Page 376 of The Running Grave

Robin was banking on Midge giving her due warning that Becca was on her way back to the temple, so she could find a less obvious place to watch, but the longer Robin waited, the more the little battery life in her phone was leaking away.

She was afraid that if Becca spotted her, she’d turn tail and run. It might be better, she thought, to be waiting in the temple when Becca returned. That, after all, was Becca’s place of safety and her final destination; it would be far harder for her to refuse to talk there than in the street. After a few more moments of indecision, Robin texted her intention to Midge, then headed into Rupert Court.

None of the people walking up and down the narrow passage paid her the slightest attention as she removed the skeleton keys from her pocket. This, after all, was London: each to their own business, unless it became so noisy, violent or otherwise bothersome that passers-by felt duty bound to intervene. It took Robin five goes to find a key that would unlock the temple doors, but finally she managed it. Having slipped inside, she closed the doors quietly behind her and locked them again.

Becca had left the temple lights on their lowest setting, doubtless to make it easier for her to navigate when she returned. The place was deserted. The gigantic cinema screen facing Robin was black, which gave it a faintly forbidding look. The Disneyesque hand-holding figures that ran around the walls had blended into the shadows, but the ceiling figures were dimly visible: the Wounded Prophet in orange, with the blood on his forehead; the Healer Prophet in his blue robes, with his beard and serpent-wrapped staff; the Golden Prophet in yellow, scattering jewels as she flew; the Stolen Prophet in scarlet, with his noose around his neck; and lastly the Drowned Prophet, all in bridal white, with the stylised waves rising behind her.

Robin walked up the scarlet-carpeted aisle to stand beneath the image of Daiyu, with its malevolent black eyes. It was while she was still looking up at the figure that Robin heard something she hadn’t expected, and which made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up: the screaming of a baby, somewhere inside the temple.

She turned swiftly, trying to locate the source of the sound, then headed towards the stage. To the right of it was a door so well camouflaged in the gold temple wall that Robin hadn’t noticed it during the services she’d attended, distracted, no doubt, by the images of Gods, and of the church’s charitable work, shown onscreen. Robin felt for the flush pull handle and tugged.

The door opened. There was a staircase beyond, leading upstairs to what Robin knew were sleeping quarters. The baby’s cries grew louder. Robin began to climb.

129

The fate of fire depends on wood; as long as there is wood below, the fire burns above.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

‘So,’ said Strike, pausing in his note-taking to read back what Abigail had just told him, ‘in the two or three weeks you spent at the Birmingham centre, you definitely don’t remember any eleven-year-olds being transferred from Chapman Farm?’

‘No,’ said Abigail.

‘That tallies with my information,’ said Strike, ‘because my operative in Birmingham made enquiries about Becca Pirbright. They know who she is, because she’s a big shot in the church now, but they said she’d never lived there as a child.’

‘What’s it matter wevver she ever lived in Birmingham?’ said Abigail, perplexed.

‘Because that’s where her brother and sister believed she’d gone, after Daiyu disappeared. Becca returned to the farm three years later, and she was changed.’

‘Well, she would be, after free years,’ said Abigail, still looking puzzled.

‘But you can’t remember the Pirbright kids?’

‘No, they must’ve been a lot younger than me.’

‘Becca was five years younger.’

‘Then we’d’ve missed each uvver in the dorms.’

‘Dark,’ Strike prompted her. ‘Reasonably attractive. Shiny hair.’

Abigail shrugged and shook her head.

‘Their mother was called Louise.’

‘Oh,’ said Abigail slowly. ‘Yeah… I remember Louise. Really good-looking woman. Mazu ’ad it in for ’er the moment she arrived at the farm.’

‘Did she?’

‘Oh yeah. It was all bruvverly love an’ not bein’ possessive an’ shit, but Mazu fuckin’ ’ated all the women my farver was shagging.’

‘Was he calling them spirit wives in those days?’

‘Not to me,’ said Abigail restlessly. ‘Listen, can you get to the point? Only I’ve gotta meet Darryl an’ ’e’s pissed off at me at the moment ’cause ’e finks I’m not givin’ ’im enough attention.’

‘You don’t seem the type to be bothered by complaints like that.’

‘’E’s very good in the sack, if you must know,’ said Abigail coolly. ‘Is that it, then, on Becca and Birmingham?’