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Chapter 5

TillyBradshaw was a human outlier. A maths genius in a field that didn’t like to use the word. And although maths was her first love, she was a true polymath – a person able to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve multifaceted problems. Had done since she was plucked from school at the age of thirteen and given a fully funded place at Oxford, where her once-in-a-generation mind could flourish and realise its true potential.

Academically she’d exceeded everyone’s wildest expectations. When her studies had finished, she stayed on to do research. Companies around the world threw money at her. Her relieved parents believed their intellectually odd-shaped daughter had found one of the few odd-shaped holes available to her.

And for years that was enough.

Until it wasn’t.

Without telling anyone, she successfully applied for a profiler’s job with the Serious Crime Analysis Section. After correcting three of the questions on the entrance exam, she handed in what would turn out to be the highest ever score, a score that could be equalled but never beaten. On an exam where the average mark was 63, she scored a perfect 100 per cent.

She started working for SCAS.

And to everyone’s surprise she struggled.

She was brilliant, able to do the things others couldn’t. Things no one else could eventhinkof. She could devise bespoke solutions and she could spot patterns in data faster than any computer. She became the leading expert in almost every crime science there was. Forensic accounting, digital and multimedia, fingerprint analysis, bloodstain patterns, firearm and toolmark examination, geographicprofiling, gait analysis. She even studied forensic astronomy so she could determine the appearance of the sky at a specific point in the past.

She should have been the most valuable asset in UK law enforcement.

But what the professors and visiting academics, even her parents, had failed to understand was, putting Bradshaw into adult education at such a young age had consequences.

They had stolen her childhood.

More importantly, they had robbed her of the chance to interact with people who weren’t like her. She developed no social skills, believed everything she was told and was unable to recognise irony or sarcasm. And, because what was in her head didn’t readily translate into words people could understand, her guileless honesty was mistaken for rudeness.

She wasn’t easy to get on with.

She was different.

And it doesn’t matter where you are, different people get bullied.

Some SCAS employees, jealous of her abilities, stole her personal items. They dared each other to get her to do more and more outrageous stuff. They called her names.

She withdrew into herself. She was miserable.

And then Poe had entered her life. He was returning to work after an eighteen-month suspension and needed SCAS’s best profiler in the field with him. Flynn, now promoted to Poe’s old detective inspector role, had mentioned Bradshaw. Poe had spoken to her and realised two things. The first was that underneath all the awkwardness and unintentional rudeness was an extremely kind and brilliant young woman.

The second thing was she was being bullied.

And Poehatedbullies.

Always had, always would.

They elicited a primeval response: a staggering overreaction.

SCAS soon learned that if they bullied Bradshaw they might as well have bullied Poe. In fact, they would be better off doing so. The consequences wouldn’t be as severe.

In life experiences they were poles apart – he’d had some, she hadn’t – and intellectually they could barely understand each other. They shouldn’t have got on.

But they did.

Because underneath all the childlike gawkiness, the tactless comments, the lack of humility, Bradshaw was the nicest person he had ever met. Loyal to the point of stubborn – a trait they shared – generous to a fault and, in defence of Poe, as fierce as a honey badger. She had saved his life twice, stopped him from being charged with murder once and had helped him catch countless bad guys. She also helped him manage his demons. Showed him that the dark, self-destructive path he was heading down wasn’t the only way. There was a lighter side of the street to walk on.

And in return, he helped her navigate the complicated and nuanced world she was still coming to terms with. He showed her how to communicate with her colleagues without upsetting them. She got better at understanding body language and sarcasm and irony.

But, she was still Bradshaw. The wonderfully innocent social hand grenade, the same person who had told the Bishop of Carlisle she didn’t drink liquorice tea because it gave her diarrhoea. She only ever wore T-shirts and cargo trousers, and, despite being able to afford a more modern pair, still preferred her Harry Potter-style glasses, her grey eyes magnified behind the thick lenses.

So when she said someone wanted to buy her toenail clippings, it wasn’t the opening line of a joke.

Someone really did want to buy them.