Page 121 of The Mercy Chair

Poe spent ten more minutes with her. Alice wanted to talk about Bethany and he was saddened to hear she was now referring to her in the past tense.

‘You going to be OK?’ Poe asked.

‘I should ask you the same thing.’

‘I’m not sure that I am,’ he replied honestly.

‘Do you need to talk to someone about it?’

Poe looked up. ‘I doubt I’ll have a choice,’ he said.

Bradshaw had just entered the old school gymnasium.

Chapter 107

Poe left Alice to her memories and gestured for Bradshaw and Linus to join him on the stage. The three of them were perched on the edge, facing the busy gymnasium, legs dangling. Bradshaw’s eyes were red, like she’d touched them after chopping chillies, and her face was pale and pinched. She knew what he’d seen, and even though he’d tried to downplay the horror of the videos, there wasn’t really any nice way of saying you’d watched six young lives being snuffed out. Linus looked even worse. The young spook didn’t seem to have enjoyed his first experience of a murder investigation. In fact, the more Poe thought about it, he realised theybothhad pale, pinched faces.

‘You’ve watched the videos, haven’t you?’ he said.

Bradshaw sniffed and nodded. ‘Only one.’

‘Even though I explicitly told you not to?’

She faced him, her expression defiant. ‘It’s not onlyyourjob to watch these things, Poe. Cumbria’s high-tech crime unit have a backlog, and even if they didn’t have, none of them know how to verify the authenticity of an old VHS tape. And also, DI Stephanie Flynn is my line manager, not you. You don’t have the authority to stop me.’

Poe sighed. Hedidhave the authority. They both knew that. He was a sergeant and Bradshaw wasn’t. He’d explained many, many times how a command and control organisation worked, but as she’d only ever had him as a role model it had always been a case of monkey see/monkey do. He’d previously taken advantage of her newfound rebellious nature; he could hardly complain about it now. So, instead of getting cross, he said, ‘Is the video authentic?’

‘While I have no way of telling if the murder was staged, I can say with absolute certainty that the video has not been tampered with or edited in any way. It is a genuine recording.’

‘Why hasn’t the cadaver dog found anything in the basement then?’

‘I don’t know, Poe. But it was definitely filmed down there. I’ve compared the photos I took when Joshua Meade gave us a tour of the basement. The colour, shape and texture of the brickwork is distinctive.’

‘Did you watch the video, Snoopy?’

‘I did,’ Linus said. ‘I wish I hadn’t.’

‘So why did you?’

‘I’m here to observe.’

‘That’s a stupid answer,’ Poe said. ‘Like Tilly said, it’s our job to swim in this shit. And we do it so people like you can sit in your nice London offices and post things like “Defund the police” on Twitter. And that’s OK; that’s how it’s supposed to be. This isn’t a participation sport but you’ve gone out of your way to join in. Why?’

‘I told you, there’s an ongoing audit—’

‘Oh fuck off,’ Poe said. He turned his back on Linus. He wasn’t in the mood to be lied to. Not right now.

‘You must be hungry, Poe,’ Bradshaw said, rummaging in her bag. ‘We stopped off at an all-night supermarket on the way and got you something to eat.’

‘Did this “something” once have bones?’

‘Of course not.’

‘I don’t want it then,’ he said.

Bradshaw handed over a tub of pre-prepared food.

‘What’s this?’ he said, eyeing the contents suspiciously.

---