Page 46 of The Mercy Chair

‘Oh, for fu—’

‘And I’ll have a pint of Sneck Lifter,’ Poe cut in. ‘Snoopy will have the same and we’ll all need menus.’

‘Steak and kidney pudding’s the special today if you’re interested?’ the barman said, mollified he was finally getting to pull some pints.

‘Veryinterested,’ Poe said. ‘Snoopy?’

‘Same, please.’

‘Can I tell the kitchen we want three, miss?’ the barman asked.

‘Don’t be absurd,’ Bradshaw replied, looking at the specials board. ‘I’ll have the watercress soup.’

‘But that’s a starter.’

‘And a heavy meal during the day makes me feel sluggish and dull-witted.’

‘You’re the boss,’ he said, tapping the order into the till.

‘I’m not the boss,’ Bradshaw said, frowning. ‘I’ve never worked in a pub in my life. And while I’m out in the field, Poe’s my boss.’

‘Who’s Poe?’

Poe reached across and shook his hand. ‘I am.’

‘Mike,’ the barman said.

‘You the landlord?’

‘How can you tell?’

‘You’re the only one with a tan.’

Mike laughed. ‘You saying I should pay this lot more?’ He gestured to the other bar staff. Two of them were on their phones and another was staring, dead-eyed, into space.

‘You been here long?’

‘Ten years now,’ Mike said, putting Poe’s pint on the drip tray.

‘Not a fan of the convention, I take it?’

‘I don’t mind ’em really. I mean, I wish they’d spend some money, but they’re polite enough and they seem like decent people. It’s just I had to turn down two groups of eight yesterday. Fresh off the fells and thirsty as hell. Wanted lunch and afternoon drinks. Between ’em they’d have spent four ’undred quid. Instead, I had sixteen conventioneers sharing four plates of chips.’

‘You get any of that Children of Job lot in here?’

‘The cult? They have that compound on the dark side of Barf?’

Poe was surprised to hear the term being used so openly. Then again, perhaps he wasn’t. Bar staff were constantly taking the pulse of the local zeitgeist. And what else could you call a group who lived as the Children of Job did? Their hair was too short to mistake them for a hippy commune. In the vernacular of the straight-talking local, that only really left cult. ‘Yep, them,’ he said.

‘Nah. They don’t come in ’ere. You see them outside sometimes, haranguing the punters about the demon drink. But they’re harmless. Locals ignore ’em and tourists film ’em for Twitter and Facebook.’

Poe knew what he meant. On the walk from the car to the pub they’d passed a trio of wild-eyed men badgering people about how it wasn’t too late to renounce something Poe didn’t catch and accept something else he didn’t catch. He had been more interested in the crowd’s reaction. Most were giving them a wide berth but a few had their smartphones out. Although they didn’t have identity cards clipped to their pockets, once you knew what you were looking for, they were clearly Children of Job. He had surreptitiously taken a photo. The more of them he could recognise, the better.

Poe’s phone buzzed in his pocket. The dark side of Barf, as landlord Mike had called it, had been a reception dead spot and Keswick, surrounded by some of the steepest fells in the Lake District, wasn’t much better. It seemed to have picked up the pub’s wi-fi rather than a mast signal. Bradshaw must have logged him in the last time they were there and the password hadn’t been changed.

He had messages and calls from both Doyle and Superintendent Nightingale. He used WhatsApp, another of Bradshaw’s additions to his phone, to call Doyle. She didn’t answer. He called Nightingale and she did.

‘Where are you, Poe?’ she said. ‘Estelle and I have been trying to get hold of you for ages.’

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