‘Well, exactly,’ said Robin.
She’d called Strike immediately after leaving the Institute of Civil Engineers, and he’d asked her to meet him in Dorset Street, a short Tube journey away. Strike had been sitting in his parked car all morning, watching the entrance of Hampstead’s office: an exercise he’d guessed would be fruitless, as Hampstead’s only suspicious activity had so far been conducted by night.
Strike sipped his coffee, then said,
‘I don’t like this.’
‘Sorry, I got what you—’
‘Not the coffee. I mean these mysterious phone calls to everyone we interview. I don’t like that Corsa following us, or the bloke watching the office last night, or that guy stalking you on the Tube.’
‘I told you, he wasn’t stalking me. I’m just jumpy.’
‘Yeah, well, I wasn’t being jumpy when an armed intruder tried to smash their way through our office door with a gun, although Kevin Pirbright might well have been when he realised he was about to get shot through the head.’
Strike now pulled his mobile out of his pocket and handed it to Robin. Looking down, she saw the same flattering picture of Jonathan Wace that was on the enormous poster on the side of a building near her flat. It was captioned:
Interested in the Universal Humanitarian Church? Join us at
7pm Friday 12th August
SUPERSERVICE 2016
PAPA J AT OLYMPIA
‘Doubt there’ll be anyone at Olympia tonight who’s more interested in the Universal Humanitarian Church than I am,’ said Strike.
‘You can’t go!’
Though instantly ashamed of her own panic, and worried that Strike would think her foolish, the very idea of entering a space where Papa J was in charge brought back memories Robin been trying to suppress every day since she’d left Chapman Farm, but which resurfaced almost nightly in her dreams.
Strike understood Robin’s disproportionate reaction better than she realised. For a long time after half his leg had been ripped off in that exploding car in Afghanistan, certain experiences, certain noises, even certain faces, had evoked a primal response over which it had taken him years to gain mastery. A particular brand of rough humour, shared with those who understood, had got him through some of his bleakest moments, which was why he said,
‘Typical materialist reaction. Personally, I think I’ll go pure spirit very fast.’
‘You can’t,’ said Robin, trying to sound reasonable, and not as though she was trying to dispel a vivid recollection of Jonathan Wace advancing on her in that peacock blue room, calling her Artemis. ‘You’ll be recognised!’
‘Bloody well hope so. That’s the whole point.’
‘What?’
‘They know we’re investigating them, we know they know, they know we know they know. It’s time to stop playing this dumb game and actually look Wace in the eye.’
‘Strike, if you tell him any of the things people told me at Chapman Farm, those people will be in deep, deep trouble!’
‘You mean Emily?’
‘And Lin, who’s still inside, really, and Shawna, and even Jiang, not that I like him much. You’re messing—’
‘With forces I don’t understand?’
‘This isn’t funny!’
‘I don’t think it’s remotely funny,’ said Strike, unsmiling. ‘As I’ve just said, I don’t like the way this is going, nor have I forgotten that at the current tally, we’ve got one definite murder, one suspected murder, two coerced suicides and two missing kids – but whatever else Wace is, he’s not stupid. He can fuck around with Wikipedia pages all he likes, but it’d be a massive strategic error to shoot me through the head at Olympia. If they realise I’m there, I’ll lay you odds Wace’ll want to talk to me. He’ll want to know what we know.’
‘You won’t get anything out of interviewing him! He’ll just lie and—’
‘You’re presuming I want information.’
‘What’s the point in interviewing him, if you don’t want information?’
‘Has it occurred to you,’ said Strike, ‘that I was in two minds whether to let you go and see Rufus Fernsby on your own today, in case something happened to you? Do you realise how easy it would be to make your killing look like suicide? “She threw herself off the bridge – or stepped into moving traffic, or hanged herself, or slit her wrists – because she couldn’t face the child abuse charge.” You wouldn’t be much of a match for the guy who was watching our office last night, not if he decided to drag you into a car. I let you interview Fernsby because his office is in central London and it’d be pure insanity to risk a kidnapping there, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s a risk – so going forwards, I want you to stick to taxis, no public transport, and I’d rather you weren’t out on jobs on your own.’
‘Strike—’
‘You can’t have it both bloody ways! You can’t tell me they’re evil and dangerous, and then prance around London—’
‘You know what,’ said Robin furiously, ‘I’d really appreciate it if, every time we have a discussion like this, you don’t use words like “prance” for how I get around.’
‘Fine, you don’t prance,’ said the exasperated Strike. ‘Fuck’s sake, how complicated is this? We’re dealing with a bunch of people we believe are capable of murder, and the two people who are most dangerous to them right now are you and Rosie Fernsby, and if anything happens to either of you, it’ll be on me.’
‘What are you talking about? How’s it on you?’
‘I was the one who put you into Chapman Farm.’
‘Again,’ said Robin, infuriated, ‘you didn’t put me anywhere. I’m not a bloody pot plant, I wanted the job, I volunteered for the job, and I seem to remember getting there by minibus, not being carried there by you.’
‘All right, great: if you end up dead in a ditch it won’t be my fault. Cheers. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Rosie, or Bhakta, or whoever the fuck she is now.’
‘How on earth could that be your fault?’
‘Because I fucked up, didn’t I? Think! Why’s the church so interested in the whereabouts of a girl who was only at Chapman Farm for ten days, twenty-one years ago?’
‘Because of the Polaroids.’
‘Yeah, but how does the church know we’ve got the Polaroids? Because,’ said Strike, answering his own question, ‘I showed them to the wrong fucking person, who reported back. I strongly suspect that person of being Jordan Reaney. He told whoever it was who phoned him after our interview, posing as his wife.
‘From Reaney’s reaction, he knew exactly who was behind those pig masks. I’m not interested right now in whether he was present when they were taken. The point is that the person on the other end of the phone found out I had evidence that could see the church buried in a tsunami of filth. Pig masks, teenagers sodomising each other? That’s the front page of every tabloid guaranteed, and all the old Aylmerton Community stuff’ll be dragged up again. They’ll want to close the mouths of everyone who was in those pictures, because if one of the subjects testifies, the church is properly fucked. I’ve put Rosie Fernsby in danger, and that’s why I want to meet Jonathan Wace.’
110
Nine in the fifth place means:
Flying dragon in the heavens.
It furthers one to see the great man.
The I Ching or Book of Changes