‘No,’ said Strike, and as they set off up the road, he explained about Ted’s stroke, and his Alzheimer’s, and the burden Lucy was currently bearing, and the guilt he felt about not pulling his weight. In consequence, neither Strike nor Robin noticed the blue Ford Focus that pulled away from the kerb a hundred yards beyond the garage, as Robin accelerated.
The Ford’s speed was often adjusted, which varied the distance between it and the BMW, so that it was sometimes one, and sometimes as many as three cars behind them. Both detectives’ minds were so preoccupied with their separate, joint, general and specific anxieties that both failed to notice they were, again, being followed.
It was only as Robin approached Prudence’s house that she registered, in some dim region of her mind, that she’d spotted a blue Ford Focus in her rear-view mirror at another point in the journey. She rounded the corner of Prudence’s street, and the blue car drove innocently past. Preoccupied with the imminent meeting between Will and Flora, Robin immediately forgot it again.
‘You’ll like Prudence,’ she said reassuringly to Will, who’d barely spoken during the journey. ‘She’s really nice.’
Will looked up at the large Edwardian house, shoulders hunched and arms folded, an expression of intense misgiving on his face.
‘Hi,’ said Prudence, when she opened the front door, looking understatedly elegant as ever in cream trousers and a matching sweater. ‘Oh.’
Her face had fallen on seeing Strike.
‘Problem?’ he asked, wondering whether she’d expected him to call and apologise after their last, heated phone call. As he considered himself entirely blameless in the matter of identifying Flora, the idea hadn’t occurred to him.
‘I assumed it would just be Robin,’ said Prudence, standing back to let them all in. ‘Flora isn’t expecting another man.’
‘Ah,’ said Strike. ‘Right. I could wait in the car?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Prudence, with a slight awkwardness. ‘You can go in the sitting room.’
‘Thanks,’ said Strike. He caught Robin’s eye, then headed wordlessly through the door to the right. Prudence opened a door on the left.
Like the sitting room, Prudence’s consulting room was tastefully decorated in neutral colours. A few decorative objects, including jade snuff bottles and a Chinese puzzle ball, were arranged on wall shelves. There was a sofa upholstered in cream, a flourishing palm tree in the corner and an antique rug on the floor.
A pale and very heavy woman of around thirty was sitting in a low, black, steel-framed chair. Every item she wore was dark and baggy. Robin noticed the thin white self-harm scars on her neck, and the way she was clutching both cuffs of her long-sleeved top, so as to hold them down over her hands. Her curly hair was arranged to cover as much of her face as possible, though a pair of large, beautiful brown eyes were just visible.
‘Have a seat, Will,’ said Prudence. ‘Anywhere you like.’
After a moment’s indecision, he chose a chair. Robin sat down on the sofa.
‘So: Flora, Will, Will, Flora,’ said Prudence, smiling as she sat down too.
‘Hi,’ said Flora.
‘Hi,’ muttered Will.
When neither of them showed any further inclination for interacting with each other, Prudence said,
‘Flora was in the UHC for five years, Will, and I think you were in for—’
‘Four, yeah.’
Will’s eyes were darting around the room, lingering on some of the objects.
‘How long have you been out?’ he shot suddenly at Flora.
‘Um… eleven years,’ said Flora, peering at Will through her fringe.
Will got up so suddenly, Flora gasped. Pointing at her, Will snarled at Robin,
‘It’s a trap. She’s still working for them.’
‘I’m not!’ exclaimed Flora indignantly.
‘Will,’ said Robin, getting to her feet, too, ‘why on earth would I have gone undercover at Chapman Farm to get you out, only to lead you straight back to them?’
‘They fooled you! Or, it’s all been a test.
‘You found the plastic rock,’ said Robin calmly. ‘You saw the torch and the traces of my notes. If I were a church agent, why would I have been writing to outsiders? And how would I have known you’d find the rock at all?’
‘I want to go back to Pat’s,’ said Will desperately. ‘I want to go back.’
He was almost at the door when Robin said,
‘Will, your mother’s dead. You know that, don’t you?’
Will turned back, glaring at her, his thin chest rising and falling rapidly. Robin felt she had no choice but to resort to dirty tactics, but it wrung her heart, nonetheless.
