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It took her nearly half an hour to find the small clearing Barclay had cut just inside the perimeter wall, with its heavy reinforcement of barbed wire. Crouching down, she groped around on the ground and at long last her fingers felt something unnaturally warm and smooth. She lifted the plastic rock out of the patch of weeds where it had lain and pulled the two halves apart with shaking hands.
Turning on the pencil torch, she saw the pen, paper and a note in Strike’s familiar handwriting, and her heart leapt as though she’d seen him in person. She’d just removed his message when she heard voices in the wood behind her.
Terrified, Robin turned off the torch and flung herself flat to the ground in the nearest patch of nettles, shielding her face as best she could with her arms, certain the pounding of her heart would be audible to whoever had followed her. Expecting a shout or a demand to show herself, she heard nothing at all except footsteps. Then a girl spoke.
‘I th-th-thought I saw a light just then.’
Robin lay very still and closed her eyes, as though that would somehow make her less visible.
‘Moonlight on the wire, probably,’ said a male voice. ‘Go on. What did you want to—?’
‘I n-n-need you to m-m-make me increase again.’
‘Lin… I can’t.’
‘You’ve g-g-got to,’ said the girl, who sounded on the verge of tears. ‘Or I-I-I’ll have t-t-t-t-to go with him again. I c-c-can’t, Will. I c-c-c-c—’
She started to cry.
‘Shh!’ said Will frantically.
Robin heard a rustle of fabric and murmuring. She guessed that Will had put his arms around Lin, whose sobs now sounded muffled.
‘Why c-c-c—’
‘You know why,’ he whispered.
‘They’re g-g-g-going to send me t-t-to Birmingham if I d-d-don’t go with him and I c-c-can’t leave Qing, I w-w-won’t—’
‘Who says you’re going to Birmingham?’ said Will.
‘M-M-M-M-Mazu, if I d-d-d-don’t go with h-h-h—’
‘When did she tell you that?’
‘Y-y-y-yesterday, but if I’m increasing m-m-maybe she w-w-won’t m-m-m—’
‘Oh God,’ said Will, and Robin had never heard the two syllables more freighted with despair.
There was more silence and faint sounds of movement.
Please don’t be having sex, Robin thought, eyes tightly closed as she lay among the nettles. Please, please don’t.
‘Or c-c-c-could d-d-do w-w-what Kevin d-d-did,’ said Lin, her voice thick with tears.
‘Are you insane?’ said Will harshly. ‘Be damned forever, annihilate our spirits?’
‘I w-w-won’t leave Qing!’ wailed Lin. Again Will frantically hushed her. There was another lull, in which Robin thought she could hear kissing of a comforting rather than passionate nature.
She should have foreseen that somebody other than the Strike and Ellacott Detective Agency might be aware of the blind spot on the cameras and the useful cover of the woods. She was now dependent for her own safe return to the dormitory on whatever the couple decided to do next. Petrified that one of them might stray closer to the spot where she lay, because another passing car would undoubtedly reveal her bright orange tracksuit, she had no choice but to remain curled up among the nettles. How she was going to explain the mud and grass stains on her clean tracksuit was a problem she’d worry about if she ever got safely out of the woods.
‘Can’t you tell Mazu you’ve got something – what’s that thing you had?’
‘Cystitis,’ sobbed Lin. ‘She w-w-won’t believe m-m-me.’
‘OK,’ said Will, ‘then – then – you’ll have to pretend to be ill with something else. Ask to see Dr Zhou.’
‘B-b-but I’ll have to g–g-get better in the end – I can’t leave Qing!’ wailed the girl again, and Will, now clearly scared out of his wits, said,
