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‘Did PC Curtis – so-called – give you a landline number, or mobile?’
‘Mobile.’
‘Have you still got it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Could I have it?’
‘I’ll need to think about that,’ he said, confirming Robin’s impression that this was a man who believed information was very definitely power. ‘I decided to call you back because you, at least, were telling the truth about who you are. I checked you out online,’ he added, ‘though you don’t look much like your pictures.’
His tone left Robin in no doubt that he thought she looked worse in person. Feeling sorrier for his wife by the minute, she said,
‘I’ve lost some weight recently. Well, my partner and I—’
‘This is Cormorant Strike?’
‘Cormoran Strike,’ said Robin, who didn’t see why Fernsby should corner the market in pedantry.
‘Not the bird?’
‘Not the bird,’ said Robin patiently. ‘We’re investigating the Universal Humanitarian Church.’
‘Why?’
‘We’ve been hired to do so.’
‘By a newspaper?’
‘No,’ said Robin.
‘I’m not sure I want to talk to you, unless I know who’s paying you.’
‘Our client has a relative inside the church,’ said Robin, deciding it was simpler, given Rufus’s clearly nit-picking nature, not to say that the relative had in fact left.
‘And how’s my father relevant to the situation?’
‘Are you’re aware he’s currently—?’
‘At Chapman Farm? Yes. He wrote me a stupid letter saying he’d gone back.’
‘What d’you mean by “gone back”?’ asked Robin, her pulse rate accelerating.
‘I mean he’s been there before, obviously.’
‘Really? When?’
‘In 1995, for ten days,’ said Rufus, with pernickety though useful precision, ‘and 2007, for… possibly a week.’
‘Why such short stays? My client’s interested in what makes people join, and what makes them leave, you see,’ she added mendaciously.
‘He left the first time because my mother took legal action against him. Second time, my sister Rosie was ill.’
Disguising her keen interest in these answers, Robin asked,
‘What made him want to join in ’95, do you know?’
‘That man who started it, Wace, gave a talk at the University of Sussex, where my father was working. He went along in a spirit of supposed academic enquiry,’ said Rufus, with a slight sneer, ‘and fell for it. He resigned his post, and decided he was going to devote himself to the spiritual life.’
