As Strike would have expected, the carefully worded obituary concealed more than it revealed. The ‘long illness’ surely referred to mental health problems given the suggestion for donations, while the ‘private funeral’, for which no date was given, had presumably been held at Chapman Farm, where Graves had been buried according to the wish he’d stated in his will. Nevertheless, the obituary-writer had been determined to state that Garvestone Hall was ‘home’.
Strike Googled Garvestone Hall. Although it was a private residence, there were numerous pictures of the house online, due to its medieval origins. The stone mansion had hexagonal towers, rectangular leaded windows and spectacular gardens, which featured topiary, statuary, intricately laid-out flowerbeds and a small lake. The grounds, Strike read, were occasionally opened to the public to raise money for charity.
Exhaling nicotine vapour in the silent office, Strike wondered again how much money Graves, who according to Abigail had looked like a hobo, had left the girl he believed was his daughter.
The sky outside the office window was a deep, velvety black. Almost absent-mindedly, Strike Googled ‘drowned prophet UHC’.
The top hit led to the website of the UHC, but a number of idealised pictures of Daiyu Wace also appeared. Strike clicked on ‘images’ and scrolled slowly down through many identical pictures of Daiyu as she appeared in the Rupert Court Temple, with her white robes and her flying black hair, stylised waves trailing behind her.
Towards the bottom of the page, however, Strike saw a picture that caught his attention. This showed Daiyu as she’d looked in life, although in far more sinister form. The accomplished pencil and charcoal drawing had turned the rabbity face skeletal. Where there should have been eyes, there were empty sockets. The picture was taken from Pinterest. Strike clicked on the link.
The drawing had been posted by a user calling themselves Torment Town. The page had only twelve followers, which didn’t surprise Strike in the slightest. All Torment Town had posted were drawings that had the same nightmarish quality as the first.
A small, long-haired, naked child lay in the foetal position on the ground, face hidden, with two cloven feet standing either side. The image was surrounded by two hairy, clawed hands making a heart, a clear parody of the UHC symbol.
The same hairy hands formed their heart around a drawing of a naked man’s lower body, although the erect penis had been replaced by a spiked club.
A gagged woman was depicted with one of the clawed hands throttling her, the letters UHC drawn onto both dilated pupils.
Daiyu appeared repeatedly, sometimes only her face, sometimes full length, in a white dress that dripped water onto the floor around her bare feet. The eyeless, rabbity face stared in through windows, the dripping corpse floated across ceilings and peered out from between dark trees.
A loud bang made Strike start. A bird had hit the office window. For two seconds, he and the raven blinked at each other and then, in a blur of black feathers, it had gone.
Heart rate now slightly elevated, Strike returned his attention to the images on Torment Town’s page. He paused on the most complex picture yet: a meticulously rendered depiction of a group standing around a black five-sided pool. The figures around the pool were hooded, their faces in shadow, but Jonathan Wace’s face was illuminated.
Over the water hovered the spectral Daiyu, looking down at the water below, a sinister smile on her face. Where Daiyu’s reflection should have been, there was a different woman, floating on the surface of the water. She was fair haired and wore square-framed glasses, but like Daiyu she had no eyes, only empty sockets.
