The Running Grave — страница 49 из 179

A gagged woman was depicted with one of the clawed hands throttling her, the letters UHC drawn onto both dilated pupils.

Daiyu appeared repeatedly, sometimes only her face, sometimes full length, in a white dress that dripped water onto the floor around her bare feet. The eyeless, rabbity face stared in through windows, the dripping corpse floated across ceilings and peered out from between dark trees.

A loud bang made Strike start. A bird had hit the office window. For two seconds, he and the raven blinked at each other and then, in a blur of black feathers, it had gone.

Heart rate now slightly elevated, Strike returned his attention to the images on Torment Town’s page. He paused on the most complex picture yet: a meticulously rendered depiction of a group standing around a black five-sided pool. The figures around the pool were hooded, their faces in shadow, but Jonathan Wace’s face was illuminated.

Over the water hovered the spectral Daiyu, looking down at the water below, a sinister smile on her face. Where Daiyu’s reflection should have been, there was a different woman, floating on the surface of the water. She was fair haired and wore square-framed glasses, but like Daiyu she had no eyes, only empty sockets.

30

… a princess leads her maids-in-waiting like a shoal of fishes to her husband and thus gains his favour.

The I Ching or Book of Changes




The women in the dormitory were woken at 5 a.m. as usual by the ringing of the large copper bell on Robin’s fourth morning at Chapman Farm. After the same scant breakfast of watery porridge they’d eaten every day so far, new recruits were asked to remain in the dining hall, because their groups were to be reconfigured.

Every member of Fire Group other than Robin left to join other groups. Her new companions included the professor, Walter Fernsby, Amandeep Singh, who’d worn the Spiderman T-shirt in temple, and a young woman with short, spiky black hair called Vivienne.

‘’Owzit going?’ she said, on joining the others.

In spite of her best efforts to drop her aitches, Robin noticed, as Vivienne exchanged remarks with the others, that her accent was really irremediably upper middle class.

Robin was almost certain the newly formed groups were no longer randomly selected. Fire Group now seemed to consist only of university-educated people, most of whom clearly had money or came from well-off families. Metal Group, by contrast, contained some of the people who’d had most difficulty with daily tasks, including bespectacled, ginger-haired widow Marion Huxley, and a couple of recruits whom Robin had already heard complain of fatigue and hunger, like green-haired Penny Brown.

After the re-sorting of the groups, the day proceeded in the same way as the previous ones. Robin and the rest of Fire Group were ushered through a mixture of tasks, some physical, some spiritual. After feeding the pigs and putting fresh straw in the chickens’ nesting boxes, they were taken to their third lecture on church doctrine, which was conducted by Taio Wace, then had a chanting session in the temple, during which Robin, already tired, entered a pleasant, trance-like state which left her with a feeling of increased well-being. She could now recite Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu without needing to check the words or pronunciation.

After temple, they were led to a new crafting workshop.

‘Fire Group, called to service,’ said Becca Pirbright as they entered a slightly larger space than that in which the toy turtles had been made. The walls were hung with many different kinds of woven and plaited corn dollies: stars, crosses, hearts, spirals and figures, many of them finished with ribbons. In a far corner of the room, two church members – Robin recognised the woman who’d stood at the reception desk when they arrived, and the pregnant Wan – were working on a large straw sculpture. Piles of straw also lay on a long central table, in front of every seat. At the head of the table stood Mazu Wace in her long orange robes, with the mother-of-pearl fish around her neck, holding a leatherbound book.

N ho,’ she said, gesturing for Fire Group to take their seats.

There were fewer permanent church members seated at the table than at the turtle-making session. Among them was the teenage girl with long, fine mousey hair and large blue eyes whom Robin had already noticed. Robin deliberately selected a seat beside her.

‘As you know,’ said Mazu, ‘we sell our handiwork to raise funds for the church’s charitable projects. We have a long tradition of making corn dollies at Chapman Farm and grow our own straw specifically for this purpose. Today you’ll be making some simple Glory Plaits,’ said Mazu, walking to the wall and pointing at a flat, plaited corn dolly with wheat heads fanning out of the bottom. ‘Regular members will help, and once you’re working properly, I’ll read you today’s lesson.’

‘Hi,’ Robin said to the teenage girl beside her, as Mazu began leafing through the book, ‘I’m Rowena.’

‘I’m L-L-Lin,’ stammered the girl.

Robin knew at once that the girl must be the daughter of Deirdre Doherty, who’d been (if Kevin Pirbright was to be believed) the product of Jonathan Wace’s rape.

‘That looks hard,’ Robin said, watching Lin’s thin fingers working the straw.

‘It isn’t r-r-really,’ said Lin.

Robin noticed Mazu glance up irritably from her book at the sound of Lin’s voice. Although Lin hadn’t looked at Mazu, Robin was certain she’d registered her reaction, because she began showing Robin what to do without words. Robin remembered Kevin Pirbright writing in his email to Sir Colin that Mazu had mocked Lin for her stammer since childhood.

Once everyone had set to work in earnest, Mazu said,

‘I’m going to talk to you this morning about the Golden Prophet, whose life was a beautiful lesson. The Golden Prophet’s mantra is I Live to Love and Give. The following words were written by Papa J himself.’

She dropped her gaze to the open book in her hands and now Robin saw The Answer, by Jonathan Wace printed on its spine in gold leaf.

‘“There was once a worldly, materialistic woman who married with the sole aim of living what the bubble world considers a fulfilled, successful li—”’

‘Are we allowed to ask questions?’ interrupted Amandeep Singh.

Robin sensed an immediate tension among the regular church members.

‘I usually take questions at the end of the reading,’ said Mazu coolly. ‘Were you going to ask what the “bubble world” is?’

‘Yeah,’ said Amandeep.

‘That’s about to be explained,’ said Mazu, with a tight, cold smile. Looking back at her book, she continued reading.

‘“We sometimes call the materialist world the ‘bubble world’ because its inhabitants live inside a consumer-driven, status-obsessed and ego-saturated bubble. Possession is key to the bubble world: possession of things and possessiveness of other human beings, who are reduced to flesh objects. Those who can see beyond the gaudy, multicoloured walls of the bubble are deemed strange, deluded – even mad. Yet the bubble world’s walls are fragile. It takes just one glimpse of Truth for them to burst, and so it was with Margaret Cathcart-Bryce.

‘“She was a rich woman, vain and selfish. She had doctors operate upon her body, the better to ape the youth so venerated within the bubble world, which lives in terror of death and decay. She had no children by choice, for fear that it would spoil her perfect figure, and she amassed great wealth without giving away a penny, content to live a life of material ease that other bubble-dwellers envied for its trappings.”’

Robin was carefully folding the hollow straws under Lin’s silent direction. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the pregnant Wan massaging one side of her swollen belly.

‘“Margaret’s sickness was one of false self,”’ read Mazu. ‘“This is the self that craves external validation. Her spiritual self had been untended and neglected for a very long time. Her awakening came after her husband’s death by what the world calls chance, but which the Universal Humanitarian Church recognises as part of the eternal design.

‘“Margaret came to hear one of my talks. She told me, later, that she’d attended because she had nothing better to do. Of course, I was well aware that people often attended my meetings purely to have something new to talk about at fashionable dinner parties. Yet I’ve never scorned the company of the rich. That in itself is a form of prejudice. All judgement based on a person’s wealth is bubble thinking.

‘“So I spoke at the dinner and the attendees nodded and smiled. I didn’t doubt that some would write me cheques to support our charitable work at the end of the evening. It would cost them little and perhaps give them a sense of their own goodness.

‘“But when I saw Margaret’s eyes fixed upon me, I knew that she was what I sometimes call a sleepwalker: one who has great unawakened spiritual capacity. I hurried through my talk, eager to speak to this woman. I approached her at the conclusion of our talk and with a few short sentences, I’d fallen as deeply in love as I’d ever done in my life.”’

Robin wasn’t the only person who glanced up at Mazu at these words.

‘“Some will be shocked to hear me talk of love. Margaret was seventy-two years old, but when two sympathetic spirits meet, so-called physical reality dissolves into irrelevance. I loved Margaret instantly, because her true self called to me from behind the masklike face, pleading for liberation. I had already undertaken sufficient spiritual training to see with a clarity physical eyes cannot. Beauty that is of the flesh will always wither, whereas beauty of the spirit is eternal and unchange—”’

The door of the workshop opened. Mazu looked up. Jiang Wace entered, squat and sullen in his orange tracksuit. At the sight of Mazu, his right eye began to flicker and he hastily covered it.