Murphy was inclined to be triumphalist about the church’s demise, but Robin found it hard to celebrate. Murphy and Strike kept telling her that the child abuse accusations against her would be dropped any day now, but she’d had no word to that effect. Even worse than her personal fear of prosecution was her dread of the church reforming and rebuilding. When she said as much to Murphy, he’d told her she was too pessimistic, but watching Becca smiling on television, clearly unshaken in her belief in the Lotus Way, Robin could only hope that the world would watch more closely and ask more questions, when the next five-sided temple appeared on a piece of vacant land.
‘And what about the Waces?’ Sir Colin asked Strike, while the children on the lawn continued to chase bubbles.
‘Confidentially,’ said Strike, ‘Mazu hasn’t spoken a word since her arrest. Literally not a word. One of our police contacts told us she won’t even talk to her own lawyer.’
‘Shock, do you think?’ said Sir Colin.
‘Power play,’ said Robin. ‘She’ll continue to act as though she’s the divine mother of the Drowned Prophet until her dying breath.’
‘But surely she knows, now…?’
‘I think,’ said Robin, ‘if she ever allowed herself to accept that Daiyu was murdered, and her husband knew all along, and made sure to get her killer out of the way to safety, it would drive her out of her mind.’
‘And has Abigail confessed?’ Sir Colin asked Strike.
‘No,’ said Strike. ‘She’s like her father: brazen it out as long as you can, but her boyfriends are turning on her. Now they’ve realised they might be accused of being accessories to attempted murder, they can’t wait to get off the sinking ship. Confidentially, one of her fireman colleagues saw her pocketing the gun and ammo when she found it in a burned-out drug den. He says he assumed she was going to hand them over to the police. ’Course, he’d have to say that – he’s married, and he doesn’t want it to come out that she was sleeping with him, as well.
‘Reaney’s currently denying he knows anything about axes and pigs, but a guy who was in the men’s dormitory that night remembers Reaney sneaking back inside, in the early hours. Reaney was in his underwear: he’d obviously had to get rid of his bloody tracksuit somewhere. Then he accused everyone of nicking it, when he woke up.
‘I think Abigail will be found guilty of Kevin’s murder, and for trying to kill Robin and me, and I think she and Reaney are both going to be done for Daiyu’s murder.’
‘Abigail must be seriously disturbed,’ said the compassionate Sir Colin. ‘She must have had a dreadful childhood.’
‘A lot of people have dreadful childhoods and don’t take to strangling small children,’ said the implacable Strike, to nods of agreement from Dennis and Pat.
Strike was thinking of Lucy as he spoke. He’d spent the previous day with his sister, accompanying her to view two prospective nursing homes for their uncle. Afterwards they’d had a coffee together in a café, and Strike had told his sister about Mazu attempting to kill Robin in the Rupert Court Temple.
‘That evil bitch,’ said the horrified Lucy.
‘Yeah, but we got her, Luce,’ said Strike, ‘and the baby’s back with her mother.’
Strike had half-expected more tears, but to his surprise, Lucy beamed at him.
‘I know I nag you, Stick,’ she said. ‘I know I do, but as long as you’re happy, I don’t care if you’re not – you know. Married with kids, and all that. You do wonderful things. You help people. You’ve helped me, taking this case, putting that woman behind bars. And what you said about Leda… you’ve really helped me, Stick.’
Touched, Strike reached out to squeeze her hand.
‘I s’pose you’re just not cut out for the whole settling down with one woman thing, and that’s OK,’ said Lucy, now smiling a little tearfully. ‘I promise I’ll never go on about it again.’
135
… if one is intent on retaining his clarity of mind, good fortune will come from this grief. For here we are dealing not with a passing mood, as in the nine in the third place, but with a real change of heart.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
A week after they’d visited the Edensors, Strike, with a heavy heart but a sense of obligation, agreed to meet Amelia Crichton, Charlotte’s sister, at her place of work.
He’d asked himself whether he was truly honour-bound to do this. The UHC case had mercifully relegated Charlotte’s suicide to the back of his mind, but now that it was over – now that the shattered lives and suicides were being tallied, and the storm which had caught these people up had passed, leaving them broken in an unfamiliar landscape – he was left with his own personal debt to the dead, one he didn’t particularly want to pay. He could imagine optimistic souls telling him that, much like Lucy with regards to Leda and the Aylmerton Community, he’d find some kind of resolution in this meeting with Charlotte’s sister, but he had no such expectation.
No, he thought, as he dressed in a sober suit – because military habits of proper respect for the dead and bereaved are hard to overcome, and however little he liked Amelia or the prospect of this meeting, he owed her this, at least – it was far more likely that Charlotte’s sister was the one who’d achieve resolution today. Very well, then: he’d give Amelia satisfaction, and in doing so, offer Charlotte one more chance at a clean sucker punch via her proxy, before they were finally done.
Strike’s BMW, from which the police had now dug out a bullet, remained in the repair shop, so he took a taxi to Elizabeth Street in Belgravia. Here, he found Amelia’s eponymous shop, which was full of expensive curtain fabrics, tasteful ceramics and chinoiserie table lamps.
She emerged from a back room on hearing the bell over the door ring. Dark-haired like Charlotte, she had similar hazel-flecked green eyes, but there the resemblance ended. Amelia was thin-lipped, with a patrician profile she’d inherited from her father.
‘I’ve booked us a table at the Thomas Cubitt,’ she told him, in lieu of any greeting.
So they walked the short distance to the restaurant, which lay just a few doors down from the shop. Once seated at a white-clothed table, Amelia asked for two menus and a glass of wine, while Strike ordered a beer.
Amelia waited for the drinks to arrive and the waiter to disappear again before drawing a deep breath and saying,
‘So: I asked you to meet me, because Charlotte left a note. She wanted me to show it to you.’
Of course she fucking did.
Amelia took a large swig of Pinot Noir and Strike a similarly large slug of his beer.
‘But I’m not going to,’ said Amelia, setting down her glass. ‘I thought I had to, immediately after—I thought I owed it to her, whatever… whatever it said. But I’ve had a lot of time to think things over while I’ve been in the country, and I don’t think… maybe you’ll be angry,’ said Amelia, taking a deep breath, ‘but when the police were done with it… I burned it.’