The pair left the room, leaving Wace and Mazu to watch Robin in silence. Robin heard scuffing footsteps, and then the door opened once more to reveal Taio and Becca carrying a heavy wooden box, the size of a large travel trunk, with an envelope-sized rectangular hole at one end and a hinged, lockable lid.
‘I’m going to leave you now, Artemis,’ said Wace, getting to his feet, and his eyes were wet again. ‘Even where the sin has been great, I hate the necessity for punishment. I wish,’ he pressed his hand to his heart, ‘it weren’t necessary. Be well, Rowena, I’ll see you on the other side, purified, I hope, by suffering. Don’t think I don’t recognise your gifts of intelligence and generosity. I’m very happy,’ he said, making her a little bow, ‘in spite of everything, that you chose to stay with us. Eight hours,’ he added to Taio.
He left the room.
Taio now threw back the lid of the box.
‘You face this way,’ he told Robin, pointing at the rectangular hole. You kneel and bend over in an attitude of penance. Then we close the lid.’
Shaking uncontrollably, Robin stood up. She climbed into the box, facing the rectangular hole, then knelt down and curled up. The floor of the box hadn’t been sanded: she felt the splintered surface digging into her knees through the thin, wet robe. Then the lid banged down on her spine.
She watched through the rectangular hole as Mazu, Taio and Becca left the room, only the hems of their robes and their feet visible. Mazu, the last to leave, turned out the light, closed the door of the room and locked it.
Strike, who’d arrived in Lion’s Mouth at one o’clock that afternoon, was now sitting in the dark in his BMW at the blind spot in Chapman Farm’s perimeter with the car’s headlights off. Shah had given Strike the night vision binoculars and wire cutters, and he was using the former to stare at the woods for any sign of a human figure. He’d sent Shah back to London: there was no point two of them sitting here in the dark for hours.
It was nearly midnight, and raining heavily, when Strike’s mobile rang.
‘Any sign of her?’ said Midge anxiously.
‘No,’ said Strike.
‘She
‘I know,’ said Strike, peering through the rain-flecked window at the dark trees, ‘but why the fuck’s the rock gone?’
‘Could she have moved it herself?’
‘Possibly,’ said Strike, ‘but I can’t see why.’
‘You sure you don’t want company?’
‘No, I’m fine on my own,’ said Strike.
‘What if she doesn’t turn up tonight?’
‘We agreed I wouldn’t do anything until Sunday,’ said Strike, ‘so she’s got another night, assuming she doesn’t turn up in the next few hours.’
‘God, I hope she’s all right.’
‘Me too,’ said Strike. With the aim of maintaining these friendlier relations with Midge, even in the midst of his larger worries, he asked,
‘Tasha all right?’
‘Yeah, I think so,’ said Midge. ‘Barclay’s outside her house.’
‘Good,’ said Strike. ‘I might’ve overreacted about the photos. Didn’t want to give Patterson another stick to beat us with.’
‘I know,’ said Midge. ‘And I’m sorry for what I said about her with the fake tits.’
‘Apology accepted.’
When Midge had hung up, Strike continued to stare through the night vision binoculars at the woods.
Six hours later, Robin still hadn’t appeared.
Every attempt to relieve pressure or numbness in either of Robin’s smarting legs resulted in more pain. The rough lid of the box scraped her back as she tried to make minor readjustments of her position. Folded down upon herself in the pitch dark, too scared and in too much pain to escape the present by sleeping, she imagined dying, locked inside the box inside the locked room. She knew nobody would hear even if she screamed, but she cried intermittently. After what she thought must be two or three hours, she was forced to urinate inside the box. Her legs were burning with the weight they were supporting. She had nothing to hold on to except that Wace had said ‘eight hours’. There would be a release. It would come. She had to hold on to that.
And, at long last, it came. She heard the key turn in the lock of the door. The light was switched on. A pair of trainer-clad feet approached the box, and the lid was opened.
‘Out,’ said a female voice.
Robin initially found it almost impossible to unfold herself, but by pushing herself upwards with her hands, she forced herself into a standing position, her legs numb and weak. The now dry robe was sticking to her knees, which had bled during the night.
