year-old male. He was still sitting in the small police interview room he’d been taken to upon arrival at the local station. Having been asked whether he knew why someone might want to shoot him, Strike had given a full account of the agency’s current investigation into the UHC, advised his interrogator to look up Kevin Pirbright’s murder, explained that a gun-toting intruder had tried to break into their office a week previously and informed the officer this was the second time he and Robin had been tailed in a car in the last couple of weeks.
The sheer scale of Strike’s story seemed to aggravate PC Bowers, a long-necked man with an adenoidal voice. As Bowers became more openly sceptical and incredulous (‘A church has got it in for you?’) Strike had been provoked into open irritability. Aside from everything else, he was now exceptionally hungry. A request for food had led to the production of three plain biscuits and a cup of milky tea, and given that he was the victim of the shooting rather than a suspect, Strike felt he was owed a little more consideration.
Robin, meanwhile, was dealing with a different kind of problem. She’d finished giving her statement to a perfectly friendly and competent female officer, but had declined a lift home, instead insisting that Will be driven back to Pat’s. Having seen Will into the police car, Robin returned to the waiting room and, with a sense of dread but knowing she had no choice, called Murphy to tell him what had happened.
His reaction to her news was, understandably, one of alarm and well-justified concern. Even so, Robin had to bite back angry retorts to what she considered Murphy’s statements of the obvious: that extra security measures would now be necessary and that the police would need every scrap of information Strike and Robin could provide them about the UHC. Unknowingly echoing Strike, Robin said,
‘This is literally the fifth time we’ve spoken to police about the church. We haven’t been hiding anything.’
‘No, I know, I get that, but bloody hell, Robin – wish I could come and pick you up. I’m stuck with this bloody stabbing in Southall.’
‘I’m fine,’ said Robin, ‘there isn’t a mark on me. I’ll call an Uber.’
‘Don’t call an Uber, for Christ’s sake, let one of the cops take you home. Can’t believe they haven’t nicked the shooter.’
‘Maybe they have, by now.’
‘It shouldn’t be taking them this bloody long!’
‘They radioed ahead to a couple of cars to try and cut him off, but I don’t know what happened – either they didn’t get there in time, or he knew a detour.’
‘They’ll must have him on camera, though. A316, bound to have.’
‘Yes,’ said Robin. She felt slightly jittery, perhaps a result of coffee on an empty stomach. ‘Listen, Ryan, I’ll have to go.’
‘Yeah, OK. I’m bloody glad you’re safe. Love you.’
‘I love you too,’ murmured Robin, because she’d just seen movement out of the corner of her eye, and sure enough, as she hung up, Strike emerged at last from his interview room, looking extremely grumpy.
‘You’re still here,’ said Strike, cheering up at the sight of her. ‘Thought you might’ve gone. Aren’t you knackered?’
‘No,’ said Robin, ‘I feel… wired.’
‘Getting shot at has that effect on me, too,’ said Strike. ‘What would you say to going and getting that McDonald’s?’
‘Sounds fantastic,’ said Robin, slipping her mobile back into her pocket.
120
If we are not on guard, evil will succeed in escaping by means of concealment, and when it has eluded us new misfortunes will develop from the remaining seeds, for evil does not die easily.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Forty minutes later, Strike and Robin got out of their Uber outside a twenty-four-hour McDonald’s on the Strand.
‘I’m having everything,’ said Strike, as they headed to the counter. ‘You?’
‘Um – Big Mac and—’
‘Oh, shit, what now?’ growled Strike, as his mobile rang. Answering, he heard Midge’s voice and a car engine.
‘I think they’re moving Lin. Tasha saw two men going into the office this afternoon. They were shown into the annexe, came out, left again. She didn’t realise at the time they were police, because they were plainclothes – they drove in right past me, I should’ve realised they were cops, but honestly, they were both that well groomed, I thought they might be a gay couple having a getaway. I’ve been living in this car for the last three days and I’m knackered,’ she added defensively.
‘I know the feeling,’ said Strike, watching Robin order.
‘Next thing, Tasha’s called in to see Zhou. “You appear to have lost this, I hope it’s not important.” They’d found the note in the pocket of her robes. She acted innocent, obviously—’
‘Fuck’s sake, what’s happening now?’
‘I’m trying to tell you! Tasha thought she’d better clear out before she gets locked in an annexe too—’
‘I’m not interested in Tasha!’
‘Charming,’ said the actress’s voice in the background.
‘Oh, for—’ said Strike, closing his eyes and running a hand over his face.
‘A plain van came out the front gates of the clinic ten minutes ago. We’re sure Lin’s in there. Three a.m.’s a bloody funny time to be driving vans around. Did I wake you up, by the way?’
‘No,’ said Strike, ‘listen—’
‘So we’re tailing—’
‘BLOODY LISTEN!’
Robin, the McDonald’s servers and the other customers all turned to stare. Strike marched out of the restaurant. Once on the pavement he said,
‘I’m awake because my car just got shot up, with Robin and me in it—’
‘Wh—?’
‘—and my information is the church has got guns, plural. This hour of the morning, it’ll be obvious you’re following that van. Give it up.’
‘But—’
‘You don’t know Lin’s in there. It’s too big a risk. You’ve got a civilian with you – a civilian they know knows too much. Get the number plate, then go home.’
‘But—’
‘Do – not – fucking – argue – with – me,’ said Strike in a dangerous voice. ‘I’ve told you what I want. Fucking do it.’
Seething, he turned back, only to see Robin carrying two large bags of food.
‘Let’s have it in the office,’ she suggested, keen not to draw any more attention to themselves inside the restaurant. ‘It’s only ten minutes up the road. Then we can talk properly.’
‘Fine,’ said Strike irritably, ‘but give me a burger first.’
So they walked through the dark streets towards Denmark Street, Strike telling Robin what Midge had just said between large mouthfuls of burger. He’d already started on a bag of fries before they reached the familiar black door, with its skeleton-key-proof new lock. Once upstairs, Robin unpacked the rest of the food at the partners’ desk. She still felt wide awake.
Strike, who’d soon devoured three burgers and two bags of fries, now started on an apple pie. Like Robin, he felt no desire whatsoever for sleep. The immediate past seemed to compress and extend in his mind: at one moment, the shooting felt as though it had happened a week previously, the next, as though he’d only just felt the heat of the bullet searing his cheek and watched the windscreen shatter.
‘What are you looking at?’ he asked Robin, noticing her slightly glass-eyed stare at the board on the wall behind him.
She seemed to withdraw her attention from a long way away.
‘I didn’t tell you what the third Divine Secret is, did I? The “Living Sacrifice”?’