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Driving back to Shap Wells would be a mistake. Potentially a fatal one.

He told Bradshaw and she nodded.

‘I’ll sleep on the sofa,’ Poe said, ‘you can have the bed. I’ve got some potatoes I can bake. Hop in the shower; the storm will b

low itself out soon but we might as well get comfy in the meantime.’

‘OK, Poe.’

Before long he could hear the shower running above him, the first time he had – he’d never had an overnight guest before. Up until now, if the shower was on, he was standing under it.

While the potatoes baked and Bradshaw showered, Poe stood in front of the murder wall. He reread the documents. All of them, even the ones that couldn’t possibly be relevant. When the prompt came, it was often from the most unlikely source. The unguarded remark, the unconnected thought, the smell that brought back a memory that ignited something deep in the recesses of his mind.

Poe stared at the wall for twenty minutes but nothing happened.

If there was a prompt, it wasn’t on the murder wall.

A noise made him look up. Bradshaw was at the top of the stairs. She was wearing his dressing gown and had a towel wrapped round her head. It was the most feminine thing he’d seen her do. She was red-faced and glowing. The shower had washed away most of her fatigue.

‘You have wonderful water pressure, Poe.’

It was true. He did. And the water, drawn directly from the ground, was about as pure as it was possible to get.

‘The bakies have another twenty minutes. I don’t know if I have any vegan stuff to go on them but you’re welcome to anything you can find. I’m having black pudding, but I’ll cook it.’

Poe climbed the stairs and got undressed. The wood burner was doing its job and the croft was cosy. If he didn’t have a guest he’d have got into bed and slept through to the morning. He stepped under the shower, readjusted the head after Bradshaw had lowered it, shut his eyes and lathered his hair with shampoo.

And deep in his mind something stirred. He stopped washing his hair. Poe knew his mind was like one of Bradshaw’s bespoke computer programs: it never stopped processing what it had read. What it had heard.

What it had seen …

A memory surfaced, one that felt so real it was as if he’d stepped back in time.

His eyes snapped open as he made connection after connection, each bit of evidence now slotting neatly into an unfolding nightmare. Melody Lee’s words filled his mind: ‘When you think you’ve figured out what the Curator’s up to, you’re normally exactly where he wants you to be.’

Poe had made a terrible mistake.

Atkinson wasn’t the target.

He was the bait …

Sixty miles away on Montague Island, Stephanie Flynn looked out to sea, her eyes tired and gritty – a by-product of staring through thermal imaging equipment for hours at a time. She was currently sheltering from the blizzard under the lean-to Atkinson used to keep his logs dry. It wasn’t a perfect view but she was confident no one could approach her side of the island without being seen.

Her feet were swollen but so far she’d managed to stay on them. She was starting to agree with what Poe was clearly too scared to say: that she shouldn’t be at work. That she should have started her maternity leave a month ago. It had been stupid to keep going for as long as she had.

She’d see this shift through, then ring Director van Zyl when she was back on the mainland. Tell him she was going on leave and that he needed to cough up some NCA officers. There was a building full of them in Manchester. She knew he’d comply with her request. When it came to maternity leave, van Zyl was firmly in the Poe, Zoe and Bradshaw camp. She’d only been putting it off to annoy her sister. If Jess said cake was nice, Flynn would never eat it again – it was just the way it was between them.

A noise made her turn.

Her eyes widened in shock.

‘You!’

‘Me,’ the Curator agreed.

He then punched her in the face.

Chapter 72