Page 153 of The Running Grave

Strike could tell Murphy wanted to know what Wardle had told him, and was enjoying being as inscrutable as possible.

‘So what are you going to do now?’ asked Murphy, when the continuing silence had told him plainly Strike wasn’t going to disclose whatever he knew to Murphy’s discredit. ‘Tell Robin to go looking for guns?’

‘I’ll tell her to keep an eye out, certainly,’ said Strike. ‘Thanks for this, though. Very helpful.’

‘Yeah, well, I’ve got a vested interest in my girlfriend not getting shot,’ said Murphy.

Strike noted the nettled tone, smiled, checked his watch and announced that he’d better get going.

He might not have learned much about guns at Chapman Farm, but he felt it had been twenty minutes well spent, nonetheless.

PART FOUR

K’un/Oppression (Exhaustion)

There is no water in the lake:

The image of EXHAUSTION.

Thus the superior man stakes his life

On following his will.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

52

Nine in the second place means…

There is some gossip.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

I’m so tired… you wouldn’t believe how tired I am… I just want to leave…

Robin was addressing her detective partner inside her head while forking manure out of the Shire horses’ stable. Five days had passed since her demotion from the high-level group, but her relegation to the lowest level of farm workers showed no sign of being reversed, nor was she any the wiser about what she’d done to merit punishment. Aside from very brief spells of chanting in the temple, all of Robin’s time was now devoted to manual labour: looking after livestock, cleaning, or working in the laundry and kitchens.

A new intake of prospective members had arrived for their Week of Service, but Robin had nothing to do with them. She saw them being moved around the farm, doing their different tasks, but evidently she wasn’t considered sufficiently trustworthy to shepherd them around, as Vivienne and Amandeep were doing.

Those doing hard domestic and farm work received no more food than those sitting in lectures and seminars, and had less time to sleep, waking early to collect breakfast eggs and cleaning dishes every night after dinner for a hundred people. Robin’s exhaustion had reached such levels that her hands shook whenever they were free of tools or stacks of plates, shadows flickered regularly in her peripheral vision and every muscle in her body ached as though she were suffering from flu.

Resting for a moment on the handle of her pitchfork – the spring day wasn’t particularly warm, but she was sweating nonetheless – Robin looked into the pigsty visible through the stable door, where a couple of very large sows were snoozing in the intermittent sunshine, both covered in mud and faeces, a sulphurous and ammoniac smell wafting over to Robin in the damp air. As she contemplated their naked snouts, tiny eyes and the coarse hair covering their bodies, she remembered that Abigail, Wace’s daughter, had once been forced to sleep naked beside them, in all that filth, and felt repulsed.

She could hear voices over on the vegetable patch, where a few people were planting and hoeing. Robin knew for certain now that the scant number of vegetables produced on the patch by the pigsty were there merely to keep up the pretence that church members were living off the land, because she’d seen the cavernous pantry containing shelves of dehydrated noodles, own-brand tinned tomatoes and catering-sized tubs of powdered soup.

Robin had just returned to her mucking-out when a commotion over on the vegetable patch reached her ears. Moving back to the stable entrance, she saw Emily Pirbright and Jiang Wace shouting at each other while the other workers stared, aghast.

‘You’ll do as you’re told!’

‘I won’t,’ shouted Emily, who was scarlet in the face.

Jiang attempted to force a hoe into Emily’s hands, so forcefully that she staggered back a few paces, yet stood her ground.

‘I’m not fucking doing it!’ she yelled at Jiang. ‘I won’t and you can’t fucking make me!’

Jiang raised the hoe over Emily’s head, advancing on her. A few of those watching shouted ‘No!’ and Robin, pitchfork in hand, dashed out of the stable.

‘Leave her alone!’