The Mercy Chair

Book 6: Washington Poe

by M.W. Craven

Genres: Hard-Boiled; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin . . .

Washington Poe has a story to tell.

And he needs you to listen.

You'll hear how it started with the robber birds. Crows. Dozens of them. Enough for a murder . . .

He'll tell you about a man who was tied to a tree and stoned to death, a man who had tattooed himself with a code so obscure, even the gifted analyst Tilly Bradshaw struggled to break it. He'll tell you how the man's murder was connected to a tragedy that happened fifteen years earlier when a young girl massacred her entire family.

And finally, he'll tell you about the mercy chair. And why people would rather kill themselves than talk about it . . .
Poe hopes you've been paying attention. Because in this story, nothing is as it seems . . .

Praise for M W Craven

"Washington Poe is a brilliant creation, from one of the finest and most inventive crime writers of today' Peter James

'Mesmerising, macabre and magnificent. The Mercy Chair is truly terrifying, laugh-out-loud funny, and impossibly clever. Poe and Tilly are unstoppable' Chris Whitaker

The Curator shortlisted for the VN Thriller of the Year 2022 & longlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger 2021

Dead Ground longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year 2022 & longlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger 2022

'The Poe and Tilly books are a joy' Steve Cavanagh

'Unputdownable, gripping, clever and with a rich seam of trademark Craven humour running through it' Imran Mahmood

'A sinful treat' Vaseem Khan

'Fast, furious, and utterly enjoyable.' Keith Nixon

'An unforgettably compulsive read' Bishop's Stortford Independent

'Heart-pounding, hilarious, sharp and shocking, Dead Ground is further proof that M.W. Craven never disappoints. Miss this series at your peril.' Chris Whitaker

'Dark and entertaining, this is top rank crime fiction.' Vaseem Khan, Author of the Malabar House series and the Baby Ganesh Agency series

'M. W. Craven is one of the best crime writers working today. Dead Ground is a cracking puzzle, beautifully written, with characters you'll be behind every step of the way. It's his best yet.' Stuart Turton

'Fantastic' Martina Cole

'Dark, sharp and compelling' Peter James

'I've been following M.W. Craven's Poe/Tilly series from the very beginning, and it just gets better and better. Dead Ground is a fast-paced crime novel with as many twists and turns as a country lane. I can't wait for the next one.' Peter Robinson

'Dead Ground is both entertaining and engaging with great characters and storyline. I loved this first dip into the world of Tilly and Poe!' BA Paris

'A brutal and thrilling page turner' Natasha Harding, The Sun

'A thrilling curtain raiser for what looks set to be a great new series' Mick Herron

'A powerful thriller from an explosive new talent. Tightly plotted, and not for the faint hearted!'
David Mark

'Satisfyingly twisty and clever and the flashes of humour work well to offer the reader respite from the thrill of the read.' Michael J. Malone

'Nothing you've ever read will prepare you for the utterly unique Washington Poe' Keith Nixon

Release date: June 6, 2024

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 100000

Sample

The hospital was old. A cathedral to the sick, built when eight-year-olds crawled up chimneys and a queen’s empire was the largest the world had ever known. They called it a lunatic asylum then, now they said psychiatric hospital.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

The man staring out of a high-arched, curtainless window wasn’t thinking about the UK’s mental health crisis though, he was thinking about the hospital’s colour scheme. He was wondering if the paint on the corridor he was standing in had been chosen for its therapeutic qualities. He suspected not. It was institutional green, the type of colour not found anywhere in nature, and still smelled fresh and acrid. He thought it made the hospital seem more like a prison than a place of healing. Perhaps that was the point.

The corridor was empty and echoed as if it were a church. The chemical stink of wall-socket air fresheners soaked the still air; the linoleum floor was buffed to a shine. A fob-controlled navy double door blocked off one entrance, a steel security door the other. The corridor had three rooms and the man was waiting to be called into the middle one. None of the doors had handles.

There were no seats in this corridor, no waiting area with televisions and pot plants and magazines about idyllic lives in the Cotswolds, so the man stood. On the other side of the security door someone screamed and someone else shouted. Before long he could hear accents from all four corners of the country. He didn’t turn away from the window. Screaming and shouting and crying and alarms were the hospital’s soundtrack, an aria heard all day and all night.

And he knew no one would enter this corridor.

Not until it was time.

A crow flew into view. It wheeled overhead and landed on the hospital lawn. Two more joined it. The man watched their strong, scrawny feet scratch at the earth, searching for bugs and beetles and worms. He shuddered in revulsion. He had come to hate crows.

He turned his back on them and glanced at his watch. It was almost time. He removed his phone from his pocket to see if there were any urgent messages. But there was nothing. Not one. Not even a good luck text from his friend. Instead, he saw his face reflected in the black mirror. His eyes were red and gritty and puffed up, as if he’d slept on a plane. The hands holding the phone were heavily calloused, covered in scratches and smelled of the sea. He wondered if they would ever be clean again.

The door to the middle room opened. A shaven-headed man stepped out. He was wearing a royal blue tunic top with black trousers. He had a personal alarm clipped to his belt loop. Pulling the cord or pressing the red button would rush people to his location, like a police officer sending out an urgent assistance request.

A smaller man in a suit joined the shaven-headed man. He had the harried look all doctors seemed to have. ‘Doctor Lang is ready to see you now,’ he said.

For such a grand building, the room’s décor was dreary and flavourless. The walls were cream, not green, but still screamed institution. The carpet tiles were brown and hardwearing; the empty bookcase was cheap with sagging shelves. Thank-you cards and hospital notices were Sellotaped to a red felt noticeboard. Doctor Lang was waiting for the man behind a large desk. A beige file and a box of tissues were the only things in front of her.

She rose to meet him. She was in her early thirties and was wearing a sleeveless, quilted green dress. She wore no makeup, and her long dark hair partly covered her face. The man wondered if she was shy. He then wondered if her shyness had hindered her career. Perhaps not; shy people were often the most empathetic, the easiest to talk to. People opened up to them.

They shook hands and introduced themselves.

‘Do sit down,’ she said.

‘Thank you, Doctor Lang.’

‘Please, I’d very much like it if you called me Clara.’

The man was from a generation that stood to shake hands. He wasn’t about to call a doctor by their first name. It wouldn’t be right. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he said, before sinking into the seat on the opposite side of the desk. It was a heavy armchair and it looked out of place in a doctor’s office. Doctor Lang’s chair was the same.

‘I’m sorry you’ve had to drag yourself all the way here,’ she said. ‘I’d have preferred somewhere more suitable, but I have patients to see here today, and it wasn’t possible to get away.’

‘It was no hardship. It’s a nice drive and my boss is happy I’m finally taking the time to do this.’

‘Were you waiting long?’

‘Twenty minutes, but I was early.’

‘And I must apologise for this office,’ she said, gesturing around the room. ‘It’s not mine, I’m just borrowing it for the day. I understand it’s about to be decorated, which is why it’s almost empty. I see my other patients on the ward but, as you’re not a resident here, I thought we might benefit from somewhere less pressurised. It can get a bit lively on the other side of the door.’

‘I can imagine,’ the man said.

‘We’ll find somewhere more suitable for our next session. Today is really about getting to know each other.’

‘OK.’

Doctor Lang smiled. ‘So, like I said, my name’s Clara and although I have a PhD, I’m not a medical doctor; I’m a trauma therapist. I’m experienced in CBT, somatic experiencing, sensorimotor psychotherapy, eye-movement desensitisation and reprocessing therapy, sometimes called EMDR, and all the other major disciplines. And, while I don’t need you to understand what all that medical gobbledegook means, I do need you to understand one thing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I know what I’m doing.’

She opened the file on the desk. The man could see handwritten and typed notes, held together with plastic-ended treasury tags. He saw photographs of his injuries, particularly his eye socket. He winced at the memory.

‘Shall we begin?’ Doctor Lang asked.

The man shrugged.

She offered a sympathetic smile. ‘As you know, your employer made this referral after some concerning behaviour at work—’

‘I made one mistake,’ he cut in. ‘“Concerning behaviour” is a stretch.’

‘Nevertheless, they saw fit to pay for three sessions in advance. What does that tell you?’

The man didn’t answer. Doctor Lang removed a slim document from the file.

‘This is the self-assessment form you completed,’ she said. ‘I would like to thank you for being so candid. Not everyone is.’ She tapped the document with her fingers. Her nails were short and unvarnished. ‘This is a good place to start.’

‘If I’m doing this, I’m doing it right,’ the man said.

‘So why don’t we dive in at the deep end? I understand you’re still having headaches?’

The man touched the thick, lumpy scar tissue around his eye socket. ‘I am, although I don’t know if that’s because of my injury or because I’m not sleeping.’

‘Probably a bit of both,’ Doctor Lang said. ‘But not sleeping will exacerbate the head trauma.’ She checked the file. ‘It says here you’ve refused zopiclone.’

‘I have.’

‘Why is that? It’s commonly prescribed for patients with sleeping difficulties.’

The man didn’t respond.

‘Are you self-medicating? Is that why you refused it?’

‘Self-medicating?’

‘Excessive alcohol, depressants such as benzodiazepines or barbiturates. Maybe even heroin. Someone as resourceful as you would have no problem securing something to help him sleep.’

The man smiled. ‘I’m not self-medicating, Doctor Lang,’ he said.

‘Then why won’t you take zopiclone?’

A knock on the door made the man turn. The shaven-headed man entered the room. He was holding a tray. ‘Got tea for you,’ he said.

He put two disposable cups and a paper medicine dispenser filled with sugar lumps on the desk. He left the room and shut the door behind him. The man picked up one of the cups and took a sip. He grimaced. The tea was lukewarm. Doctor Lang studied him over the rim of hers. If she’d noticed anything about the tea’s temperature, she kept it to herself.

‘What happens when you try to sleep?’ she asked.

‘I lie awake until morning.’

‘And yet you still refuse common medications.’

‘I do.’

‘You don’t want to go to sleep, do you?’ Doctor Lang said.

After a few moments the man shook his head.

‘Because when you sleep, you see things you don’t like?’

He nodded.

‘Nightmares?’

He nodded again.

‘What is it you see?’

He didn’t answer. He put his hands in his lap and looked at them.

‘What is it you see when you close your eyes?’ Doctor Lang urged.

The man looked up. His eyes were haunted and wet.

‘Crows,’ Detective Sergeant Washington Poe whispered. ‘When I go to sleep, I see crows.’

‘Crows?’ Doctor Lang said. ‘You’re having nightmares about crows?’

Poe nodded.

‘Is this a childhood thing, or something more recent?’

‘Recent. Just a few months.’

‘You’ve been through a traumatic experience, Sergeant . . . Look, can I call you Washington? Sergeant Poe is far too formal.’

‘Of course.’

‘You’ve been through a traumatic experience, Washington,’ she said. ‘I’ve read the case summary and, in my entire career, this is by far the most horrific thing I’ve read about. People died in front of you. You nearly died. Nightmares can be the mind’s way of making sense of things and crows have long been associated with loss. In some cultures they are mediator animals between life and death.’

‘So I’ve been told.’

‘And some therapists might try to palm you off with a clichéd diagnosis about how the nightmares are your way of coping with what you’ve been through. They’ll tell you that crows are a manifestation of the parts of the case you were unable to control. That your nightmares are little more than an unconscious defence mechanism.’

‘If you say so, Doc.’

Doctor Lang smiled. She had a nice smile. It lit up her face. ‘But I think you’re far too pragmatic to entertain fanciful ideas like Freudian displacement. I don’t think you’ve been redirecting a negative emotion from its original source on to a less threatening recipient.’ She put her hand on the file. ‘If you’ve been having nightmares about crows, I think it’s likely crows played a significant role in what happened. Literally, not figuratively.’

Poe’s spine stiffened as if it had received a blast of electricity.

‘And I find this odd, Washington,’ she continued.

‘You do? Why?’

‘Because I’ve read this file cover to cover and, not only is there no mention of crows, I don’t believe you saw anything that might have attracted them. I know crows are attracted to carrion, but by the time you arrived at the Lightning Tree the dead man had been removed. And everything else happened indoors.’

Doctor Lang picked up the file.

‘And because the activity log has no gaps, it means if you did encounter crows, it must have been before this case started. Am I right?’

Poe said nothing.

‘It would have seemed insignificant at the time,’ she continued. ‘It might not have even registered.’

‘Then why do I see them in my dreams?’ Poe asked.

‘The unconscious mind is a complex beast, Washington. It can make leaps our conscious mind doesn’t have the bandwidth for. It processes information differently. You can’t see it yet, but right now, in your mind, crows are the catalyst for everything that followed.’

‘So this is me now, is it?’ Poe said. ‘Every time I go to sleep, I’m going to wake up terrified and screaming.’

‘No, your mind will heal. At the minute the traumatic memory isn’t stored properly. It’s unprocessed and that means it’s easily accessible, easily triggered. We can fix this, but we need to take the first step together.’

‘Which is?’

‘We need to distinguish between the external threats that demand action and the internal threats that are causing this overwhelming, paralysing fear. In other words, you need to be able to dream of crows without reliving what happened.’

‘And how do we do that?’

‘Initially, by talking.’

‘I’m a man, I’m in my forties and I’m a police officer,’ Poe said. ‘I don’t talk about my feelings.’

‘And I don’t want you to talk about your feelings. The last thing I want you doing is talking about your feelings. This is about getting to know your history, the kind of difficulties you’re experiencing. We’ll then target the distressing memories.’

‘With what?’

‘We’ll come to that later, but nothing that will make you uncomfortable.’

Poe wasn’t convinced. It must have shown.

‘Do you trust me, Washington?’

‘You come highly recommended.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’

‘Trust is earned.’

‘Spoken like a true police officer. Why don’t you let me start earning your trust now?’

‘I have to do something,’ Poe admitted. ‘I can’t go on like this.’

‘Good man,’ Doctor Lang said. She turned to the activity log at the front of the file. ‘It says here the case officially began when you were asked to consult on the Lightning Tree murder,’ she said. ‘But why don’t you tell me when it really started? Why don’t you tell me about the crows?’

Poe looked at his empty cup. He wondered if he could get another tea. His mouth had gone dry. ‘It’s true that I encountered some crows,’ he said. ‘But this whole thing began a few hours earlier with another hooligan of the British countryside.’

‘Oh?’

‘What do you know about badgers, Doctor Lang?’

Nine months earlier

As a way of getting Poe to stop moping over his lunchtime drink, a well-heeled man holding a posy of flowers marching into the pub and yelling, ‘Bloody badgers!’ was as good as any. Poe had been about to ask for a second pint of Borrowdale Bitter. Maybe add a Scotch egg to the order. Make it a government-approved substantial meal. Now, he wanted to know what the ‘bloody badgers’ had been up to.

But the man had slunk to the other end of the Crown Inn’s polished mahogany bar. He was now muttering to himself. The landlady, a no-nonsense woman in her mid-forties, winked at Poe before making her way to the man’s end of the bar. She planted her elbows on the wood and said, ‘You want some water for them flowers, Stephen?’

Instead of answering, Stephen said, ‘Bloody badgers’ again. Less venomous this time.

‘What have you got against badgers?’

‘My poor mum. Went to put flowers on her grave. Bastards have only dug her up.’

Poe leaned sideways so he could hear better, all thoughts of Scotch eggs abandoned.

‘But she’s been dead, what, fifteen years?’ the landlady said.

‘Seventeen.’

‘That’s right. I was at her funeral.’

‘I remember. Mum liked you.’

‘Not as much as she liked a drink though, am I right?’

‘She did enjoy the occasional milk stout,’ Stephen admitted.

‘What’s all this nonsense about badgers then?’

Which was when Poe’s mobile rang. He frowned. Stephen was about to get to the good bit, and he didn’t want to miss anything. He glanced at the screen, readying himself to reject the call.

He stayed his hand.

It was Estelle Doyle.

‘You were on your own when this happened?’ Doctor Lang asked.

‘I was,’ Poe replied. ‘Why, is it important?’

‘Possibly. Why wasn’t your partner with you? I thought you lived together?’

‘Estelle’s my fiancée, actually.’

‘She is?’

Poe nodded, a little bit proud, a little bit embarrassed.

‘Congratulations are in order then. Is this new? There’s nothing in the file.’

‘Couple of months now.’

‘I’ll make a note.’ She glanced at the bare desk. ‘Darn it, I’ve forgotten my pen.’ She opened the desk drawer and searched inside. ‘Would you believe it? A doctor’s office without a pen. Could I borrow yours, Washington?’

Poe reached into his pocket. Came out empty. ‘I’ve forgotten mine as well,’ he said.

‘A police officer without a pen,’ Doctor Lang said, her eyes twinkling. ‘Isn’t that unusual?’

‘I’m an unusual police officer.’

She tapped the file. ‘Of that I need no convincing. I’ll make a note later. Anyway, was it romantic? Where did you propose?’

‘I didn’t,’ Poe said. ‘Estelle proposed to me.’

‘That’s . . . unconventional.’

‘You don’t know the half of it. She lured me to a post-mortem and when I got there she’d spelled out “Will you marry me?” with finger bones.’

‘Finger . . .’ Doctor Lang said incredulously. She did some mental calculations. ‘But that’s forty-three bones.’

‘Forty-seven,’ Poe said. ‘You forgot the question mark. You don’t want to know which bone she’d used for the dot.’

‘I actually think I do.’

‘I’ve forgotten its name, but it sits at the roof of the nasal cavity.’

‘The ethmoid bone,’ Doctor Lang said automatically. ‘Where on earth did she get it all from?’

‘I was too scared to ask.’

‘You accepted, obviously?’

‘I love her,’ Poe said. ‘We haven’t been together that long, but I think I’ve loved her for years. I didn’t realise on account of her being so terrifying. We toasted it with some beer she’d chilled in one of the mortuary’s cadaver fridges.’ He paused. Looked at Doctor Lang’s incredulous expression. ‘Like you said, it was an unconventional proposal.’

‘So where was she? Why were you on your own?’

‘Estelle was in the States.’

‘For work? I understand she’s one of the world’s foremost forensic pathologists.’

‘She is, but she wasn’t in America to work. She was there to support Tilly.’

Doctor Lang checked the file. Flicked through to the personal statements Bradshaw, Flynn and a few others had made. The ones he hadn’t bothered to read.

‘That would be Miss Bradshaw?’ she said. ‘I have her statement here.’ She started to read it. ‘Good grief, that’s a lot of letters after her name.’ She looked up. ‘She’s a friend?’

‘My best friend. She was being presented with a maths breakthrough award at some swanky ceremony in New York. Something to do with the Kissing Number Problem.’

‘I’m not familiar with it.’

‘Apparently, if a bunch of spheres are packed together, each sphere has a kissing number. That’s the number of other spheres it can touch. For example, in a one-dimensional line, the kissing number would be two. Each sphere could kiss the one on its left and the one on its right, like if snooker balls were lined up against the cushion. And in two dimensions it’s six.’

‘That doesn’t seem too complicated.’

‘The kissing number for the twenty-fourth dimension is 196,560.’

‘OK, that sounds a bit more complicated.’

‘Indeed. And Tilly’s equation was for the twenty-eighth dimension,’ Poe said. ‘I was with her when she wrote it. Took her about half an hour.’

‘She’s good at maths then?’

‘I’m not exaggerating when I say she might be one of the best there’s ever been.’

‘Did you not fancy going with her?’

‘I’d have loved to.’

‘Then why—’

‘I was giving evidence in a murder trial. Absolutely no way of getting out of it. Neither could the boss.’

‘Detective Inspector Flynn?’

‘Yes. She was at the same trial so couldn’t get away either. Tilly had never been abroad before. Never even been on a plane. She asked Estelle if she wanted to go with her.’

‘OK, so you’re in the pub and Estelle calls. What happened next?’

‘You at the airport yet?’ Poe asked Doyle after they’d caught up with each other’s news.

‘We checked in a couple of hours ago. Boarding in twenty minutes.’

‘How was Tilly’s speech?’

‘Weird.’

‘Thank you, Captain Obvious.’

Doyle laughed. It was throaty and full and genuine and made Poe realise just how much he’d missed her this last week.

‘She explained the physics of air travel to a roomful of scientists, then thanked you for five minutes—’

‘Me? Why did she thank me?’

‘She said she got interested in the equation after she watched you cram four pickled onions into your mouth.’

‘But I only did it to make her laugh. She didn’t tell them, did she?’

‘What do you think?’ Doyle said. ‘She then told everyone you and I were recently engaged and led the entire audience in three hearty cheers for Estelle Doyle and Washington Poe.’

‘She didn’t!’

‘Again, what do you think?’

‘But no one would have had the first clue who we were.’

‘There was an undercurrent of confusion,’ Doyle admitted. ‘But because of her infectious enthusiasm, they went with it anyway. Strangest thing I’ve ever witnessed. That woman could lead armies if she put her mind to it.’

‘Oh well, at least she was only talking to a bunch of nerds.’

‘And to anyone watching one of the countless news channels that picked it up. CNN, Sky News, Fox, Al Jazeera and the BBC all had cameras there.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘It’s a huge deal, Poe. I don’t think we’ve quite realised how much of a rock star Tilly is in the maths world. After her speech, of which I understood nothing, she received a fifteen-minute standing ovation.’

‘Really?’

‘And while we were having dinner after the ceremony, representatives from three US agencies came to our table to offer her a job. And I’m sure one of them was the NSA.’

‘Blimey. She enjoyed it though?’

‘She did. Blundered her way through any number of social faux pas without batting an eyelid. As soon as we arrived, she asked the event organiser, a woman in her fifties, if the dark hairs growing out of her chin were caused by hypertrichosis.’

‘Which is?’

‘It’s more commonly known as werewolf syndrome. A point Tilly was very clear about.’

Poe laughed so hard the men playing pool stopped to watch.

‘Laugh all you want; I was standing right next to her. She has no embarrassment threshold at all, does she?’

Poe was about to go toe-to-toe with Doyle on the times Bradshaw had made awkward situations unimaginably worse when the pub’s lounge door burst open. A worried-looking man in grass-stained corduroys and a brown felt waistcoat rushed in. His face was ruddy and his hair unkempt, like he’d combed it with his fingers. A man of the soil. Either a gamekeeper or a poacher. He scanned the semi-crowded room until his eyes found Poe’s.

‘I’d better go, Estelle,’ he said. ‘I think duty’s about to call.’

There had been a church on the site St Michael’s now occupied since 750 AD, predating the nearby, and more famous, Shap Abbey by almost five hundred years. It was in the centre of Shap village and was a cold and stoic Grade II listed building, all ancient stone and stained glass. It had an imposing tower with an embattled parapet. Poe thought it looked more like a fortified house than a church. Maybe a medieval borstal for unruly vicars.

The war memorial at the churchyard entrance, a tall wheel-head cross with a tapering shaft on a four-sided plinth, Poe knew well. He visited it every Remembrance Sunday, although he waited until the crowds had thinned before paying his respects. The memorial was made from Shap granite, the same stone used to build Herdwick Croft, the isolated two-hundred-year-old shepherd’s cottage he called home.

‘This way, Sergeant Poe,’ Anthony said, leading him off the street and into the churchyard. A hushed crowd had gathered at the entrance but, although the wrought-iron gates were open, the grounds remained empty.

The graves at St Michael’s were arranged in an ad hoc, scattergun manner, as if no one could agree on the best strategy for planting the dead. The biggest plot pushed up against a clump of gnarled trees, stripped of their greenery, but Poe knew there were graves all over the church grounds.

He cast his eyes around, looking for evidence of badgers: heaps of earth, collapsed headstones, anything that hinted at nocturnal digging. But all he saw was a winter graveyard. It looked like a scene from a Goth Christmas card. Some of the headstones were cracked and crumbling with faded etchings; others hadn’t been exposed to the harsh Shap weather long enough. Trinkets and flowers had been left at some graves but, like most old graveyards, the majority were bare and unattended, the deceaseds’ relatives long dead too.

‘Where is it?’ Poe asked Anthony.

‘Round the back.’

Anthony stepped off the path and on to the grass. Poe followed suit; the brown frosted leaves crunched under the thick soles of his boots as if he were walking on Pringles. As they neared the north-facing side of the church, the side that got no afternoon sun, the ground changed from mainly grass to mainly moss and creeping ivy. Tree roots crossed each other like pallet straps.

The light was thin and grey. Branches creaked in the breeze. Poe stopped walking. Something felt wrong. He took in a deep breath but all he got in return was damp earth and pine needles. Maybe the suggestion of grave flowers, perhaps some early snowdrops. Nothing funky. He took in another deep breath. Shut his eyes and let his memory do the heavy lifting. There was a hint of something else there, he thought. An unwanted seasoning, a smell he knew well. It was sweet and rancid.

Decay.

Poe opened his eyes. In the time it had taken him to stop and smell the flowers, Anthony had disappeared around the back of the tower. Poe followed the footprints he’d left in the frost.

And saw a murder.

‘A murder?’ Doctor Lang said.

‘Of crows,’ Poe explained. ‘Technically they were carrion crows. Corvus corone. There were some magpies as well, but they’re skittish and didn’t hang around.’

‘But the crows did?’

‘They were full of meat and are lazy at the best of times. So, yes, they did hang around. Stood around like vultures. A few cocked their heads like they were waiting for me to make a speech, but the rest remained motionless. I think this is the bit I remember most of all – the way they just stared. Watching, waiting, emotionless.’

‘This is what you see when you sleep?’

Poe nodded. ‘It was like something out of Hammer House of Horror, Doctor Lang,’ he said. ‘There were at least twenty on the ground, more in the trees. Creepy bastards, pardon my French.’

She waved away his apology. ‘We’re in a psychiatric hospital,’ she said. ‘This won’t be the last expletive I hear today. What happened next?’

‘Anthony, the bloke who’d fetched me from the pub, grabbed a fallen branch and started yelling and swinging it about.’

‘That scared them away?’

‘It did. To the trees at least. They watched us for the rest of the afternoon.’

‘And it was badgers?’

‘It was. The plot behind the church tower looked like a ploughed field. Clawed mounds of earth, two metres high.’

‘I knew badgers ate worms; I didn’t realise they also ate corpses.’

‘It’s not the corpses they like, it’s the easy digging.’

‘Easy digging?’

‘Yep. Although they have powerful forelegs, and long, non-retractable claws, at this time of year the ground is frosty and digging is hard. But, because graveyards are quiet and tend to be on ground that can be dug up with nothing more than a spade, they’re attractive to badgers. In other words, the essential characteristics of a graveyard are the same essential characteristics of a badger sett.’

‘And this badger was digging a new one?’

‘Judging by the amount of spill, it was a medium-sized cete.’

‘Cete?’

‘A group of badgers. At least four adults, Anthony reckoned.’

‘And they’d unearthed the grave of that man’s mother?’

‘They’d been digging parallel to it, and when they went deeper than six feet, they completely collapsed her grave. The coffin had toppled into the half-constructed sett. And that loosened the earth above. Foxes smelled a cheap meal and dug down for it. And in the morning, after the foxes had slunk back into their holes, the crows began feasting.’

‘How disgusting,’ Doctor Lang said. ‘I assume the coffin had cracked open. That’s what the foxes and crows were eating?’

‘The coffin was intact,’ Poe said.

‘Oh? But I thought this man Anthony told you there was a body that wasn’t supposed to be in the grave.’

‘He did and there was. The corpse he wanted me to see had been hidden underneath the coffin.’

‘Underneath?’

‘The body of a young man, I found out later. And he wasn’t fresh. There was barely anything left of him. He had been wrapped in plastic but as soon as the badgers unearthed him, the foxes and crows started picking him clean. That man’s mum had been in the ground seventeen years. We assume the young man had been there for as long.’

‘But . . . why?’

‘Why not?’ Poe said. ‘I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often to be honest. As a way of getting rid of a corpse, a grave is practically foolproof. They’re always dug the night before so it would have been a simple case of digging down a couple more feet and hiding the body. The next morning a bunch of people stand around while a coffin is lowered into it, no one realising that when the vicar does his “I am the resurrection” bit, he’s blessing two corpses, not one. A headstone is whacked on top like a giant full stop, and the body underneath the coffin is gone, if not forever, then at least until someone gets an exhumation order.’

‘That’s . . . creative.’

‘But, unfortunately fo