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‘Christ’s sake,’ muttered Strike. ‘No, what we need is someone who looks the part, designer clothes and the right moneyed attitude… Prudence would’ve been ideal, come to think of it, but as she’s seriously pissed off at me just now…’
‘Why’s she pissed off?’ said Robin, concerned.
‘Didn’t I—? Shit, I forgot to put Torment Town into your update.’
‘Torment – what?’
‘Torment Town. It’s – or it was – an anonymous account on Pinterest. I was looking for pictures of the Drowned Prophet and found a cache of horror-style drawings, all UHC-themed. A picture of Daiyu caught my eye, because it genuinely looked like her. I complimented the artist, who thanked me, then I said, “You aren’t keen on the UHC, are you?” or words to that effect, and they went quiet.
‘But there was this one picture Torment Town had drawn, of a woman floating in a dark pool, with Daiyu hovering over her. The woman was blonde, wearing glasses and looked a lot like that old picture of Deirdre Doherty we got from Niamh. Having had no response to my UHC question for days, I thought, fuck it, and asked the artist if they’d ever known a woman called Deirdre Doherty, at which point the whole account disappeared.
‘Fast-forward to the night you were taken in for questioning: I get a phone call from Prudence, accusing me of tracking down her client and threatening her.’
To Strike’s surprise, Robin said nothing at all. Glancing at her, he thought she looked even paler than she had on getting into the car.
‘You all right?’
‘What shape was the pool?’ said Robin.
‘What?’
‘The pool in Torment Town’s drawing. What shape?’
‘Er… a pentagon.’
‘Strike,’ said Robin, whose ears were ringing, ‘I think I know what happened to Deirdre Doherty.’
‘D’you want to pull over?’ Strike asked, because Robin had turned white.
‘No, I – actually,’ said Robin, who was feeling light-headed, ‘yes.’
Robin indicated and pulled over onto the hard shoulder. Once they were stationary, she turned a stricken face to Strike and said,
‘Deirdre drowned in the temple, during the Manifestation of the Drowned Prophet. The pool in the Chapman Farm temple’s five-sided. Deirdre had a weak heart. They must’ve wanted to punish her for what she’d written about Wace raping her, but it went too far. She either drowned, or had a heart attack.’
Strike sat in silence for a moment, considering the probabilities, but could find no flaw in Robin’s reasoning.
‘Shit.’
Robin’s head was swimming. She knew exactly what Deirdre Doherty’s last moments on earth must have felt like, because she’d been through exactly the same thing, in the very same pool. Deirdre, too, would have seen fragments of her life flicker before her – her children, the husband who’d abandoned her, perhaps snapshots of a long-gone childhood – and then the water would have crushed the air from her lungs, and she’d have drunk in fatal quantities, and suffocated in darkness…
‘What?’ she said numbly, because Strike was talking and she hadn’t heard a word.
‘I said: so we’ve got a witness to the church committing manslaughter, and possibly even murder, and they’re on the outside?’
‘Yes,’ said Robin, ‘but we don’t know who they are, do we?’
‘That’s where you’re wrong. I know exactly who they are – well,’ Strike corrected himself, ‘I’d be prepared to bet a grand on it, anyway.’
‘How on earth can you know that?’
‘Worked it out. For starters, Prudence doesn’t come cheap. She’s very well regarded in her field and she’s written successful books. You’ve seen the house they live in – she sees clients in a consulting room opposite the sitting room. She’s very discreet and never names names, but I know perfectly well her client list’s full of fucked-up A-listers and wealthy people who’ve had breakdowns, so whoever Torment Town is, they or their family must have money. They’re also likely to be living in or close to London. Prudence let slip that the client’s female, and we know Torment Town must have been at Chapman Farm at the same time as Deirdre Doherty.’
‘So…’
‘It’s Flora Brewster, the housing heiress. She was listed as living at Chapman Farm on the 2001 census. Flora’s friend Henry told me she stayed in the church for five years and Deirdre disappeared in 2003.
‘According to Fergus Robertson, his contact’s family shunted her off to New Zealand after her suicide attempt, but Henry Worthington-Fields says Flora’s back in the country now, though still in poor mental health. He begged me not to go near her, but I know where she’s living, because I looked her up: Strawberry Hill, a five-minute walk from Prudence and Declan’s.’
