Page 49 of The Mercy Chair

‘Then I haven’t described Estelle properly. She doesn’t suffer fools at the best of times and cutting into the body of a murder victim is not the best of times. If you don’t respect the science, she doesn’t respect you. I’ve seen her reduce her assistants to tears and I’ve seen her ban senior investigating officers from her post-mortems.’

‘But shewasharsh on you.’

‘I’d asked a question.’

‘Surely asking questions is a step towards finding answers?’

Poe nodded. ‘Estelle encourages questions, but only when she’s finished her briefing. She talks police officers through her findings in a logical, linear manner. She uses accessible language and, because she needs you to understand the scientific sequence of events, she doesn’t like to be interrupted. I knew this and I asked a question anyway. If anything, she went easy on me.’

‘OK,’ Doctor Lang said. ‘I think I’m beginning to get a grip on her. Is she like this with you when she isn’t working?’

‘Absolutely not. The moment she steps out of the mortuary, the cold, logical scientist is put into a locked drawer. It’s me who can’t get my work/life balance right. When I’m working a murder, I’malwaysworking it. Even when I’m not, if that makes sense.’

‘You think about it when you should be thinking about your friends and family.’

‘I do. Always have.’

‘Everyone needs downtime, Washington. Taking a break isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a sign of strength. It’s an acknowledgement that the most powerful tool at your disposal,’ – she touched herself on the temple – ‘needs to be recharged. If it runs flat, it doesn’t work properly. Mood, cognitive functioning, even memory begins to suffer. And because of your nightmares, you’re not even getting the restorative power of sleep. I think you’re now operating on sheer willpower, and although this case is over, there’ll be others that require your undivided attention. There will be times when you have to work for thirty-six hours straight, and the only way you can do what you need to do, is tonotdo it when you don’t need to.’ She gestured at where they were and added, ‘Otherwise you might find yourself in a place like this. Estelle’s a doctor; I’m sure she’ll agree.’

‘Oh, Iknowshe agrees,’ he said.

‘We have something we can work on then. Now, where were we?’

‘Estelle had finished telling us the killer had probably used a stun gun to get Cornelius Green up to the Lightning Tree.’

‘Was there anything else?’

‘Oh yes. She’d noticed something about Cornelius’s tattoos.’

‘Something important?’

‘It didn’t seem so at the time.’

‘And later?’

‘Everything, Doctor Lang,’ Poe said. ‘The tattoos were the key toeverything.’

Chapter 45

‘I have one last thing to show you,’ Doyle said. ‘You too, Superintendent Nightingale.’

Nightingale frowned. ‘You’ve kept something back?’

Poe winced, but Doyle took it in her stride.

‘No, I was waiting for a confirmatory email. It has only just arrived. I saw no reason to burden you with my suspicions until then. I report facts, it’s you who interprets those facts.’

‘And you have a new fact?’ Nightingale asked.

‘Show slides twenty-three to twenty-eight on the monitor, please, Carlos.’

Doyle’s assistant fiddled with the computer. The screen in the viewing room changed from the stun-gun marks to six close-ups of Cornelius’s lower torso and upper thighs. They were just as heavily tattooed.

‘I understand an expert in religious iconography will go through the victim’s tattoos with you,’ Doyle said, ‘but I wanted to show you something that is more my field of expertise. Now, as you can see there are hundreds of tattoos on the victim’s body, and because he’s used every available bit of skin, it does appear they’re a bit rough and ready.’

‘They’re not?’ Nightingale asked.

‘No. Most are exceptionally well done. The new ones are sharp with clear lines and the older ones haven’t bled into the epidermis as much as you might expect. Probably because he’s had a consistent body mass over the years.’

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