Page 80 of The Mercy Chair

Poe glanced down at Nathan Rose’s corpse. ‘Maybe it’s a reminder of what he went through,’ he said. ‘A permanent elastic band.’

‘I don’t understand that reference, Poe.’

‘Neither do I,’ Linus said from behind him.

Linus had sat with Virginia Rose until the police arrived. Now specialist officers were with her, he had nothing left to do. Poe wanted to get away but Superintendent Nightingale had asked him to wait until she arrived.

‘It’s sometimes used with addictive behaviour,’ Poe said. ‘The user wears an elastic band on their wrist and when they have a craving, they stretch it and let it snap back. It’s a distraction technique for intrusive thoughts.’

‘What good’s a distraction technique on the sole of the foot though?’ Linus asked. ‘He wouldn’t have been able to see it.’

‘You make a good point,’ Poe admitted. ‘But once you have a tattoo, youalwayshave a tattoo. It’s part of you.’ He slapped his right bicep. ‘I have a tattoo here and even though I can’t see it, I know it’s there. Perhaps that was enough.’

‘I don’t think that’s it, Poe,’ Bradshaw said. ‘If itwasa distraction tattoo, why is it a seemingly random collection of numbers and letters? Why is it not something motivational? Or, given the rich pickings in the Old Testament, why not have a Bible passage like Leviticus 18:22, which says homosexuality is a “detestable sin”? We know from Cornelius Green’s profile that he held these extreme views.’

‘You make a good point as well,’ Poe said. ‘So whyarethe tattoos so ambiguous?’

A high-pitched wailing noise cut through their whispered conversation. Poe wondered if Superintendent Nightingale was downstairs now. Under circumstances like this it was procedure for the senior investigating officer to inform the next of kin that the paramedics had confirmed death.

‘Poor woman,’ Poe said. ‘She was quietly leading her life the best way she knew how, and we turn up and smash her world to pieces.’

‘You had to ask those questions,’ Linus said.

‘I didn’t have to ask them the way I did though, Snoopy. I shouldn’t have read Bethany’s journal on the way here. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind for an interview like this. I should have postponed it.’

‘I agree with Linus, Poe,’ Bradshaw said. ‘We couldn’t possibly have known something like this would happen.’

‘But—’

‘How many times have you told me that investigating murder isn’t a nine-to-five job?’

‘I don’t know. Twice maybe?’

‘Twenty-six times.’

‘That many?’

Bradshaw nodded.

‘I need a new saying then,’ Poe said.

‘At least it’s better than your black pudding saying,’ she said. ‘That makes no sense and it’s kinda gross. No wonder your doctor—’

‘That’s enough, Tilly,’ Poe said, clipping her sentence. Superintendent Nightingale had joined them on the landing.

‘Poe, can I have a word?’ she said. She walked into the bedroom from which Bradshaw had called the emergency services. Poe followed her.

‘You need to leave,’ she said.

He didn’t need to ask why. ‘Mrs Rose is blaming me?’ he said.

‘She is. She said you were antagonistic towards her and her husband from the moment you arrived. Your interview was aggressive and it brought up too many painful memories for her husband to cope with. That it should have been done more sensitively. She claims he hanged himself as a direct result of how you spoke to him.’

‘He also took off a shoe and one of his socks so we wouldn’t miss that he had one of those alphanumeric tattoos.’

Nightingale’s eyes widened. ‘He has one as well?’

Poe nodded. ‘And it matches one of Cornelius’s.’

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