‘Charlotte?’ repeated Strike.
‘Yeah,’ said Henry. ‘Charlotte Ross? I know her from the antiques shop where I work – Arlington and Black? She’s redecorating her house, we’ve found a couple of really nice pieces for her. I knew from looking you up that you two used to – so I rang her – she’s lovely, she’s, like, one of my favourite clients – and I said, “Hey, Charlie, should I talk to this guy?” or whatever, and she said, “Yeah, definitely”, so – yeah – here I am.’
‘Great,’ said Strike, determinedly keeping both tone and expression as pleasant as he could make them. ‘Well, as I said in my message, I noticed you’ve been quite outspoken about the UHC on your Facebook page, so I—’
‘Yeah, so, OK,’ said Henry, shifting uncomfortably in his seat, ‘I need to say – I wanted to say, like, before we get into it – it’s kind of a condition, actually – you won’t go after Flora, will you? Because she’s still not right. I’m only talking to you so she doesn’t have to. Charlotte said you’d be OK with that.’
‘Well, it’s not really Charlotte’s call,’ said Strike, still forcing himself to sound pleasant, ‘but if Flora’s having mental health problems—’
‘She is, she’s never been right since she left the UHC. But I really feel, like – well, somebody needs to hold the UHC accountable,’ said Henry. ‘So I’m happy to talk, but only if you don’t go near Flora.’
‘Is she still in New Zealand?’
‘No, it didn’t work out, she’s back in London, but – seriously – you can’t talk to her. Because I think it might tip her over the edge. She can’t stand talking about it any more. Last time she told anyone what happened she tried to kill herself, afterwards.’
Notwithstanding Henry’s fondness for Charlotte (gay men, in Strike’s experience, were the most likely to see no flaw in his beautiful, funny and immaculately dressed ex), Strike had to respect Henry for his wish to protect his friend.
‘OK, agreed. So: have you ever had direct contact with the UHC yourself?’
‘Yeah, when I was eighteen. I met this guy in a bar, and he said I should come along to Chapman Farm, to do a course. Yoga and meditation and stuff. He was hot,’ Henry added, with yet another nervous laugh. ‘Good-looking older guy.’
‘Did he talk about religion at all?’
‘Not like – more like spirituality, you know? He made it sound interesting and cool. Like, he was talking about fighting, like, materialism and capitalism, but he also said you could learn – I know this sounds crazy, but kind of learn… not magic, but to make things happen with your own power, if you studied enough… I’d just finished school, so… I thought I’d go along and see what it was about and – yeah, I asked Flora to come with me. We were school friends, we were at Marlborough together. We were kind of like – we were both gay or whatever, and we were into stuff nobody else was, so I said to Flora, “Come with me, we’ll just do a week there, it’ll be a laugh.” It was just, like, something to do in the holidays, you know?’
‘Are you all right with me taking notes?’
‘Er… yeah, OK,’ said Henry. Strike took out his notebook and pen.
‘So, you were approached in a bar – where was this, London?’
‘Yeah. It isn’t there any more, the bar. It wasn’t far from here, actually.’
‘What was the man called who invited you, can you remember?’
‘Joe,’ said Henry.
‘Was this a gay bar?’
‘Not a gay bar,’ said Henry, ‘but the guy who ran it was gay, so, yeah… it was a cool place, so I thought, like, this guy, Joe, must be cool, too.’
‘And this was in 2000?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How did you and Flora travel to Chapman Farm?’
‘I drove, thank God,’ added Henry fervently, ‘because then I had the car there, so I could get away. Most of the other people had come on a minibus, so they had to wait for the minibus to take them back. I was really fucking glad I took my car.’
‘And what happened when you got there?’
‘Er – well, you had to check in all your stuff and they gave you these tracksuits to wear, and after we changed, they made us all sit down in this barn, or whatever, and Flora and I were looking sideways at each other, and we were, like, cracking up. We were thinking, “What the fuck have we done, coming here?”’
‘Then what happened?’
‘Then we went to this big communal meal, and before the food arrived, they played “Heroes”, by David Bowie. Over speakers. Yeah, and then… he came in. Papa J.’
‘Jonathan Wace?’
‘Yeah. And he talked to us.’
Strike waited.
‘And, I mean, you can see how people fall for it,’ said Henry uneasily. ‘While he was talking, it was like, he was saying, people chase things, all their lives, that never make them happy. People die miserable, and frustrated, and they never, kind of, realise it was all there for them to find. Like, the true way, or whatever. But he said, people get, like, buried in all this materialistic bullshit… and he was really… he’s got something,’ said Henry. ‘He wasn’t, like, some big shouty guy – he wasn’t what you’d think. Flora and I felt like – we discussed it, afterwards – he was, like, one of us.’
‘What d’you mean by that?’
‘Like, he got what it’s like, to be… what it feels like, not to be… like, to be different, you know? Or maybe you don’t, I don’t know,’ Henry added, with a laugh and a shrug. ‘But Flora and I weren’t taking the piss any more, we kind of… yeah, anyway, we went off to our dormitories. Separate, obviously. They put men and women in different dorms. It was kind of like being back in boarding school, actually,’ said Henry, with another little laugh.
‘Next day, they woke us up at, like, 5 a.m. or something, and we had to go and do meditation before breakfast. Then, after we’d eaten, we got split into separate groups. I wasn’t with Flora. They split up people who knew each other.
‘And after that it was, like, really intense. You hardly had a minute to think and you were never alone. There were always UHC people with you, talking to you. You were either in a lecture, or you were chanting in the temple, or you were helping work the land, or feeding the livestock, or making stuff to sell on the street, or cooking, and people were constantly reading UHC literature to you… oh yeah, and there were discussion groups, where you all sat around and listened to one of the UHC people talk and you asked questions. You had activities until, like, 11 o’clock at night, and you were so tired at the end of the day, you could hardly think, and then it all started at 5 a.m. again.
‘And they taught you these techniques that – like, if you had a negative thought, like, about the church, or about anything, really, you had to chant. They called it killing the false self, because, like, the false self is going to struggle against the good, because it’s been indoctrinated by society to think certain things are true, when they’re not, and you’ve got to fight your false self constantly to keep your mind open enough to accept the truth.
‘It was just a couple of days, but it felt like a month. I was so tired, and really hungry most of the time. They told us that was deliberate, that fasting sharpens perception.’
‘And how did you feel about the church, while all this was going on?’
Henry drank more gin and tonic before saying,
‘For the first couple of days, I was thinking, I can’t wait for this to fucking end. But there were a couple of guys in there, proper members, who were really friendly and helped me do stuff, and they seemed really happy – and it was, like – it was a different world, you kind of lost – lost your bearings, I s’pose. Like, they’re constantly telling you how great you are, and you started wanting their approval,’ said Henry uncomfortably. ‘You couldn’t help it. And all this talk about pure spirit – they made it sound like you’d be a superhero or something, once you were pure spirit. I know that sounds insane, but – if you’d been there – it didn’t sound insane, the way they were talking.