He’d expected their muted response to the child trafficking allegations, given that neither Will nor Flora had ever been to the Birmingham centre which was supposed to be its hub. Nobody was disposed to challenge out loud Flora’s statement, delivered in a quaking voice while staring at the table in front of her, that she’d been repeatedly raped, but it angered Robin that it took her own corroboration about the Retreat Rooms to wipe the doubtful expression from George Layborn’s face. She described, in blunt language, her own close shaves with Taio, and the sight of an underage girl emerging from a Retreat Room with Giles Harmon. The novelist’s name seemed unfamiliar to Layborn, but Wardle and Ekwensi exchanged a look at this, and both got out their notebooks.
As for the allegation that the church was improperly burying bodies without registering deaths, Robin thought that, too, might have been dismissed as an evidence-free claim, but for the unexpected intervention of Will.
‘They do bury them illegally,’ he said, interrupting Layborn, who was pressing a distressed Flora for details. ‘I’ve seen it as well. Right before I left, they buried a kid who was born with – well, I don’t know what was wrong with him. They never got him seen by anyone except Zhou.’
‘Not Jacob?’ said Robin, looking around at Will.
‘Yeah. He died a few hours after you left. They buried him on the far side of the field, by the oak,’ said Will, who hadn’t previously disclosed this. ‘I watched them do it.’
Robin was too distressed by this information to say anything except, ‘Oh.’
‘And,’ said Will, ‘we – I had to help—’
He swallowed and pressed on.
‘—I had to help dig up Kevin. They put him in the field, first, but they moved him to the vegetable patch instead, to punish Louise – his… mother.’
‘What?’ said Vanessa Ekwensi, her pen hovering over her pad.
‘She tried to… she went to plant flowers on him, in the field,’ said Will, turning red. ‘And someone saw her, and reported her to Mazu. So Mazu said, if she wanted to plant stuff on a Deviate, she could. And they dug him up and put him in the vegetable patch and made Louise plant carrots on him.’
The horrified silence that followed these words was broken by Strike’s mobile buzzing. He glanced at the text he’d received, then looked up at Will.
‘We’ve found Lin: she’s been moved to Birmingham.’
Will looked stunned.
‘They’ve let her out to fundraise?’
‘No,’ said Strike. ‘She’s in the church compound, helping look after the babies.’
He answered Shah’s text, giving further instructions, then looked up at the police.
‘Look, we’re not stupid: we know you can’t authorise or even guarantee a massive investigation like this, right now, tonight. But you’ve got two people here who are willing to testify to widespread criminality, and we’re sure there’ll be many more, if only you can get into those church centres and start asking questions. Robin’s ready to go to court about everything she saw, too. There’s going to be glory in this, for whoever takes the UHC down,’ said Strike, ‘and I’ve already got a journalist who’s gagging to run an exposé.’
‘That’s not a threat, is it?’ said Murphy.
‘No,’ said Robin, before Strike could say anything, ‘it’s a fact. If we can’t get a police investigation without the press, we’ll let the journalist have it and try and force one that way. If you’d been in there, as I have, you’d understand exactly why every day the UHC is getting away with it counts.’
After that, Strike noticed with satisfaction, Murphy said nothing more.
At ten o’clock, the meeting broke up, with handshakes all round. Vanessa Ekwensi and Eric Wardle, who’d taken most notes, separately promised to get back to Strike and Robin quickly.
Strike determinedly didn’t watch Murphy kissing Robin goodbye and telling her he’d see her the next day, because she was taking over surveillance on Hampstead from Midge in an hour’s time. However, Strike gained some pleasure from Murphy’s clear unhappiness at leaving his girlfriend alone with her partner.
‘Well,’ said Robin, sitting back down at the table, ‘it went about as well as could be expected, I suppose.’
‘Yeah, not bad,’ said Strike.
‘So what happened in Norfolk?’
‘I got an earful, as expected,’ said Strike. ‘They’re definitely rattled. What about Isaac Mills?’
‘No word yet. He might not fancy meeting me at all.’
‘Don’t despair yet. It’s pretty monotonous in the nick.’
‘D’you think you’ll have to go back to Reaney?’ asked Robin, as the waitress re-entered the room to clear away pint glasses and both detectives got to their feet.
‘Maybe,’ said Strike, ‘but I doubt he’ll talk until he has to.’
They climbed the stairs together, emerging onto Oxford Street, where Strike pulled out his vape pen and took a long-awaited lungful of nicotine.
‘I’m parked up the road. There’s no need to escort me,’ Robin added, correctly guessing what Strike was about to say, ‘it’s still crowded and I definitely wasn’t followed here. I kept checking, all the way.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Strike. ‘Speak tomorrow, then.’
As he set off up the road, Strike’s mobile buzzed again, now with a text from Barclay.
Still no invite
Strike sent two words back.
Keep trying
124
The inferior man is not ashamed of unkindness and does not shrink from injustice. If no advantage beckons he makes no effort.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
The second week of September passed without progress on the UHC case, and no word as to whether the church’s accusation of child abuse against Robin was likely to result in her arrest, which meant she continued to suffer regular stabs of dread every time she thought about it. In slightly better news, both Will and Flora had been invited to give formal statements to the police, and, far more quickly than she’d expected, Robin received word that she’d been put on Isaac Mills’ visitors’ list.
‘S’pose you were right: prison’s boring,’ Robin told Strike, when she called him from outside Hampstead’s office to tell him the good news.
‘Be interesting to know whether he’s got any idea what it’s about,’ said Strike, who was walking away from Chinatown as he spoke.
‘Anyone watching the office today?’
‘No,’ said Strike, ‘but I’ve just followed a friend of yours to the Rupert Court Temple. Saw her from across the street when I was buying vape juice: Becca.’
‘What, out with a collecting tin?’ said Robin. ‘I thought she was too important for that.’
‘No tin. She was just walking along staring at the ground. She unlocked the temple doors and went inside and didn’t come out while I was watching, which was for about half an hour. I had to leave, I’ve got Colin Edensor arriving in twenty minutes; he wants an update on Will. Anyway, very good news on Mills. This Saturday, did you say?’
‘Yes. I’ve never visited a prison before.’
‘I wouldn’t worry. The dress code’s fairly relaxed,’ said Strike, and Robin laughed.
Having seen his 1999 mugshot, Robin hadn’t supposed Isaac Mills would look more attractive or healthy seventeen years later, but she certainly wasn’t expecting the man who shuffled towards her in the Wandsworth visitors’ centre a few days later.
He was, without exception, the most pathetic example of humanity Robin had ever laid eyes on. Though she knew him to be forty-three, he might have been seventy. The small amount of hair he still possessed was dull and grey, and while his skin was bronzed, his hollow face seemed to have collapsed inwards. Most of his teeth were missing, and the few that remained were blackened stumps, while his discoloured fingernails scooped upwards, as if peeling away from his hands. Robin had the macabre thought that she was looking at a man whose proper setting was a coffin, an impression reinforced by the gust of rotten breath that reached her as he sat down.
In the first two minutes of their meeting, Mills told Robin that he never received visits and that he was waiting for a liver transplant. After this, the conversation stalled. When Robin mentioned Carrie – or Cherry, as she’d been when Mills knew her – he informed her that Cherry had been a ‘stupid tart’, then folded his arms and contemplated her with a sneer on his face, his demeanour posing the silent question, What’s in this for me?
Appeals to conscience – ‘Daiyu was only seven when she disappeared. You’ve got children, haven’t you?’ – or to a sense of justice – ‘Kevin’s killer’s still walking around, free, and you could help us catch them’ – elicited nothing at all from the prisoner, though his sunken eyes, with their yellow whites and pinprick pupils, remained fixed on the healthy young woman who sat breathing in his odour of decay.
Uneasily conscious of the time slipping past, Robin tried an appeal to self-interest.
‘If you were to help our investigation, I’m sure it would be taken into account when you come up for parole.’
Mills’ only reaction was a low, unpleasant chuckle. He was serving twelve years for manslaughter; they both knew he was unlikely to live long enough to meet a parole board.
‘We’ve got a journalist who’s very interested in this story,’ she said, resorting in desperation to the tactic Strike had used on the police. ‘Finding out what really happened could help us bring down the church, which—’
‘It’s a cult,’ said Isaac Mills unexpectedly, a further gust of halitosis engulfing Robin. ‘Not a fucking church.’
‘I agree. That’s what’s got the journalist interested. Cherry talked to you about the UHC, then, did she?’
Mills’ only response was a loud sniff.
‘Did Cherry ever mention Daiyu, at all?’
Mills glanced at the large clock over the double doors through which he’d emerged.