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‘There are homes and homes,’ Strike told Lucy, ignoring Greg. ‘If we got him into somewhere decent in London, we could make sure we’re seeing him regularly. Take him for days out—’
‘Then Lucy’ll be running round after him like he’s living here,’ said Greg, his clear implication that Strike wouldn’t be doing any running round at all. ‘He wants to stay in Cornwall, he’s just said so.’
‘He doesn’t know what he wants,’ said Lucy shrilly. ‘What happened on Tuesday was a warning. He isn’t safe to live alone any more, anything could have happened to him – what if he’d tried to take his boat out?’
‘That’s what I was worried about,’ admitted Strike.
‘So sell the boat,’ said Greg angrily.
The conversation ended, as Strike could have predicted from the first, with no decision in place other than getting Ted seen by a specialist in London. As Ted was exhausted after his unexpected journey to London he turned in at nine, and Strike left shortly afterwards, hoping to maximise his sleep before getting up to drive to Thornbury.
He’d decided against giving Cherie, or Carrie, as she was now, prior notice of his arrival, due to her well-established pattern of flight and reinvention: he had a feeling that if he called her first, she’d make sure she was unavailable. Strike doubted the woman who posted endless pictures on Facebook of her family’s outings to Longleat and Paultons Park, of her contributions to school bake sales and of the fancy dress costumes she’d made her little girls was going to enjoy being reminded of her unsavoury past.
Strike had been travelling along the motorway for two hours when he received a phone call from Tasha Mayo, asking why Midge wasn’t looking after her any more, and requesting that Midge be reassigned to her case. The phrase ‘looking after’ did nothing to allay Strike’s faint suspicion that Midge had become over-friendly with the actress, and he didn’t much appreciate their client dictating to him which personnel they wanted assigned to them.
‘It’s just more natural for me to be seen walking around with another woman,’ Mayo told him.
‘If what my agency provided was private security, and we wanted to keep it discreet, I’d agree,’ said Strike, ‘but there shouldn’t be any walking around together, given that what we’re providing is surveillance—’
To his consternation, he then realised Tasha was crying. His heart sank: he seemed to have had to deal with an endless train of crying people lately.
‘Look,’ she sobbed, ‘I can’t afford you and private security, and I like her, she makes me feel safe, and I’d rather have someone around I can have a laugh with—’
‘All right, all right,’ said Strike. ‘I’ll put Midge back on the job.’
Little though Strike liked what he thought of as mission creep, he couldn’t pretend it was unreasonable of Mayo to want a bodyguard.
‘Take care of yourself,’ he finished lamely, and Tasha rang off.
Having contacted a frosty Midge to give her the news, Strike continued driving.
Twenty minutes later, Shah called.
‘Have you got her?’ said Strike, smiling in anticipation of hearing Robin’s voice.
‘No,’ said Shah. ‘She didn’t turn up and the rock’s gone.’
For the second time in two weeks, Strike felt as though dry ice had slid down through his guts.
‘What?’
‘The plastic rock’s gone. No sign of it.’
‘Fuck. Stay there. I’m on the M4. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’
81
The upper trigram K’an stands for the Abysmal, the dangerous. Its motion is downward…
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Three nights of vigil had now been held on the temple steps, making it impossible for Robin to leave her bed. On Wednesday, teenaged boys in long white robes had replaced the girls, and on Thursday night, the church Principals took up their positions at the temple entrance, the flickering flames of their torches illuminating the painted faces of Jonathan and Mazu Wace, Becca Pirbright, Taio Wace, Giles Harmon, Noli Seymour and others, all of them wearing black smeared around their eyes. Daiyu had appeared twice more by night, her luminous figure visible from afar from the rear windows of the dormitories.
The ghost, the watchful figures on the temple steps, the constant dread, the impossibility of escaping or calling for help: all made Robin feel as though she was inhabiting a nightmare from which she couldn’t wake. Nobody had confronted her about her real identity, nobody had spoken to her about what had happened in the Retreat Room with Will or challenged her explanation of why her face was swollen and bruised, and she found all of this ominous rather than reassuring. She felt certain that a reckoning was coming at a time of the church’s choosing, and afraid that the Manifestation would be the moment it happened. The Drowned Prophet will sort you out.
She saw Will from a distance, moving blank-faced about his daily tasks, and occasionally she saw his lips moving silently, and knew he was chanting. Once, she spotted him sitting on his haunches to talk to little Qing, before hurrying away as Mazu swept through the courtyard, cradling baby Yixin in her arms. Robin was still being accompanied everywhere she went.
The day of the Manifestation was marked by a fast for all church members, who were once again served hot water with lemon for breakfast. The church Principals, who were presumably catching up on their sleep in the farmhouse after their overnight vigil, remained out of sight. Exhausted, hungry and scared, Robin fed chickens, cleaned the dormitories and spent a few hours in the craft room, stuffing more plush turtles for sale in Norwich. She kept remembering her blithe request of an extra day’s grace from Strike, should she be late putting a letter in the plastic rock. Had she not overruled him, someone from the agency would be coming to get her the following day, although she now knew enough about Chapman Farm to be certain anyone who tried to gain entry at the front gate would be turned away.
