‘So how much longer d’you reckon you’ll need her in there?’ asked Murphy.
‘Not down to me,’ said Strike. ‘She can come out whenever she likes, but at the moment, she wants to stay in. Says she’s not coming out until she’s got something on the church. You know Robin.’
‘Yeah, she’s dedicated,’ said Murphy.
After a short pause he said,
‘Funny, you two going after the UHC. First time I heard of them was five years ago.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. I was still in uniform. Bloke drove his car off the road, straight through the window of a Morrisons. Coked out of his head. Kept saying “D’you know who I am?” while I was arresting him. I didn’t have a clue. Turned out he’d been a contestant on some reality show I’d never watched. Jacob Messenger, his name was.’
‘Jacob?’ repeated Strike, slipping his hand into his pocket for his notebook.
‘Yeah. He was a real tit, all pecs and fake tan. He hit a woman shopping with her kid. The boy was OK, but the mother was a real mess. Messenger got a year, out in six months. Next I heard of him, he was in the paper because he’d joined the UHC. Trying to burnish up his reputation, you know. He’d seen the light and he was going to be a good boy from now on and here’s a picture of me with some disabled kids.’
‘Interesting,’ said Strike, who’d written much of this down. ‘Apparently there’s a Jacob at Chapman Farm who’s very ill. D’you know what this Messenger’s doing now?’
‘No idea,’ said Murphy. ‘So, what’s she getting up to in there? She doesn’t tell me a lot in her letters.’
‘No, well, she won’t have got time for duplicate reports, middle of the night in the woods,’ said Strike, privately enjoying the fact that Murphy had to ask. He’d resisted looking at the notes Robin had scribbled for Ryan, but been pleased to see they seemed far shorter than his own. ‘She’s doing well. Seems to have kept her incognito going, no problem. She’s already got us a couple of bits of decent information. Nothing we can credibly threaten the church with, though.’
‘Tall order, waiting for something criminal to happen right in front of her.’
‘If I know Robin,’
Both men drank more beer. Strike had an idea Murphy had something he wanted to say and was preparing various robust pushbacks, whether against the suggestion Strike had acted recklessly in sending Robin undercover, or that he’d done so with the intent of messing up her relationship.
‘Didn’t know you were a mate of Wardle’s,’ said Murphy. ‘He’s not a big fan of mine.’
Strike settled for looking non-committal.
‘I was a bit of an arsehole one night, in the pub. This is before I stopped drinking.’
Strike made an indeterminate noise somewhere between acknowledgement and agreement.
‘My marriage was going tits-up at the time,’ said Murphy.
Strike could tell Murphy wanted to know what Wardle had told him, and was enjoying being as inscrutable as possible.
‘So what are you going to do now?’ asked Murphy, when the continuing silence had told him plainly Strike wasn’t going to disclose whatever he knew to Murphy’s discredit. ‘Tell Robin to go looking for guns?’
‘I’ll tell her to keep an eye out, certainly,’ said Strike. ‘Thanks for this, though. Very helpful.’
‘Yeah, well, I’ve got a vested interest in my girlfriend not getting shot,’ said Murphy.
Strike noted the nettled tone, smiled, checked his watch and announced that he’d better get going.
He might not have learned much about guns at Chapman Farm, but he felt it had been twenty minutes well spent, nonetheless.
Robin was addressing her detective partner inside her head while forking manure out of the Shire horses’ stable. Five days had passed since her demotion from the high-level group, but her relegation to the lowest level of farm workers showed no sign of being reversed, nor was she any the wiser about what she’d done to merit punishment. Aside from very brief spells of chanting in the temple, all of Robin’s time was now devoted to manual labour: looking after livestock, cleaning, or working in the laundry and kitchens.
