Behind Midge, holding two Boots bags, was Becca Pirbright. Aghast, she looked from Mazu, whose hands were clasped to the nose Robin sincerely hoped she’d broken, to Robin, and back again.
‘Violence, Mazu?’ whispered Becca. ‘In the temple?’
Robin, who was still holding the rifle, let out a genuine laugh. Becca stared at her.
‘Can someone do something about that baby?’ said Midge loudly.
‘You do it,’ Robin told Becca, pointing the rifle at her.
‘You’re threatening to shoot me?’ said Becca, dropping the bags and moving to the carry cot. She scooped up the screaming Yixin and tried to soothe her, without much success.
‘I’m calling 999,’ said Midge, phone in hand.
‘Not yet,’ said Robin. ‘Just cover the door.’
‘Well, I’m telling Strike you’re all right, at least,’ said Midge, rapidly texting. ‘He’s not happy you came in here without back-up.’
Robin now looked Becca in the eye.
‘It was you I came for.’
‘What d’you mean, “came for”?’ said Becca.
She spoke as though Robin was unspeakably impertinent. No matter that she’d interrupted attempted murder, or that press were swarming at the gates of Chapman Farm, or that police were raiding the church – Becca Pirbright remained what she’d always been: utterly convinced of her own rectitude, confident that everything, even this, could be put right by Papa J.
‘You’re already facing child abuse charges,’ Becca said contemptuously, ineffectually trying to quell Yixin’s screams by jiggling her. ‘Now you’re taking us hostage at gunpoint.’
‘I don’t think that’s going to wash in court, coming from the person who colluded in covering up infanticide,’ said Robin.
‘You’re unbalanced,’ said Becca.
‘You’d better hope psychiatrists find you are. Where were you for three years, after Daiyu died?’
‘That’s no business—’
‘You weren’t in Birmingham. You were either in the Glasgow centre, or some rented property where Jonathan Wace could keep you well away from other people.’
Becca’s smile was patronising.
‘Rowena, you’re an agent—’
‘It’s Robin, but you’re damn right, I’m your adversary. Do you want to tell Mazu why you’re the only virgin spirit wife, or shall I?’
133
Nine at the top means…
One sees one’s companion as a pig covered with dirt,
As a wagon full of devils.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
The door behind Strike banged open again. Abigail, now divested of her fireman’s apparel and wearing jeans, marched towards him with a leather bag slung over her shoulder, grabbed her vacated chair, dragged it into the centre of the room, then clambered up onto it. Tall as she was, she had no difficulty in reaching the smoke alarm in the middle of the ceiling. With one twist, she’d taken off the lid and pulled out its batteries. Having replaced the lid, she jumped down off the chair and rejoined Strike at the table, pulling a pack of Marlboro Golds out of her bag. She sat down and lit one with a Zippo.
‘Is that allowed, in a fire station?’ he asked.
‘I don’t fuckin’ care,’ said Abigail, inhaling. ‘All right,’ she said, blowing smoke sideways, ‘you can ’ave DNA, if you want, an’ compare it to this Becca’s, but if she’s still in the church, I don’ see ’ow you’re gonna get it.’
‘My partner’s working on that right now,’ said Strike.
‘I was finkin’, upstairs.’
‘Go on,’ said Strike.
‘What you jus’ said, about all what Daiyu was gonna get, from Graves’ will. That ’ouse. You said it was worf millions.’
‘Yeah, it must be,’ said Strike.
‘Then the Graves lot ’ad a motive to get rid of ’er. Stop ’er gettin’ the ’ouse.’
‘Interesting you should say that,’ said Strike, ‘because that thought occurred to me, too. Daiyu’s aunt and uncle, who’ll inherit if Daiyu’s dead, have been doing their best to stop me investigating her disappearance. I went to see them in Norfolk the other day. It wasn’t a happy interview, especially after I told Phillipa I’d seen her at your father’s Olympia meeting.’
‘The fuck was she doing there?’
‘Something had clearly rattled her enough to make her desperate to speak to your father. Phillipa left a note for him, backstage at Olympia. I asked whether they’d received an unexpected, anonymous phone call recently, which spurred her into action.’
‘Wha’ made you ask that?’
‘Call it intuition.’
Abigail flicked ash onto the floor and kicked it away with her foot.
‘You’d get on wiv Mazu.’ She affected a malignant whisper. ‘“The divine vibration moves in me.” What was this phone call about?’
‘They didn’t want to tell me, but when I suggested that someone had called to say Daiyu’s still alive, Phillipa gave herself away. Turned white. You can see how a phone call like that would put the fear of God into them. No more family mansion for them, if Daiyu’s still breathing.
‘And I have to say,’ added Strike, ‘Nicholas Delaunay ticks quite a few boxes for me, as Kevin Pirbright’s killer. Ex-marine. Knows how to handle a gun, knows how to plan and execute an ambush. The person who murdered Kevin was pretty slick.’
Abigail took another drag on her cigarette, frowning.
‘I’m lost.’
‘I think Kevin Pirbright worked out the truth behind Daiyu’s disappearance before he died, and that’s why he was shot.’
Abigail lowered her cigarette.
‘’E knew?’
‘Yeah, I think so.’
‘’E never said nuffing to me about Daiyu.’
‘He didn’t mention it being an odd coincidence, Daiyu dying exactly where your mother did?’
‘Oh,’ said Abigail. ‘Yeah. ’E did say somefing abou’ that.’
‘Possibly Kevin only put it all together after he’d approached you,’ said Strike.
‘So ’oo called these Delaunay people?’
‘Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? I suspect it was the same person who called Jordan Reaney to find out what he might have let slip to me, and who called Carrie Curtis Woods, and tipped her into suicide.’
Strike’s mobile buzzed, not once, but twice, in quick succession.
‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘Been waiting for this.’
The first text was from Barclay, but he ignored it in favour of Midge’s.
Robin safe. Got Becca and Mazoo shut in temple.
Immensely relieved, Strike opened Barclay’s message, which comprised two words.
Got everything.
Strike sent two texts of his own back, returned his mobile to his pocket, then looked again at Abigail.
‘I said there were four possibilities, to explain Becca’s strange status in the church.’
‘Listen,’ said Abigail impatiently, ‘I’m sorry, but I told Darryl I was gonna be late, not that I was never gonna turn up.’
‘Is Darryl the tall, good-looking black guy with green eyes? Because I know he wasn’t the fat guy driving the red Corsa. That was your lodger, Patrick.’
The pupils of Abigail’s dark blue eyes enlarged suddenly, so that they became as opaque as Strike had seen her father’s.
‘I had to keep you talking,’ said Strike, ‘because there were things that needed doing while you were well out of the way.’
He paused to let her speak, but she said nothing, so he continued,
‘Would you like to hear some of the questions I’ve been pondering, about Daiyu’s drowning in the North Sea?’
‘Tell me what you like,’ said Abigail. She was striving to look unconcerned, but the hand holding her cigarette had begun to shake.
‘I started small,’ said Strike, ‘by wondering why she’d drowned exactly where your mother did, but the deeper into the investigation I got, the more unexplained things started cropping up. Who was buying Daiyu toys and sweets in her last few months at the farm? Why was she wearing a white dress rather than a tracksuit when last seen alive? Why did Carrie strip to her underwear, if they were only going in for a paddle? Why did Carrie run off to poke at something at the water’s edge, right before the police arrived? Who was the second adult, who was supposed to be in the dormitory the night Carrie helped Daiyu out of the window? Why did your father spirit Becca Pirbright away from the farm, after Daiyu vanished?’
Abigail, who’d already ground out her first cigarette under her heel, now took out a second. Having lit it, she blew smoke into Strike’s face. Far from resenting this, Strike took the opportunity to breathe in some nicotine.
‘Then I started thinking hard about Kevin Pirbright’s death. Who gouged some of the writing out of his bedroom wall, leaving only the word “pigs”, and who stole his laptop? Who was Kevin talking about, when he told an undercover detective he was going to meet a bully and “have things out” with them? What exactly did Kevin know – what had he pieced together – such that he deserved a bullet through the brain?
‘Now all of those things, separately, might have explanations. A junkie could’ve stolen his laptop. The kids in the dorm might’ve simply forgotten the second person in charge the last night Daiyu was seen there. But added together, there seemed to be a hell of a lot of unexplained occurrences.’
‘If you say so,’ said Abigail, but her hand was still shaking. ‘But—’
‘I haven’t finished. There was also the question of those phone calls. Who called Carrie Curtis Woods, before my partner and I visited her? Whom did she call back, after we’d left? Who phoned Jordan Reaney, from a call box in Norfolk to throw suspicion on the church, and put him in such a state of fear and alarm he tried to overdose? Who were those two people terrified of, and what had that person threatened them with, that made them both decide they’d rather die than face it? And who called the Delaunays, trying to make them scared Daiyu was still alive, to throw a red herring in my path, and make them even more obstructive?’
Abigail blew smoke towards the ceiling and said nothing.