Marcus Williams lived alone at Oakfield House. He had a caretaker and a gardener, both of whom attended ‘near daily’, and both lived in Little Asham. Their addresses were recorded and Yellich took a note of them.

Of the death itself, it was recorded that Mrs O’Shea had found the deceased Marcus Williams drowned in his bath.

It was noted that the death, whilst not suspicious in itself, was curious, because Marcus Williams was known to favour showers, and was not known to take baths. On this occasion he had and it appeared to have cost him his life. It was strange, Yellich thought, that an open verdict should be recorded because there was no sign of any other hand in the affair. It was a man who lived alone, drew a bath, fell asleep and drowned. About ten people a year die in such a manner in the United Kingdom. It seemed to Yellich that an open verdict in this case was an unduly cautious verdict.

There seemed to him no reason to return a verdict which in lay speak means ‘here we are not told the whole story’. But he read on.

Of the man himself, it was recorded that he was a recluse who would not let anyone near him unless he knew and trusted them. He had amassed a fortune on the stock exchange, by consulting the Financial Times each day, telephoning his stockbroker if he thought fit, and conducting all other business via his solicitors, Ibbotson, Utley and Swales of Malton.

If a document needed to be signed, a representative of the firm would visit him. It was also recorded, almost as a footnote, that Marcus Williams stood just over three feet tall, suffering as he did from cretinism.

Yellich closed the file and handed it to the duty sergeant.

‘Got all you want, sir?’ The duty sergeant signed for the file.

‘Not sure,’ said Yellich. ‘Not sure at all. I think I’d like to visit the house itself. Who lives there now?’

‘Oh my, bane of our lives, thorn in our side.’

‘A rock star?’

‘I wish it was. No, all I can say is that it’s now inhabited, and that’s the only word I can use, inhabited by a team of weirdos who call themselves “the World Union of God”.’

‘Ah-ha…a cult. You’ve got problems.’

‘One we’ve got to live with. Seems to me it consists of a lot of young people in robes who look very lost and needy.’

The portly duty sergeant shook his head slowly. ‘Occasionally we used to see them in the streets with a gaily painted covered wagon pulled by a cow, asking for “alms”, as they put it. Don’t seem to do that now. A local journalist did some digging and found out that the World Union of God is American-based, its guru, who has some fancy name, lives with his female acolytes in a “temple” in California, and has a sacred chariot which sounded to the journalist to be very similar to a Lear jet. They pay in money to the local banks here which is credited to an account in Geneva. But they have a font of knowledge in the form of a tree in India which is in permanent bloom and which only their guru in his private jet and one or two acolytes can visit. So they say.’

‘Been here before, methinks.’

‘Aye…but they’re open and honest enough, you can walk up to the gate and ask to be shown round. We’re satisfied that they’ve nothing to hide, they’re just a bit soft in the head and are wasting valuable years, if you ask me.’

‘Well, I’ll go and have a chat with them. If I don’t come back, send a search party for me.’

‘Will do, sir.’ The sergeant smiled.

Yellich drove out of Malton into steadily closing countryside, until he came to a narrow lane which had once, many years earlier, been metalled, now it was cratered after many years of ice and rain action. He drove gingerly, trying, not always successfully, to avoid the potholes. The foliage on either side was close, overwhelmingly so. He came to two large stone gateposts with wrought-iron gates which were held shut with a heavy padlock and chain. A painted sign on the gate showed a robed, Christ-like figure with outstretched palms against a celestial background, standing above the planet earth, with the Americas dead central to the planet as it was depicted. A brass bell, similar to a ship’s bell, was fastened to the gate. Yellich got out of his car and rang the bell loudly, causing the birds in the nearby trees and bushes to take to flight. There was no response, and calm and tranquillity, birdsong and insect chirruping returned.

Yellich waited for a minute, perhaps, he thought, nearer two, then he rang the bell again, and again birds in the nearby greenery took to flight.

Still no response.

Then a robed figure, a male, approached the gate from within the grounds. He wore a long white robe, sandals, and walked with his hands crossed in front of him. He walked up to the gate and held eye contact with Yellich. He had a calm manner, his skin was clean, very clean, as though the pores had been cleaned by steam, Turkish-bath style. His eyes had a glazed expression which unnerved Yellich. ‘Can I help you, my brother?’ he said softly. Yellich thought the man to be the same age as himself.

‘Police.’ Yellich showed his ID. The man made to reach through the bars of the gate to get hold of the plastic card but Yellich withdrew it. ‘No, you can look at it but you can’t hold it, that’s the rule.’

‘Very well. What can I do for you, my brother?’

‘I’d like to look inside the house.’

‘Why?’

‘Police business.’

‘You have some concern about the house?’

‘No, nor about you or your friends. It concerns a matter which took place before you took up occupancy. I want to examine the scene of an accident.’

‘Well, we have nothing to hide and welcome all visitors.’

The man took a key from his pocket and unlocked the padlock. He opened the gate and Yellich stepped inside. He turned and watched the man lock the gate behind him. The man turned to Yellich. ‘We have nothing to hide and welcome visitors, but we do like to control egress and exit, it’s no more than you keeping your front door locked.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘Shall we go up?’ The man began to walk up the wide, curving driveway. ‘We try to keep ourselves to ourselves in order not to antagonize local people but we don’t succeed. When we first came here we would find padlocks and chains round the gate extra to the one we put on. We took our wagon and oxen into the community but stopped when the local children would not stop throwing stones at us. It’s the nature of prejudice, people are frightened of anything that is different, anything they don’t understand. You know, it amuses me that the British can get on their high horse about racism and human rights issues in other countries, but if a group of Neanderthals had escaped the march of time and still lived a Neanderthal existence in the Scots lowlands or Thetford Forest, do they honestly think the same kind of prejudice would not exist here?’

‘I imagine it would,’ Yellich conceded.

‘It is, as I said, the nature of prejudice. How is my brother called?’

‘Yellich. DS Yellich.’

‘I am Pastor Cyrus. D? S? David? Simon?’

‘Detective Sergeant.’

Pastor Cyrus, nodded and the two men walked side by side in silence up the drive and emerged from the trees into a lawned area in which stood a large house of blackened stone. Clearly, thought Yellich, early Victorian as had been reported, squat, uncompromising, very ‘new money’ of its day, not here is the graceful architecture of the classicism of a century earlier, here was the representation of the beginning of the sweeping aside of the English aristocracy, a process, mused Yellich, which is not yet complete.

On the lawn, a group of children in robes sat cross-legged in a circle listening to a young woman, also robed, who spoke to them. Yellich noted that not one of the children, nor the young woman, even glanced at him, clearly a stranger in city clothing. He felt invisible.

‘How long have you been here?’