The lid showed the image of four caged circus animals and balloons, along with ‘85th Anniversary’ written inside a gold circle. She prised it off, expecting the tin to be empty because it was so light, but on the contrary: a number of faded Polaroids lay inside. Unable to see what they showed in the dim light, Robin took them out and stuffed them inside her bra, as she did daily with her date-marking pebbles. She then replaced the lid, re-inserted the tin where she’d found it, hurried to the gap in the rear wall of the barn and squeezed back outside.
Judging from the distant noise coming from the courtyard, almost everyone at the farm was now awake. Robin set off at a jog, passing the dining hall and temple, and joined the throng, who were mostly in pyjamas, at a moment when everyone’s attention was on Mazu Wace, who was standing between the tombs of the Stolen and Golden Prophets in her long orange robes. Beside her stood Louise Pirbright, who was holding a struggling toddler in a nappy, whom Robin guessed to be the errant Bo. Other than the child’s whimpers, there was complete silence. Mazu barely needed to raise her voice for everyone in the crowd to hear her.
‘Who was on child dorm duty?’
After a small hesitation, two teenage girls sidled to the front of the crowd, one with short fair hair, the other, long dark twists. The latter was crying. Robin, who was watching through the thicket of heads in front of her, saw both girls fall to their knees as though they’d rehearsed the movement and crawl towards Mazu’s feet.
‘Please, Mama…’
‘We’re so sorry, Mama!’
When they reached the hem of Mazu’s robes she lifted them slightly, and watched, her expression blank, as the two girls wept and kissed her feet.
Then she said sharply, ‘Taio.’
Her elder son pushed his way through the watching crowd.
‘Take them to the temple.’
‘Mama, please,’ wailed the fair-haired girl.
‘Come on,’ said Taio, grabbing the arms of the two girls and dragging them forcibly to their feet. Robin was most disturbed by the way the girl with the twists tried to cling on to Mazu’s leg, and the utter coldness of Mazu’s expression as she watched her son drag them away. Nobody asked what was going to happen to the girls; nobody spoke or even moved.
As Mazu turned back to the watching crowd, Louise said,
‘Shall I put Bo back to—?’ but Mazu said,
‘No. You – ’ she pointed at Penny Brown ‘– and you,’ she said to Emily Pirbright, ‘take him back to the dormitory and stay there.’
Penny went to lift the little boy out of Louise’s arms, but he clung to Louise. The latter prised him off and handed him over. His screams receded as Penny and Emily hurried away through the arch that led to the children’s dormitory.
‘You may go back to bed,’ said Mazu to the watching crowd. She turned and walked towards the temple.
None of the women looked at each other or spoke as they filed back into their dormitory. Robin grabbed her pyjamas off her bed, then hurried off into the bathroom and locked herself into a cubicle before pulling the Polaroids out of her bra to examine them.
All were faded, yet Robin could still just make out the images. The uppermost picture showed the figure of a naked, chubby dark-haired young woman – possibly a teenager – wearing a pig mask, her legs spread wide. The second showed a different, blonde young woman being penetrated from behind by a squat man, both in pig masks. The third showed a stringy-looking man with a skull tattooed on his bicep sodomising a smaller man. Robin rifled hastily through the pictures. In total, four naked people were pictured in various sexual combinations in a space Robin didn’t recognise, but which looked like an outhouse, possibly even the barn she’d just left. They wore pig masks in every image.
Robin shoved the pictures back inside her bra and left it on as she stripped off her tracksuit. She then left the cubicle, turned out the bathroom light and returned to her bed. As she settled down to sleep at last, a distant scream pierced the silence, emanating from the temple.
‘Please no – please no, Mama – no, please, please!’
If anyone in the surrounding beds had also heard it, none of them made a sound.
43
Six in the fourth place means:
Entangled folly brings humiliation.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Six days after Robin, unbeknownst to Strike, had found the old Polaroids in the rusty biscuit tin, he held an afternoon team meeting attended by everyone at the detective agency apart from Littlejohn, who was on surveillance. Strike had opted to hold the meeting in the otherwise deserted basement room of his favourite local pub, which until recently had been called the Tottenham, but had now become the Flying Horse. As an Arsenal fan, Strike thoroughly approved of the rebrand. While waiting for his subcontractors to join him, he checked Pinterest to see whether Torment Town had responded to his message, but there was no change to the page.
‘I’m no’ complainin’, but why’re we doing this here?’ asked Barclay ten minutes later. The Glaswegian was the last to arrive in the red carpeted room and, as he had the evening off, had stopped at the upstairs bar to buy himself a pint.
‘In case Littlejohn decides to come back to the office,’ said Strike.
‘We’re gonnae be plottin’ his downfall, are we?’
‘He might not be working for us for much longer, so there’s no need for him to know any more of our business,’ said Strike. ‘I’m interviewing Wardle’s mate tomorrow and if that goes well, Littlejohn’s out.’
Shah, Midge and Barclay all said, ‘Good.’ Pat, Strike noticed, remained silent.
‘Where’s he now?’ asked Midge.
‘On the Franks,’ said Strike.
‘Speakin’ of which, I’ve got somethin’ on them,’ said Barclay, reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket for two sheets of paper which, when unfolded, proved to be photocopied news articles. ‘I’ve been wonderin’ whether we could get them on a benefits scam an’ I ended up findin’ this.’
He pushed the papers towards Strike. Both news items were small, though one featured a headshot of the older brother. The surname given wasn’t the one the Frank brothers were currently living under, though the forenames remained the same.
‘The younger one was done fer flashin’,’ Barclay told Shah and Midge, while Strike was reading. ‘Got a suspended sentence. The older one’s supposedly the younger one’s carer. No idea what’s s’posed to be wrong wi’ him.’
‘And the older one’s been done for stalking,’ said Strike, now reading the second article, ‘of another actress. Judge let him off with a suspended sentence, because he’s his brother’s carer.’
‘Typical,’ said Midge angrily, banging her glass down on the table to the slight consternation of Shah, who was sitting beside her. ‘If I saw that once, I saw it fifty fookin’ times when I was in the force. Men like them get cut too much fookin’ slack, and everyone’ll act surprised when one of the fookers is charged with rape.’