The Running Grave, page 16
Sheila gave another cracked laugh. Doing her best to dissemble her shock, Robin said,
‘Your memory’s very good, Sheila.’
‘Oh, I remember all what happened on the farm. Don’t remember yesterday sometimes, but I remember all that. I helped little Ann give birth. Harold Coates was there. He was a doctor. I helped. She had a rough old time. Well… she was only fourteen.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah… free love, see. It wasn’t like it is now. It was different.’
‘Was the baby—?’
‘It was all right. Mazu, Ann called her, but Ann took off, not long after. Left her at the commune. Didn’t like being a mother. Too young.’
‘So who looked after Mazu?’ asked Robin, ‘Her father?’
‘Don’t know who her father was. I never knew who Ann was going with. People were sleeping with whoever. Not me and Brian, though. We were trying to have our own kids. Busy on the farm. We didn’t know everything that was going on,’ said Sheila, yet again. ‘Police come into the farm, no warning. Somebody tipped them off. We was all questioned. My Brian was at the station for hours. They searched all the rooms. Went through all our personal things. Me and Brian left after that.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yeah. Awful,’ said Sheila, and yet again, she emphasised, ‘We didn’t know. We never knew. It’s not like they were doing it in the yard. We were busy with the farming.’
‘Where did you go, when you left?’
‘Here,’ said Sheila, indicating the bungalow with her mottled hand. ‘This was my mum and dad’s place. Ooh, they were angry about all the things in the papers. And Brian couldn’t get a job. I got one. Office clerk. I didn’t like it. Brian missed the farm.’
‘How long were you away, Sheila, can you remember?’
‘Two years… three years… then Mazu wrote to us. She said it was all better and they had a good new community. Brian was good at the farming, see, that’s why she wanted him… so we went back.’
‘Can you remember who was there, when you returned?’
‘Don’t you want a cake?’
‘Thank you, I’d love one,’ lied Robin, reaching for a Bakewell slice. ‘Can I—?’
‘No, I got them for you,’ said Sheila. ‘What did you just ask me?’
‘About who was at Chapman Farm, when you went back there to live.’
‘I don’t know all the names. There was a couple of new families. Coates was still there. What did you ask me?’
‘Just about the people,’ said Robin, ‘who were there when you went back.’
‘Oh… Rust Andersen was still in his cabin. And the Graves boy – posh, skinny boy. He was new. He’d go up Rust’s place and smoke half the night. Pot. D’you know what pot is?’ she asked, again.
‘I do, yes,’ said Robin, smiling.
‘It doesn’t do some people any good,’ said Sheila wisely. ‘The Graves boy couldn’t handle it. He went funny. Some people shouldn’t smoke it.’
‘Was Jonathan Wace at the farm, when you went back?’ asked Robin.
‘That’s right, with his little girl, Abigail. And Mazu had a baby: Daiyu.’
‘What did you think of Jonathan Wace?’ asked Robin.
‘Charming. That’s what I thought, then. He took us all in. Charming,’ she repeated.
‘What made him come and live at the farm, d’you know?’
‘No, I don’t know why he came. I felt sorry for Abigail. Her mum died, then her dad brought her to the farm, and next minute she’s got a sister…’
‘And when did the whole idea of a church start up, can you remember?’
‘That was because Jonathan used to give us talks about his beliefs. He had us meditating and he started making us go out on the street and collect money. People would come and listen to him talk.’
‘Lots more people started coming to the farm, did they?’
‘Yeah, and they were paying. Some of them were posh. Then Jonathan started going on trips, giving his talks. He left Mazu in charge. She’d grown her hair down to her waist – long black hair – and she was telling everyone she was half-Chinese, but she was never Chinese,’ said Sheila scathingly. ‘Her mum was as white as you and me. There was no Chinese man, ever, at Chapman Farm. We never told her we knew she was lying, though. We were just happy to be back at the farm, me and Brian. What did you ask me?’
‘Just about the church, and how it began.’
‘Oh… Jonathan was running courses, with his meditation and all his Eastern religions and things, and then he started taking services, so we built a temple at the farm.’
‘And were you happy?’ asked Robin.
Sheila blinked a few times before saying,
‘It was happy sometimes. Sometimes it was. But bad things happened. Rust got hit by a car one night. Jonathan said it was a judgement, for all the lives Rust took in the war… and then the Graves boy’s family came and grabbed him off the street, when he was out in Norwich, and we heard he’d hanged himself. Jonathan told us that’s what would happen to all of us, if we left. He said Alex had got a glimpse of truth, but he couldn’t cope with the world outside. So that was a warning for us, Jonathan said.’
‘Did you believe him?’ asked Robin.
‘I did then,’ said Sheila. ‘I believed everything Jonathan said, back then. So did Brian. Jonathan had a way of making you believe… a way of making you want to make everything all right, for him. You wanted to look after him.’
‘To look after Jonathan?’
‘Yeah… you should’ve seen him crying, when Rust and Alex died. He seemed to feel it worse than all the rest of us.’
‘You said it was happy at the farm sometimes. Were there other times when—?’
‘Nasty things started happening,’ said the old lady. Her lips had started to tremble. ‘It was Mazu, not Jonathan… it wasn’t Jonathan. It was her.’
‘What kind of nasty things?’ asked Robin, her pen poised over her notebook.
‘Just… punishments,’ said Sheila, her lips still trembling. After a few seconds’ silence, she said,
‘Paul let the pigs out, by accident and Mazu made people hit him.’
‘Can you remember Paul’s surname?’
‘Draper,’ said Sheila, after a slight pause. ‘Everyone called him Dopey. He wasn’t normal. Bit retarded. They shouldn’t have had him looking after the pigs. He left the gate open. Dopey Draper.’
‘Do you know where he is now?’
Sheila shook her head.
‘Do you remember a boy called Jordan whipping himself?’
‘There was lots of times people was whipped. Yeah, I remember Jordan. Teenager.’
‘Would you happen to remember his surname, Sheila?’
Sheila thought a little, then said,
‘Reaney. Jordan Reaney. He was a rough sort. Been in trouble with the police.’
As Robin made a note of Jordan’s surname, the cat beside her, bored of inattention, leapt lightly off the sofa and stalked out of the room.
‘Everything got worse after Daiyu died,’ said Sheila, unprompted. ‘You know who Daiyu was?’
‘Jonathan and Mazu’s daughter,’ said Robin. ‘She drowned, didn’t she?’
‘That’s right. Cherie took her to the beach.’
‘This is Cherie Gittins?’ asked Robin.
‘That’s right. Silly girl, she was. Daiyu bossed her around.’
‘Would you happen to know what happened to Cherie after Daiyu died, Sheila?’
‘Punished,’ said Sheila. She now looked very distressed. ‘All them who were involved were punished.’
‘What d’you mean, “all of them”, Sheila?’
‘Cherie, and the ones who didn’t stop it. The ones who saw them leaving in the truck that morning – but they didn’t know! They thought Daiyu had permission! My Brian, and Dopey Draper, and little Abigail. They was all punished.’
‘Hit?’ asked Robin tentatively.
‘No,’ said Sheila, suddenly agitated. ‘Worse. It was wicked.’
‘What—?’
‘Never you mind,’ said Sheila, her small hands balled into shaking fists. ‘Least said about that… but they knew Brian was ill when they did it to him. He kept losing his balance. Jonathan had been telling him to go and pray in temple, and then he’d be better. But after they punished him, he was much worse. He couldn’t see properly, and they still made him get up and go collecting on the street… and in the end,’ said Sheila, her agitation increasing, ‘Brian was screaming and moaning. He couldn’t get out of bed. They carried him into the temple. He died on the temple floor. I was with him. He’d been quiet for a whole day, and then he died. All stiff on the temple floor. I woke up next to him and I knew he was dead. His eyes were open…’
The old lady began to weep. Robin, who felt desperately sorry for her, glanced around the room for a sign of a tissue.
‘Tumour,’ sobbed Sheila. ‘That’s what he had. They opened him up to find out what it was. Tumour.’
She wiped her nose on the back of her hand.
‘Let me…’ said Robin, getting up and leaving the room. In the small bathroom off the hall, which had an old pink sink and bath, she pulled off a length of toilet roll and hurried back to the sitting room to give it to Sheila.
‘Thanks,’ said Sheila, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose as Robin sat back down on the sofa.
‘Is that when you left for good, Sheila?’ Robin asked. ‘After Brian died?’
Sheila nodded, tears still trickling out from behind the bifocals.
‘And they threatened me, trying to stop me going. They said I was a bad person and they’d tell everyone I’d been cruel to Brian, and they said they knew I’d taken money, and they’d seen me hurting the animals on the farm… I never hurt an animal, I never did…
‘Wicked,’ she said, with a sob. ‘Wicked, they are. I thought he was so good, Jonathan. He said to me, “Brian was nearly better, Sheila, but he wasn’t pure spirit yet, and that’s why he died. You stopped him being pure spirit, shouting at him and not being a good wife.” He wasn’t nearly better,’ said Sheila, with another sob. ‘He wasn’t. He couldn’t see properly and he couldn’t walk right, and they did terrible things to him and then they were yelling at him because he hadn’t collected enough money on the street.’
‘I’m so sorry, Sheila,’ said Robin quietly. ‘I really am. I’m so sorry.’
A loud mew pierced the silence. Smoky the cat had reappeared.
‘He’s after food,’ said Sheila tearfully. ‘It isn’t time,’ she told the cat. ‘You’ll have me in trouble with Next Door if I start giving you lunch.’
Sheila seemed exhausted. Robin, who didn’t want to leave her in this state, turned the conversation gently to cats and their vagrant habits. After ten minutes or so, Sheila had regained her composure sufficiently to talk about her own cat, who’d been run over in the street outside, but Robin could tell her distress still lay close to the surface and felt it would be cruel to press for further reminiscences.
‘Thank you so much for talking to me, Sheila,’ she said at last. ‘Just one last question, if you don’t mind. Do you know when Cherie Gittins left Chapman Farm? Would you have any idea where she is now?’
‘She left not long after Brian died. I don’t know where she went. It was her fault it all happened!’ she said, with a resurgence of anger. ‘It was all her fault!’
‘Is there anything I can do for you, before I go?’ asked Robin, returning her notebook to her bag. ‘Maybe call your neighbour? It might be good to have some company.’
‘Are you going to stop them?’ asked Sheila tearfully, ignoring Robin’s suggestion.
‘We’re going to try,’ said Robin.
‘You need to stop them,’ said Sheila fiercely. ‘We were hippies, Brian and me, that’s all. Hippies. We never knew what it was all going to turn into.’
17
For youthful folly it is the most hopeless thing to entangle itself in empty imaginings.
The more obstinately it clings to such unreal fantasies, the more certainly will humiliation overtake it.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
‘You got a hell of a lot out of her,’ said Strike. ‘Excellent work.’
Robin, who was sitting in the parked Land Rover eating a tuna sandwich she’d bought from a nearby café, hadn’t been able to resist calling Strike after leaving Sheila. He sounded considerably less grumpy than the last time they’d spoken.
‘Awful, though, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Nobody getting her poor husband any medical help.’
‘Yeah, it is. Trouble is, he made the choice not to go to hospital, didn’t he? So it’d be very hard to make a criminal charge stick. It’s not like Margaret Cathcart-Bryce, who was actively asking for a doctor.’
‘Allegedly asking,’ said Robin. ‘We’ve got no corroboration for that.’
‘Yeah, that’s the problem,’ said Strike, who was currently standing in the street outside the Frank brothers’ block of flats. ‘What we really need is something criminal that had multiple eyewitnesses who’re prepared to stand up in court and talk, which I’m starting to think is going to be a bloody tall order.’
‘I know,’ said Robin. ‘I can’t see Sheila’s accounts of beatings and whippings being believed after all this time without corroboration. I’ll start looking for Paul Draper and Jordan Reaney, though.’
‘Great,’ said Strike. ‘With luck, they can confirm their own and each other’s assaults – oh, here he comes.’
‘Who?’
‘One of the Franks. I can’t tell them apart.’
‘Frank One’s got a bit of a squint and Frank Two’s balder.’
‘It’s Two, then,’ said Strike, watching the man. ‘Hope he’s heading for central London, otherwise I’ll have to get Dev to take over from me early. I’m interviewing the Facebook friend of housing heiress Flora Brewster at six. He called me last night.’
‘Oh, great. Where are you meeting him?’
‘The Grenadier pub, Belgravia,’ said Strike, setting off after his target, who was heading for the station. ‘His choice. Apparently it’s near his place of work. He also claims we’ve got a mutual friend.’
‘Probably a client,’ said Robin. The number of very rich Londoners who’d come to the agency for help had been steadily increasing, year on year, and they’d recently done jobs for a couple of billionaires.
‘So that’s all Sheila said, is it?’ asked Strike.
‘Er – yes, I think so,’ said Robin. ‘I’ll write up my notes and email them to you.’
‘Great. Well, I’d better go, we’re heading for a train. Safe travels.’
‘OK, bye,’ said Robin, and hung up.
She sat for a moment, contemplating the last bit of her sandwich, which was very dry, before putting it back into its paper bag and reaching instead for a yoghurt and a plastic spoon. Her slight hesitation before answering Strike’s last question was due to the fact that she’d omitted mention of his presence at the Aylmerton Community as a boy. Robin assumed that Strike didn’t want to talk about that, given that he hadn’t revealed it himself.
Unaware how close he’d come to a conversation he definitely didn’t want to have, Strike spent the journey into London feeling slightly less disgruntled at the world after restoring friendly relations with Robin. His mood was further elevated, though for less sentimental reasons, when Frank Two led him to Notting Hill, then made his way to the very terrace of pastel-coloured houses where their client, actress Tasha Mayo, lived.
‘He’s been skulking behind parked cars, looking up at her windows,’ Strike told Dev Shah an hour later, when the latter turned up to take over surveillance. ‘I’ve taken a few pictures. He hasn’t glued up any keyholes yet.’
‘Probably waiting for night time,’ said Shah. ‘More romantic.’
‘Have you spoken to Littlejohn lately?’ Strike asked.
‘“Spoken”,’ repeated Shah, musingly. ‘No, I don’t think you could call it speaking. Why?’
‘What d’you think of him?’ said Strike. ‘Off the record?’
‘Weird,’ said Shah flatly, looking directly at his boss.
‘Yeah, I’m starting to—’
‘Here she is,’ said Shah.
The door of the actress’s house had opened and a slight, short-haired blonde stepped out onto the pavement, a holdall over her shoulder. She set off at a brisk walk in the direction of the Tube, reading something off her phone as she went. The younger Frank took off in pursuit, his mobile raised: he seemed to be filming her.
‘Creepy fucker,’ were Shah’s last words before setting off, leaving Strike free to proceed to the Grenadier.
Henry Worthington-Fields’ chosen venue for his meeting with Strike was a pub the detective had visited years previously, because it had been a favourite of Charlotte’s and her well-heeled friends. The smartly painted frontage was red, white and blue; flower baskets hung beside the windows and a scarlet guard’s box stood outside the door.
The interior was exactly as Strike remembered it: military prints and paintings on the walls, highly polished tables, red leather benches and hundreds of banknotes in different currencies pinned up on the ceiling. The pub was supposed to be haunted by a soldier who’d been beaten to death after being discovered cheating at cards. The money left by visitors was to pay the ghost’s debt, but this hadn’t worked, as the spectral soldier continued to haunt the pub – or so the tourist-friendly story went.
Aside from a couple of Germans, who were discussing the banknotes on the ceiling, the clientele was English, the men mostly dressed in suits or the kinds of coloured chinos favoured by the upper classes, the women in smart dresses or jeans. Strike ordered himself a pint of zero-alcohol beer and sat down to drink it while reading Fergus Robertson’s article about the forthcoming Brexit referendum off his phone, glancing up regularly to see whether his interviewee had yet arrived.
Strike guessed Henry Worthington-Fields’ identity as soon as he entered the pub, mainly because he had the wary look common to those about to speak to a private detective. Henry was thirty-four years old, though he looked younger. Tall, thin and pale, with a mop of wavy red hair, he wore horn-rimmed glasses, a well-tailored, single-breasted pin-striped suit and a flamboyant red tie patterned with horseshoes. He looked as though he worked either in an art gallery, or as a salesman of luxury goods, either of which would have fitted with the Belgravia location.
