‘Oh, yeah, ’e knows,’ said Shanker. ‘An’ you’ll ’ave a bit of security there, to make sure ’e’s cooperating.’
‘Even better,’ said Strike. ‘Thanks a lot.’
‘Awright, ’appy ’untin’,’ said Shanker, and rang off.
Strike had just put his mobile back in his pocket when the door of Lavington Court Chambers opened and Bijou descended the steps wearing a bright red coat, setting off in the direction of the Tube station. Strike let her get a head start, then followed. As he walked, he took out his mobile and called her number again. She took her phone out of her bag, still walking, looked at it, then put it back in the bag without answering.
As he wanted to put some distance between himself and Lavington Court Chambers to reduce the possibility of being seen by Bijou’s work colleagues, Strike continued to walk fifty yards behind his quarry until she entered narrow Gate Street. Here, she slowed down, took out her mobile again, apparently to read a recently received text, and finally came to a halt to send a reply. Strike sped up, and when she’d again put her mobile back into her bag, called her name.
She looked round, and was clearly horrified to see who had called her.
‘I’d like a word, in there,’ he said grimly, pointing to a pub called the Ship, which was tucked away in a pedestrian-only alleyway visible between two buildings.
‘Why?’
‘Have you read today’s Private Eye?’
‘I – yes.’
‘Then you know why.’
‘I don’t—’
‘Want to be seen with me? Then you should’ve answered your phone.’
She looked as though she’d have liked to refuse to go with him, but let him lead her into the alleyway. When he held open the door of the Ship, she walked in past him, her expression cold.
‘I’d rather go upstairs,’ she said.
‘Fine by me,’ said Strike. ‘What d’you want to drink?’
‘I don’t care – red wine.’
Five minutes later he joined her upstairs in the low-ceilinged, dimly lit Oak Room. She’d taken off her coat to reveal a tight red dress, and was sitting in a corner with her back to the room. Strike set her wine on the table before sitting down opposite her, holding a double whisky. He didn’t intend to stay long enough for a pint.
‘You’ve been shooting your mouth off about me.’
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘“A mole at Lavington Court Chambers—”’
‘I know what it said!’
‘You need to make it very clear to this Honbold individual that I never gave you any advice on surveillance.’
‘I’ve already told him that!’
‘Seen the article, has he?’
‘Yes. And the Mail have been on to him. And the Sun. But he’s going to deny everything,’ she added, her bottom lip trembling.
‘I’ll bet he is.’
Strike watched unsympathetically as Bijou dug in her pockets for a tissue and blotted her eyes carefully so as not to disturb her make-up.
‘What are you going to do when journos turn up at your flat?’ he asked.
‘Tell them I never slept with him. It’s what Andrew wants.’
‘You’re going to deny you ever slept with me, as well.’
She said nothing. Suspecting he knew what lay behind her silence, he said,
‘I’m not going to be collateral damage in all this. We met at a christening, that’s all. If you still think Honbold’s going to be spurred into leaving his wife out of jealousy that we’re screwing, you’re deluded. I doubt he’d touch you with a bargepole after this.’
‘You bastard,’ she croaked, still mopping her eyes and nose. ‘I liked you.’
‘You were playing a little game that blew up in your face, but I’m not going to get caught in the crossfire, so understand now, there’ll be consequences if you try and save face by saying we’re having an affair.’
‘Are you threatening me?’ she whispered over the damp tissue.
‘It’s a warning,’ said Strike. ‘Delete the texts you sent me and take my number off your phone.’
‘Or?’
‘Or there’ll be consequences,’ he repeated. ‘I’m a private detective. I find out things about people, things they think they’ve hidden very effectively. Unless there’s nothing in your past you’d mind seeing printed in the Sun, I’d think long and hard about using me to try and leverage a proposal out of Honbold.’
She was no longer crying. Her expression had hardened, but he thought she’d gone slightly paler beneath her foundation. Finally she took out her mobile, deleted his contact details, the texts they’d exchanged and the photos she’d sent him. Strike then did the same on his own phone, downed his whisky in one and stood up again.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘blanket denials all round and this should blow over.’
He left the Ship feeling no qualms whatsoever about the tactics he’d just employed, but consumed with fury at her and himself. Time would tell whether he was going to find the Mail at his own door, but as he walked back towards Holborn Tube station, he vowed to himself that this would be the last time, ever, he risked his own privacy or career for a pointless affair undertaken to distract him from thoughts of Robin Ellacott.
45
But every relationship between individuals bears within it the danger that wrong turns may be taken…
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Robin had had to carry around the Polaroids she’d found for a week before placing them in the plastic rock on Thursday night. She didn’t dare hide them anywhere in the dormitory, but the awareness of them close to her skin was an ever-present source of anxiety in case one slipped out from under her tracksuit top. Her fourth trip into the woods and back again was mercifully uneventful, and she returned safely to her bed undetected, deeply relieved to have got rid of the photographs.
The following evening, after a day of lectures and chanting, Robin returned to the dormitory with the other women to find scarlet tracksuits lying on their beds, instead of orange.
‘Why the colour change?’ said widowed Marion Huxley blankly. Marion, whose ginger hair had now grown out to reveal an inch of silver, often asked rather basic questions, or spoke when others might have remained silent.
‘’Aven’t you finished reading The Answer yet?’ snapped spiky-haired Vivienne. ‘We must’ve entered the Season of the Stolen Prophet. Red’s his colour.’
‘Very good, Vivienne,’ called Becca Pirbright, smiling from a few beds away, and Vivienne visibly preened herself.
But there was something else on Robin’s bed beside her folded scarlet tracksuit: a box of hair colour remover with a slip of paper lying on top of it, with what she recognised as a quotation from The Answer printed on it.
The False Self craves that which is artificial and unnatural.
The True Self craves that which is genuine and natural.
Robin glanced across the dormitory and saw green-haired Penny Brown also examining a box of hair colour remover. Their eyes met; Robin smiled and pointed towards the bathroom and Penny, smiling back, nodded.
To Robin’s surprise, Louise was standing at the sink, carefully shaving her head in the mirror. Their eyes met briefly. Louise dropped her gaze first. Having towelled off her now completely bald pate, she left the bathroom without speaking.
‘People were telling me,’ whispered Penny, ‘that she’s been shaved for, like, a year.’
‘Wow,’ said Robin. ‘D’you know why?’
Penny shook her head.
Tired as she was, and resentful that she had to give up valuable sleeping time to removing her blue hair dye, Robin was nevertheless glad for the opportunity to talk freely to another church member, especially one whose daily routine differed so markedly from her own.
‘How’re you doing? I’ve barely seen you since we were in Fire Group together.’
‘Great,’ said Penny. ‘Really great.’
Her round face was slimmer than it had been on arrival at the farm and there were shadows beneath her eyes. Side by side at the bathroom mirror, Robin and Penny opened the boxes and began to apply the product to their hair.
‘If this is the start of the Season of the Stolen Prophet,’ said Penny, ‘we’ll be seeing a proper Manifestation soon.’
She sounded both excited and frightened.
‘It was incredible, seeing the Drowned Prophet appear, wasn’t it?’ said Robin.
‘Yes,’ said Penny. ‘That’s what really – I mean, once you’ve seen that, there’s no going back to normal life, is there? Like, the proof.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Robin. ‘I felt the same.’
Penny looked disconsolately at her reflection, with her green hair now covered in a thick white paste.
‘It was growing out anyway,’ she said, with an air of trying to convince herself she was happy to be doing what she was doing.
‘So what have you been up to?’ asked Robin.
‘Um, loads of stuff,’ said Penny. ‘Cooking, working on the vegetable patch. I’ve been helping with Jacob as well. And we had a really good talk this morning, on spirit bonding.’
‘Really?’ said Robin. ‘I haven’t had that yet… how’s Jacob doing?’
‘He’s definitely getting better,’ said Penny, evidently under the impression that Robin knew all about Jacob.
‘Oh, good,’ said Robin. ‘I heard he wasn’t too well.’
‘I mean, he hasn’t been, obviously,’ said Penny. Her manner was somewhere between anxious and cagey. ‘It’s like, difficult, isn’t it? Because someone like that, they can’t understand about the false self and the pure spirit, and that’s why they can’t heal themselves.’
‘Right,’ said Robin, nodding, ‘but you think he’s getting better?’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Penny. ‘Definitely.’
‘It’s nice of Mazu to have him in the farmhouse,’ said Robin, subtly probing.
‘Yeah,’ said Penny again, ‘but he couldn’t be in the dormitory with all his problems.’
‘No, of course not,’ said Robin, carefully feeling her way. ‘Dr Zhou seems so nice.’