Page 339 of The Running Grave

Incredibly, at least to Strike, who found it difficult to cry in extremity, let alone on cue, Wace’s eyes now welled with tears.

‘Do I regret that Abigail left the church?’ he said. ‘Of course – but for her sake, not mine. If you are indeed in contact with her,’ said Wace, now placing a hand over his heart, ‘tell her, from me, “Popsicle misses you”. It’s what she used to call me.’

‘Touching,’ said Strike indifferently. ‘Moving on: you remember Rosie Fernsby, I presume? Well-developed fifteen-year-old you were going to take up to Birmingham, on the morning Daiyu died?’

Wace, who was wiping his eyes on the crumpled towel, didn’t answer.

‘You were going to “show her something”,’ Strike went on. ‘What kinds of things does he show young girls in Birmingham?’ he asked Becca. ‘You must have seen some of them, if you were there three years?’

‘Jonathan,’ said Mazu again, more insistently. Her husband ignored her.

‘You talk about “spoiling”,’ said Strike, looking back at Wace. ‘There’s a word with a double meaning, if ever there was one… which brings us to pig masks.’

‘Cormoran,’ said Wace, his tone world-weary, ‘I think I’ve heard enough to realise that you’re determined to write some lurid exposé, full of innuendo, short on facts and embellished with whatever fictional details you and Miss Ellacott can dream up together. I regret to say we’ll have to proceed with our action against Miss Ellacott for child abuse. It would be best if you communicate henceforth through my lawyers.’

‘That’s a shame. We were getting on so well. To return to the pig masks—’

‘I’ve made my position clear, Mr Strike.’

Wace’s charm and ease of manner, his smile, his warmth, had vanished. Once before, Strike had faced a killer whose eyes, under the stress and excitement of hearing their crimes described, had become as black and blank as those of a shark, and now he saw the phenomenon again: Wace’s eyes might have turned into empty boreholes.

‘Abigail and others were made to wear pig masks and crawl through the dirt to do their chores, at the command of your charming wife,’ said Strike.

‘That never happened,’ said Mazu contemptuously. ‘Never. Jonathan—’

‘Unfortunately for you, Mrs Wace, I have concrete evidence of those masks being worn at Chapman Farm,’ said Strike, ‘although it’d be in your own interests to deny you knew all the ways in which they were used. Perhaps Mr Jackson could enlighten you?’

Jackson glanced at Wace, then said, in his strange hybrid drawl,

‘You’re off on some kinda fantastical kick, Mr Strike.’

‘Then let me do a bit more plain speaking before I go. The police don’t like too many coincidences. Twice in the last couple of months, phone calls from unknown numbers had been followed by suicide attempts, one of them successful. I don’t think anyone but my agency has connected them yet, but that can soon change.

‘Late last year, Kevin Pirbright was caught on tape saying he had an appointment with someone from the church. Five days later, he was murdered. That’s two unnatural deaths and one close shave for three of the people who were at Chapman Farm when Daiyu drowned – assuming, of course, she ever drowned at all.’

Becca’s mouth fell open. Mazu began to shout, but unfortunately for her, so did both Taio and Noli Seymour who, both being in the room, easily obliterated the oaths now pouring from Mazu’s thin lips.

‘You bastard—’

‘You vile, evil, disgusting man, how dare you say these things about a dead child, have you no conscience—’

Strike raised his voice over the tumult.

‘There are witnesses to the fact that Rosie Fernsby was at Chapman Farm when certain Polaroids were taken. Rosie was identified by Cherie Gittins as one of the subjects of those photos. I know you’re trying to find her, so I’m warning you,’ he said, pointing directly into the face of Jonathan Wace, ‘if she’s found dead, whether by her own hand, or by accident, or by murder, rest assured, I’ll be showing those Polaroids to the police, drawing their attention to the fact that we’ve now got four unnatural deaths of ex-UHC members within a ten-month period, urging them to recheck certain phone records and making sure my journalistic contact makes as much of a noise about it all as possible.

‘To tell you the truth, I’m not as humble as you are, Jonathan,’ said Strike, getting to his feet. ‘I don’t need to ask myself whether I’m up to the job, because I know I’m fucking great at it, so be warned: if you do anything to hurt either my partner or Rosie Fernsby, I will burn your church to the fucking ground.’

113

… one may spend a full cycle of time with a friend of kindred spirit without fear of making a mistake.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

Spending the night curled up on what she’d previously found a fairly comfortable sofa, which revealed unexpected crevices and hard edges when asked to double as a bed, was bad enough. Insult was added to injury when, having finally achieved a couple of hours of deep sleep, Robin was woken rudely by a loud exclamation of ‘What the—?’ from a man in her immediate vicinity. For a fraction of a second she had no idea where she was: her flat, the dormitory at Chapman Farm, Ryan’s bedroom, all of which had doors in different relative positions. She sat up fast, disorientated; her coat slid off her onto the floor, and then she realised she was in the office, looking blearily up at Strike.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t expecting to find a body.’

‘You nearly gave me a heart—’