Page 360 of The Running Grave

She pulled the jacket on: it was comfortingly warm.

‘How did Wace react when you mentioned the pig-mask Polaroids?’

‘Incredulity, disbelief… exactly what you’d expect.’

Both sat in thought for a while, still gazing up at the board.

‘Strike, I don’t see why anyone would risk shooting us, purely because of those pictures,’ said Robin, breaking a lengthy silence. ‘They’re horrible, and they’d definitely get tabloid coverage, but honestly, compared with what the church could be facing if we can get Will and Flora and maybe others to testify, those pictures would surely pale into – not insignificance, but they’d be just one more sordid detail. Plus, there’s nothing in the pictures to show they were taken at Chapman Farm. It’s deniable.’

‘Not if Rosie Fernsby testifies, it isn’t.’

‘She hasn’t spoken up in twenty-one years. Her face is hidden in the pictures. If she wants to deny it’s her, we’ll never be able to prove it.’

‘So why’s someone so keen to stop us talking to her?’

‘I don’t know, except… I know you don’t like the theory, but she was there, the night before Daiyu died. What if she witnessed something, or heard something, as she was sneaking out of the women’s dormitory to join her father and brother?’

‘How far away from the kids’ dormitory is the women’s?’

‘A fair distance,’ admitted Robin, ‘but what if Daiyu came into the women’s dorm, after leaving the children’s one? Or maybe Rosie looked out of her dormitory window and saw Daiyu heading for the woods, or a Retreat Room?’

‘Then somebody else must have been with Daiyu, to know Rosie had spotted them.’

Another silence followed. Then Robin said,

‘Daiyu was getting food and toys from somewhere…’

‘Yeah, and you know what that smacks of? Grooming.’

‘But Carrie said it wasn’t her.’

‘Do we believe her?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Robin.

Another long pause followed, each of them lost in thought.

‘It would make a damn sight more sense,’ said Strike at last, ‘if the last glimpse anyone ever had of Daiyu was her going out of that window. If you were going to drown a child in the early hours, why help them out of the window first? What if Daiyu didn’t come back?… Or was that the point? Daiyu hides – or is hidden – somewhere after climbing out of the window… and another child gets taken to the beach in her place?’

‘Are you serious?’ said Robin. ‘You’re saying a different child drowned?’

‘What do we know about the journey to the beach?’ said Strike. ‘It’s dark, self-evidently – it must’ve been around this time of night,’ said Strike, glancing out of the window at the navy blue sky. ‘We know there was a kid in the van, because he or she waved as they passed the people on early duty – which, when you think about it, is suspicious in itself. You’d think Daiyu would’ve ducked down until they were safely off the premises if she didn’t have permission for the trip. I also find it fishy that Daiyu was dressed in a distinctive white dress unlike any other at the farm. Then, after they left the farm, the only witness was an elderly woman who saw them from a distance and didn’t know Daiyu from Adam anyway. She wouldn’t have known which kid it was.’

‘But the body,’ said Robin. ‘How could Carrie be sure it wouldn’t wash back up? DNA would prove it wasn’t Daiyu.’

‘They might not bother taking DNA if Daiyu’s loving mother was prepared to identify the corpse as her daughter,’ said Strike.

‘So Mazu’s in on the switch? And nobody notices there’s an extra child missing from Chapman Farm?’

‘You’re the one who’s found out the church separates kids from parents and shifts them around the different centres. What if a kid was drafted in from Glasgow or Birmingham to be Daiyu’s stand-in? All the Waces would need to do is tell everyone the child’s gone back to where they came from. If it was a child whose birth was never registered, who’s going to go looking?’

Robin, who was remembering the shaven-headed, closed-down children in the Chapman Farm classroom, and how easily they’d shown affection to a total stranger, now felt a nasty sinking sensation.

After another silence, Strike said,

‘Colonel Graves thinks the witnesses who saw the van passing were set up, so the Waces could punish them and maintain the fiction that they didn’t know about the trip to the beach. If it was a set-up, it was bloody sadistic. Brian Kennett: getting steadily sicker, no use to the church any more. Draper: low IQ and possibly brain-damaged. Abigail: the heartbroken stepmother can’t bear to look at the stepdaughter who let her child drive off to a watery grave and insists on getting rid of her.’

‘You think Wace would deliberately set up his elder daughter to be shut up naked in the pigsty?’