Page 19 of The Mercy Chair

‘Not at all,’ Poe replied. ‘Cops have a dark sense of humour and taking the piss is how you show trust.’

‘It is?’

‘Absolutely. I’ve found the more polite someone is, the more they dislike you.’

‘You must havereallytrusted Linus then,’ she said with a smile.

Poe didn’t respond.

‘Tell me about the murder scene.’

‘They’d shot two crime scene videos,’ Poe said. ‘It was still dark when Superintendent Nightingale and her team got there so they set up lights and shot what they could. Took samples in case it rained again, a few other things that couldn’t wait. They didn’t shoot the main video until first light.’

‘I’ve never seen a crime scene video,’ Doctor Lang said. ‘Talk me through it.’

‘It’s sort of like a two-person-crew film shoot. The crime scene manager is the cameraperson, and the senior investigating officer is the director. A good SIO will offer commentary on what’s being filmed without second-guessing what has happened. Facts, not opinions.’

‘And Superintendent Nightingale is a good SIO?’

‘One of the best I’ve worked with,’ Poe said. ‘She had the crime scene manager shoot the Lightning Tree, the rocks, potential approaches and the surrounding area from a multitude of angles.’

‘And there was a lot to process?’

Poe nodded. ‘Superintendent Nightingale had a mass of potential evidence to recover as there was no way of knowing which rocks had been used in the murder, and which were . . . you know, simply rocks.’

‘They didn’t all have blood on them?’

‘Some did. Others had hit the victim without breaking the skin. Some had been thrown but had missed. They all had to be identified, recorded and recovered.’

‘That sounds like a thankless task,’ Doctor Lang said.

‘Good crime scene managementisa thankless task,’ Poe said. ‘It was a straightforward video walkthrough at the end of the day though. Cornelius Green had been tied to a tree and stoned to death. The killer hadn’t tried to move the body afterwards and there had been no attempt to tidy the crime scene. There was very little room for interpretation.’

‘What did Cornelius look like?’

‘His own mother wouldn’t have recognised him.’

Chapter 15

‘Jesus,’ Poe muttered.

They had finished watching the videos and were now scrolling through the CSI photographs. The one currently on Nightingale’s screen was a close-up of Cornelius Green’s head. It was the size of a pumpkin and had swollen so much it looked like it might burst open, like an over-baked potato. It was bruised and cut, with numerous compression fractures. The eye sockets and nose were so badly damaged that shards of needle-sharp bone had jutted through the skin like sawgrass. The blood was thick and crusty and black.

‘How did you identify him so quickly?’ Poe asked.

Nightingale scrolled through to the next photograph. This one was of Cornelius’s torso. It had been battered with rocks, but nowhere near as badly as his face. Probably where the killers’ aim hadn’t been 100 per cent. Or maybe they had wanted to start somewhere that wouldn’t be fatal. That keeping him alive and conscious, prolonging his horrific death, had been part of whatever the hell this was.

Cornelius’s skin was pale and hairless, and his muscles were well defined. Like he worked out, but always in a dark room. It would have taken a big, burly man to drag him to the Lightning Tree unwillingly. His hair was grey and shorn. Not the uniform buzzcut of the electric clipper, this was lumpy and irregular, like he’d done it himself with scissors. Poe reversed his opinion that Cornelius had worked out. Hair like this didn’t belong to a vain man. More likely he had a manual job.

But, as strange as the pale skin and the weird haircut were, there was something far stranger about Cornelius’s torso. Something Poe hadn’t seen since his time with the Russian organised crime unit.

‘Holy mackerel,’ Bradshaw said. ‘That’s a lot of tattoos.’

Which was the understatement of the day. Apart from his head, neck, hands and groin area, every inch of Cornelius’s body was covered in religious iconography. Big crosses and little crosses; single words and complete Bible passages. Angels and demons. Moses holding the Ten Commandments. Candles and doves. Jesus wearing his crown of thorns; Jesus walking on water. Praying hands and the Virgin Mary. Dozens more Poe didn’t recognise. There were so many tattoos they had merged with each other. It made him look as though he didn’t have lots, he just had one.

‘Finding something to put in the “did the deceased have any distinguishing features” box wasn’t a problem then, ma’am,’ Poe said. ‘But unless someone on your team knew him, I’m still not seeing how you identified him so quickly.’

Nightingale pointed into the distance, towards the outskirts of Keswick.

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