‘I’ll phone her boss when I get back,’ said Evi. ‘Make sure I’m kept informed about any applications to the court. Good job keeping your eyes away from her cleavage, by the way.’
‘Blondes don’t do it for me. Will you oppose one?’
Evi thought for a moment as Hannah Wilson climbed into a small red hatchback and drove away. ‘If I think it necessary, Harry, I’ll apply for one myself,’ she said. ‘No, don’t fly off the handle. Those children are at risk. Given the events of last night, I don’t think anyone can doubt that any more.’
‘But snatching them away from their mum and dad will—’
‘An EPO doesn’t mean taking them away from their parents, it just gives the local authority power to keep them from harm. Gareth Fletcher has parents living close by, is that right?’
Harry nodded. ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘In Burnley.’
‘Well, then a magistrate might decide that the children should go and stay with their grandparents for a while, with Alice and Gareth’s full consent and cooperation, of course.’
‘For how long?’
She shook her head. ‘Impossible to say. EPOs usually only last a few days but they’re often followed by a longer-term care order. Oh, stop glaring at me. I have never believed the children’s parents are part of the problem. But there is a problem.’
‘Rushton is going to have officers watching the house,’ said Harry.
‘And how long will that last? He won’t have the manpower to watch them indefinitely. And even if those children in the graveyard do turn out to have been murdered, if there is a psychopath up here preying on little girls, they’ve still been dead for years. They’re not likely to find the person responsible all that quickly.’
Harry said nothing. She was right.
‘And while they carry on looking, the Fletcher children remain at risk.’
She was still right. Reluctantly, Harry gave a faint nod.
‘I had a good long chat with Tom just now,’ said Evi. ‘He’s finally started talking to me about this little girl of his.’
‘And…’
‘Well, I’m pretty certain he’s not lying. Someone has been frightening him and I think, maybe, what you said last night was right. Someone is playing a rather mean practical joke. Maybe dressing up in some sort of Hallowe’en costume. She tends to appear at night, so he never gets a particularly good look at her. A lot of the time, he says, he doesn’t actually see her properly. Just catches glimpses, hears her calling things to him.’
‘Does he think she put Millie on the church balcony back in September?’
‘Yes, he’s convinced she did.’
‘And he thinks she took Millie last night?’
She turned back. Was it her imagination or had Harry moved closer on the bench?
‘At first he did,’ she said. ‘But when we talked about it, he realized it couldn’t have been her. The intruder he describes is just nothing like the little girl – much taller, for one thing, and wearing very different clothes. Miss Pissy Knickers, as you like to call her, was smart enough to spot that whoever kicked Tom did it with a booted foot.’
‘I said nothing about knickers. I have no interest in Miss Pissy’s undergarments. What’s going on here is something to do with the church. I’m sure of it.’
‘The church?’
‘We know for a fact that one of those children – Lucy Pickup – died in the church. Millie Fletcher almost did. I’ll bet the other two did as well. They’re taken up to the gallery and dropped.’
Evi gave herself a moment to take that in. ‘Four little girls,’ she said. ‘Who would do such a thing?’
‘They’re dropped from the gallery and then their bodies are stored in the crypt. If Millie had fallen that night, if we hadn’t found her in time, she’d have been taken down there as well. That was probably the plan for Lucy, too, but Jenny found her very quickly.’
Evi felt a tickling sensation between her shoulder blades. She clutched both her upper arms to stop the shiver breaking out. ‘That’s quite a leap you’ve just made there, Vicar,’ she said.
‘You were a good Catholic girl once. Ever heard of the Incorruptibles?’
Evi thought for a second then shook her head. ‘Can’t say I have.’
‘I thought of it in the post-mortem, earlier. When I saw Megan and Hayley. Their bodies had been preserved. Hardly any decomposition at all.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘It’s a Catholic and Orthodox Christian belief that certain human bodies, typically those of very pious people, don’t decompose after death,’ said Harry. ‘Something supernatural, the work of the