To his amazement, the phone was answered after three rings.
‘Hello?’ said a female voice.
‘Hi,’ said Strike, ‘is this Mrs Heaton?’
‘No, iss me, Gillian,’ said the woman, who had a strong Norfolk accent. ‘Who’s this?’
‘I’m trying to contact Mr and Mrs Heaton,’ said Strike. ‘Have they sold their house?’
‘No,’ said Gillian, ‘I’m jus’ here waterin’ the plants. They’re still in Spain. Who’s this?’ she asked again.
‘My name’s Cormoran Strike. I’m a private detective, and I was wondering whether I could speak—’
‘Strike?’ said the woman on the end of the line. ‘You’re not him who got that strangler?’
‘That’s me. I was hoping to speak to Mr and Mrs Heaton about the drowning of a little girl in 1995. They were witnesses at the inquest.’
‘Blimey, yeah,’ said Gillian. ‘I remember that. We’re old friends.’
‘Are they likely to be back in the country soon? I’d rather speak to them in person, but if they can’t—’
‘Well, Leonard broke his leg, see,’ said Gillian, ‘so they stopped out in Fuengirola a bit longer. They’ve got a place out there. He’s getting better, though. Shelley reckons they’ll be back in a couple of weeks.’
‘Would you mind asking if they’d be prepared to speak to me when they get home? I’m happy to come to Cromer,’ added Strike, who wanted to take a look at the place Jennifer and Daiyu had died.
‘Oh,’ said Gillian, who sounded quite excited. ‘Right. I’m sure they’d be happy to help.’
Strike gave the woman his number, thanked her, hung up, then turned to face the board on the wall once more.
There was only one other item pinned to it: a few lines of a poem, which had been printed in a local Norfolk newspaper as part of a grieving widower’s tribute to his dead wife.
Came up that cold sea at Cromer like a running grave
Beside her as she struck
Wildly towards the shore, but the blackcapped wave
Crossed her and swung her back…
The imagery was powerful, but it wasn’t Wace’s. Strike had had a feeling upon reading the lines that he’d heard something like them before, and sure enough, he’d traced them to poet George Barker’s ‘On a Friend’s Escape from Drowning off the Norfolk Coast’. Wace had taken the opening lines of Barker’s poem and switched the pronouns, for Barker’s friend had been male.
It was a shameless piece of plagiarism and Strike was surprised that nobody at the newspaper had spotted it. He was interested not only in the brazenness of the theft, but in the egoism of the widower who’d wanted to figure as a man of poetic gifts in the immediate wake of his wife’s drowning, not to mention the choice of a poem that described the way in which Jennifer must have died, rather than her qualities in life. Even though Abigail had painted her father as a grifter and a narcissist, she’d claimed Wace had been genuinely upset about her mother’s death. The tawdry act of stealing Barker’s poem to get himself into the local paper was not, in Strike’s view, the act of a man truly grieving at all.
For another minute he stood contemplating the pictures of individuals who’d met unnatural deaths, two by drowning, one by beating, and one by a single gunshot to the head. His gaze moved again to the Polaroids of the four young people in pig masks. Then he sat back down at the desk, and scribbled a few more questions for Jordan Reaney.
56
Six at the beginning means…
Even a lean pig has it in him to rage around.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
The following morning, Strike’s bathroom scales informed him that he was now a mere eight pounds off his target weight. This boost to his morale enabled him to resist the temptation of stopping for a doughnut at the service station en route to HMP Bedford.
The prison was an ugly building of red and yellow brick. After queuing to present his visiting permit, he and the rest of the families and friends were shown into a visitors’ hall that resembled a white and green gym, with square tables set at evenly spaced intervals. Strike recognised Reaney, who was already seated, from across the room.
The prisoner, who was wearing jeans and a grey sweatshirt, looked what he undoubtedly was: a dangerous man. Over six feet tall, thin but broad-shouldered, his head was shaven and his teeth a yellowish brown. Almost every visible inch of his skin was tattooed, including his throat, which was covered by a tiger’s face, and part of his gaunt face, where an ace of spades adorned most of his left cheek.
As Strike sat down opposite him, Reaney glanced towards a large black prisoner watching him in silence from a table away, and in those few seconds Strike noticed a series of tattooed lines, three broken, three solid, on the back of Reaney’s left hand, and also saw that the ace of spades tattoo was partially concealing what looked like an old facial scar.
‘Thanks for agreeing to see me,’ said Strike, as the prisoner turned to look at him.
Reaney grunted. He blinked, Strike noticed, in an exaggerated fashion, keeping his eyes closed a fraction longer than was usual. The effect was strange, as though his large, thick-lashed, bright blue eyes were surprised to find themselves in such a face.
‘As I said on the phone,’ said Strike, drawing out his notebook, ‘I’m after information on the Universal Humanitarian Church.’
Reaney folded his arms across his chest, and placed both hands beneath his armpits.
‘How old were you when you joined?’ asked Strike.
‘Seven’een.’
‘What made you join?’
‘Needed somewhere to kip.’
‘Bit out of your way, Norfolk. You grew up in Tower Hamlets, right?’
Reaney looked unhappy that Strike knew this.
‘I was on’y in Tower ’Amlets from when I was twelve.’
‘Where were you before that?’
‘Wiv me mum, in Norfolk.’ Reaney swallowed, and his prominent Adam’s apple caused the tiger tattooed on his throat to ripple. ‘After she died I ’ad to go to London, live wiv me old man. Then I was in care, then I was ’omeless for a bit, then I went to Chapman Farm.’
‘Born in Norfolk, then?’
‘Yeah.’
This explained how a young man of Reaney’s background had ended up in deep countryside. Strike’s experience of Reaney’s type was that they rarely, if ever, broke free of the gravitational pull of the capital.
‘Did you have family there?’
‘Nah. Jus’ fancied a change.’
‘Police after you?’
‘They usually were,’ said Reaney, unsmiling.
‘How did you hear about Chapman Farm?’
‘Me an’ anuvver kid was sleeping rough in Norwich an’ we met a couple of girls collecting for the UHC. They got us into it.’
‘Was the other kid Paul Draper?’
‘Yeah,’ said Reaney, again with displeasure that Strike knew so much.
‘What d’you think made the girls from the UHC so keen to recruit two men sleeping rough?’
‘Needed people to do the ’eavy stuff on the farm.’
‘You had to join the church, as a condition of living there?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How long did you stay?’
‘Free years.’
‘Long time, at that age,’ said Strike.
‘I liked the animals,’ said Reaney.
‘But not the pigs, as we’ve already established.’
Reaney ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, blinked hard, then said,
‘No. They stink.’
‘Thought they were supposed to be clean?’
‘You fort wrong.’
‘D’you often have bad dreams about things, because they stink?’
‘I jus’ don’ like pigs.’
‘Nothing to do with the pig “acting in the abysmal”?’
‘Wha’?’ said Reaney.
‘I’ve been told the pig has a particular significance in the I Ching.’
‘In the wha’?’
‘The book where you got the hexagram tattooed on the back of your left hand. Can I have a look?’
Reaney complied, though unwillingly, pulling his hand out from under his armpit and extending it towards Strike.
‘Which hexagram’s that?’ asked Strike.
Reaney looked as though he’d rather not answer, but finally said,
‘Fifty-six.’
‘What does it mean?’
Reaney blinked hard twice before muttering.
‘The wanderer.’
‘Why the wanderer?’
‘“’E ’oo ’as few friends: this is the wanderer.” I was a kid when I done it,’ he muttered, shoving his hand back under his armpit.
‘Made a believer of you, did they?’
Reaney said nothing.
‘No opinion on the UHC’s religion?’
Reaney cast another glance towards the large prisoner at the next table, who wasn’t talking to his visitor, but glaring at Reaney. With an irritable movement of his shoulders, Reaney muttered unwillingly,
‘I seen fings.’
‘Like what?’
‘Jus’ fings what they could do.’
‘Who’s “they”?’
‘Them. That Jonafun an’… is she still alive?’ asked Reaney. ‘Mazu?’
‘Why wouldn’t she be?’
Reaney didn’t answer.
‘What things did you see the Waces do?’
‘Jus’… makin’ stuff disappear. An’… spirits an’ stuff.’
‘Spirits?’
‘I seen ’er make a spirit appear.’
‘What did the spirit look like?’ asked Strike.
‘Like a ghost,’ said Reaney, his expression daring Strike to find this funny. ‘In temple. I seen it. Like… transparent.’
Reaney gave another hard blink, then said,
‘You talked to anyone else ’oo was in there?’
‘Did you believe the ghost was real?’ Strike asked, ignoring Reaney’s question.
‘I dunno – yeah, maybe,’ said Reaney. ‘You weren’ fuckin’ there,’ he added, with a slight show of temper, but after a glance over Strike’s head at a hovering warder, he added, with effortful calmness, ‘but maybe it was a trick. I dunno.’
‘I heard Mazu forced you to whip yourself across the face,’ said Strike, watching Reaney closely, and sure enough, a tremor passed over the prisoner’s face. ‘What had you done?’
‘Smacked a bloke called Graves.’
‘Alexander Graves?’