‘Daiyu was always nagging me to take her to the beach,’ a visibly distressed Gittins told the coroner, Jacqueline Porteous. ‘I thought she just wanted a paddle. The water was really cold, but she just dived right in. She was always really brave and adventurous. I was worried, so I went after her. One minute she was laughing, then she disappeared – went under and didn’t come up.
‘I couldn’t reach her, I couldn’t even see where she was. The light was bad because it was so early. I went back to the beach and I was screaming and shouting for help. I saw Mr and Mrs Heaton walking their dog. Mr Heaton went to phone the police and the coastguard.
‘I never wanted any harm to come to Daiyu. This has been the worst thing that’s ever happened to me and I’ll never get over it. I just want to apologise to Daiyu’s parents. I’m so, so sorry. I’d give absolutely anything if I could bring Daiyu back.’
Giving evidence, Muriel Carter, owner of a beachside café, said she saw Gittins taking the child down to the beach, shortly before sunrise.
‘They had towels with them and I thought it was a silly time to be going swimming, that’s why it stuck in my mind.’
Interviewed after the inquest, bereaved mother Mrs Mazu Wace (24) said:
‘I never dreamed anyone would take my child without permission, let alone take her swimming in the sea, in the dark. I’m still praying we’ll find her and be able to give her a decent burial.’
Mr Jonathan Wace (44), father of the dead girl, said:
‘This has been an appalling time and of course, it’s been made far worse by the uncertainty, but the inquest has given us some sense of closure. My wife and I are sustained by our religious faith and I’d like to thank the local community for their kindness.’
Strike reached for the notebook that was still in his pocket from his interview with Abigail Glover, re-read the Mirror article and made a note of a couple of points that struck him as interesting, along with the names of the witnesses mentioned. He also scrutinised the new picture of Cherie Gittins, which seemed to have been taken outside the coroner’s court. She looked much older here, her eyelids heavier, the previously babyish contours of her face more defined.
Strike sat in thought for a few more minutes, vaping, then made another search of the newspaper archives, now looking for information relating to Alex Graves, the man who, if Abigail was to be believed, was Daiyu’s biological father.
It took twenty minutes, but Strike finally found Graves’ obituary notice in a copy of The Times.
Graves, Alexander Edward Thawley, passed away at home, Garvestone Hall, Norfolk, on 15th June 1993, after a long illness. Beloved son of Colonel and Mrs Edward Graves, and dearly missed brother of Phillipa. Private funeral. No flowers. Donations if wished to The Mental Health Foundation. ‘Say not the struggle naught availeth.’
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.
30
… a princess leads her maids-in-waiting like a shoal of fishes to her husband and thus gains his favour.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
The women in the dormitory were woken at 5 a.m. as usual by the ringing of the large copper bell on Robin’s fourth morning at Chapman Farm. After the same scant breakfast of watery porridge they’d eaten every day so far, new recruits were asked to remain in the dining hall, because their groups were to be reconfigured.
Every member of Fire Group other than Robin left to join other groups. Her new companions included the professor, Walter Fernsby, Amandeep Singh, who’d worn the Spiderman T-shirt in temple, and a young woman with short, spiky black hair called Vivienne.
‘’Owzit going?’ she said, on joining the others.
In spite of her best efforts to drop her aitches, Robin noticed, as Vivienne exchanged remarks with the others, that her accent was really irremediably upper middle class.