The Running Grave полностью

‘They might not bother taking DNA if Daiyu’s loving mother was prepared to identify the corpse as her daughter,’ said Strike.

‘So Mazu’s in on the switch? And nobody notices there’s an extra child missing from Chapman Farm?’

‘You’re the one who’s found out the church separates kids from parents and shifts them around the different centres. What if a kid was drafted in from Glasgow or Birmingham to be Daiyu’s stand-in? All the Waces would need to do is tell everyone the child’s gone back to where they came from. If it was a child whose birth was never registered, who’s going to go looking?’

Robin, who was remembering the shaven-headed, closed-down children in the Chapman Farm classroom, and how easily they’d shown affection to a total stranger, now felt a nasty sinking sensation.

After another silence, Strike said,

‘Colonel Graves thinks the witnesses who saw the van passing were set up, so the Waces could punish them and maintain the fiction that they didn’t know about the trip to the beach. If it was a set-up, it was bloody sadistic. Brian Kennett: getting steadily sicker, no use to the church any more. Draper: low IQ and possibly brain-damaged. Abigail: the heartbroken stepmother can’t bear to look at the stepdaughter who let her child drive off to a watery grave and insists on getting rid of her.’

‘You think Wace would deliberately set up his elder daughter to be shut up naked in the pigsty?’

‘Wace was supposed to be absent that morning, remember,’ said Strike.

‘So you think Mazu planned it all behind Wace’s back?’

‘It’s a possibility.’

‘But where did Daiyu go, if the drowning was faked? We haven’t found any other family.’

‘Yeah, we have. Wace’s parents, in South Africa.’

‘But that means a passport, and if Wace wasn’t privy to the hoax…’

Strike frowned, then said with a sigh,

‘OK, objection sustained.’

‘I’ve got another objection,’ said Robin tentatively. ‘I know you’re going to say this is based on emotion, not facts, but I don’t believe Carrie was capable of drowning a child. I just don’t, Strike.’

‘Then explain “It wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t pretend. It was real. She wasn’t coming back.”’

‘I can’t, except that I’m certain Carrie believed Daiyu was dead.’

‘Then—’

‘Dead… but not in the sea. Or not with her, in the sea…

‘You know,’ said Robin, after another long pause, ‘there might be an alternative explanation for the chocolate and the toys. Not grooming… blackmail. Daiyu saw something when she was sneaking around. Somebody was trying to keep her sweet… and that might tie back in with those Polaroids. Maybe she saw the naked people in masks, but unlike Kevin, knew they were real people… I need a pee,’ said Robin, getting to her feet, Strike’s jacket still wrapped around her.

Robin’s reflection was ghostly in the tarnished mirror of the landing bathroom. Having washed her hands, she returned to the office to find Strike now at Pat’s desk, poring over his attempt at a transcript of Kevin Pirbright’s interview with Farah Navabi.

‘I ran you off a copy,’ said Strike, putting the still-warm pages into Robin’s hand.

‘Want a coffee?’ asked Robin, dropping the pages onto the sofa to attend to in a few minutes.

‘Yeah, go on… and she drowned, or they said she drowned,’ he read off the paper in front of him. ‘So Kevin had his doubts about Daiyu’s death, too.’

‘He was only six when it happened,’ objected Robin, switching on the kettle.

‘He might not have had doubts then, but he grew up with people who might’ve let slip more than they let on at the time, and started wondering about it later… and he says, I remember funny things happening, things I keep thinking about, stuff I keep remembering, and then, there were four of them – or that’s what Navabi thought he said. It’s not clear on the tape.’

‘Four people in pig masks?’ suggested Robin.

‘Possibly, although we might be getting a bit too hung up on those pictures… What else could it be? “More of them”, “score of them”, “sixty-four of them”… Christ knows…

‘Then we’ve got it was more than just Cherie – he was slurring a lot, but that’s what it sounded like… then something about drinks… then, but Bec made Em, visible and then bullshit.’

‘But Becca made Emily lie about Daiyu being invisible?’ suggested Robin, over the sound of the bubbling kettle.

‘Got to be, because then Navabi says, Becca made Em lie, did you say? And Kevin says, she was allowed out, she could get things and smuggle it in.’

Robin finished making the two coffees, set Strike’s beside him and sat down on the sofa.