Page 57 of The Mercy Chair

Bradshaw responded to Poe’s numerous transgressions by changing his ringtone to songs she knew he’d hate, safe in the knowledge he wouldn’t know how to change it back. Poe had said this was passive-aggressive behaviour. She had responded by making his ringtone Terry Wogan’s ‘Floral Dance’. She hadn’t changed it back until he had apologised.

‘I asked her why Obi-Wan Kenobi didn’t recognise R2-D2 inA New Hope, when they’d been in the three prequels together.’

‘Ouch,’ Doyle said. ‘She wouldn’t have liked that. And when did you watchStar Wars? I can’t even get you to watchThe Wire.’

‘She made me watch them on the Spring-heeled Jack stakeout last year.’

‘Aren’t you going to answer your phone?’

‘Not yet. I’m pretending the ringtone doesn’t work so she’ll change it to something less embarrassing.’

Doyle stared at him. ‘You’re a peculiar adult, Poe,’ she said eventually.

Poe stuck out his tongue. He reached for his phone and showed Doyle the screen. A photograph of a grinning Bradshaw was flashing on and off.

‘Told you,’ he said. He pressed receive. ‘Tilly, this is early, even for you.’

‘I’ve found something you need to see, Poe,’ she replied.

She told him what it was.

‘I’m on my way,’ he said.

Chapter 50

Bradshaw said that when she cross-referenced the Children of Job’s bank records against the register of course attendees, she had uncovered six payments made between 2001 and 2007 that hadn’t corresponded to anything on the curriculums provided by the Bishop of Carlisle. There was a gap in 2002, otherwise there had been one a year for six years. Four of those payments appeared to have been made in cash, and that was where the trail ended, but the remaining two had been made by credit card. Working on the hypothesis that the payments might have been for more intensive versions of the routine conversion therapy courses the Children of Job ran, she checked whether either of the credit cards belonged to families who, between 2001 and 2007, had sons in their teens or early twenties. They both had. In 2004, Nathan Rose was twenty, and in 2007, Aaron Bowman was fifteen. Their families had both paid the Children of Job one thousand pounds.

But it wasn’t until she had fed the name Aaron Bowman into the National Crime Agency database that she reached for her phone to call Poe.

‘How did Tilly find this so quickly?’ Nightingale asked.

Poe had called Nightingale immediately after Bradshaw had called him.

‘Cornelius wasn’t just a zealot, ma’am, he was also a shrewd businessman,’ Poe replied. ‘Even if he was running courses he wasn’t prepared to put on paper, I figured he’d still be charging for them. Money always leaves an auditable trail, so I asked Tilly to look for any unreconciled deposits. She was supposed to be doing this today, but you know what she’s like. I don’t think she sleeps at night; she simply plugs herself into the mainframe.’

‘What did she find?’

‘Six large bank deposits that didn’t correlate with any course on the curriculum. There was no trail at all for four of them, so we’re assuming they were cash payments, but the other two were paid with credit cards.’

‘And one of those payments was made by Aaron Bowman?’

‘His parents, yes.’

‘Just when I thought this case couldn’t get any bloody weirder,’ she said. ‘OK, can you follow this up? I have a manhunt to arrange.’

‘Who’s Aaron Bowman?’ Linus said.

Poe had picked them both up at Shap Wells and they were now on their way to Underbarrow, a small but geographically dispersed village on the outskirts of Kendal. Poe hadn’t been there in years. It was a beautiful village, full of charm and largely unspoiled, but if you were driving to Underbarrow it was because you wanted to be in Underbarrow – the road didn’t lead anywhere else.

‘He’s a kid Tilly thinks might have attended one of these secret courses,’ Poe explained. ‘The courses the note said had stopped when Israel Cobb left the Children of Job.’

‘Is Aaron Bowman a suspect?’

‘I doubt it, Snoopy; he’s dead.’

‘Dead? How?’

‘He was murdered in 2012. I’m surprised you didn’t recognise his name; he was killed at the same time as his mother and father.’

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