The Running Grave полностью

‘Yeah, I think they’re definitely,’ said Strike, ‘and it’s not a good idea to sleep with clients.’

‘But she’s not a client any more.’

A brief silence fell. As far as Strike was aware, Robin had no idea how seriously his entanglement with Bijou Watkins had threatened to compromise the agency and he hoped to keep it that way. Little did he know that Robin had had the whole story from Ilsa the previous evening, by phone. Their mutual friend, who’d been cross at learning that Robin was out of Chapman Farm and that nobody had told her, had regaled Robin with everything she knew about the saga of Strike and Bijou. Robin therefore had a fairly shrewd idea as to why Strike would currently be sensitive about any subcontractor sleeping with people who might expose them to gossip.

‘Anyway,’ said Strike, keen to usher in a fresh topic of conversation, ‘Edensor’s got a second motive to keep digging for dirt on the church, unless he hasn’t realised yet.’

‘Which is?’

‘His Wikipedia page has undergone a lot of overnight modifications, too.’

‘Shit, really?’

‘Exactly the same m.o. as they used on the Graves family. Brutal abuse towards Will by his father, family dysfunction, etc.’

‘Edensor might think lawyers are a better way of dealing with that, than us trying to take down the church.’

‘He might,’ said Strike, ‘but I’ve got counter-arguments.’

‘Which are?’

‘For one: does he really want Will hallucinating the Drowned Prophet and killing himself?’

‘He might argue psychotherapy would sort that out better than us trying to solve the mystery of Daiyu’s death. I mean, it’s not really even a mystery to anyone except us, is it?’

‘That’s because everyone else is a bloody idiot.’

‘The police, the coastguard, the witnesses and the coroner? They’re all bloody idiots?’ said Robin, amused.

‘You’re the one who said the UHC have got away with it because everyone thought them a “bit weird, but harmless”. Too many people, even intelligent ones – no, especially intelligent ones – presume innocence when they meet weirdness. “Bit odd, but I mustn’t let my prejudices cloud my judgement.” Then they over-correct, and what d’you get? A kid disappears off the face of the earth, and the whole story’s bloody odd, but the robes and the mystic bullshit get in the way, and nobody wants to look like a bigot, so they say, “Strange, going paddling in the North Sea at five in the morning, but I s’pose that’s the kind of thing people like that do. Probably something to do with moon phases.”’

Robin made no response to this speech, partly because she didn’t want to express aloud her real opinion, which was that her partner, too, was prejudiced: prejudiced in the opposite direction to the one he was describing, prejudiced against alternative lifestyles, because large parts of his own difficult and disrupted childhood had been spent in squats and communes. The other reason Robin didn’t respond was because she’d noticed something vaguely disquieting. After a full minute of silence, Strike noticed her regular glances into the mirror.

‘Something up?’

‘I’m… probably being paranoid.’

‘About what?’

‘Don’t look back,’ said Robin, ‘but we might be being followed.’

‘Who?’ said Strike, now watching the wing mirror.

‘The red Vauxhall Corsa behind the Mazda… but it might not be the same one.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘There was a red Corsa right behind us as we drove away from the garage in London. That one,’ said Robin, glancing in the rear-view mirror again, ‘has been keeping a car between us and it for the last few miles. Can you see the number plate?’

‘No,’ said Strike, squinting into the wing mirror. The driver was a fat man in sunglasses.

‘Weird.’

‘What?’

‘There’s another adult in there but they’re in the back seat… try speeding up. Overtake this Polo.’

Robin did so. Strike watched the Corsa in the wing mirror. It pulled out, overtook the Mazda, then settled back in behind the Polo.

‘Coincidence?’ said Robin.

‘Time will tell,’ said Strike, his eyes on the pursuant car.

Conflict within weakens the power to conquer danger without.

The I Ching or Book of Changes

‘I was being paranoid,’ said Robin.

She’d just taken the turning onto the A309 leading to Thames Ditton, but the red Vauxhall Corsa had continued along the A307 and vanished.

‘I’m not so sure,’ said Strike, checking the pictures he’d taken covertly of the Corsa in the wing mirror. ‘They might just’ve wanted confirmation we’re visiting the Edensors.’

‘Which we’ve just given them, by turning off,’ said Robin anxiously. ‘Maybe they think Will and Qing are staying with Sir Colin?’

‘They might,’ agreed Strike. ‘We’d better warn him to keep a lookout for that car.’