d no means of knowing how many extra pebbles she’d picked up, forgetting that she’d already done so earlier in the day. She might, in fact, be as much as forty-eight hours out. Her disappointment at finding no letter from Strike and no chocolate had been severe. Someone from the agency would now have picked up her disappointingly news-less letter, but she didn’t dare make another night-time trip before it was absolutely necessary, because of what happened the morning after her premature trip.
She’d been silently overjoyed to hear that her group would be going into Norwich for the first time to collect money for the UHC’s many charitable enterprises. This would give her an opportunity to check the date on a newspaper and restart her pebble collecting again from the right day. However, shortly after breakfast, Robin was called aside by a stern-faced woman who’d never spoken to her before.
‘Mazu wants you to stay at the farm today,’ she said. ‘You’re to go up to the vegetable patch and help the workers there.’
‘Oh,’ said Robin, as Becca Pirbright led the rest of her group out of the dining hall, some of them looking curiously back at Robin. ‘Er – all right. Should I go there now?’
‘Yes,’ said the woman curtly, and walked away.
Robin had been at Chapman Farm long enough to recognise the subtle signs that somebody was in disgrace. There were still a few people sitting along the breakfast table from her, and when she glanced towards them, all looked swiftly away. Feeling self-conscious, she got to her feet and carried her empty porridge bowl and glass over to a trolley by the wall.
As she left the dining hall and made her way towards the large vegetable patch, which she’d never worked on before, Robin wondered nervously what she’d done to be demoted from the high-level recruits. Was it her insufficiently enthusiastic response to the concept of spirit bonding? Had Taio been displeased with her reaction to their conversation and reported her to his mother? Or had one of the women in her dormitory reported seeing her leave it by night?
She found several adults planting carrot seeds on the vegetable patch, including the now very heavily pregnant Wan. A number of pre-school children were also there, in their miniature scarlet tracksuits. One of these was the white-headed Qing, who was easy to recognise because of her dandelion clock hair. Only when the man nearest Qing straightened up to his full height did Robin recognise Will Edensor.
‘I’ve been told to come and help,’ said Robin.
‘Oh,’ said Will. ‘Right. Well, there are seeds here…’
He showed her what to do then returned to his own planting.
Robin wondered whether the silence of the other adults was due to her presence. None of them were talking except to the children, who were more hindrance than help, more interested in scooping up the seeds and digging their fingers into the earth than in planting anything.
A strong smell wafted over the vegetable patch, which lay downwind of the pigsty. Robin had been working for a few minutes when Qing toddled over to her. The child had a crudely made toy spade of wood, which she banged on the earth.
‘Qing, come here,’ said Will. ‘Come and help me plant.’
The child struggled away across the damp soil.
As Robin scattered seeds in their furrow, bent double and moving slowly, she watched Will Edensor out of the corner of her eye. This was the first chance she’d had of getting close to him, barring the night-time conversation between him and Lin he didn’t know she’d overheard. Young though he was, his hair was already receding, heightening a look of fragility and illness. By speeding up her sowing, she managed, apparently naturally, to reach a spot beside Will as he worked an adjacent furrow with Qing.
‘She’s yours, isn’t she?’ she said to Will, smiling. ‘She looks like you.’
He threw Robin an irritated glance and muttered,
‘There’s no “mine”. That’s materialist possession.’
‘Oh, sorry, of course,’ said Robin.
‘You should’ve internalised that by now,’ said Will sententiously. ‘That’s kind of basic.’
‘Sorry,’ said Robin again. ‘I keep getting into trouble accidentally.’
‘There’s no “in trouble”,’ said Will, in the same critical tone. ‘Spiritual demarcation is strengthening.’
‘What’s spiritual demarcation?’ said Robin.
‘The Answer, chapter fourteen, paragraph nine,’ said Will. ‘That’s kind of basic, too.’
He wasn’t bothering to keep his voice down. Robin could tell the other gardeners were listening. One young woman in glasses, who had long, dirty hair and a prominent mole on her chin, was wearing a faint smile.
‘If you don’t understand why spiritual demarcation’s occurred,’ Will said, unasked, ‘you need to chant or medit—Qing, don’t do that,’ he said, because the little girl was now digging her wooden spade where he’d just patted down the earth over the seeds. ‘Come and get more seeds,’ said Will, standing up and leading Qing, hand in hand, towards the box where the packets were sitting.
Robin kept working, wondering at the difference in Will when church elders were present, when he looked hangdog and defeated, and Will here among the farmhands, where he seemed self-assured and dogmatic. She was also quietly reflecting on the young man’s hypocrisy. Robin had seen clear signs that Will and Lin were trying to sustain a parental relationship with Qing in defiance of the church’s teaching, and the conversation she’d overheard him having with Lin in the woods had proven he was trying to help her avoid spirit bonding with some other man. Robin wondered whether Will was oblivious to the fact that he was transgressing against the precepts of the UHC, or whether the lecturing tone was for the benefit of their listeners.
Almost as though the girl in glasses had read Robin’s mind, she said with a strong Norfolk accent,
‘You won’t win agin Will on church doctrine. ’E knows it insoid out.’
‘I wasn’t trying to win anything,’ said Robin mildly.
Will returned, Qing in tow. Determined to keep him talking, Robin said,
‘This is a wonderful place for kids to grow up, isn’t it?’
Will merely grunted.
‘They’ll know the right way from the start – unlike me.’
Will glanced at Robin again, then said,
‘It’s never too late. The Golden Prophet was seventy-two when she found The Way.’
‘I know,’ said Robin, ‘that sort of gives me comfort. I’ll get it if I keep working—’
‘It isn’t working, it’s freeing yourself to discover,’ Will corrected her. ‘The Answer, chapter three, paragraph six.’
Robin was starting to understand why Will’s brother James found him infuriating.
‘Well, that’s what I’m trying—’
‘You shouldn’t be trying. It’s a process of allowing.’
‘I know, that’s what I’m saying,’ said Robin, as each of them scattered seeds and patted down the earth, Qing now poking idly at a weed. ‘Your little – I mean, that little girl – is her name Qing?’
‘Yes,’ said Will.
‘She won’t make my mistakes, because she’ll be taught to open herself up properly, won’t she?’
Will looked up. Their eyes met, Robin’s expression deliberately innocent, and Will’s face turned slowly scarlet. Pretending she hadn’t noticed, Robin returned to her work, saying,
‘We had a really good lecture on spirit bonding the other—’
Will got up abruptly and walked back towards the seeds. For the rest of the two hours Robin spent on the vegetable patch, he came nowhere near her.
That night was the first at Chapman Farm in which Robin found it difficult to fall asleep. Recent events had forced her up against one incontrovertible fact: doing what she was in here to do – find out things to the church’s discredit, and persuade Will Edensor to reconsider his allegiance – necessarily meant pushing at boundaries. The tactics that had seen her accepted as a full church member had to be abandoned: doglike obedience and apparent indoctrination wouldn’t further her aims.
Yet she was scared. She doubted she’d ever be able to communicate to Strike – her touchstone, the person who was keeping her sane – just how intimidating the atmosphere was at Chapman Farm, how frightening it was to know you were surrounded by willing accomplices, or how unnerved she now felt at the prospect of the Retreat Rooms.
51
Nine at the top…
There is drinking of wine
In genuine confidence.
No blame.
But if one wets his head,
He loses it, in truth.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Little though Strike wanted to meet Ryan Murphy for a drink, the Met’s lack of action on the matter of the Franks’ stalking had underlined the usefulness of personal contacts if you wanted swift action taken on a matter the overstretched police might not consider of immediate importance. As nobody on the force was likely to have a greater interest in establishing whether or not there were guns at Chapman Farm than Murphy, Strike had swallowed his increasing antipathy towards the man. A few days after first contacting him, Strike arrived at St Stephen’s Tavern in Westminster to hear what the CID officer had managed to find out.
The last time Strike had entered this particular pub had been with Robin, and as Murphy hadn’t yet arrived, he took his pint to the same corner table he and his detective partner had previously sat at, half-aware of a vaguely territorial instinct. The green leather benches echoed those in the House of Commons a short distance away and Strike sat down beneath one of the etched mirrors, resisting the urge to read the menu, because his target weight remained unreached and pub food was one of the things he’d reluctantly decided to forgo.
If he wasn’t particularly pleased to see the handsome Murphy, he was glad to see a folder under the man’s arm, because this suggested he had research to share that Strike himself was unable to undertake.