Fox pulled the hood over her head, waited for Georgie to pass, then merged into the crowd.

Chapter 50

Chapter 50

The fragments of data Solly had recovered from Simeon’s phone puzzled Priest. It was possible that the text was unrelated but the prospect that it was part of a document sent by the same person who had lured Simeon into this dark conspiracy was too intriguing to ignore. Sitting in the car park at the Fen Marsh institute, Priest read as much as he could, but there was pages and pages. All the same story about a girl locked in a basement.

What is this?

He had skipped a few sections in the middle and flipped to the end. The story ended with the girl escaping, clutching a wooden doll.

‘Come on, Ash Doll,’ she whispers. ‘We can go together.’

Priest had been relieved. The girl’s ordeal was torturous to read. Dolls were a recurring theme. The girl’s abuser was sick. Even though it was only a story, Priest’s hatred of him was real.

There were occasional respites, moments where the girl was ruminating about her confinement, or staring out of the window.

The girl closes her eyes and thinks of the church spire, just visible beyond the trees. On a clear day, the girl can stand on boxes piled on top of each other and reach the windowsill. From there she can see out across the valley and to the top of the church. She finds comfort in this simple image, just an upside-down ice cream cone above a tree. But it makes her calm. It gives her hope. In there, God is waiting for her.

Priest closed the papers, packed them into a bag. The story must have some relevance, but what?

The car park was full. He could just see the entrance to Fen Marsh over the car roofs. With its large peach-coloured bricks and teal fascia, Fen Marsh presented a benign exterior compared with the foreboding red bricks of Broadmoor. But that was a deception. It was a small facility, with fewer than eighty patients, but some of the country’s most feared criminals were kept confined behind the shiny new walls. Priest hated it.

Inside the reception, Priest surrendered his phone and wallet and everything else he had in his pockets, before he was ushered through to a waiting area. After a few minutes, a nurse appeared.

‘You’re here to see Dr Priest?’ she asked, anxious.

‘Doctor? You still call him that? I’m pretty sure they revoked his doctorate.’

She shrugged. ‘He insists.’

He stood up. ‘Best not keep the good doctor waiting then.’

*