‘Do we believe her?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Robin.
Another long pause followed, each of them lost in thought.
‘It would make a damn sight more sense,’ said Strike at last, ‘if the last glimpse anyone ever had of Daiyu was her going out of that window. If you were going to drown a child in the early hours, why help them out of the window first? What if Daiyu didn’t come back?… Or was that the point? Daiyu hides – or is hidden – somewhere after climbing out of the window… and another child gets taken to the beach in her place?’
‘Are you serious?’ said Robin. ‘You’re saying a different child drowned?’
‘What do we know about the journey to the beach?’ said Strike. ‘It’s dark, self-evidently – it must’ve been around this time of night,’ said Strike, glancing out of the window at the navy blue sky. ‘We know there was a kid in the van, because he or she waved as they passed the people on early duty – which, when you think about it, is suspicious in itself. You’d think Daiyu would’ve ducked down until they were safely off the premises if she didn’t have permission for the trip. I also find it fishy that Daiyu was dressed in a distinctive white dress unlike any other at the farm. Then, after they left the farm, the only witness was an elderly woman who saw them from a distance and didn’t know Daiyu from Adam anyway. She wouldn’t have known which kid it was.’
‘But the body,’ said Robin. ‘How could Carrie be sure it wouldn’t wash back up? DNA would prove it wasn’t Daiyu.’
‘They might not bother taking DNA if Daiyu’s loving mother was prepared to identify the corpse as her daughter,’ said Strike.
‘So Mazu’s in on the switch? And nobody notices there’s an extra child missing from Chapman Farm?’
‘You’re the one who’s found out the church separates kids from parents and shifts them around the different centres. What if a kid was drafted in from Glasgow or Birmingham to be Daiyu’s stand-in? All the Waces would need to do is tell everyone the child’s gone back to where they came from. If it was a child whose birth was never registered, who’s going to go looking?’
Robin, who was remembering the shaven-headed, closed-down children in the Chapman Farm classroom, and how easily they’d shown affection to a total stranger, now felt a nasty sinking sensation.
After another silence, Strike said,
‘Colonel Graves thinks the witnesses who saw the van passing were set up, so the Waces could punish them and maintain the fiction that they didn’t know about the trip to the beach. If it was a set-up, it was bloody sadistic. Brian Kennett: getting steadily sicker, no use to the church any more. Draper: low IQ and possibly brain-damaged. Abigail: the heartbroken stepmother can’t bear to look at the stepdaughter who let her child drive off to a watery grave and insists on getting rid of her.’
‘You think Wace would deliberately set up his elder daughter to be shut up naked in the pigsty?’
‘Wace was supposed to be absent that morning, remember,’ said Strike.
‘So you think Mazu planned it all behind Wace’s back?’
‘It’s a possibility.’
‘But where did Daiyu go, if the drowning was faked? We haven’t found any other family.’
‘Yeah, we have. Wace’s parents, in South Africa.’
‘But that means a passport, and if Wace wasn’t privy to the hoax…’
Strike frowned, then said with a sigh,
‘OK, objection sustained.’
‘I’ve got another objection,’ said Robin tentatively. ‘I know you’re going to say this is based on emotion, not facts, but I don’t believe Carrie was capable of drowning a child. I just don’t, Strike.’
‘Then explain “It wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t pretend. It was real. She wasn’t coming back.”’
‘I can’t, except that I’m certain Carrie believed Daiyu was dead.’
‘Then—’
‘Dead… but not in the sea. Or not with her, in the sea…
‘You know,’ said Robin, after another long pause, ‘there might be an alternative explanation for the chocolate and the toys. Not grooming… blackmail. Daiyu saw something when she was sneaking around. Somebody was trying to keep her sweet… and that might tie back in with those Polaroids. Maybe she saw the naked people in masks, but unlike Kevin, knew they were real people… I need a pee,’ said Robin, getting to her feet, Strike’s jacket still wrapped around her.
Robin’s reflection was ghostly in the tarnished mirror of the landing bathroom. Having washed her hands, she returned to the office to find Strike now at Pat’s desk, poring over his attempt at a transcript of Kevin Pirbright’s interview with Farah Navabi.
‘I ran you off a copy,’ said Strike, putting the still-warm pages into Robin’s hand.
‘Want a coffee?’ asked Robin, dropping the pages onto the sofa to attend to in a few minutes.
‘Yeah, go on… and she drowned, or they said she drowned,’ he read off the paper in front of him. ‘So Kevin had his doubts about Daiyu’s death, too.’
‘He was only six when it happened,’ objected Robin, switching on the kettle.
‘He might not have had doubts then, but he grew up with people who might’ve let slip more than they let on at the time, and started wondering about it later… and he says, I remember funny things happening, things I keep thinking about, stuff I keep remembering, and then, there were four of them – or that’s what Navabi thought he said. It’s not clear on the tape.’
‘Four people in pig masks?’ suggested Robin.
‘Possibly, although we might be getting a bit too hung up on those pictures… What else could it be? “More of them”, “score of them”, “sixty-four of them”… Christ knows…
‘Then we’ve got it was more than just Cherie – he was slurring a lot, but that’s what it sounded like… then something about drinks… then, but Bec made Em, visible and then bullshit.’
‘But Becca made Emily lie about Daiyu being invisible?’ suggested Robin, over the sound of the bubbling kettle.
‘Got to be, because then Navabi says, Becca made Em lie, did you say? And Kevin says, she was allowed out, she could get things and smuggle it in.’
Robin finished making the two coffees, set Strike’s beside him and sat down on the sofa.
‘Cheers,’ said Strike, still reading the transcript. ‘Then we’ve got let her away with stuff – didn’t care about her, really – she had chocolate once and I stole some – and bully, though.’
Robin had just found the part of the transcript Strike was reading.
‘Well, let her away with stuff sounds like Daiyu… and didn’t care about her, really might well apply to Daiyu, too…’
‘Who didn’t care about Daiyu?’ objected Strike. ‘Abigail told me she was the princess of the place.’
‘But was she, though?’ said Robin. ‘You know, I saw a virtual shrine to Daiyu in Mazu’s office and for a few seconds, I felt genuinely sorry for her. What could be worse than waking and finding out your child’s disappeared, and then hearing she’s drowned? But the picture other people paint isn’t of a devoted mother. Mazu was happy to palm Daiyu off onto other people – well, certainly onto Carrie. Don’t you think,’ said Robin, warming to her subject, ‘it’s odd behaviour, the way Mazu’s let this cult grow up around Daiyu? The drowning’s mentioned constantly. Is that consistent with genuine grief?’
‘Could be a deranged kind of grief.’
‘But Mazu thrives off it. It makes her important, being the mother of the Drowned Prophet. Don’t you think the whole thing feels… I don’t know… horribly exploitative? I’m sure it felt to Abigail like Daiyu was her father and stepmother’s little princess – she’d just lost her own mum, and her father had no time for her any more – but I’m not sure that was the reality.’
‘You make good points,’ said Strike, scratching his now heavily stubbled chin. ‘OK, so we think let her away with stuff but didn’t care about her really both refer to Daiyu… So who was allowed out and able to get things and smuggle them in? Who did Kevin steal chocolate from? Who was the bully?’
‘Becca,’ said Robin, with such conviction that Strike looked up at her, surprised. ‘Sorry,’ Robin said, with a disconcerted laugh, ‘I – don’t really know where that came from, except there’s something really weird about Becca’s whole… status.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, she seems to have been singled out really early by Wace as… I mean, if I had to pick out anyone who’s treated like a princess, it would be Becca. I told you what Flora said about her being a virgin, didn’t I?’
‘You definitely didn’t,’ said Strike, staring at her. ‘I’d’ve remembered.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Robin, ‘of course I didn’t. It feels like Flora told me that a week ago.’
‘How can Becca be a virgin? I thought she was a spirit wife?’
‘That’s what’s so weird. Emily’s convinced Becca sleeps with Wace, which is why she never goes into the Retreat Rooms with anyone else, but Emily also told me Wace won’t have kids with Becca. Shawna said that’s because Wace doesn’t want a baby with her, because her half-brother was born with so many problems. But Flora says all the other spirit wives know Wace isn’t sleeping with Becca, and that’s why Mazu doesn’t hate Becca as much as she hates the rest of them. And honestly, that makes sense to me, because Mazu and Becca always seem – if not matey, there’s definitely a sense of alliance.’
Another pause ensued in which both Strike and Robin drank coffee, reading the transcript, and the dawn chorus twittered ever louder beyond the windows.
‘Making allowances,’ Strike read under his breath. ‘Bad t – possibly bad time… gonna talk to her…’
‘She’s going to meet me,’ said Robin, also reading. ‘But who’s “she”?’
‘And did “she” turn up?’ asked Strike. ‘Or was “she” a ruse? Did he answer the door and find our masked gunman friend outside? Then Navabi says