Page 117 of The Mercy Chair

Chapter 104

‘I need you to go home, Poe,’ Superintendent Nightingale said.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Don’t give me that macho shit. You’renotfine. Anyone with half a brain can see you’re not fine. How could you be? You’ve just watched six snuff movies while sitting next to one of the men responsible. I’d be worried if you were fine. I only watched a bit of the first one and I wanted to go home and hug my kids.’

It was quarter to four in the morning and they were in the back of Nightingale’s car. Poe had met her in a layby, a mile from the Children of Job compound. Nightingale’s uniformed cops had arrived at Cobb’s and arrested him again. He was now safely tucked away in a police cell. And because Nathan Rose had chosen a short drop with a sudden stop, rather than face up to what he’d been involved in, Poe had made sure Cobb was put on suicide watch. He still had questions to answer.

CSI had turned up fifteen minutes after uniform and seized the videos. The team would stay in Cobb’s house and process it with everything they had. Poe wasn’t sure they would find anything else, but not doing it would be irresponsible.

Nightingale hadn’t driven to Cobb’s as Poe had expected. Instead, she had called and asked his opinion on the veracity of the videos. Poe had replied, ‘Trust, but verify, ma’am.’ He thought they were real, but Bradshaw had told him there was now some bullshit called ‘deep fakes’, where perverts put celebrities’ faces on to porn stars. Apparently it looked very realistic. Poe didn’t think that was the case here – the tapes looked as old as Cobb claimed they were – but until someone who knew about this stuff had checked, ‘trust but verify’ was as certain as he was prepared to be.

Nightingale had thanked him, got a crusty old magistrate out of bed and demanded he sign a warrant to search the Children of Job compound. She told him she had six snuff movies he could watch if he didn’t believe she had reasonable grounds. The magistrate had signed without comment.

The time on the warrant was 4 a.m. so there was a short delay before they could execute it. Nightingale’s car was the last in a long line of police vehicles. Dogs, specialist search teams, CSI vans, the works.

At the stroke of four they would go in mob-handed.

‘OK, I’mnotfine,’ Poe admitted. ‘But I don’t think going back to an empty cottage is the best thing for me right now. I need to be among the living for a bit longer.’

‘Estelle is—’

‘—in London, ma’am,’ Poe cut in. ‘On her way to Brussels.’

‘If I can finish?’

‘Sorry.’

‘I was about to say that Estelle is getting on the first flight out of Heathrow,’ Nightingale said. ‘She lands in Newcastle in a few hours.’

‘But how . . . ?’

‘How did she find out? How do you think?’

‘Tilly told her,’ Poe said. ‘I really wish she hadn’t.’

‘Face it, Poe; you have people who care about you now. You’re no longer a weirdo loner. So go home. You’ve done enough; let us handle it from here. And don’t forget, I’m a superintendent and you’re a ten-a-penny sergeant. If I need to, I’ll order you. Even have uniform follow you with their blues and twos on.’

Poe scowled. He knew Nightingale was right, knew that relationships were a two-way street, and Estelle being worried about him wasn’t something he could brush off. But until he’d established, in his own mind at least, that the videos had been filmed in the old school basement, he wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway.

‘You up for a compromise, ma’am?’

‘No. Go home.’

‘It won’t take long to confirm the films were shot here,’ Poe said regardless. ‘The amount of blood on those videos was considerable. Even if they used bleach on the floor, some of it will have soaked into the concrete. And if we find blood then it’s safe to assume the murders weren’t staged. As soon as we’ve established that, there’s really nothing more for me to do. I’ll gladly go home and wait for Estelle.’

‘Fine,’ Nightingale said, throwing up her arms in capitulation. ‘You can stay until we’ve found blood. But, as we have a specialist cadaver dog with us, I imagine that will be two minutes after we’re through the front door.’

Poe scowled again, realising he’d been played, but also recognising that Nightingale was operating from a good place.

She checked her watch. ‘Ten minutes,’ she said. ‘Will they be expecting us?’

‘Doubt it,’ Poe replied, thinking about Joshua Meade. ‘I kind of got the impression Cornelius had become a bit of an embarrassment to the newer members. Some might even have been relieved by his death. That it would allow Joshua and the more media-savvy bigots to press the reset button. The country’s becoming less interested in organised religion every year, and he knows that while screaming into the void might have worked for them in the past, it won’t now. But with Cornelius Green dead, Joshua can concentrate on reshaping the Children of Job into a lobby group.’

‘Out with the old cult, in with the new?’

Poe nodded. ‘I think if Joshua had known there were skeletons this smelly in the cupboard he’d have distanced himself from them a long time ago. People like him have an agenda, one they relentlessly pursue, and they can’t afford scandal.’

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