Chapter 75

The reference books were closed when they got back to Bradshaw's hotel room. She was leaning into her laptop, muttering, while making notes on the hotel stationery pad.

‘I need you to get me something, Poe,' she said as soon as he'd grabbed a coaster and carefully placed her smoothie on the desk.

‘Another book?'

‘Not this time. I need you to go to the All Saints Church on the outskirts of Kendal and get me their records.'

‘The birth, marriages and deaths register? What the hell do you want that for?'

‘No. That's just a list of events they have a statutory obligation to record. I need the church records. That's where everything else that happens is written down. Minutes of meetings, architect's plans, maps, drawings, anything at all that affects the church that isn't required to go in the BMD register.'

‘And they're kept in the church?'

‘Until they're deposited in the archive office, yes. They have to; they're working documents.'

‘OK,' Poe said. ‘But what's this about? The Children of Job aren't affiliated to any church. They don't even have charitable status.'

She turned her back and said, ‘And I don't need anything before 1985 or after 2007.'

Poe had been dismissed again.

‘How the hell are you going to get something like that?' Linus asked the moment they were outside Bradshaw's room. ‘And that's twenty-odd years' worth of records Tilly has asked for. There'll be lever-arch file after lever-arch file of the stuff. Imagine wading through years and years of the stuff they talked about on The Vicar of Dibley.'

‘Where's his parish?'

‘You really don't have a TV, do you?'

By the time he had finished speaking, Poe already had his phone to his ear. The Bishop of Carlisle answered on the first ring.

‘Washington?'

‘I need something, sir.'

Poe told him what it was.

‘I'll make a call,' the bishop said. ‘You make your way to the church and I'll have someone meet you there. What's this about, Washington? What's in those records?'

‘Tilly wants them, sir. That's all I know.'

‘I'll get back to you within twenty minutes.'

‘The Bishop of Carlisle is being extraordinarily helpful,' Linus said when Poe finished his call. ‘What was it he wanted to see you and Tilly about again?'

‘Nice try, Snoopy.'

‘Fine, don't tell me.'

‘Oh, shut up,' Poe said.