The next few days yielded little progress in the UHC case. There was no word from Shanker on a possible interview with Jordan Reaney. Cherie Gittins remained unfindable on every database Strike consulted. Of the witnesses to Cherie and Daiyu’s early morning swim, the café owner who’d seen Cherie taking the child down to the beach while carrying towels had died five years previously. He’d tried to contact Mr and Mrs Heaton, who’d seen the hysterical Cherie running up the beach after Daiyu disappeared beneath the waves, and who were still living at an address in Cromer, but nobody ever answered their landline, no matter what time of day Strike tried it. He toyed with the idea of driving on to Cromer after visiting Garvestone Hall, but as the agency was already stretched with its current cases, and he was already planning to go down to Cornwall later in the week, he decided against sacrificing another few hours on the road merely to find an unoccupied house.
His drive to Norfolk on a sunny Tuesday morning was uneventful until, on a flat, straight stretch of the A11, Midge called him about the most recently acquired case on the agency’s books, a case of presumed marital infidelity in which the husband wanted the wife watched. The client had been taken on so recently that no nickname had been assigned to either client or target, although Strike understood who Midge was talking about when she said without preamble,
‘I’ve caught Mrs What’s-Her-Name in the act.’
‘Already?’
‘Yeah. Got pictures of her coming out of the lover’s flat this morning. Visiting her mother, my arse. Maybe I should’ve strung it out a bit. We’re not going to make much out of this one.’
‘Good word of mouth, though,’ said Strike.
‘Shall I get Pat to notify the next on the waiting list?’
‘Let’s give it a week,’ said Strike, after a sight hesitation. ‘The Frank job needs twice the manpower now we know it’s both of them. Listen, Midge, while I’ve got you – is there anything up with Pat and Littlejohn?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘There hasn’t been a row or anything?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘She was a bit odd when I asked her what she thought of him, this morning.’
‘Well, she doesn’t like him,’ said Midge. ‘None of us do,’ she added, with her usual candour.
‘I’m putting out feelers for a replacement,’ said Strike, which was true: he’d emailed several contacts in both the police and the army for possible candidates the previous evening. ‘OK, good work on Mrs Thing. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
He drove on through the relentlessly flat landscape, which was having its usual lowering effect on his mood. The Aylmerton Community had forever tainted Norfolk in his mind; he found no beauty in the seeming immensity of the sky pressing down upon the level earth, nor for its occasional windmills and marshy wetlands.
His satnav guided him along a series of narrow, winding country lanes, until he finally saw his first signpost to Garvestone. Three hours after he’d left London, he entered the tiny village, passing a square-towered church, school and village hall in rapid succession and finding himself out the other side barely three minutes later. A quarter of a mile beyond Garvestone he spotted a wooden sign directing him up a track to his right to the hall. Shortly thereafter, he was driving through the open gates towards what had once been home to the Stolen Prophet.
The drive was bordered with high hedges, so Strike saw little of the surrounding gardens until he reached the gravel forecourt in front of the hall, which was an irregular but impressive building of grey-blue stone, with Gothic windows and a front door of solid oak reached by a flight of stone steps. He paused for a few seconds after leaving the car to take in the immaculate green lawns, the topiary lions and the water garden glimmering in the distance. Then a door creaked and a croaky but powerful male voice said,
‘Hello thah!’
An elderly man had come out of the house and now stood leaning on a mahogany stick at the top of the stone steps to the front door. He was wearing a shirt under his tweed blazer, and the blue and maroon regimental tie of the Grenadier Guards. Beside him stood an immensely fat yellow Labrador, wagging its tail but evidently deciding to wait for the newcomer to climb the steps rather than descend to greet him.
‘Can’t get down the damn steps any more without help, sorry!’
‘No problem,’ Strike said, the gravel crunching beneath his feet as he approached the front door. ‘Colonel Graves, I presume?’
