He’d talked blithely of ‘coming in the front’ if Robin was out of contact this long, but the absence of the plastic rock made him fear that she’d been identified as a private detective and had now been taken hostage. Taking out his phone, he looked up satellite pictures of Chapman Farm. There were a lot of buildings there, and Strike thought it odds on that some of them had basements or hidden rooms.
He could, of course, contact the police, but Robin had voluntarily entered the church and he might have to jump through a lot of procedural hoops to persuade them it was worth getting a warrant. Strike hadn’t forgotten that there were also UHC centres in Birmingham and Glasgow to which his partner might have been relocated. What if she became the new Deirdre Doherty, of whom no trace could be found, even though the church claimed she’d left thirteen years previously?
Strike’s mobile rang: Barclay.
‘What’s happening?’
‘She didn’t show up last night, either.’
‘Fuck,’ said Barclay. ‘What’s the plan?’
‘I’ll give it tonight, but if she doesn’t show, I’ll call the police.’
‘Aye,’ said Barclay, ‘ye’d better.’
When Barclay had hung up, Strike lay for a while, still telling himself he should sleep while he could, but after twenty minutes he gave up. Having made himself a cup of tea with the kettle provided, he stood for a few minutes looking out of one of the windows, through which he could see a wooden hot tub belonging to his cabin.
His mobile rang again: Shanker.
‘What’s up?’
‘You owe me a monkey.’
‘You’ve got intel on Reaney’s phone call?’
‘Yeah. It was made from a number wiv area code 01263. Woman contacted the prison, said she was ’is wife and it was urgent—’
‘It was definitely a woman?’ said Strike, scribbling down the number.
‘Screw says it sounded like one. They agreed a time for ’er to call ’im. Claimed she wasn’t at ’ome and didn’t want ’im ’aving ’er friend’s number. ’S’all I could get.’
‘All right, the monkey’s yours. Cheers.’
Shanker rang off. Glad to have something to do for a few minutes other than agonise about what had happened to Robin, Strike looked up the area code in question. It covered a large area including Cromer, Lion’s Mouth, Aylmerton, and even the lodge he was currently sitting in.
Having removed a few cushions, Strike sat down on the sofa, vaping, drinking tea and willing the hours to pass quickly, so he could return to Chapman Farm.
86
Six in the fourth place means:
Waiting in blood.
Get out of the pit.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Robin had been sitting with Jacob all day. He had, indeed, had a fit: she’d tried to stop him hurting himself against the cot bars, and finally he’d grown limp and she’d laid him gently back down. She’d changed his nappy three times, putting the soiled ones into the black bin bag sitting there for that purpose, and tried to give him water, but he seemed unable to swallow.
At midday she’d been brought food by one of the teenage girls who’d stood vigil outside the temple four nights previously. The girl said nothing to her, and kept her eyes averted from Jacob. Barring this one interruption, Robin was left entirely alone. She could hear people moving around in the farmhouse below, and knew she was only allowed this solitude because it would be impossible for her to creep back down the farmhouse stairs without being apprehended. Her fatigue kept threatening to overwhelm her; several times, she nodded off in the hard wooden chair and jerked awake as she slid sideways.
As the hours wore on, she took to reading pages of the newspaper spread over the floor in an attempt to stay awake. Thus she learned that the Prime Minister, David Cameron, had resigned after the country had voted to leave the EU, that Theresa May had now taken his place and that that Chilcot Inquiry had found that the UK had entered the Iraq War before peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted.
The information Robin had been denied for so long, information unfiltered by Jonathan Wace’s interpretation, had a peculiar effect on her. It felt as though it came from a different galaxy, making her feel her isolation even more acutely, yet at the same time, it pulled her mentally back towards the outer world, the place where nobody knew what ‘flesh objects’ were, or dictated what you wore and ate, or attempted to regulate the language in which you thought and spoke.
Now two contradictory impulses battled inside her. The first was allied to her exhaustion; it urged caution and compliance and urged her to chant to drive everything else from her mind. It recalled the dreadful hours in the box and whispered that the Waces were capable of worse than that, if she broke any more rules. But the second asked her how she could return to her daily tasks knowing that a small boy was being slowly starved to death behind the farmhouse walls. It reminded her that she’d managed to slip out of the dormitory by night many times without being caught. It urged her to take the risk one more time, and escape.
She was brought a second bowl of noodles and a glass of water at dinner time, this time by a boy who also kept his gaze carefully averted from Jacob and looked repulsed by the smell in the room, to which Robin had become acclimatised.
Dusk arrived, and Robin had now read almost all of the newspapers lying on the floor. Not wanting to put on the electric light in case it disturbed the child in the cot, she got up and moved to the small dormer window to continue reading an article about Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Having finished this, she turned the page over and saw the headline SOCIALITE DIED IN BATH, INQUEST TOLD, before realising that the picture below was of Charlotte Ross.
Robin’s gasp was so loud Jacob stirred in his sleep. With one hand pressed over her mouth, Robin read the article, the paper held inches from her eyes in the dying light. She’d just read how much alcohol and how many sleeping pills Charlotte had taken before slitting her wrists in the bath, when there was a soft knock on the attic door.
Robin threw the report about Charlotte back onto the floor and hastened back to her chair as the door opened to reveal Emily, whose head, like her mother’s, was freshly shaven.
Emily closed the door quietly. From what Robin could see of her through the rapidly darkening room, she looked apprehensive, almost tearful.
‘Rowena – I’m so sorry, I’m really, really sorry.’
‘What about?’
‘I told them you gave me money in Norwich. I didn’t want to, but they were threatening me with the box.’
‘Oh, that… it’s OK, I admitted it, too. It was stupid to expect them not to notice.’
‘You can go. Jiang’s waiting downstairs to escort you to the dormitory.’
Robin stood up and had taken a couple of steps towards the door when something strange happened.
She suddenly knew – didn’t guess, or hope, but knew – that Strike had just arrived beside the blind spot at the perimeter fence. The conviction was so strong that it stopped her in her tracks. Then she turned slowly to face Emily again.