Page 366 of The Running Grave

‘Great.’ Strike scratched his chin, thinking. ‘If he’s the right one, you should visit him. Might require a lighter touch than I gave Reaney.’

He chose not to say that Mills was likely to fancy a visit from an attractive young woman far more than he’d want to meet a broken-nosed forty-one-year-old man.

‘This is all going to take time to arrange,’ said Robin, sounding worried.

‘Doesn’t matter. We do this properly or not at all. I’m trying to fix up a meeting with all our police contacts—’

‘I know, Ryan just called me, he got Pat’s message,’ said Robin.

Then why the fuck didn’t he call Pat? was Strike’s immediate, ungracious thought.

‘He can’t do anything until next week.’

‘Nor can Layborn,’ said Strike. ‘I might give them all a little kick up the arse, tell them my journalist contact is gagging to write a piece about the church and police apathy, and that I’m barely holding him off.’

‘Would you mind not?’ said Robin. ‘Or not unless it’s absolutely necessary?’

‘You’re the one who wants to speed things up,’ said Strike.

And nobody made you start seeing that prick Murphy.

123

Strength in the face of danger does not plunge ahead but bides its time, whereas weakness in the face of danger grows agitated and has not the patience to wait.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

For the next fortnight, everyone at the agency was very busy, their efforts directed almost exclusively to proving Strike’s theory about the fate of the Drowned Prophet.

Midge, who’d accepted with alacrity the possibly dangerous job of trying to get forensic evidence from the woods at Chapman Farm, returned safely and triumphantly from Norfolk. Given that the agency had no access to a forensics lab, the only hope of having her findings analysed would be in the context of a police investigation that hadn’t yet started, if, indeed, it ever did. Everything she’d carried out of the woods at Chapman Farm was now wrapped carefully in plastic in the office safe.

After a week of hanging around various likely haunts, Barclay had successfully located the man whom Strike was so keen to have befriended, and was cautiously optimistic, given his target’s fondness for drink and military anecdotes, that a few more free pints might see himself invited round to the man’s home.

‘Don’t rush it,’ warned Strike. ‘One false move could set off alarm bells.’

Shah remained in Birmingham, where some of the activities he’d undertaken were illegal. In consequence, Strike didn’t intend to share any of Dev’s findings at the meeting with his and Robin’s four best police contacts, which finally took place two weeks and a day after Strike and Robin had been shot at, on a Tuesday evening, in the useful downstairs room at the Flying Horse. Strike – who felt he was becoming increasingly profligate with Sir Colin Edensor’s money – was paying for the room and dinner out of his own pocket, with the promise of burgers and chips to sweeten their contacts’ sacrifice of a few hours of their free time.

Unfortunately for Strike, he was late for his own meeting. He’d driven to Norfolk and back that day in a hired automatic Audi A1. The interview he’d conducted there had taken longer than he’d expected, the unfamiliar car’s pedals had been hard on his right leg, he’d hit a lot of traffic on the way back into London, and this, coupled with the stress of checking constantly that he wasn’t being followed, had etched a slight scowl onto his face which he had to discipline into a smile when he reached the downstairs room, where he found Eric Wardle, George Layborn, Vanessa Ekwensi, Ryan Murphy, Robin, Will, Flora and Ilsa.

‘Sorry,’ Strike muttered, spilling some of his pint as he dropped clumsily into the spare seat at the table. ‘Long day.’

‘I’ve ordered for you,’ said Robin, and Strike noted the look of irritation on Murphy’s face as she said it.

Robin was feeling uneasy. Will, she knew, had been cajoled into attending by Pat and Dennis, the latter having told Will firmly that he was caught in a chicken and egg situation and needed to bloody well get himself out of it. Since arriving in the basement of the Flying Horse with Flora and Ilsa, Will, who looked pale and worried, had barely spoken. Meanwhile, it had required all Robin’s cheerful chat and gratitude for her presence to raise the slightest smile from Flora, who was currently twisting her fingers on her lap beneath the table. Robin had already glimpsed a fresh self-harm mark on her neck.

Aside from her worries about how this meeting was likely to affect the two fragile ex-church members, Robin sensed undercurrents between Wardle and Murphy; the latter had become peremptory and curt in manner even before Strike arrived.

After some slightly stilted small talk, Strike introduced the subject of the meeting. The police listened in silence while Strike ran over the main accusations against the church, omitting all mention of the Drowned Prophet. When Strike said Flora and Will were prepared to give statements about what they’d witnessed while members of the church, Robin saw the knuckles of Flora’s hands turn white beneath the table.

Food arrived before the police had had time to ask any questions. Once the waitress had left, the CID officers began to speak up. They were, as Strike had expected, starting from a position, if not of scepticism, then of caution.

He’d expected their muted response to the child trafficking allegations, given that neither Will nor Flora had ever been to the Birmingham centre which was supposed to be its hub. Nobody was disposed to challenge out loud Flora’s statement, delivered in a quaking voice while staring at the table in front of her, that she’d been repeatedly raped, but it angered Robin that it took her own corroboration about the Retreat Rooms to wipe the doubtful expression from George Layborn’s face. She described, in blunt language, her own close shaves with Taio, and the sight of an underage girl emerging from a Retreat Room with Giles Harmon. The novelist’s name seemed unfamiliar to Layborn, but Wardle and Ekwensi exchanged a look at this, and both got out their notebooks.

As for the allegation that the church was improperly burying bodies without registering deaths, Robin thought that, too, might have been dismissed as an evidence-free claim, but for the unexpected intervention of Will.

‘They do bury them illegally,’ he said, interrupting Layborn, who was pressing a distressed Flora for details. ‘I’ve seen it as well. Right before I left, they buried a kid who was born with – well, I don’t know what was wrong with him. They never got him seen by anyone except Zhou.’

‘Not Jacob?’ said Robin, looking around at Will.