Page 124 of The Mercy Chair

‘Maybe you’d better stand back a bit, Tilly,’ Poe said.

There were no references to his authority this time. Bradshaw stepped to the side and made sure her safety glasses were snug.

Poe lifted the sledgehammer again and sent it crashing against the wall.

He did it again.

And again.

As Bradshaw watched in silence, Poe hit the wall until the sweat had plastered his hair to his forehead. He hit it until his eyes were stinging. He hit it until he could no longer lift the sledgehammer. And when that happened he ignored the blood and the pain and used his hands to tear out the remaining loose bricks until he had made a hole big enough to fit his head through. He stepped back, panting, grabbed a CSI lamp and dragged it across the floor. He aimed it through the hole but the air behind the gap was thick with brick dust and visibility was down to zero.

He couldn’t tell if it was a walled-up room or just a wall cavity.

Poe spent the extra time widening the hole. It wasn’t long until he could fit his head and torso through. While he waited for the dust to settle, he rooted among the search team’s gear until he found a heavy-duty torch. It was twelve inches long with a black, vulcanised rubber handle. He headed back to the hole and forced his upper body through. He switched on the torch. In the dark basement the beam was an almost physical thing. A solid white tube, like one of the lightsabers Bradshaw waved around at Halloween.

The gap behind the wall was almost fifteen feet deep, far too big for a cavity wall. Poe aimed the torch straight ahead and picked out the wall on the other side. Theoriginalwall. He was right; this end of the basement had been sectioned off. The wall he’d knocked through was a false wall.

The beam of light picked out something among the gloom and the dust. Something angular, a shape even a child could recognise.

‘Oh no,’ he whispered.

Waves of nausea threatened to overwhelm Poe. He jerked his head out of the hole in the wall and raced up the basement stairs, Bradshaw hot on his heels. He grabbed an empty evidence bag from the CSI table and, as his stomach heaved, got it to his mouth and vomited noisily.

When he’d finished, Bradshaw passed him a moist towelette and he cleaned his mouth and chin. He threw it into the bag and sat on one of the pews, head in his hands. Bradshaw passed him another towelette, took a seat beside him and hugged him tight. He pressed the damp cloth against his face and the back of his neck.

‘What did you see, Poe?’ Bradshaw asked.

A crowd of cops had begun to gather around him. One of them was Nightingale. Joshua Meade was hovering over her shoulder. Poe struggled to his feet and shouldered his way through the crowd. The gymnasium descended into a charged silence. Joshua shrank back.

‘Did you know?’ Poe said, quiet, menacing.

‘Know what?’ Joshua said, backing away.

Nightingale nodded at two uniformed cops and they blocked Poe’s path. They didn’t put a finger on him, but the message was clear: they would if he tried to push past them.

‘That Cornelius Green and Israel Cobb were murdering people as part of their conversion therapy!’

‘Whatareyou talking about?’

Joshua’s righteous indignation had returned now he was no longer in physical danger.

‘Cornelius Green was abducting gay men from the streets and he was forcing those poor boys to murder them. Right under where we’re standing now, he was strapping them into something he called the mercy chair and making the boys stone them to death. So, I’m asking you: did you know?’

Poe took another step forward. One of the cops held up an arm. Poe would now have to go around him or through him.

Joshua considered what Poe had said. The cops watching Poe aside, all eyes were now on the Children of Job’s most senior member. It didn’t look as though anyone had any sympathy for him. The mood had darkened.

‘Like I told you, I wasn’t here then.’

‘This is still on you!’ Poe snapped. ‘People like Cornelius Green can’t exist in a vacuum. They need their enablers, their snivelling politicians. They need people like you to justify their actions.’

‘That’s enough, Poe,’ Nightingale said.

‘You think the Nazis had the skills to manufacture their gas chambers, ma’am?’ He jabbed his finger in Joshua’s direction. ‘No, they needed their lickspittles, people too scared to dirty their hands but fanatical about the cause nonetheless.’

Joshua said nothing.

‘Or maybe I’m wrong,’ Poe continued. ‘Tell me you condemn what Cornelius did. Say it now. Loud enough so the rest of your obscene cult can hear.’

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