AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘How the hell did Carrie come up?’
‘As an example of how the devilish may sometimes be divine.’
‘I’m going to need footnotes.’
‘She was explaining how she’d have been happy to hear my explanation of what I did to Jacob, because she once knew a divine vessel who did something that seemed awful but was actually – you get the gist. Then she said Carrie “confided her purpose” to her.’
‘Very interesting,’ said Strike.
‘And she knows Carrie’s got daughters. She said, “I believe she’ll come back to us one day, and bring her little girls, too.”’
Strike, who was crossing the road, pondered this for a few moments.
‘Are you still there?’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike.
‘What d’you think?’
‘I think that’s even more interesting than her “confiding her purpose” to an eleven-year-old.’
As he turned into Denmark Street he said,
‘So the church kept tabs on Cherie after she left? It’ll have taken them a fair bit of work, as I know. I told you Jordan Reaney got a mysterious phone call from Norfolk before trying to top himself, didn’t I?’
‘Yes – why’s that relev—? Oh… you mean the church kept tabs on him, too?’
‘Exactly,’ said Strike. ‘So do they do this to everyone who leaves, or only to people they know are particularly dangerous to them?’
‘They managed to trace Kevin to his rented flat, as well… you know they killed Kevin,’ Robin added, when Strike didn’t say anything.
‘We don’t know it,’ he said, as he unlocked the main door to the office. ‘Not yet. But I’ll accept it as a working hypothesis.’
‘And what about those letters Ralph Doherty kept tearing up after he and the kids left the farm, even after they’d moved to a different town and changed their surname?’
Strike started climbing the stairs.
‘So, what have all those people got in common, other than having been members of the UHC?’
‘They’re all connected to the drownings of Deirdre and Daiyu,’ said Robin.
‘Reaney’s connection’s tenuous,’ said Strike. ‘He overslept; that’s it. Kevin’s connection’s shaky, too. He was, what – six, when Daiyu died? And I doubt the church knows what Emily said to him about her suspicions. Was he old enough to attend the Manifestation where we think Deirdre drowned?’
‘Yes,’ said Robin, doing some rapid mental calculations. ‘He’d have been thirteen or fourteen when it happened.’
‘Which is strange,’ said Strike, ‘because he seemed to buy the line about her taking off of her own accord.’
‘OK,’ said Robin, who could hear Strike’s footsteps on the metal stairs, ‘well, I’ll see you tomorrow, anyway. I just wanted to tell you about Cherie.’
‘Yeah, thanks. Definitely something to think about.’
Robin rang off. Strike continued to climb until he reached the office door. He’d gone directly to Chinatown after Robin had dropped him off, which meant this was his first opportunity to examine the lock since Littlejohn had been fired. Strike turned on his phone torch and bent down.
‘I thought so, you fucker,’ he murmured.
The expensive new lock, which was skeleton-key resistant, had gained new scratches since that morning. A tiny fleck of paint had also been chipped away beside it. Somebody, Strike surmised, had made strenuous efforts to force the door.
He now looked up at the second precaution he’d taken against Patterson’s revenge. The tiny camera sat in a dark corner near the ceiling, almost invisible unless you knew what you were looking for.
