Page 314 of The Running Grave

‘Just outside Guildford,’ said Robin. ‘But the house has been sold now.’

‘You said you contacted her brother and he hung up on you?’

‘Immediately I mentioned his father, yes. I’ve tried the mother’s landline, but she’s not answering. But it doesn’t matter now, does it? Sir Colin probably won’t want to pay for any more of this.’

‘The case isn’t closed yet. He still wants us to find Lin. Speaking of which, did you get the email about Tasha Mayo?’

‘I did, yes,’ said Robin. ‘Fantastic news.’

Tasha Mayo had not only agreed to go undercover at Zhou’s clinic for a week, she’d evinced real gusto for the job and unless something unexpected had happened, might already have arrived in Borehamwood. Her email enquiry had led within half an hour to a call from Dr Zhou in person, who’d taken a long history of her imaginary ailments over the phone, diagnosed her as in need of immediate treatment, and told her she’d need to stay a week and possibly longer.

‘You wouldn’t think she was that gutsy, looking at her,’ said Robin.

‘Appearances are definitely deceptive there,’ said Strike. ‘You should’ve seen her braving the Franks… can’t say I’m over-happy about her and Midge, though.’

‘You think they’re—?’

‘Yeah, I think they’re definitely,’ said Strike, ‘and it’s not a good idea to sleep with clients.’

‘But she’s not a client any more.’

A brief silence fell. As far as Strike was aware, Robin had no idea how seriously his entanglement with Bijou Watkins had threatened to compromise the agency and he hoped to keep it that way. Little did he know that Robin had had the whole story from Ilsa the previous evening, by phone. Their mutual friend, who’d been cross at learning that Robin was out of Chapman Farm and that nobody had told her, had regaled Robin with everything she knew about the saga of Strike and Bijou. Robin therefore had a fairly shrewd idea as to why Strike would currently be sensitive about any subcontractor sleeping with people who might expose them to gossip.

‘Anyway,’ said Strike, keen to usher in a fresh topic of conversation, ‘Edensor’s got a second motive to keep digging for dirt on the church, unless he hasn’t realised yet.’

‘Which is?’

‘His Wikipedia page has undergone a lot of overnight modifications, too.’

‘Shit, really?’

‘Exactly the same m.o. as they used on the Graves family. Brutal abuse towards Will by his father, family dysfunction, etc.’

‘Edensor might think lawyers are a better way of dealing with that, than us trying to take down the church.’

‘He might,’ said Strike, ‘but I’ve got counter-arguments.’

‘Which are?’

‘For one: does he really want Will hallucinating the Drowned Prophet and killing himself?’

‘He might argue psychotherapy would sort that out better than us trying to solve the mystery of Daiyu’s death. I mean, it’s not really even a mystery to anyone except us, is it?’

‘That’s because everyone else is a bloody idiot.’

‘The police, the coastguard, the witnesses and the coroner? They’re all bloody idiots?’ said Robin, amused.

‘You’re the one who said the UHC have got away with it because everyone thought them a “bit weird, but harmless”. Too many people, even intelligent ones – no, especially intelligent ones – presume innocence when they meet weirdness. “Bit odd, but I mustn’t let my prejudices cloud my judgement.” Then they over-correct, and what d’you get? A kid disappears off the face of the earth, and the whole story’s bloody odd, but the robes and the mystic bullshit get in the way, and nobody wants to look like a bigot, so they say, “Strange, going paddling in the North Sea at five in the morning, but I s’pose that’s the kind of thing people like that do. Probably something to do with moon phases.”’

Robin made no response to this speech, partly because she didn’t want to express aloud her real opinion, which was that her partner, too, was prejudiced: prejudiced in the opposite direction to the one he was describing, prejudiced against alternative lifestyles, because large parts of his own difficult and disrupted childhood had been spent in squats and communes. The other reason Robin didn’t respond was because she’d noticed something vaguely disquieting. After a full minute of silence, Strike noticed her regular glances into the mirror.

‘Something up?’

‘I’m… probably being paranoid.’

‘About what?’

‘Don’t look back,’ said Robin, ‘but we might be being followed.’