I think that’s everything, sorry there isn’t more. Hopefully now I’m a real church member I’ll start seeing the bad stuff.
Sounds like a good idea to get rid of Littlejohn when you can.
Robin x
She folded up her note, put it inside the safe rock and replaced the rock where she’d found it. Then, with a heavy heart, she tore Strike’s note into tiny pieces, and began to make her way back through the trees towards the distant farm, strewing pieces of the note into different patches of nettles as she went.
However, she was so tired she’d lost her sense of direction. Soon she found herself in a dense clump of trees she definitely didn’t remember coming through. Panic started to rise in her again. Finally she forced her way between two trunks tangled with creepers, took a few steps across a small clearing and then, with a shriek she couldn’t prevent, fell over something hard and sharp.
‘Shit,’ Robin moaned, feeling for her lower leg. She’d cut herself, though thankfully there was no tear in her trousers. Groping around, she found the thing she’d tripped over: it appeared to be a broken stump or post in the ground. She stood up, and as she did so, she saw by the moonlight that there were several broken posts set in a rough circle. They were definitely manmade and looked unnervingly ritualistic, set amid the surrounding wilderness. Robin remembered Kevin Pirbright’s story of being tied to a tree overnight as punishment when he was twelve. Had there once been posts here, to which an entire group of children could be tied? If so, they appeared to be no longer in use, because they were rotting quietly away in the depths of the wood.
Now limping slightly, Robin set off again and at long last, with the aid of a fleeting spell of moonlight, found the edge of the wood.
Only as she was walking back across the dark, damp field towards the farm did she remember that she hadn’t written a note for Murphy. Far too tired and shaken to go back now, she decided she’d write him an apology next week. Fifteen minutes later, she was climbing the five-bar gate. She passed the now dark and silent Retreat Rooms and, with profound relief, slipped back inside the dormitory undetected.
PART THREE
Chien/Obstruction
OBSTRUCTION means difficulty.
The danger is ahead.
To see the danger and to know how to stand still, that is wisdom.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
37
Through resoluteness one is certain to encounter something.
Hence there follows the hexagram of COMING TO MEET.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
If the receipt of Robin’s letter from Chapman Farm didn’t have quite the same effect on Strike as his had on her, the absence of a note for Ryan Murphy cheered him enormously, a fact he concealed from Dev Shah when the latter confirmed that there’d been only one letter inside the plastic rock when he’d checked before dawn.
‘Well, good to know she’s OK,’ was Strike’s only comment, after reading Robin’s message at the partners’ desk. ‘And that’s a pretty bloody big piece of information she’s got already. If Will Edensor’s fathered a kid in there, we’ve got a partial explanation of why he’s not leaving.’
‘Yeah,’ said Dev. ‘Fear of prosecution. Statutory rape, isn’t it? Gonna tell Sir Colin?’
Strike hesitated, frowning as he rubbed his chin.
‘If the kid’s definitely Will’s he’ll have to know eventually, but I’d rather get a bit more information first.’
‘Underage is underage,’ said Dev.
Strike had never seen Shah look that uncompromising before.
‘I agree. But I’m not sure you can judge what goes on in there by normal standards.’
‘Fuck normal standards,’ said Dev. ‘Keep your dick in your pants around kids.’
There was a short, charged silence, following which Dev announced that he needed to get some sleep, having been up all night in the car, and departed.
‘What’s upset him?’ enquired Pat, as the glass door closed rather harder than necessary and Strike emerged from the inner office with an empty mug in his hand.
‘Sex with underage girls,’ said Strike, moving towards the sink to wash up the mug before heading out for more surveillance on Bigfoot. ‘Not Dev,’ he added.
‘Well, I knew that,’ said Pat.
How Pat could know that, Strike didn’t ask. Dev was easily the most handsome subcontractor employed by the agency and Strike knew from experience that their office manager’s sympathies were most readily engaged by good-looking men. An association of ideas led him to say,
‘Incidentally, if Ryan Murphy calls, tell him there’s no note for him from Robin this week.’
Something in Pat’s sharp glance made Strike say,
‘There wasn’t one in the rock.’
‘All right, I’m not accusing you of burning it,’ snapped Pat, turning back to her typing.
‘Everything all right?’ asked Strike. While he doubted anyone had ever compared Pat to a ray of eternal sunshine, he couldn’t offhand remember her being this tetchy without provocation.
‘Fine,’ said Pat, e-cigarette waggling as she scowled at her monitor.
Strike decided the politic course was to wash his mug in silence.
‘Well, that’s me off to watch Bigfoot,’ he said. As he turned to get his coat, his eye fell on a small pile of receipts on Pat’s desk.
‘Those Littlejohn’s?’
‘Yeah,’ said Pat, her fingers moving rapidly over the keys.
‘Mind if I have a quick look?’
He shuffled through them. There was nothing unusual or extravagant in there; indeed, if anything, they were on the sketchy side.
‘What d’you think of Littlejohn?’ Strike asked Pat, setting the receipts back down beside her.
‘What d’you mean, what do I think of him?’ she said, glaring up at him.
‘Exactly what I said.’
‘He’s all right,’ said Pat, after a moment or two. ‘He’s fine.’
‘Robin told me you don’t like him.’
‘I thought he was a bit quiet when he started, that’s all.’
‘Got chattier, has he?’ said Strike.
‘Yeah,’ said Pat. ‘Well – no – but he’s always polite.’
‘You’ve never noticed him doing anything odd? Behaving strangely? Lying about anything?’
‘No. Why’re you asking me this?’ said Pat.
‘Because if you had, you wouldn’t be the only one,’ said Strike. He was now intrigued: Pat had never before shown the slightest inclination to pull her punches when judging anyone: client, employee or, indeed, Strike himself.
‘He’s fine. Doing the job OK, isn’t he?’
Before Strike could answer, the phone on Pat’s desk rang.
‘Oh, hello Ryan,’ she said, her tone far warmer.
Strike decided it was time to leave, and did so, closing the glass door quietly behind him.
The next few days yielded little progress in the UHC case. There was no word from Shanker on a possible interview with Jordan Reaney. Cherie Gittins remained unfindable on every database Strike consulted. Of the witnesses to Cherie and Daiyu’s early morning swim, the café owner who’d seen Cherie taking the child down to the beach while carrying towels had died five years previously. He’d tried to contact Mr and Mrs Heaton, who’d seen the hysterical Cherie running up the beach after Daiyu disappeared beneath the waves, and who were still living at an address in Cromer, but nobody ever answered their landline, no matter what time of day Strike tried it. He toyed with the idea of driving on to Cromer after visiting Garvestone Hall, but as the agency was already stretched with its current cases, and he was already planning to go down to Cornwall later in the week, he decided against sacrificing another few hours on the road merely to find an unoccupied house.