Page 82 of The Mercy Chair

Poe shook his head. ‘It didn’t,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

‘That depends on who you ask.’

‘Which sounds . . . complicated.’

‘It was,’ Poe said. ‘The official reason Mrs Rose withdrew her complaint was because of what we discovered about her husband.’

‘And the unofficial reason?’

Poe held up his hands for her to see. ‘You see these scars? There are what, seven or eight that are visible now? Maybe another twelve or thirteen that have healed and gone away. Loads more that are too small to make out.’

Doctor Lang frowned. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said.

‘You will.’

‘But not yet?’

Poe shook his head again. ‘It’ll make more sense later. You don’t have the context yet.’

‘OK, it’s your story,’ she said. ‘What happened next?’

Poe smiled. ‘Tilly tried to do the impossible.’

‘And did she?’

Poe offered a grim smile. ‘Of course she did.’

‘You don’t look happy about it, Washington. Surely progressing the case was a good thing?’

‘It was.’ Poe nodded. ‘But also, it wasn’t.’

Chapter 71

Poe assumed Bradshaw would want to start immediately. That she would put her computers next to the strongest wi-fi signal she could find and stay there until her cargo pants were enmeshed with the chair cushion. Or at least until she had an answer for him. His role now was to stay out of her way. Do the occasional fruit-tea run.

But Bradshaw didn’t want to start immediately. She wanted to go shopping.

‘Why’s that, Tilly?’ Linus had asked.

‘Can I tell him, Poe?’

‘As long as it’s boring.’

‘Ha ha,’ she said. She faced Linus and continued. ‘CSM.12.R2.CL was tattooed on both Cornelius GreenandNathan Rose.’

‘It was.’

‘And handwriting analysis has now confirmed Cornelius Green didn’t just tattoo himself, he also tattooed Nathan Rose.’

‘It has.’

‘Well, I think Poe was right earlier when he said the tattoo would be like the elastic band addiction trick, a reminder of a shared experience.’

‘Really? Why?’

‘Because CSM.12.R2.CL means something, Linus. It isn’t a random mishmash of letters and numbers and full stops; there’s human intelligence behind this alphanumeric string. It’s code for something. And because the purpose of codes isn’t mathematics, it’s about messages being safely passed between individuals, even countries, the sooner we understand what these messages might be about, the sooner we have somewhere to start.’

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