Bigfoot had set off again. Strike followed, mobile still clamped to his ear.
‘I’m not looking to identify ex-church members, or expose their identities,’ he reassured Abigail. ‘It’ll be down to individual witnesses to decide whether they want to go on the record—’
‘I don’t,’ said Abigail quickly.
‘I understand,’ said Strike, ‘but I’d still like to talk to you.’
Up ahead, Bigfoot had stopped again, this time to talk to a slim, dark teenage girl who was heading in the direction of the hotel he’d just left. Strike hastily turned his mobile to camera and took a couple of pictures. When he’d placed the phone back to his ear, Abigail was talking.
‘… weekend?’
‘Great,’ said Strike, hoping she’d just agreed to meet him. ‘Where would you—?’
‘Not at my flat, my lodger’s bloody nosy. I’ll meet you at seven on Sunday in the Forester on Seaford Road.’
Robin had no idea how long she’d stuffed toy turtles, but at a guess, it was a couple of hours. During that time her fake identity had been so thoroughly tested that she could only be glad she’d devoted so many hours to bringing Rowena to life. When Louise asked, Robin was able to give the names of both her imaginary parents’ imaginary cats.
She might have worried that Louise’s meticulous questioning of her indicated suspicion of her bona fides, except for the fact that all the new recruits, as far as she could hear, were being subjected to similar interrogations. It was as though the established members had been given a rota of questions to ask, and Robin had a feeling that the most important parts of what she’d told Louise would have been memorised, and passed in due course to somebody else.
The room in which Fire Group was making the toys became progressively stuffier as they worked, and the relentless questioning had left so little time to think, that Robin was relieved when Becca came to the door, smiling and letting in a cool breeze.
‘Thank you for your service,’ she told the group, pressing her hands together as though in prayer, and bowing. ‘Now, please follow me!’
Everyone trooped after Becca, back past the chicken coop, inside which Wood Group was ushering the hens back into their shed. Seeing the low-hanging sun, Robin realised she must have spent longer with the toy turtles than she’d imagined. There were no longer people in orange dotted over the fields, nor could she see the two Shire horses.
Becca now led them to what Robin guessed was the oldest part of the farm. Ahead lay an old stone sty, and beyond it, a muddy acre of field, where pigs were roaming. Robin could see a couple of teenagers in bee-keeping hats and gloves, tending to the hives. Tethered at a wall nearby stood the two massive horses, still wearing harnesses, their bodies steaming in the cooling air.
‘As I explained to some of you on the minibus,’ said Becca, ‘this is still a working farm. One of our central tenets is to live in harmony with nature, and commit to ethical food production and sustainability. I’m going to hand you over to Jiang now, who’ll instruct you.’
Jiang, the minibus driver, now moved forwards.
‘OK, you – you – you – you,’ muttered Jiang, pointing at four people at random, ‘you find wellingtons in the shed, you get the buckets of swill, you get the pigs back in the sty.’
Robin noticed as he spoke that Jiang had several missing teeth. Like Louise, his skin was coarse and chapped, giving him the appearance of being outside in all weathers. As he began to give instructions, his tic recurred; as his right eye began its uncontrollable winking again, he clapped his hand over it and pretended to be rubbing it.
‘You four,’ said Jiang, pointing at Robin and three others, ‘you get the harness off the horses, then you rub them down and brush their feathers. The rest will clean the harness when it comes off.’
Jiang gave the grooming group brushes and combs and left them to their job, disappearing into the stable, while behind them, those trying to entice the pigs into the sty called and cajoled, shaking their buckets of food.
‘Did he say
‘He means the hair over their hooves,’ Robin explained.
A yell from the field made them all look round: widowed Marion Huxley had slipped in the mud and fallen. The pigs had charged those holding the buckets: country-born Robin, whose uncle was a farmer, could have told them they should have put the food in the trough and opened the gate between sty and field, rather than trying to lead the pigs in, Pied Piper style.
