‘What d’you mean?’ said Rufus suspiciously.
‘It’s a nice café,’ said Robin.
‘Oh.’
Rufus looked around as though he’d never before considered whether it was pleasant or not.
‘Yes. I suppose so,’ he said grudgingly. She had the impression he’d rather have found fault with the place.
From the moment Rufus had agreed to meet her, Robin had known that her main objective, that of finding out whether Rosalind Fernsby was the naked girl in the pig mask, would have to be approached tactfully. She didn’t like to imagine how any of her own brothers would react, if shown such a photograph featuring Robin. Having now met Rufus, she was afraid there might be a truly volcanic explosion when she showed him the pictures on her phone. She therefore decided that her secondary objective – that of finding out whether Walter was the person Jiang had recognised as someone who’d come back after many years – would form her first line of questioning.
Having purchased sandwiches, they sat down at a corner table.
‘Well, thanks very much for meeting me, Rufus,’ Robin began.
‘I only called you back because I want to know what exactly’s going on,’ said Rufus severely. ‘I had a call from a policewoman – well, she
‘Did you give them to her?’
‘I haven’t got any. We don’t talk, haven’t for years. Nothing in common.’
He said it with a kind of pugnacious pride.
‘Then she told me two individuals called Robin Ellacott and Cormorant Strike might make contact with me, because they were trying to dig up dirt on my family. Naturally, I asked for further details, but she said she couldn’t give them, as it was an open investigation. She gave me a number to call if you contacted me. So, when you called – well, you know what happened,’ said Rufus unapologetically. ‘I phoned the number I’d been given and asked for PC Curtis. The man who answered laughed. He passed me to this woman. I was suspicious. I asked for her badge number and jurisdiction. There was a silence. Then she hung up.’
‘Pretty sharp of you to check,’ commented Robin.
‘Well, of course I checked,’ said Rufus, with a whiff of gratified vanity. ‘There’s more at stake for engineers than getting a bad review in some joke social sciences journal, if we don’t check.’
‘D’you mind if I take notes?’ she asked, reaching into her bag.
‘Why should I mind?’ he said irritably.
Robin, who knew from online records that Fernsby was married, offered up a silent vote of sympathy for his wife as she reached for her pen.
‘Did PC Curtis – so-called – give you a landline number, or mobile?’
‘Mobile.’
‘Have you still got it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Could I have it?’
‘I’ll need to think about that,’ he said, confirming Robin’s impression that this was a man who believed information was very definitely power. ‘I decided to call you back because you, at least, were telling the truth about who you are. I checked you out online,’ he added, ‘though you don’t look much like your pictures.’
His tone left Robin in no doubt that he thought she looked worse in person. Feeling sorrier for his wife by the minute, she said,
‘I’ve lost some weight recently. Well, my partner and I—’
‘This is Cormorant Strike?’
‘Cormo
‘Not the bird?’
‘Not the bird,’ said Robin patiently. ‘We’re investigating the Universal Humanitarian Church.’
‘Why?’
‘We’ve been hired to do so.’
‘By a newspaper?’
‘No,’ said Robin.
‘I’m not sure I want to talk to you, unless I know who’s paying you.’
‘Our client has a relative inside the church,’ said Robin, deciding it was simpler, given Rufus’s clearly nit-picking nature, not to say that the relative had in fact left.
‘And how’s my father relevant to the situation?’
‘Are you’re aware he’s currently—?’
‘At Chapman Farm? Yes. He wrote me a stupid letter saying he’d gone back.’
‘What d’you mean by “gone back”?’ asked Robin, her pulse rate accelerating.
‘I mean he’s been there before, obviously.’
‘Really? When?’
‘In 1995, for ten days,’ said Rufus, with pernickety though useful precision, ‘and 2007, for… possibly a week.’
‘Why such short stays? My client’s interested in what makes people join, and what makes them leave, you see,’ she added mendaciously.
‘He left the first time because my mother took legal action against him. Second time, my sister Rosie was ill.’
Disguising her keen interest in these answers, Robin asked,
‘What made him want to join in ’95, do you know?’
‘That man who started it, Wace, gave a talk at the University of Sussex, where my father was working. He went along in a spirit of supposed academic enquiry,’ said Rufus, with a slight sneer, ‘and fell for it. He resigned his post, and decided he was going to devote himself to the spiritual life.’
‘So he just took off?’
‘What d’you mean by “took off”?’
‘I mean, this was unexpected?’
