‘She only came once.’
‘So Mr Selhurst said. He said he argued with her.’
He nodded unhappily. ‘Kate was … disrespectful. I thought I was doing the right thing in asking her to come. Gareth told me I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I wondered if I should have checked with him first.’
‘Was he angry with her?’
‘Gareth doesn’t get angry. Not about personal things. He allowed God to speak through him and Kate was scared by what he said.’
‘What did he say?’
‘That hell was waiting for her if she didn’t change her ways. That she had one choice to make because after her death there would be no more choices. That she had let herself fall into evil and God would help her out but she had to want to be saved.’
‘And she didn’t like that.’
‘She called him a patronising old lizard.’ Norris sighed. ‘I tried to intervene.’
‘He said that other people were upset.’
‘Everyone was.’ Norris swallowed. ‘People were unsettled. They didn’t feel they had been able to pray. After I took Kate away, some of our flock asked Gareth to lead another service straight away. They wanted to purify our church. Kate was like pollution among us.’
I whistled. ‘Strong words.’
‘Strong feelings.’ Norris frowned, not looking at me. ‘But that was the end of it. She didn’t come back.’
‘Was there anyone in particular who asked about her? Anyone who wanted to know her name, or where she lived?’
‘You don’t think someone here harmed her. That’s impossible.’
‘It happens. And Mr Selhurst said she was full of evil.’
‘But that’s not her fault. We prayed for her. We wouldn’t hurt her. That’s not God’s way.’
He looked genuinely appalled at the idea. I backed off. ‘Mr Selhurst said he spoke to her again a number of times. With you.’
‘Gareth wanted to convince her to let Chloe join us. She was obviously interested – she talked to Bethany about it all the time. Kate wouldn’t even let her walk through the door. That was one reason why I asked Kate to come and see what our services were like. I thought it would show her we weren’t happy-clappy types. But it only confirmed all her prejudices. She didn’t want to believe. She didn’t want to know.’ He looked unhappy. ‘She wasn’t ready, maybe. Her mind was closed.’
I had made up my own mind too. ‘I’m going to need names and addresses for everyone in the congregation.’
‘You’re wasting your time looking for Kate’s killer here.’
‘I hope so. But I have to do my job.’
‘Can I say no?’
‘It would be helpful if you didn’t. I want to run background checks on them. I need to make sure you don’t have anyone in the congregation with a history of violent or unstable behaviour. If I don’t find anything, I won’t bother them.’
He sighed. ‘Come to the office. Stella can print them off for you.’
Stella – the dark-haired woman – did, shuffling the pages together and sliding them into a folder for me as Gareth Selhurst and Norris watched. I noticed her long-sleeved, shapeless top, her ankle-skimming skirt and the flat shoes she wore that were like Eleanor Norris’s. I was probably breaking all sorts of rules by wearing trousers in the church, I thought, not to mention the two-inch heels. On the other hand, there were long days when I might be prepared to admit that high heels were evil.
‘That’s everything for the moment.’
Gareth smiled, all benevolence. ‘I’ll pray for you, child.’
‘There’s no need,’ I said.
‘There’s every need. We all need prayers. Especially those of us who walk in evil ways.’
‘Because of my job?’ I said, wary.
‘I think you know what I mean.’
The easy option was to smile and say nothing. Mentally I tossed a coin and decided to be difficult. ‘No, I don’t.’
‘Don’t you find your spiritual life is rather lacking? Like Catholicism itself?’
‘Not often.’
He smiled a little wider. ‘The Church of Rome will fall, my dear.’
‘It’s lasted a long time without falling.’
‘It’s riddled with corruption. You only have to look at the things they’ve done.’
‘The things that some of them did.’
‘Too many. Men who were supposed to be of God. Men tainted and rotten with sin.’
I tucked the folder under my arm and smiled back at him with equal tolerance and just a hint of condescension. ‘If I’ve learned one thing doing this job it’s that evil can be anywhere. Even here.’
And on that note, I left.
14
It was early on Friday morning – so early that the houses on Valerian Road were all dark. The moon was bright in a faded sky, hanging on to the end of the night like a lover. I followed Derwent’s car into the street and pulled up a little way away from Kate Emery’s house. Una Burt had parked and was walking back up the street towards us, on her phone, coordinating her teams. At four thirty we were an hour into the working day already, I’d had something less than three hours’ sleep and I didn’t feel tired in the least. I was running on adrenalin.
I had returned from the church of the Modern Apostles and stepped into a whirlwind. The preliminary forensic reports were back, Una Burt informed us, and in spite of the fact we didn’t have a body, we had a good reason to bring some suspects in for questioning. I’d spent the rest of the day on background checks, finding out as much as I could about them. We needed to walk into the interviews knowing not just what questions we were going to ask, but how they were going to answer.
My mood dipped fractionally at the sight of Georgia getting out of Derwent’s car. Una Burt had divided us into teams: Derwent with Georgia and Chris Pettifer with me. I walked quickly to where the others were assembling. Pettifer made room for me. Derwent was brooding at his phone and ignored me. Georgia was huddled in her jacket, standing close to him. Her mascara was already on, I noted. I wondered what they’d found to talk about in the car on the way over. She had tried to find out more about him on the way back from Pimlico and I’d found myself reluctant to say too much about him, about times we’d worked together, about our history of stepping all over each other’s lives.
I didn’t want her to take my place.
‘Ready?’ Una Burt turned her phone away from her mouth. ‘The others are in position.’
We nodded. The best time to call on a suspect was unannounced, early in the morning. No warning. No time to prepare. No time to get word to anyone else. No Fly, all is discovered. Or rather, no Get your story straight because you’ve got some questions to answer. We very definitely hadn’t discovered all. The forensic report had kept me awake during my brief night’s rest as I tried and failed to make the pieces fit a pattern.