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‘… shouldn’t even have gotten near Papa J.’
‘She didn’t, we told her there was no—’
‘But the fact she even got as far as this corrid—’
‘Mr Jackson!’ said Strike, coming to a halt. ‘I thought you were based in San Francisco these days?’
Joe Jackson turned, frowning, tall enough to look straight into Strike’s eyes.
‘Do we know each other?’
His voice was a strange compound of Midlands, overlain with west coast American. His eyes were a light grey.
‘No,’ said Strike. ‘I recognised you from your pictures.’
‘Please,’ said the disconcerted redhead, ‘come, if you’d like to speak to Papa J.’
Judging that his odds of getting a truthful answer from Joe Jackson to the question ‘Got any tattoos?’ were minimal under these circumstances, Strike walked on.
They arrived at last at a closed door, from beyond which came a buzz of talk. The girl knocked, opened the door and stood back to allow Strike to enter.
There were at least twenty people inside, all of them wearing blue. Jonathan Wace was sitting in a chair in the middle of the group, a glass of clear liquid in his hand, a crumpled towel in his lap, with a cluster of young people in tracksuits around him. Most of the robed church Principals were also present.
Silence crept over the room like a rapidly moving frost as those nearest the door became aware that Strike had arrived. It reached Giles Harmon last. He was talking to a couple of young women in a distant corner.
‘… said to him, “What you fail to appreciate is the heterodox—”’
Apparently realising his voice was ringing alone through the room, Harmon broke off mid-sentence.
‘Evening,’ said Strike, moving further into the room.
If Jonathan Wace had meant to intimidate Strike by receiving him amid a crowd, he’d greatly mistaken his opponent. Strike found it positively stimulating to come face to face with the kind of people he most despised: fanatics and hypocrites, as he mentally dubbed all of them, each of them undoubtedly convinced of their own critical importance to Wace’s grandiose mission, blind to their own motives and indifferent to the sometimes irreversible damage done by the man to whom they’d sworn allegiance.
Wace rose, let the towel in his lap fall onto the arm of his chair and walked towards Strike, glass in hand. His smile was as charming and self-deprecating as it had been when he’d first mounted the pentagonal stage.
‘I’m glad – genuinely glad – you’re here.’
He held out his hand, and Strike shook it, looking down at him.
‘Don’t stand behind Mr Strike,’ said Wace, to the ordinary members who’d moved to surround the pair. ‘It’s bad manners. Or,’ he looked back at Strike, ‘may I call you Cormoran?’
‘Call me whatever you like,’ said Strike.
‘I think we’re a little crowded,’ said Wace, and Strike had to give him this much credit: he’d intuited in a few seconds that the detective was indifferent to the numbers in the room. ‘Principals, remain please. The rest of you, I know you won’t mind leaving us… Lindsey, if Joe’s still outside, tell him to join us.’
Most of the attractive young women filed out of the room.
‘Got a bathroom?’ asked Strike. ‘I could do with a pee.’
‘Certainly, certainly,’ said Wace. He pointed to a white door. ‘Over there.’
Strike was mildly amused to find, on washing his hands, that Wace appeared to have brought his own toiletries with him, because he doubted very much that Olympia routinely provided soaps from Hermès or bathrobes from Armani. Strike slipped his hand into the pockets of the latter, but they were empty.
‘Please, sit down,’ Wace invited Strike, when he emerged. Somebody had pulled up a chair to face the church leader’s. As Strike did as he was bid, Joe Jackson entered the room and crossed to join the other Principals, who were either standing or sitting behind the church leader.
‘She’s gone,’ Jackson informed Wace. ‘She wanted you to have this note.’
‘I’ll read it later,’ said Wace lightly. ‘It’s Cormoran I’m interested in now. Would you mind,’ Wace asked the detective, ‘if my wife listened in to our talk? I know she’d love to hear from you.’
