At last she heard the opening bars of ‘Heroes’ and knew the evening was about to end, as surely as if she’d heard the start of ‘Auld Lang Syne’. She was careful to sing along and look happy, and was rewarded when at last everyone began to file back to the dormitories through the rain that had begun to fall while they were eating, except for the drudges like Louise who were left behind to clean up the tables.
In spite of her bone-deep tiredness, that part of Robin’s mind that kept reminding her why she was there told her that tonight would be her best opportunity to find the plastic stone. Everyone at the farm had just enjoyed an atypically filling meal and would be more likely to fall asleep quickly. Sure enough, the women around her undressed quickly, pulling on pyjamas, scribbling in their journals, then falling into bed.
Robin made a brief entry in her own journal then put on her pyjamas too, leaving on the underwear that was still slightly damp. Glancing around to make sure nobody was watching, she got into bed with her socks and trainers still on, hiding her tracksuit under the covers. After ten minutes, the lights, which were controlled by a master switch somewhere, finally went out.
Robin lay in the darkness, listening to the rain, forcing herself to stay awake even though her eyelids kept drooping. Soon snores and slow, heavy breathing could be heard over the patter on the windows. She daren’t wait too long, nor did she dare try and extricate her waterproof jacket from under her bed. Trying not to rustle her sheets, she succeeded in pulling her tracksuit back on over her pyjamas. Then, slowly and carefully, she slid out of bed and crept towards the dormitory door, ready to tell anyone who woke that she was on her way to the bathroom.
She opened the door cautiously. There were no electric lights in the deserted courtyard, although Daiyu’s pool and fountain glinted in the moonlight and a single lit window shone from the upper floor of the farmhouse.
Robin felt her way around the side of the building and along the strip of ground between the women’s and men’s dormitories, her hair becoming rapidly wetter in the rain. By the time she reached the end of the passage her eyes had somewhat acclimatised to the darkness. Her objective was the patch of dense woodland visible from the dormitory’s window, which lay beyond a small field which none of the recruits had yet entered.
Trees and shrubs had been planted at the end of the passageway between the dormitories, which screened the field from view. As she made her way carefully through this thicket, trying not to trip over roots, she saw light and paused between bushes.
She’d found more Retreat Rooms, such as she’d seen from Dr Zhou’s office, screened from the dormitories by careful planting. Through the bushes, she could see light shining from behind curtains which had been pulled across the sliding glass doors of one of them. Robin feared that someone might be about to walk out of it, or peer outside. She waited for a minute, pondering her options, then decided to risk it. Leaving the shelter of the trees, she crept on, passing within ten yards of the cabin.
It was then that she realised there was no danger of anyone leaving the Retreat Room immediately. Rhythmic thumps and grunts were issuing from it, along with small squeals that might have been pleasure or pain. Robin hurried on.
A five-bar gate separated the field from the planted area where the Retreat Rooms stood. Robin decided to climb this rather than attempt to open it. Once she’d reached the other side she set off at a jog, the wet ground squelching beneath her feet, consumed by barely controlled panic. If there were night vision cameras covering the farm, she’d be detected any moment; the agency might have taken a careful survey of the perimeter, but they’d had no way of knowing what surveillance technology was used inside. Her rational self kept telling her she’d seen no sign of cameras anywhere, yet the fear dogged her she hurried towards the deeper darkness that was the wood.
Reaching the shelter of the trees was a relief, but now another kind of fear gripped her. She seemed to see again the smiling, transparent form of Daiyu as she’d appeared in the basement a few hours previously.
But she didn’t understand how it had been done, and it was only too easy to believe in ghosts when struggling blindly through overgrown woodland, nettles and over more twisted roots, with the crack of twigs underfoot sounding as loud as gunshots in the still of the night and rain beating down on the tree canopy overhead.
