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‘It’s the twenty-seventh of December, Poe. Surely even someone as adamantine as yourself can find someone to spend the festive season with?’

‘Adam Ant what now?’

‘Don’t worry about it, Poe,’ she replied. ‘What is it you desire of me?’

Poe was sure she spoke like this just to make him blush, even over the phone.

‘I have a finger for you,’ he replied.

‘Do you now?’ she drawled.

‘Lots of fingers.’ He knew he was making it worse but for some reason, whenever he talked to her, he became a right chatter of shit.

‘Well, aren’t you just the gift that keeps on giving, Poe?’

‘We have three separate crime scenes,’ he said, recovering some dignity. ‘A pair was found at each one.’

‘Same victim?’ She was all business now.

‘No.’

‘I’m visiting friends in Haltwhistle so I can be at the Cumberland Infirmary in thirty minutes. How soon can you get everything to me?’

Poe glanced at his watch. Assuming Nightingale agreed, he reckoned he could have them there within the hour. He told her.

‘See you soon then,’ she replied. ‘You do bring me the most fabulous gifts, Poe.’

The line went dead and Poe went looking for Nightingale.

Chapter 6

/> It had been six months since Poe had seen Estelle Doyle. She’d helped enormously in the Jared Keaton case. She’d given them the early break and then overseen the recovery of evidence in one of the most complex crime scenes anyone in law enforcement had ever had to deal with.

Poe trusted her. It was as simple as that. She stood up to senior investigating officers and interpreted the evidence as she saw it. She had no interest in following the narrative the SIO was trying to present. Some detectives preferred malleable pathologists but Poe wasn’t one of them.

‘I hate these gimmicky killers,’ Poe muttered to Flynn as they walked down the stairs to the mortuary in the Cumberland Infirmary, Carlisle’s major hospital.

Flynn had insisted on coming with him. She wasn’t quite waddling yet but she wasn’t far off. Naively, he’d asked if she’d wanted to stay in the car.

‘I’m not the one who’s fucking ill, Poe,’ she’d snapped. She’d ignored the lift and taken the stairs to prove her point. She could be just as stubborn as him sometimes. By the time Poe had caught her up he was wheezing so hard it sounded like he’d swallowed a whistle.

Flynn smiled in satisfaction. Point proved.

The fingers had been sent ahead and Nightingale had tracked the order and confirmed delivery with them.

It was the 27th of December and this part of the hospital was quiet. Their footsteps reverberated along the sterile corridor.

At the end was the mortuary.

Poe knocked on the door and entered.

Doyle was bent over an inspection table. At first glance it looked empty. It wasn’t. Two fingers were in a small tray. Doyle was working on them.

She straightened when she saw them.

She was wearing a lab coat, a hairnet and goggles. Standard attire when the metal met the meat. Her eyes were ringed with black eyeliner and her lipstick was crimson. Poe didn’t know if she always looked like this, whether it was a work thing and she dressed like Mary Poppins when she was on her own time, or if she did it just to watch him squirm.

‘Merry Christmas, Poe,’ she said huskily. She had a smoker’s voice although Poe knew she never touched them. ‘Good grief, you look dreadful.’