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‘I’m ninety per cent certain Flora would, after tonight. Will… I think he’s still determined only to speak to the police once Lin’s out.’
‘Maybe bullets sailing a foot over his head will have sharpened his ideas up,’ said Strike. ‘I’ll make those calls tomorrow… later today, I mean.’
Strike ate a solitary cold chip lingering at the bottom of a greasy bag. Robin was again looking at the board on the wall. Her eyes travelled from the photo of rabbity-faced Daiyu to Flora Brewster’s drawing of the girl without eyes; from the mugshot of twenty-something Carrie Curtis Woods to Jennifer Wace, with her eighties perm; from the pig-mask Polaroids to Paul Draper’s timid moon face, and lastly to the note to himself Strike had written, which read, JOGGER ON THE BEACH?
‘Strike,’ said Robin, ‘what the hell’s going on?’
121
Six in the third place means:
Whoever hunts deer without the forester
Only loses his way in the forest.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
‘Enough to bring down the UHC, if we’re lucky,’ said Strike.
‘No, I mean the things that have been happening since I got out. Why are they simultaneously so slick, so hard to catch in the act, but also so incompetent?’
‘Go on,’ said Strike, because she was articulating something he himself had been wondering about.
‘That couple in the red Corsa: were they genuinely tailing us? If so, they were lousy at it, whereas the Ford Focus – I know I messed up, not spotting them sooner—’
‘No, whoever was driving that car was very good, and they also came bloody close to killing one or both of us.’
‘Right, and whoever tried to break in here with the gun looked pretty efficient, and whoever murdered Kevin Pirbright has got clean away with it—’
‘Whereas our green-eyed friend couldn’t have been more obvious unless he’d held up a placard saying, “I am watching you”.’
‘And then you’ve got Reaney and Carrie, scared into suicide without even being face to face with the person… don’t you feel as though we’ve got two different sets of people after us, one of them kind of a clown show, and the other lot really dangerous?’
‘Personally,’ said Strike, ‘I think we’ve got someone after us who can’t be picky about their underlings. They have to go with what they’ve got at any given time.’
‘But that doesn’t fit Jonathan Wace. He’s got thousands of people who’re absolutely devoted to him at his disposal, and whatever else you might say about him, he’s got a real talent for putting people where they’re most useful. He’s never had a high-level defector.’
‘There’s that,’ said Strike, ‘and also the fact he’d have the ability to keep us under twenty-four-hour surveillance without ever repeating a face, whereas whoever’s behind this seems to be watching us and following us at what seem fairly random times. I get the sense that they’re only doing it when they can.
‘You know,’ said Strike, reaching for his beer, ‘Wace absolutely denied he was following or watching us when I met him at Olympia. He would, of course, but I s’pose there’s an outside chance he was telling the truth.’
‘What if,’ said Robin, thinking the thing out as she spoke, ‘someone in the church is scared we’ve found out something Wace never knew about? Something he’d be really angry about?’
Both of them now looked up at the noticeboard.
‘Going by who they’re trying to stop us talking to, it’s those Polaroids,’ said Strike, ‘because I doubt it’s escaped your notice that the bullets only started hitting us once it looked as though we were heading for Cedar Terrace and, I strongly suspect, Rosie Fernsby. They didn’t give a damn about Will, or they’d have tried to stop us earlier. It’s possible they’re banking on the fact he won’t talk while they’ve still got Lin, in case she’s the one who pays for it… in point of fact, she’s something of a trump card for the church, isn’t she? It’s in their best interests to keep her alive…
‘No,’ said Strike, reaching for his notebook and pen again, ‘I still think Rosie Fernsby’s the one in real danger. Someone’s got to go to Cedar Terrace and warn her, if she’s there.’
He made a note to this effect and set his pen down again.
Robin shivered. It was now approaching four in the morning, and while her brain was far too overwrought for sleep, her body felt differently. She was too busy staring at the picture of Daiyu on the noticeboard to register Strike taking off his jacket until he passed it to her.
‘Oh… are you sure?’
‘I’ve got about five stone of extra padding, compared to you.’
‘Don’t exaggerate,’ muttered Robin. ‘Thank you.’
