Page 383 of The Running Grave

‘Yeah, I think so.’

‘’E never said nuffing to me about Daiyu.’

‘He didn’t mention it being an odd coincidence, Daiyu dying exactly where your mother did?’

‘Oh,’ said Abigail. ‘Yeah. ’E did say somefing abou’ that.’

‘Possibly Kevin only put it all together after he’d approached you,’ said Strike.

‘So ’oo called these Delaunay people?’

‘Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? I suspect it was the same person who called Jordan Reaney to find out what he might have let slip to me, and who called Carrie Curtis Woods, and tipped her into suicide.’

Strike’s mobile buzzed, not once, but twice, in quick succession.

‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘Been waiting for this.’

The first text was from Barclay, but he ignored it in favour of Midge’s.

Robin safe. Got Becca and Mazoo shut in temple.

Immensely relieved, Strike opened Barclay’s message, which comprised two words.

Got everything.

Strike sent two texts of his own back, returned his mobile to his pocket, then looked again at Abigail.

‘I said there were four possibilities, to explain Becca’s strange status in the church.’

‘Listen,’ said Abigail impatiently, ‘I’m sorry, but I told Darryl I was gonna be late, not that I was never gonna turn up.’

‘Is Darryl the tall, good-looking black guy with green eyes? Because I know he wasn’t the fat guy driving the red Corsa. That was your lodger, Patrick.’

The pupils of Abigail’s dark blue eyes enlarged suddenly, so that they became as opaque as Strike had seen her father’s.

‘I had to keep you talking,’ said Strike, ‘because there were things that needed doing while you were well out of the way.’

He paused to let her speak, but she said nothing, so he continued,

‘Would you like to hear some of the questions I’ve been pondering, about Daiyu’s drowning in the North Sea?’

‘Tell me what you like,’ said Abigail. She was striving to look unconcerned, but the hand holding her cigarette had begun to shake.

‘I started small,’ said Strike, ‘by wondering why she’d drowned exactly where your mother did, but the deeper into the investigation I got, the more unexplained things started cropping up. Who was buying Daiyu toys and sweets in her last few months at the farm? Why was she wearing a white dress rather than a tracksuit when last seen alive? Why did Carrie strip to her underwear, if they were only going in for a paddle? Why did Carrie run off to poke at something at the water’s edge, right before the police arrived? Who was the second adult, who was supposed to be in the dormitory the night Carrie helped Daiyu out of the window? Why did your father spirit Becca Pirbright away from the farm, after Daiyu vanished?’

Abigail, who’d already ground out her first cigarette under her heel, now took out a second. Having lit it, she blew smoke into Strike’s face. Far from resenting this, Strike took the opportunity to breathe in some nicotine.

‘Then I started thinking hard about Kevin Pirbright’s death. Who gouged some of the writing out of his bedroom wall, leaving only the word “pigs”, and who stole his laptop? Who was Kevin talking about, when he told an undercover detective he was going to meet a bully and “have things out” with them? What exactly did Kevin know – what had he pieced together – such that he deserved a bullet through the brain?

‘Now all of those things, separately, might have explanations. A junkie could’ve stolen his laptop. The kids in the dorm might’ve simply forgotten the second person in charge the last night Daiyu was seen there. But added together, there seemed to be a hell of a lot of unexplained occurrences.’

‘If you say so,’ said Abigail, but her hand was still shaking. ‘But—’

‘I haven’t finished. There was also the question of those phone calls. Who called Carrie Curtis Woods, before my partner and I visited her? Whom did she call back, after we’d left? Who phoned Jordan Reaney, from a call box in Norfolk to throw suspicion on the church, and put him in such a state of fear and alarm he tried to overdose? Who were those two people terrified of, and what had that person threatened them with, that made them both decide they’d rather die than face it? And who called the Delaunays, trying to make them scared Daiyu was still alive, to throw a red herring in my path, and make them even more obstructive?’

Abigail blew smoke towards the ceiling and said nothing.

‘I also wanted to know why there’s a circle of wooden posts in the woods at Chapman Farm that someone once tried to destroy, why there’s an axe hidden in a nearby tree, and why, close by the destroyed ring, somebody once tried to burn some rope.’