‘Evening,’ said Murphy, having procured for himself a pint of what the eagle-eyed Strike noted with disappointment was alcohol-free beer. The policeman sat down opposite Strike, laid the folder on the table between them and said,
‘Had to make quite a few phone calls to get hold of this lot.’
‘Norfolk constabulary handled it, presumably?’ said Strike, who was only too happy to dispense with personal chat.
‘Initially, but Vice Squad got called in once they realised what they were dealing with. It was the biggest paedophile ring broken up in the UK at that point. There were men from up and down the country visiting.’
Murphy extracted a few pages of photocopied photos and handed them to Strike.
‘As you can see there, they found plenty of nasty stuff: restraints, gags, sex toys, whips, paddles…’
These objects would all have been present, Strike thought, when he, Lucy and Leda had been at the farm, and against his will, a series of fragmented memories forced themselves upon him as he turned the pages: Leda, enthralled by firelight as Malcom Crowther talked of social revolution; the woods where the children ran free, sometimes with the portly Gerald chasing them, sweating and laughing, tickling them until they couldn’t breathe if he caught them; and – oh fuck – that small girl curled up and sobbing in the long grass while other, older children asked her what was wrong, and she refused to say… he’d been bored by her… he just wanted to leave the squalid, creepy place…
‘… look at page five, though.’
Strike did as he was told and found himself looking at a picture of a black gun.
‘Looks like it shoots out a banner saying “Bang”.’
‘It did,’ said Murphy. ‘It was in with a load of magic props one of the Crowther brothers had his house.’
‘That’ll be Gerald,’ said Strike. ‘He worked as a kids’ entertainer before committing full time to paedophilia.’
‘Right. Well, they bagged up everything he had in his house to test it for kids’ fingerprints, because he was claiming he’d never had children in there with him.’
‘I don’t think my source could’ve confused a prop for the real thing,’ said Strike, looking down at the picture of the unconvincing plastic gun. ‘She knew Gerald Crowther did magic tricks. What about Rust Andersen, did you get anything on him?’
‘Yeah,’ said Murphy, extracting another piece of paper from the file, ‘he was pulled in and interviewed in ’86, same as all the other adults. His house – I say house, but it was more like a glorified shed – was clean. No sex tapes or toys.’
‘I don’t think he was ever part of the Aylmerton Community proper,’ said Strike, casting an eye down Rust Andersen’s witness statement.
‘That tallies with what’s in here,’ said Murphy, tapping the folder. ‘None of the kids implicated him in the abuse and a couple of them didn’t even know who he was.’
‘Born in Michigan,’ said Strike, skim-reading, ‘drafted into the army at eighteen…’
‘After he got out he went travelling in Europe and never returned to the States. But he can’t have brought guns into the UK with the IRA active at the time and tight security at airports. ’Course, there’s nothing to say someone at the farm didn’t have a permit for a hunting rifle.’
‘That occurred to me, too, although my information was “guns”, plural.’
‘Well, if they were there, they were bloody well hidden, because the Vice Squad virtually tore the place apart.’
‘I knew it was a pretty thin thread to hang a raid on,’ said Strike, handing Murphy back the papers. ‘The mention of guns could’ve been said for threatening effect.’
Both men drank some beer. A definite air of constraint hung over the table.
‘So how much longer d’you reckon you’ll need her in there?’ asked Murphy.
‘Not down to me,’ said Strike. ‘She can come out whenever she likes, but at the moment, she wants to stay in. Says she’s not coming out until she’s got something on the church. You know Robin.’
Though not as well as I do.
‘Yeah, she’s dedicated,’ said Murphy.
After a short pause he said,
‘Funny, you two going after the UHC. First time I heard of them was five years ago.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. I was still in uniform. Bloke drove his car off the road, straight through the window of a Morrisons. Coked out of his head. Kept saying “D’you know who I am?” while I was arresting him. I didn’t have a clue. Turned out he’d been a contestant on some reality show I’d never watched. Jacob Messenger, his name was.’
‘Jacob?’ repeated Strike, slipping his hand into his pocket for his notebook.
‘Yeah. He was a real tit, all pecs and fake tan. He hit a woman shopping with her kid. The boy was OK, but the mother was a real mess. Messenger got a year, out in six months. Next I heard of him, he was in the paper because he’d joined the UHC. Trying to burnish up his reputation, you know. He’d seen the light and he was going to be a good boy from now on and here’s a picture of me with some disabled kids.’
‘Interesting,’ said Strike, who’d written much of this down. ‘Apparently there’s a Jacob at Chapman Farm who’s very ill. D’you know what this Messenger’s doing now?’
‘No idea,’ said Murphy. ‘So, what’s she getting up to in there? She doesn’t tell me a lot in her letters.’
‘No, well, she won’t have got time for duplicate reports, middle of the night in the woods,’ said Strike, privately enjoying the fact that Murphy had to ask. He’d resisted looking at the notes Robin had scribbled for Ryan, but been pleased to see they seemed far shorter than his own. ‘She’s doing well. Seems to have kept her incognito going, no problem. She’s already got us a couple of bits of decent information. Nothing we can credibly threaten the church with, though.’
‘Tall order, waiting for something criminal to happen right in front of her.’
‘If I know Robin,’ which I do, bloody well, ‘she won’t just be sitting around for something to happen.’
Both men drank more beer. Strike had an idea Murphy had something he wanted to say and was preparing various robust pushbacks, whether against the suggestion Strike had acted recklessly in sending Robin undercover, or that he’d done so with the intent of messing up her relationship.
‘Didn’t know you were a mate of Wardle’s,’ said Murphy. ‘He’s not a big fan of mine.’
Strike settled for looking non-committal.
‘I was a bit of an arsehole one night, in the pub. This is before I stopped drinking.’
Strike made an indeterminate noise somewhere between acknowledgement and agreement.
‘My marriage was going tits-up at the time,’ said Murphy.
Strike could tell Murphy wanted to know what Wardle had told him, and was enjoying being as inscrutable as possible.
‘So what are you going to do now?’ asked Murphy, when the continuing silence had told him plainly Strike wasn’t going to disclose whatever he knew to Murphy’s discredit. ‘Tell Robin to go looking for guns?’
‘I’ll tell her to keep an eye out, certainly,’ said Strike. ‘Thanks for this, though. Very helpful.’
‘Yeah, well, I’ve got a vested interest in my girlfriend not getting shot,’ said Murphy.
Strike noted the nettled tone, smiled, checked his watch and announced that he’d better get going.
He might not have learned much about guns at Chapman Farm, but he felt it had been twenty minutes well spent, nonetheless.
PART FOUR
K’un/Oppression (Exhaustion)
There is no water in the lake:
The image of EXHAUSTION.
Thus the superior man stakes his life
On following his will.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
52
Nine in the second place means…
There is some gossip.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
I’m so tired… you wouldn’t believe how tired I am… I just want to leave…
Robin was addressing her detective partner inside her head while forking manure out of the Shire horses’ stable. Five days had passed since her demotion from the high-level group, but her relegation to the lowest level of farm workers showed no sign of being reversed, nor was she any the wiser about what she’d done to merit punishment. Aside from very brief spells of chanting in the temple, all of Robin’s time was now devoted to manual labour: looking after livestock, cleaning, or working in the laundry and kitchens.
A new intake of prospective members had arrived for their Week of Service, but Robin had nothing to do with them. She saw them being moved around the farm, doing their different tasks, but evidently she wasn’t considered sufficiently trustworthy to shepherd them around, as Vivienne and Amandeep were doing.
Those doing hard domestic and farm work received no more food than those sitting in lectures and seminars, and had less time to sleep, waking early to collect breakfast eggs and cleaning dishes every night after dinner for a hundred people. Robin’s exhaustion had reached such levels that her hands shook whenever they were free of tools or stacks of plates, shadows flickered regularly in her peripheral vision and every muscle in her body ached as though she were suffering from flu.
Resting for a moment on the handle of her pitchfork – the spring day wasn’t particularly warm, but she was sweating nonetheless – Robin looked into the pigsty visible through the stable door, where a couple of very large sows were snoozing in the intermittent sunshine, both covered in mud and faeces, a sulphurous and ammoniac smell wafting over to Robin in the damp air. As she contemplated their naked snouts, tiny eyes and the coarse hair covering their bodies, she remembered that Abigail, Wace’s daughter, had once been forced to sleep naked beside them, in all that filth, and felt repulsed.