Page 98 of The Mercy Chair

‘People gossip,’ Poe said, nodding. ‘We’re social animals and we like to share stuff.’

‘You’re not a social animal, Poe,’ Bradshaw said. ‘The other day you said you wanted to move to that remote Scottish island you’d read about. The one with all the seals.’

Nightingale laughed, the first time she had for days, Poe suspected.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Maybe they’re cult members who died of natural causes then. No one knows how many of them there are up there – perhaps one way of keeping their numbers hidden is to hide the dead as well as the living.’

‘Possible, I suppose,’ Nightingale said. ‘Some are registered with GPs, and some have jobs in the community, but you’re right; we don’t really know how many live at the compound. Children’s Services go in occasionally, but they always come away with the suspicion that they haven’t been given full access.’

‘The problem with that theory is that the poor sod the badger unearthed doesn’t fit the profile of a Children of Job member.’

‘No. The post-mortem found evidence of long-term intravenous drug use. He was a heroin addict basically.’

‘He was never identified, was he?’

She shook her head. ‘No, he’s still a John Doe. His DNA wasn’t on the system and foxes had eaten his fingers. We’ve ordered another post-mortem and I was wondering if Estelle might do it? To see if her opinion matches the original pathologist’s? I somehow doubt it will.’

‘You think Cornelius wasn’t the only person stoned to death, don’t you?’

‘It’s hardnotto think that,’ she admitted. ‘Which means, if there are extra bodies in these graves, we’re back to asking who they were. And if they were also stoned to death, why? And what the hell’s the connection to Cornelius Green’s murder?’

‘I don’t know,’ Poe said. ‘But I know a man who might.’

‘Who?’

‘Israel Cobb,’ he said. ‘I think it’s about time we had a chat without coffee.’

Chapter 84

Poe used the flat of his fist to hammer on Israel Cobb’s door. He waited five seconds then did it again. He was on his own. Nightingale was arranging ground-penetrating radar and making sure she had everything she needed to apply for the five exhumation orders. Bradshaw was trawling through the badger case file to see if anything had been missed, and Linus had wanted to shadow her rather than drive out to Skelton with him. For once, Poe was happy to acquiesce. What he was hoping to achieve now was best done on his own.

Before he’d left, Bradshaw had handed him the age-progressed photograph of Bethany Bowman, the one she’d got from the Polaroids Eve had given them. Bradshaw had explained that at fourteen years old the shape of Bethany’s face was unlikely to have changed, although the nose would be longer and there would be some vertical stretching. A few other variables. Poe had only asked one question: does this look like her? Bradshaw said that unless she’d had cosmetic surgery to alter her appearance, it was accurate.

Nightingale agreed that Poe’s visit to Cobb should be done under the guise of an Osman warning; used when there is police intelligence of a threat to life but not enough evidence to arrest or locate the potential offender. Poe would deliver it verbally tonight and she’d follow it up the next day with the paperwork.

Poe put his ear to the door and listened. If Cobb was in, he was passed out drunk, dead or keeping very still. Poe checked his watch. It was coming up to 10 p.m., an hour or so before chucking out time at the Dog and Gun. Poe got back in his car and drove it a couple of hundred yards down the road. After reversing into a dark verge, he got out and checked Cobb wouldn’t be able to see it when he staggered home from the pub.

Because if he wasn’t home, the pub was the only other place Cobb could be. He had reeked of booze last time, he had been in the pub the night Cornelius Green had died, and he looked like a functioning alcoholic. He might not drink every day, but when hediddrink, he drank a lot. They were called binge drinkers when Poe was in the army, and if they weren’t in the pub they were sleeping off a hangover. Anyway, Cobb didn’t own a car and Skelton was miles from anywhere – the pub was the only place open.

Poe was thinking this as he made his way down the narrow road to the Dog and Gun. The sun had dipped below the horizon, leaving pink clouds and a warm glow in the air, like a hearth the morning after a fire. The air was drenched with the fragrance of summer flowers: the pungent, thick perfume of honeysuckle and the coconut scent of gorse bushes. Shap Fell only ever smelled of heather and stunted grass and sheep, but the hedges around Skelton were a bouquet for the soul. Poe breathed in deeply. If he’d been with Bradshaw she would have been complaining about her hay fever and reaching for her allergy tablets. He smiled for the first time that day.

Light spilled out of the Dog and Gun’s windows. Men and women, forced outside because of the smoking laws, laughed and drank in the evening air. There were beer tables and umbrellas, but it was that time of night when people wanted to stand and mingle. If this had been a TV commercial, they’d have been drinking peach cider with great big chunks of ice.

To Poe’s sober ears their voices were shrill and loud, but good-natured nonetheless. He stopped a hundred yards from the pub. He didn’t want to speak to Israel Cobb there. This was reconnaissance. If Cobb was inside Poe would go back to his car and wait for him at his home. If he wasn’t inside, he’d call Nightingale and see if she would authorise a welfare check. So far, this case had thrown up a victim of stoning, a probable victim of stoning, a suicide and a massacred family. A welfare check would be fully justified.

Poe briefly considered finding a local and asking them if Cobb was inside. In a village this small, everyone knew everyone. He quickly discounted it. Poe was a cop and he asked questions like a cop. If Cobb were blameless in all this, then telling the village boozer the police still wanted to talk to him was verging on harassment. Virginia Rose’s complaint was in the pipeline and he didn’t want another. And if Cobbwasup to his ears in all this, advance warning of yet another police visit might be enough to convince him it was time to bug out. Far better he didn’t find out Poe was back in his life until he was standing right next to him.

In the end, he didn’t have to do anything because Israel Cobb stepped outside. For a moment, Poe thought he would have to hide in someone’s garden, but Cobb wasn’t leaving the pub. Instead, he let out a great hacking cough and rolled a cigarette. He stood on his own while he smoked it. He ignored the scattered groups of chatting drinkers and they ignored him. There didn’t appear to be any animosity, but it was clear he wasn’t part of anyone’s social circle.

That was good enough for Poe. Cobb was obviously staying until last orders; if he wasn’t, he would have rolled his cigarette and smoked it on the walk home. Poe waited until Cobb had gone back inside before he made his way to his car. He reckoned he had another hour before Cobb would be home. He sent Bradshaw a text telling her what he was doing – and got one back within seconds saying she and Nightingale were still working on the exhumation orders – then switched on the overhead light and took his copy of Bethany Bowman’s journal from his glove box.

But instead of reading it, his thoughts drifted to how he could get Israel Cobb to open up. They’d got nothing out of him the first time and, according to Nightingale, the detectives she’d sent to confirm his alibi for the night of Cornelius Green’s murder had got short shrift too. Perhaps he had gone in too hard last time. Bradshaw had told him his toes smelled bad. He’d called him a hobo-Jesus.

The trick this time would be to stay calm.

Chapter 85

‘I know you’re in, Mr Cobb,’ Poe yelled, hammering on the door. ‘I’ve just watched you lurch back from the pub.’

---