‘So?’
‘Anything on your upper right arm?’ said Strike.
‘Why?’
‘Could I have a look?’
‘No, you fuckin’ can’t,’ snarled Reaney.
‘I’ll ask that again,’ said Strike quietly, leaning forwards, ‘this time reminding you what’s likely to happen to you once this interview’s over, when I inform my friend you weren’t cooperative.’
Reaney slowly pushed up the sleeve of his sweatshirt. There was no skull on the bicep, but a large, jet black devil with red eyes.
‘Is that covering anything up?’
‘No,’ said Reaney, tugging his sleeve back down.
‘You sure?’
‘Yeah, I’m sure.’
‘I’m asking,’ said Strike, now reaching into an inner pocket of his jacket, withdrawing a couple of the Polaroids Robin had found in the barn at Chapman Farm, ‘because I thought you might once have had a skull where that devil is.’
He laid the two photos down on the table, facing Reaney. One showed the tall, skinny man with the skull tattoo penetrating the chubby, dark-haired girl, the other the same man sodomising the smaller man whose short, wispy hair might have been Paul Draper’s.
Reaney’s forehead had started shining in the harsh overhead light.
‘That ain’t me.’
‘You sure?’ said Strike. ‘Because I thought this might explain the pig nightmares better than the smell of pig shit.’
Sweaty and pale, Reaney shoved the photos away from him so violently that one of them fell onto the floor. Strike retrieved it and replaced both in his pocket.
‘This spirit you saw,’ he said, ‘what did it look like?’
Reaney didn’t answer.
‘Were you aware Daiyu re-materialises regularly now at Chapman Farm?’ Strike asked. ‘They call her the Drowned—’
Without warning, Reaney got to his feet. Had his plastic chair and the table not been fastened to the floor, Strike was prepared to bet the prisoner would have kicked them over.
‘Oi!’ said a nearby warder, but Reaney was walking fast towards the door into the main prison. A couple more warders caught up with him, and escorted him through the door out of the hall. Prisoners and visitors had turned to watch Reaney storm out, but swiftly turned back to their own conversations, afraid of wasting precious minutes.
Strike met the eyes of the large prisoner one table along, which were asking a silent question. Strike made a small, negative gesture. Further beatings wouldn’t make Jordan Reaney any more cooperative, Strike was sure of that. He’d met terrified men before, men who feared something worse than physical pain. The question was, what exactly was putting Jordan Reaney into such a state of alarm that he was prepared to face the worst kind of prison justice rather than divulge it?
57
Nine at the beginning…
When you see evil people,
Guard yourself against mistakes.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
To Robin’s relief, Strike’s next letter offered a solution to the problem of giving money to the UHC.
I’ve spoken to Colin Edensor and he’s prepared to make £1000 available for a donation. If you get their account details, we’ll set up a bank transfer.
In consequence, Robin asked permission to visit Mazu in the farmhouse the following morning.
‘I want to make a donation to the church,’ she explained to the hard-faced woman who’d been supervising her stint in the kitchens.
‘All right. Go now, before lunch,’ said the woman, with the first smile Robin had received from her. Glad to escape the fug of boiling noodles and turmeric, Robin pulled off her apron and left.
The June day was overcast, but as Robin crossed the deserted courtyard the sun slid out from behind a cloud and turned Daiyu’s fountain-dappled pool into a basin of diamonds. Thankfully, Emily was no longer standing on her crate. She’d remained there for a full forty-eight hours, ignored and unmentioned by all who passed, as though she’d always stood there and always would. Robin had pitied Emily doubly by the time urine stains had appeared on the inside of her tracksuit bottoms and track marks of tears had striped her muddy face, but she’d imitated all other church members and acted as though the woman was invisible.
The other absence currently improving life at Chapman Farm was that of Taio Wace, who was visiting the Glasgow centre. The removal of the ever-present fear that he’d try and take her into a Retreat Room again was such a relief that Robin even felt less tired than usual, although her regime of manual labour continued.
She knelt at Daiyu’s pool, made the usual tribute, then approached the carved double doors of the farmhouse. As she reached them, Sita, a brown-skinned, elderly woman with a long rope of steel-grey hair opened it from the inside, carrying a bulging plastic sack. As they passed each other, Robin smelled a foul odour of faeces.
‘Could you tell me where Mazu’s office is?’ she asked Sita.
‘Straight through the house, at the back.’
So Robin walked past the staircase, along the red-carpeted corridor lined with Chinese masks and painted panels, right into the heart of the farmhouse. Walking past what she assumed to be the kitchen she smelled roasting lamb, which was in stark contrast to the depressing miasma of boiling tinned vegetables she’d just left.
At the very end of the corridor, facing her, was a closed black lacquer door. As she approached, she heard voices inside.
‘… ethical question, surely?’ said a man she was almost certain was Giles Harmon. Though he’d said he was staying only a few days, he’d now been at the farm a week, and Robin had spotted him leading other teenaged girls towards the Retreat Rooms. Harmon, who never wore the scarlet tracksuit of ordinary members, was usually attired in jeans and what looked like expensive shirts. His bedroom in the farmhouse overlooked the yard and he was often to be seen typing at the desk in front of the window.
Harmon’s voice wasn’t as carefully modulated as usual. In fact, Robin thought she heard a trace of panic.
‘Everything we do here is ethical,’ said a second male voice, which she recognised at once as that of Andy Zhou. ‘This is the ethical course. Remember, he doesn’t feel as we do. There is no soul there.’
‘You approve?’ Harmon asked someone.
‘Absolutely,’ said a voice Robin had no trouble identifying as Becca Pirbright’s.
‘Well, if you think so. After all, he’s your—’
‘There’s no connection, Giles,’ said Becca, almost angrily. ‘No connection at all. I’m surprised you—’
‘Sorry, sorry,’ said Harmon placatingly. ‘Materialist values – I’ll meditate now. I’m sure whatever you all think is best. You’ve been dealing with the situation far longer than I have, of course.’
Robin thought he said it as though rehearsing a defence. She heard footsteps, and had seconds to dash back along the hall, making as little noise as possible on her trainered feet, so that when Harmon opened the office door, she appeared to be walking towards it from ten yards away.
‘Is Mazu free?’ Robin asked. ‘I’ve been given permission to see her.’
‘She will be, in a few minutes,’ said Harmon. ‘You should probably wait here.’
He passed her and headed upstairs. Seconds later, the study door opened for a second time and Dr Zhou and Becca emerged.
‘What are you doing here, Rowena?’ said Becca, and Robin thought her bright smile was a little more forced than usual.
‘I want to make a donation to the church,’ said Robin. ‘I was told I should see Mazu about it.’
‘Oh, I see. Yes, carry on, she’s in there,’ said Becca, pointing towards the office. She and Zhou walked away, their voices too low for Robin to catch what they were saying.
Bracing herself slightly, Robin approached the office door and knocked.
‘Come,’ said Mazu, and Robin entered.
The office, which had been added to the rear of the building, was so cluttered and colourful, and smelled so strongly of incense, that Robin felt as though she’d stepped through a portal into a bazaar. A profusion of statuettes, deities and idols were crammed onto the shelves.
Daiyu’s enlarged photograph sat in a golden frame on top of a Chinese cabinet, where joss paper was burning in a dish. Flowers and small offerings of food had been laid out in front of her. For a split second Robin felt a wholly unexpected spasm of compassion for Mazu, who sat facing her at an ebony desk that resembled Zhou’s, wearing her long blood-red dress, her black waist-length hair falling either side of her white face, her mother-of-pearl fish pendant glimmering on her chest.
‘Rowena,’ she said, unsmiling, and Robin’s moment of kindness vanished as though it had never been, as she seemed again to smell Mazu’s dirty foot, revealed for her to kiss.
‘Um – I’d like to make a donation to the church.’
Mazu surveyed her unsmilingly for a moment, then said,
‘Sit down.’
Robin did as she was told. As she did so, she noticed an incongruous object on a shelf behind Mazu’s head: a small, white plastic air freshener, which seemed entirely pointless in this room full of incense.
‘So you’ve decided you want to give us money, have you?’ said Mazu, scrutinising Robin with those dark, crooked eyes.
‘Yes. Taio talked to me,’ Robin said, certain that Mazu would know this, ‘and I’ve been doing some hard thinking, and, well, I see he was right, I am still struggling with materialism, and it’s time to put my money where my mouth is.’
A small smile appeared on the long, pale face.
‘Yet you refused spirit bonding.’
‘I felt so awful after Revelation, I didn’t think I was worthy,’ said Robin. ‘But I want to eradicate the false self, I really do. I know I’ve got a lot of work to do.’
‘How are you intending to donate? You didn’t bring any credit cards with you.’
Robin registered this admission that her locker had been opened and searched.