Page 8 of The Mercy Chair

After collecting his wallet and keys from the bar, Poe traipsed after the man. The street was still cold, the frost on the pavement glittering like smashed glass.

‘Where are we going?’ Poe asked.

‘The church.’

‘St Michael’s?’

‘Aye, lad.’

Poe stopped. After a couple of yards, the man turned to see why Poe was no longer biting his heels.

‘What’s up?’ he asked.

‘Do you have a name?’

‘Anthony Lawson.’

‘And what do you do, Anthony?’

‘I look after the church grounds.’

‘Is this about badgers digging up graves?’

‘You already know?’

‘A man ran into the bar fifteen minutes before you did. Said he’d been to put flowers on his mum’s grave and the badgers had dug her up. It’s unpleasant but it’s not unheard of for them to burrow under graves and excavate human remains. They’re protected, so can’t be moved without rarely given permission.’

‘But—’

‘This isn’t a police matter, Anthony,’ Poe said firmly. ‘If you want a licence to remove them, you’ll need to go through the proper channels.’

Anthony waited a moment. ‘Are you finished?’ he asked.

‘I am. And now I’m going back to the Crown for a Scotch egg. I’ll buy you a pint if you want me to talk you through your options.’

‘It’s true, the badgers did tunnel underneath Mrs Hetherington’s grave, lad, but that’s not why I was sent to get you.’

‘No?’

‘You say badgers unearthing human remains is a civil matter?’

‘I do.’

‘But what if the remains they unearthed were never supposed to be there in the first place?’

Chapter 6

There had been a church on the site St Michael’s now occupied since 750AD, predating the nearby, and more famous, Shap Abbey by almost five hundred years. It was in the centre of Shap village and was a cold and stoic Grade II listed building, all ancient stone and stained glass. It had an imposing tower with an embattled parapet. Poe thought it looked more like a fortified house than a church. Maybe a medieval borstal for unruly vicars.

The war memorial at the churchyard entrance, a tall wheel-head cross with a tapering shaft on a four-sided plinth, Poe knew well. He visited it every Remembrance Sunday, although he waited until the crowds had thinned before paying his respects. The memorial was made from Shap granite, the same stone used to build Herdwick Croft, the isolated two-hundred-year-old shepherd’s cottage he called home.

‘This way, Sergeant Poe,’ Anthony said, leading him off the street and into the churchyard. A hushed crowd had gathered at the entrance but, although the wrought-iron gates were open, the grounds remained empty.

The graves at St Michael’s were arranged in an ad hoc, scattergun manner, as if no one could agree on the best strategy for planting the dead. The biggest plot pushed up against a clump of gnarled trees, stripped of their greenery, but Poe knew there were graves all over the church grounds.

He cast his eyes around, looking for evidence of badgers: heaps of earth, collapsed headstones, anything that hinted at nocturnal digging. But all he saw was a winter graveyard. It looked like a scene from a Goth Christmas card. Some of the headstones were cracked and crumbling with faded etchings; others hadn’t been exposed to the harsh Shap weather long enough. Trinkets and flowers had been left at some graves but, like most old graveyards, the majority were bare and unattended, the deceaseds’ relatives long dead too.

‘Where is it?’ Poe asked Anthony.

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