Page 152 of The Mercy Chair

So Poe turned his back on the crows.

And after a while he started to weep.

Chapter 130

‘If only I hadn’t crammed all those pickled onions into my mouth,’ Poe said to Doctor Lang. ‘If I hadn’t, Tilly wouldn’t have solved that stupid maths problem. And if she hadn’t solved the maths problem, she wouldn’t have been invited to America to receive that big prize.’ He thought it through to its logical conclusion. ‘And if Tilly and Estelle had still been in the country, I wouldn’t have been in the pub when the badgers dug up that corpse. It could have been someone else sitting here today.’

‘Do you really think the cause and effect is that clear?’ Doctor Lang replied.

‘I suppose not,’ Poe admitted.

‘And having lunch in that pub was a coincidence, Washington. Nothing more.’

‘But—’

‘But nothing. Answer me this: if youhadn’tbeen in the pub that day, would you still have investigated Cornelius Green’s murder?’

Poe nodded. ‘The link between Cornelius and the corpse the badgers dug up wasn’t established untilafterTilly had solved the tattoo riddle.’

‘Exactly. And Tilly being a maths genius would not have been news to the security services. She undertook research at Oxford. She’d worked with them before. The bio DI Flynn provided states they had already tried to recruit her.’

‘Twice, apparently.’

‘And didn’t you say she’d hacked an MoD laptop in under two minutes a few years ago?’

Poe shrugged.

‘I’d imagine they’d had their beady eyes on her for a while,’ Doctor Lang continued.

‘I guess.’

‘It was probably only a matter of time before they made a move.’

‘There’s a point to this?’

‘My point, Washington, is you don’t need my qualifications to know that crows aren’t the cause of your nightmares.’

‘They’re not?’

‘No. All the crows did was bookend a horrific experience. They’re not the harbingers of doom your subconscious thinks they are.’

‘What are they?’

‘You’re a fighter, Washington. It’s what you do. What you’vealwaysdone, I suspect. The truth is your North Star. It’s what guides you and it’s what makes you keep on fighting against injustice.’ She tapped the file on the table. ‘And because you’re a fighter, it’s how you chose to deal with what you’ve been through. Your subconscious needed a fight and it chose crows as the battleground.’

‘I hardly think—’

She held up her hand to stop him. ‘We’ve already established your involvement in the case would have happened regardless of you being present when the first victim was discovered. And I think we’ve agreed that the security services had almost certainly been after Tilly for a while.’

Poe nodded. He didn’t know why. Being analysed so easily was an unsettling experience. Anger had always been the fuel that burned his engine, but having that stripped down to its component parts was unnerving.

‘In your mind, beating the crows means beating your PTSD,’ Doctor Lang continued. ‘Nathan Rose committing suicide in front of you. Being forced to watch the tapes of those young men being stoned and murdered. Discovering the awful truth about the Bowman family. Being there when Bethany murdered Eve and Aaron. Almost being murdered yourself. In your mind, the crows represent it all.’

‘OK, how do I fight . . . how do Imanagethis?’

‘Together,’ she said. ‘We manage this together. It isn’t a black hole: it won’t pull you in, not unless you let it. The mind is resilient, yours more than most, I suspect, and, with a bit of help, it won’t be long before you can remember what happened withoutrelivingwhat happened. When that happens, the nightmares will stop.’

‘When do we start?’ Poe asked.

---