She now turned to Strike’s note.
Thursday 28th April
Very good job on your quick thinking re: your sister. Midge has written a letter back to you from 14 Plympton Road NW6 2JJ (address will be on letter). It’s Pat’s sister’s place (she’s got a different surname from Pat, so no easily discoverable connection – could be Theresa’s landlady). She’ll alert us if you write back, we’ll collect the letter and Midge can respond again.
I’ve met the Graves family. Turns out Alex Graves had a quarter of a million to leave, which Mazu inherited when Daiyu died. Colonel Graves is convinced the Waces and Cherie were in cahoots over the drowning. I’ve had no luck tracing Cherie Gittins in spite of a couple of possible leads. Her life post-farm definitely suggests she had something to hide: several name changes and a brush with the law in the form of a pharmacy-robbing boyfriend.
Not much other news. The Franks have gone quiet. Still trying to find a replacement for Littlejohn. Wardle might know someone and I’m trying to fix up an interview.
Don’t forget: the moment you’ve had enough, say the word and we’ll come and get you out.
Sx
Unlike Ryan’s note, Strike’s brought a measure of comfort, because Robin had been fretting about what she was going to do to keep the fiction of Theresa alive. She tugged the top off the biro with her teeth and began to write back to Strike, apologising for the lack of concrete information but saying that she didn’t want to leave the farm until she had something Sir Colin could use against the church. Having finished her note with thanks for the chocolate, she dashed off a quick message for Ryan, enclosed both with the torch and the pen in the plastic rock, then tore up their letters and the chocolate wrapper. Instead of scattering the fragments in the wood, she slid a hand beneath the barbed wire and dropped them onto the road, where the breeze immediately carried them away. Robin watched the white specks disappearing into the darkness, and felt envious of them for escaping Chapman Farm.
She then made her way back through the whispering woods, shivering slightly in spite of the fact that she was wearing pyjamas under her tracksuit, and set back off across the field.
42
Nine in the fifth place means:
A melon covered with willow leaves.
Hidden lines…
The melon, like the fish, is a symbol of the principle of darkness.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Robin had almost reached the five-bar gate when she heard voices and saw lanterns swinging down the passage between the men’s and women’s dormitories. Terrified, she ducked down behind the hedge, certain that her empty bed had been discovered.
‘… check Lower Field and the woods,’ said a voice she thought she recognised as Taio’s.
‘He won’t’ve got that far,’ said a second male voice.
‘Do as you’re fucking told,’ said Taio. ‘You two do the Retreat Rooms, all of them.’
A man climbed over the five-bar gate, his lantern swinging, barely ten feet from where Robin was crouching. The lamplight darted towards and away from her as he set off, and she saw the short dreadlocks of the black man who’d told Vivienne off for using the phrase ‘go to hell’.
‘Bo!’ he bellowed, striding off towards the woods. ‘Bo, where are you?’
Such was Robin’s panic it took her a few seconds to compute that they weren’t looking for her after all, but her situation remained perilous. The women surely wouldn’t sleep through this shouting for long, and if the searchers entered her dormitory to look for the unknown Bo, they’d soon discover there were two people missing, not one. Waiting for the voices and lights of the search party to recede, Robin climbed quickly over the five-bar gate, then had to crouch down behind more bushes as Jiang emerged from the nearest Retreat Room, also holding a lantern. Once he’d stomped off into the darkness, she crept to the rear wall of the women’s dormitory before realising that more people with lanterns were hurrying across the courtyard, meaning she had no chance of entering through the door unseen.
She moved as quickly and quietly as possible through the trees and bushes at the rear of the dormitories, aiming for the older part of the farm, which offered many hiding places, and soon found herself at the rear of the dilapidated barn that was always locked. Her familiarity with old farm buildings made her feel her way along the rear until her fingers found exactly what she was hoping for: a gap where a plank of wood had rotted away and the one next to it could be pushed inwards sufficiently to make a gap large enough for her to squeeze inside, snagging her hair and scraping her body painfully.
The air inside the barn was dank and musty, but there was more light inside than she’d expected, due to a gap in the roof through which moonlight was streaming. This illuminated an old tractor, broken farming tools, stacks of crates and bits of fencing. Something, doubtless a rat, scurried away from the intruder.
Lanterns were now passing outside the barn, casting slivers of gold through the gaps in the wooden plank walls. Voices close and distant were still shouting, ‘Bo? Bo!’
Robin remained where she was, scared of moving in case she knocked something over. Now she noticed a mound of personal belongings almost as tall as she was, heaped in a corner and covered in thick dust. There were clothes, handbags, wallets, shoes, cuddly toys and books, and Robin was horribly reminded of a picture she’d seen of the mound of shoes belonging to the gassed at Auschwitz.
The searchers outside had moved on. Full of curiosity about these old belongings, Robin climbed carefully over an upended wheelbarrow to examine them. After three weeks of seeing nothing but orange tracksuits and trainers, of reading nothing but church literature, it was strange to see different kinds of clothing and shoes, not to mention the old child’s picture book with its vivid colours.
There was something disturbing, even eerie, about the mound of old possessions, thrown away with what seemed like casual contempt. Robin noticed a single stack-heeled shoe which once, perhaps, a teenage girl had coveted and treasured, and a cuddly toy rabbit, its face covered in cobwebs. Where were their owners? After a minute or two, a possible explanation occurred to her: anyone leaving the farm by stealth, at night, would be forced to leave the belongings they’d left in the lockers.
She reached for an old handbag lying close to the top of the heap. A cloud of dust rose into the air as she opened it. There was nothing inside except an old white LRT bus ticket. She replaced the handbag and as she did so, noticed the rusty edge of a rectangular red biscuit tin with Barnum’s Animals printed on it. She’d loved those biscuits when she was little, but hadn’t thought about them for years. Seeing the packaging in this strange context reminded her poignantly of the safety of her family home.
‘BO!’ bellowed a voice just outside the barn, causing the unseen rat to scratch and scrabble in the shadows. Then, somewhere in the distance a female voice shrieked,
‘I’VE GOT HIM!’
Robin heard a confusion of voices, some expressing relief, others demanding to know how Bo had ‘got out’, and decided her best option was to emerge from the barn and present herself as having been looking for Bo all along.
She’d taken a couple of steps back towards the gap in the rear wall before she stopped dead, looking back at the dusty pile of old belongings, seized by the urge to look in that Barnum’s Animals biscuit tin. Chilly, nervous and exhausted as she was, it took several moments for her to work out why her subconscious was telling her the tin’s presence at the farm was strange. Then she realised: there was a total prohibition on sugar here, so why would anybody have brought biscuits to the place? In spite of the urgent need to join the searchers outside before her absence was noticed, Robin climbed quickly back over the wheelbarrow and pulled the tin out of the pile.