‘She said the church has got guns?’
‘Yeah, an’ she says, “They jus’ killed a guy for talkin’ shit about ’em, so you need to stop fuckin’ pissin’ me off”, an’ I says, “’ow’s the fire service gonna like it when I go to the police abou’ you freatenin’ me?” I got a lotta dirt on ’er, if she wants to play that fuckin’ game,’ said Saxon, barely drawing breath, ‘an’ y’know wha’ they do in tha’ church, do ya? All fuckin’ each other all the time? That’s ’ow she was brung up, but if she di’nt like it, why’s she still fuckin’ a diff’rent guy every night? Two at a time, some—’
‘Did she say she’d seen guns at Chapman Farm?’
‘Yeah, so she’s seen the fuckin’ murder weapon, an’ she’s never reported—’
‘She can’t have seen the gun that killed Kevin Pirbright. He was killed by a model that didn’t exist then.’
Temporarily stymied, Saxon said,
‘She still freatened to ’ave me fuckin’ shot!’
‘Well, if you think that was a credible threat, by all means go to the police. Sounds to me like a woman trying to scare off a guy who can’t take no for an answer, but maybe they’ll see it differently.’
Strike thought he knew what was going on behind Saxon’s tiny hazel eyes. Occasionally, when people in the grip of obsessive resentment were pouring out their ire and grievances, something in them, some small trace of self-awareness, heard themselves as others might, and was surprised to find they didn’t sound quite as blameless, or even as rational, as they’d imagined themselves to be.
‘Maybe I will go the fuckin’ police,’ said Saxon, heaving himself to his feet.
‘Good luck with that,’ said Strike, also getting up. ‘In the meantime, I might ring Abigail and recommend she finds a lodger who doesn’t tell his mate every time she screams in her sleep.’
Perhaps because Strike was six inches taller than him, Saxon contented himself with snarling,
‘If that’s your fuckin’ attitude—’
‘Thanks for coming in,’ said Strike, moving to open the door onto the outer office.
Saxon strode out past Pat and slammed the glass door behind him.
‘I never trust men with those piggy little eyes,’ croaked the office manager.
‘You’d be right not to trust him,’ said Strike, ‘but not because of his piggy little eyes.’
‘What did ’e want?’
‘Revenge,’ said Strike succinctly.
He returned to the inner office, sat back down at the partners’ desk and read the sparse notes he’d made while Saxon was talking.
Paul Draper brain damage? Death in newspaper? Guns at Chapman Farm?
With reluctance, but knowing it was the only sure way to get fast results, he picked up his mobile and pressed Ryan Murphy’s number.
50
Six at the beginning means:
When there is hoarfrost underfoot,
Solid ice is not far off.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Several things had happened lately at Chapman Farm to leave anxiety squirming in Robin’s guts like a parasite.
It had been one thing to tell Strike in the safety of the office that she wasn’t worried about being coerced into unprotected sex with male church members, quite another to sit through a two-hour lecture about spirit bonding in the farmhouse basement and watch all the women around her earnestly nodding as they were told ‘flesh is unimportant, spirit is all-important’ (Robin knew, now, where Penny Brown had got that line).
‘What we stand against,’ Taio said from the stage, ‘is materialist possession. No human being owns another or should create any kind of framework to control or limit them. This is inevitable in carnal relationships – what we call CRs – which are based upon the possession instinct. CRs are inherently materialist. They venerate physical appearance and they inevitably stunt the natures of those in them, yet the bubble world exalts them, especially when they come draped in materialist trappings of property, weddings and the so-called nuclear family.
‘There should be no shame attached to sexual desire. It is a natural, healthy need. We agree with the Hindus that one of the aims of a well-lived life is Kama, or sensual pleasure. Yet the purer the spirit, the less likely it is to crave what is superficially attractive over what is spiritually good and true. Where two spirits are in harmony – when each feels the divine vibration working in and through them – spirit bonding occurs naturally and beautifully. The body, which is subservient to the spirit, physically demonstrates and channels the spiritual connection felt by those who have transcended materialist ties.’
While she’d found it impossible to disagree that the outside world was full of cruelty and apathy while she was being bombarded with images of bombed and starving children, Robin had no difficulty whatsoever in disengaging from her environment this time and analysing Taio’s argument as he spoke. If you cut through all the UHC jargon, she thought, he was arguing that spiritual purity meant agreeing to sex with anyone who wanted it, no matter how unattractive you might find them. Sleeping only with people you actually desired made you a shallow agent of the Adversary, whereas sex with Taio – and the very thought gave Robin an inner shudder – proved your innate goodness.
However, she seemed to be alone in this viewpoint, because all around her, men and women were nodding their agreement: yes, possessiveness and jealousy were bad, yes, it was wrong to control people, yes, there was nothing wrong with sex, it was pure and beautiful when done in the context of a spiritual relationship, and Robin wondered why they couldn’t hear what she was hearing.
Robin wondered whether she was imagining Taio’s lopsided blue eyes travelling to her more often than to any of the other listeners, or the slight smirk twisting his small mouth whenever he looked in her direction. Probably she was being paranoid, but she couldn’t entirely convince herself she was imagining it. The spotlight didn’t flatter Taio: his thick, greasy hair hung about his face like a wig, threw his long, pale, rat-like nose into sharp relief and emphasised his second chin.
Something in Taio’s self-assured manner reminded Robin of her middle-aged rapist standing in court, neat in his suit and tie, giving a little laugh as he told the jury he’d been very surprised a young student like Robin had invited him into her hall of residence for sex. He’d explained that he was merely obliging her in strangling her, because she’d said she ‘liked it rough’. His words had flowed easily; he was reasonable and rational, and she was the one, he intimated calmly, who’d regretted her unfettered carnality, and decided to put him through the dreadful ordeal of a court case to cover up her own shame. He’d had no problem looking at her in court; he’d glanced at her frequently while giving testimony, a slight smile playing on his lips.
At the end of the session, Taio treated them to an exhibition of the kind of power the pure spirit possessed: he turned his back on them and levitated inches off the stage. Robin saw it with her own eyes, saw his feet leave the floor, his arms rising heavenwards, and then, after ten seconds, saw him fall back to earth with a bang. There were gasps and applause, and Taio grinned at them all, his eyes flickering once more towards Robin.
She wanted to leave the basement as quickly as possible after that, but as she made her way towards the wooden stairs, Taio called her back by name.
‘I was watching you,’ he said, smirking again as he descended from the stage. ‘You didn’t like what I was saying.’
‘No, I thought it was really interesting,’ said Robin, trying to sound cheerful.
‘You didn’t agree,’ said Taio. He was now standing so close to her that she could smell his pungent body odour. ‘I think you’re finding it hard to let go of the materialist framing of sex. You were engaged, weren’t you? And your marriage was called off?’
‘Yes,’ said Robin.
‘So until recently, materialist possession was very attractive to you.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Robin, ‘but I do agree with what you said about control and limiting people—’
Taio now reached out and stroked her cheek. Robin had to resist the impulse to knock his hand away. Smiling, he said,
‘I knew you were a Receptive the first time I saw you, in the Rupert Court Temple. “The Receptive is the most devoted of all things in the world.” That’s from the I Ching. Have you read it?’
‘No,’ said Robin.
‘Some women – the Receptive is female, the Creative male – are constitutionally prone to devoting themselves to one man. That’s their nature. Those women can be very valuable church members, but to become pure spirit, they must lose their attachment to material status or any notion of possession. It’s not unacceptable to prefer only one man, as long as they’re not trying to limit or control him. So there’s a way forward for you, but you need to be aware of that tendency in yourself.’
‘I will,’ said Robin, trying to sound grateful for his input.
Another group of church members came down the stairs, ready for their lecture, and Robin was permitted to leave, but she’d seen the line between Taio’s heavy brows deepen as she turned away, and feared her agreement had been insufficiently enthusiastic or, worse, that she ought to have responded physically to his caress.
Others, as she swiftly realised, had already begun to demonstrate their willingness to rise above the material and embrace the spiritual. Several times over the next few days Robin noticed young women, spiky-haired Vivienne included, dropping out of scheduled activities, then reappearing from the direction of the Retreat Rooms, sometimes in the company of a man. She was certain it was a matter of time before she, too, was pressured to join in.
The next destabilising occurrence was Robin’s own fault: she went to the plastic rock a night early – at least, Robin thought she’d been a night early, but she ha