Page 8 of The Running Grave

‘We didn’t talk,’ said Ed. ‘I tried to approach him last year in Wardour Street and he just turned tail and ran back into the Rupert Court Temple. I’ve walked the area a few times since and I’ve spotted him from a distance, out with his collecting tin. He looks ill. Emaciated. He’s the tallest of all of us and he must be several stone underweight.’

‘Apparently they’re chronically underfed at Chapman Farm,’ said Sir Colin. ‘They do a lot of fasts. I found out a lot about the inner workings of the church through a young ex-member called Kevin Pirbright. Kevin grew up in the church. He was there from the age of three.’

‘Yeah,’ said James, who for the last few minutes had given the impression of a man struggling to keep a guard on his tongue. ‘He had an excuse.’

There was a moment of charged silence.

‘Sorry,’ said James, though he didn’t look it, but then, evidently unable to hold the words back, he said forcefully,

‘Look, Will might have been too much of an idiot not to realise setting fire to a school chapel won’t solve world poverty, but come on. Come on. Of all the times to join a cult, he chooses the exact moment we’re waiting to find out whether Ed’s going to be paraplegic for the rest of his life?’

‘Will doesn’t think like that,’ said Ed.

‘No, because he’s a self-centred, monomaniacal little shit,’ said James hotly. ‘He knows perfectly well what he’s doing and he’s had plenty of opportunities to stop doing it. Don’t go thinking he’s some innocent halfwit,’ he threw at Strike and Robin. ‘Will can be bloody patronising to anyone who isn’t as clever as he is and you should hear him in an argument.’

‘James,’ said Ed quietly, but his brother ignored him.

‘My mother died on New Year’s Day. One of her last conscious acts was to write a letter to Will, begging him to let her see him one more time. Nothing. Nothing back. He let her die fretting about him, desperate to see him, and he didn’t turn up for the funeral, either. That was his choice and I’ll never forgive him for it. Never. There. I’ve said it,’ said James, slapping his hands to his thighs before getting to his feet. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do this,’ he added, and before anyone else could speak, he’d marched out of the room.

‘I thought that was going to happen,’ muttered Ed.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Sir Colin to Strike and Robin. His eyes had become wet.

‘Don’t worry about us,’ said Strike. ‘We’ve seen far worse.’

Sir Colin cleared his throat again and said, with a slight tremor in his voice,

‘Sally’s very last conscious act was to beg me to get Will out… do excuse me,’ he added, as tears began to leak from beneath the bifocals and he groped for a handkerchief.

Ed struggled up to move into the seat beside his father. As he moved around the table, Strike saw he still had a pronounced limp.

‘C’mon, Dad,’ he said, placing a hand on Sir Colin’s shoulder. ‘’S’all right.’

‘We don’t usually behave like this in public,’ Sir Colin told Strike and Robin, striving for a smile as he mopped his eyes. ‘It’s just that Sally… it’s all still very… very recent…’

With what Robin felt was deplorable timing, an attendant now arrived beside their table to offer lunch.

‘Yes, very good idea,’ said Sir Colin huskily. ‘Let’s eat.’

By the time menus had been provided and food ordered, Sir Colin had regained his composure. Once the waiter was out of earshot he said,

‘Of course, James is right, up to a point. Will’s got a formidable intellect and he’s a devil in a debate. I’m simply trying to explain that there’s always been a – a worrying naivety allied to Will’s very powerful brain. He’s thoroughly well intentioned, he truly wants to make the world a better place, but he also likes certainty and rules to cleave to. Before he found the prophets of the UHC, it was socialism, and before that he was a very tiresome Cub Scout – tiresome for the Cub leaders, because he didn’t like noisy games, but equally tiresome for us, with his endless good turns, and wanting to debate whether it was a good turn if it was something he’d been asked to do, or whether he had to think up his own acts of benevolence for them to qualify.

‘But Will’s real problem,’ said Sir Colin, ‘is that he doesn’t see evil. It’s theoretical to him, a faceless world force to be eradicated. He’s utterly blind to it when he’s up close.’

‘And you think the UHC’s evil?’

‘Oh yes, Mr Strike,’ said Sir Colin quietly. ‘Yes, I’m afraid I do.’

‘Have you tried visiting him? Arranging another meeting?’

‘Yes, but he’s refused. Only church members are allowed at Chapman Farm and when Ed and I tried to attend a service at the Rupert Court Temple to talk to Will, we were refused entry. It’s a registered religious building, so they have a legal right to bar visitors. We deduced from the fact we weren’t allowed in that the church have pictures of Will’s family members and have instructed church officials to keep us out.

‘As I told you on the phone, that’s how Patterson Inc messed things up. They sent the same man who’d been staking out Chapman Farm to the temple. Chapman Farm has cameras all around the perimeter, so the church authorities already knew what the man looked like, and when he arrived in Rupert Court they told him they knew who he was and who he worked for, and that Will was aware I was having private detectives follow him. At that point I terminated my contract with Patterson Inc. They’d not only failed to find out any information that would help me extract Will, they’d reinforced the church’s narrative against our family.’

‘Will’s still at Chapman Farm then, is he?’

‘As far as we know, yes. He sometimes goes out collecting money in Norwich and London. He occasionally stays overnight at the Rupert Court Temple, but otherwise he’s at the farm. Kevin told me recruits who don’t progress to running seminars and prayer meetings usually remain in the indoctrination centres – or spiritual retreats, as the church calls them. Apparently there’s a lot of hard labour at Chapman Farm.’