‘Most recently, I’ve heard an unsubstantiated allegation that there have been guns at Chapman Farm. The source was second-hand,’ Strike admitted, ‘and not particularly trustworthy, so I’ll have to try and confirm his account, but the fact remains I think it would be unwise to underestimate the kinds of contacts the UHC have made over the last thirty years. There were no guns found in the raid on the farm in eighty-six, but since then they’ve had at least one violent criminal living at the farm. All they needed was a recruit who knew where to lay hands on guns illegally – assuming Wace didn’t already have that knowledge.’
‘You really think they murdered Kevin because of his book?’ said Sir Colin, sounding sceptical.
‘I don’t think the book, in and of itself, was a problem, because a journalist I interviewed called Fergus Robertson had already accused the UHC of pretty much everything Kevin was alleging: physical assault, sexual abuse and supernatural mind games. The church went after Robertson hard with lawyers, but he’s still alive.’
Their coffees arrived.
‘So what was the motive, if not the book?’ said Sir Colin.
‘Kevin told you he was piecing things together during the last weeks of his life, didn’t he? Things he thought he’d suppressed?’
‘Yes – as I told you, he was becoming increasingly erratic and troubled. I deeply regret that I didn’t offer more support—’
‘I don’t think any amount of support could have stopped him being shot. I think Kevin pieced together something about Daiyu’s drowning. The church would’ve been able to bully a publisher into deleting unsubstantiated allegations, but they’d lost the power to bully Kevin into silence in his daily life. What if he blabbed his suspicions to the wrong person?’
‘But, as you say, this is guesswork.’
‘Were you aware Patterson didn’t hand over all their evidence when you fired them?’
‘No,’ said Sir Colin. ‘I wasn’t.’
‘Well, I’ve got hold of a taped interview with Kevin they’d recorded covertly, five days before he was shot. It’s a botched job: most of what he said isn’t audible, which is why they didn’t bother giving it to you. In that tape, Kevin told Patterson’s operative he was intending to meet somebody from the church to “answer for it”. What “it” is, I don’t know, but he was talking a lot about Daiyu during the conversation. And you never visited Kevin’s bedsit, did you?’
‘No – I wish I had.’
‘Well, he’d scribbled all over the walls – and somebody had gouged a few words out of the plaster. It might’ve been Kevin himself, of course, but there’s a possibility his killer did it.
‘Robin got some strange information about Daiyu’s movements the night before she supposedly drowned, from Kevin’s sister Emily. What Emily said tallied with something Kevin had written on his bedsit wall, about a plot. As a matter of fact,’ said Strike, picking up his coffee cup, ‘Emily doesn’t believe Daiyu’s dead.’
‘But,’ said Sir Colin, still frowning, ‘that’s incredibly unlikely, surely?’
‘Unlikely,’ said Strike, ‘but not impossible. As it happens, alive or dead, Daiyu was worth a lot of money. She was the sole beneficiary of her biological father’s will, and he had a lot to leave. Where there’s no body, there’s got to be a doubt – which is why I want to talk to Cherie Gittins.’
‘With respect,’ said Sir Colin, with the polite but firm air Strike imagined he’d once brought to discussions of hare-brained political projects during his professional life, ‘I’m more hopeful that your partner’s leads will achieve my immediate aim – that of getting Will out of Chapman Farm – than that anyone can bring the entire religion down.’
‘But you don’t object to me interviewing Cherie Gittins?’
‘No,’ said Sir Colin slowly, ‘but I wouldn’t want this investigation to devolve into a probe into Daiyu Wace’s death. After all, it was ruled an accident, and you’ve no proof it wasn’t, have you?’
Strike, who couldn’t blame his client for this scepticism, reassured Sir Colin that the agency’s aim remained extracting his son from the UHC. The lunch concluded amicably, with Strike promising to pass on any new developments promptly, particularly as regarded the police investigation into the mistreatment of Jacob.
Nevertheless, it was the deaths of Daiyu Wace and Kevin Pirbright about which Strike was thinking as he set off back to Denmark Street. Sir Colin Edensor was correct in saying that Strike still had no concrete evidence to support his suspicions. It might indeed be overambitious to think that he’d be able to destroy the myth of the Drowned Prophet, which had survived uncontested for twenty-one years. But after all, thought the detective, still hungry after his meagre meal of fish, yet noticing how much more easily he was walking without the several stone he’d already shed, it was sometimes surprising what concerted effort in pursuit of a worthwhile goal could achieve.
