The next photo showed Carrie being penetrated from behind by Paul Draper, recognisable by his wispy hair.
In the third picture, Draper was being sodomised by Joe Jackson, assuming this identification, too, was correct. Jackson was dragging Draper’s head back by his hair, and the sinews were rigid in Draper’s neck, and Robin could almost see the grimace of pain on the moon face of the teenager pictured, looking timid, in the old newspaper article, at the top right of the board. The camera flash had illuminated the edge of something that looked like a vehicle in this picture. The UHC’s lawyers, of course, would probably argue that many vehicles were stored in many barns up and down the country.
The fourth Polaroid showed the dark girl being penetrated by Skull Tattoo from the front, her legs splayed, and now Robin noticed a deep graze on her left knee that hadn’t been there in the first picture. Either these Polaroids came from more than one photographic session, or she’d sustained the injury during it.
In the fifth picture, blonde Carrie had pushed up her mask far enough to give Draper oral sex while Skull Tattoo entered her from behind. The flash had illuminated the edge of something that looked like a wine bottle. Having read Strike’s notes on his interview with Henry Worthington-Fields, Robin knew Joe Jackson had later recruited Henry in a bar, in spite of the church’s prohibition on alcohol.
In the sixth and last picture, the dark girl was giving Skull Tattoo oral sex, and Draper was penetrating her vaginally. Now Robin noticed something she hadn’t seen before. What she’d thought was a shadow wasn’t: Skull Tattoo appeared to be wearing a black condom.
Self-disgust seized Robin, and she turned away from the pictures. They weren’t, after all, mere puzzle pieces. Joe Jackson, towards whom she could muster no pity, might now be flourishing in the church, but Carrie and Paul were both dead in dreadful circumstances and Rosie, though she almost certainly didn’t know it yet, was being hunted, all because she’d once been naive enough to trust whoever had lured her into the barn.
Robin sat back down in Strike’s chair, picturing the teenage Rosie creeping out of the farm with her father and brother, mere hours before the vegetable truck left Chapman Farm with Daiyu on board…
An idea came to Robin so suddenly she sat up straight in her chair as though called to attention. There should have been a second person in the children’s dormitory that night… could it have been Rosie? Had the girl performed the old trick of hiding pillows under her blankets, to convince Carrie she was present, before sneaking out of the farm forever? That would explain why Emily hadn’t seen a second supervisor, and it might also explain why Carrie had been curiously averse, before she saw the Polaroids and knew there was no hiding what had happened in the barn, to identifying the other person who ought to have been on duty, because if found, she might talk, not only about child duty, but pig masks and sodomy.
Robin returned to the outer office, unlocked the filing cabinet and took out the UHC case file. Back at the partners’ desk, she ran her eye back over the notes she’d made during her interview with Rufus, then checked the printouts of the housing records for the Fernsby family again. Walter no longer owned property. Rosie’s mother lived in Richmond, whereas Rufus and his wife lived in Enfield.
In spite of diligently searching all available records, Robin had found no evidence that Rosie had ever owned property in the UK under either of her known names. She’d never married and had no children. She was now nearing forty.
A vague picture was forming in Robin’s mind of a woman who saw herself as a free spirit, but who might, perhaps, have suffered emotional or financial reverses (would many solvent thirty-year-olds voluntarily go and live with their father, as Rosie had done before her name change, unless they had no alternative?). Perhaps Rosie was in India, as her brother had suggested? Or was Rosie one of those chaotic people who left little trace of themselves in records, flitting, perhaps, between sub-lets and squats, rather as Leda Strike had done?
The ringing of her mobile made Robin jump.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi,’ said Prudence’s voice. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine,’ said Robin. ‘You?’
‘Not bad… so, um… I had a session with Flora this afternoon.’
‘Oh,’ said Robin, bracing herself.
‘I’ve told her – I had to – who the person was, who’d contacted her about her Pinterest pictures. I apologised, I said it was my fault Corm worked it out, even though I didn’t name her.’
‘Right,’ said Robin.
‘Anyway… we talked about your investigation, and I told her somebody else has managed to get out of Chapman Farm, and that you helped them do it, and… long story short… she’d like to meet that person.’
