Page 10 of The Mercy Chair

‘The coffin was intact,’ Poe said.

‘Oh? But I thought this man Anthony told you there was a body that wasn’t supposed to be in the grave.’

‘He did and there was. The corpse he wanted me to see had been hiddenunderneaththe coffin.’

‘Underneath?’

‘The body of a young man, I found out later. And he wasn’t fresh. There was barely anything left of him. He had been wrapped in plastic but as soon as the badgers unearthed him, the foxes and crows started picking him clean. That man’s mum had been in the ground seventeen years. We assume the young man had been there for as long.’

‘But . . . why?’

‘Why not?’ Poe said. ‘I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often to be honest. As a way of getting rid of a corpse, a grave is practically foolproof. They’re always dug the night before so it would have been a simple case of digging down a couple more feet and hiding the body. The next morning a bunch of people stand around while a coffin is lowered into it, no one realising that when the vicar does his “I am the resurrection” bit, he’s blessingtwocorpses, not one. A headstone is whacked on top like a giant full stop, and the body underneath the coffin is gone, if not forever, then at least until someone gets an exhumation order.’

‘That’s . . . creative.’

‘But, unfortunately for whomever did this, badgers don’t bother with exhumation orders.’

‘Who was he?’

‘My involvement stopped there.’

‘It did? But you’re a detective and surely this was a murder. Did you not have, what do you call it . . . jurisdiction?’

‘I was with the National Crime Agency’s Serious Crime Analysis Section, Doctor Lang,’ Poe explained. ‘My job was to catch serial killers. All I did at St Michael’s was call Cumbria Constabulary to tell them they had a deposition site. My role ended there.’

‘But you must have wondered?’

‘I did,’ Poe admitted. ‘The senior investigating officer eventually put it down to an undocumented economic migrant dying in an accident at one of the illegal quarries up near the church. The post-mortem had revealed head and upper torso injuries consistent with a bad rock fall. They believe the gangmaster must have panicked and, instead of reporting the death, taken the easy way out and hid the body before fleeing back to mainland Europe. The coroner recorded an open verdict.’

‘And you accepted that?’

‘Like I said, it wasn’t my case. The lead detective handed the whole thing over to the Health and Safety Executive in the end.’

‘But something happened to change your mind?’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because, if in your mind the crows are the catalyst for everything that happened in here,’ she said, placing the palm of her hand on the file, ‘that means the man in the grave is somehow linked to the man at the Lightning Tree.’

Poe took his time, but eventually nodded.

‘And the Lightning Tree is where I officially enter this story,’ he said.

Chapter 8

Conference Room 14B, National Crime Agency Headquarters Building, 6 Citadel Place, London

The silence of the conference room eventually registered with Poe. He realised it had probably been quiet for a while. He blinked, glanced at the mindless doodling he couldn’t remember starting – the margins of his agenda were now almost full; a sure sign he was bored and had been for a while – then looked up. Everyone in the room was waiting for him to respond.

‘Sorry, I was miles away,’ he admitted.

‘I asked you what you thought?’ the meeting’s chair said.

‘About what?’

‘Whether the post-Brexit data sharing arrangements we have with the EU will negatively impact on the Serious Crime Analysis Section’s ability to do its job? What do you think?’

‘I think I must have been annoying DI Flynn recently,’ he said. ‘It’s the only explanation for me being here.’

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