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By the time Poe got to her, Flynn was already reaching for her coat.

Zoe walked across and joined them.

‘Steph, your absence is conspicuous,’ she said.

‘Sorry, Zoe. We’re going to have to leave, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh no!’ Bradshaw cried.

‘Oh no,’ Poe said.

‘Thank fuck,’ Flynn muttered.

Chapter 3

‘Our analytical support will be here this afternoon,’ Flynn told the group that had assembled in Conference Room A of Carleton Hall, Cumbria Constabulary’s headquarters building in Penrith. ‘We were at a social function last night and Tilly had to head back to Hampshire to collect her computers. Sergeant Poe and I were able to leave immediately.’

Poe had got back to Herdwick Croft, his secluded home on Shap Fell, in the early hours; Flynn had booked into the nearby North Lakes Hotel and Spa. It was now 8 a.m. and it looked as though Poe wasn’t the only person who hadn’t had a full night’s sleep. There were around forty people in the room, a mix of senior uniformed officers, senior detectives and essential support staff. The atmosphere was sombre.

Flynn had taken a seat at the front. Poe was standing at the back, next to the freestanding banner displaying the Constabulary’s and the Police and Crime Commissioner’s logos. When the briefing was finished the last rows of chairs would be reversed and the room would be set up for press conferences, the first of which was scheduled for later that day.

‘We have computers here,’ Detective Superintendent Jo Nightingale said.

‘Not like hers you don’t,’ Flynn said. ‘Trust me, what Tilly Bradshaw brings to the investigation can’t be overvalued.’

Nightingale nodded, satisfied. She was a serious-looking woman in her early forties. Cropped dark hair, black trousers and a white shirt. Eyes green enough to start traffic.

Poe had met Nightingale only once. She’d taken over the vacant detective superintendent position when Ian Gamble had retired after the successful conclusion of the Jared Keaton case. Poe had returned to Herdwick Croft one afternoon to find her waiting outside.

She’d introduced herself and said Gamble had advised her that Poe was an asset if used properly. She’d brought a case file with her. A murder. After the 2015 floods, when Carlisle had been flooded for the second time in a decade, a lot of buildings became all but uninsurable. People had a choice: pay for the repairs themse

lves or cut their losses. Several chose the latter with the result that there were abandoned buildings all over the city. A body had been found in one of them.

The victim was an economic migrant from Poland, and Nightingale had asked Poe if SCAS could add value to her investigation. He’d read the file while she waited then said, ‘You don’t need us – you’ll catch the perp using the investigation strategy you’re already following. He’ll be from within the Polish community and he’s probably already returned home. He’ll be known over there and your forensic evidence will be enough to extradite and convict him.’

She nodded.

It felt like he’d passed some sort of test. That she’d needed to reassure herself that Poe wasn’t going to invent drama just so he had an excuse to leave Hampshire. It had been unnecessary anyway – Poe lived in Cumbria full time now. At the end of the Jared Keaton case, Detective Chief Inspector Wardle, a cop Poe had had a run in with, had done the dirty. Realising that the Lake District National Park’s new boundary included Shap Fell, the prehistoric moorland where Poe’s croft was situated, he’d asked the local authority, ‘purely as a concerned citizen’, if Poe had been granted permission to convert the two-hundred-year-old building into a dwelling. Poe hadn’t and they’d issued a legally binding instruction to return it to its original condition.

Although he was fighting it in court there had been an upside. In the law of unintended consequences, Wardle had done him a favour: Poe’s solicitor had said it would be helpful if he could demonstrate that Herdwick Croft was his sole residence.

Poe, who up until a couple of years ago wouldn’t have cared if he lived in a shoe, had asked if he could work from home when they weren’t out in the field. Director of Intelligence Edward van Zyl had immediately agreed.

‘You’re like a caged animal down here anyway, Poe,’ he’d said. ‘The open space up there has cleared your mind and brought a clarity to your work – I don’t want to lose that.’

‘I’ll send the SCAS guys videos and photographs of the crime scenes when we’re finished, but it’ll be helpful for me to summarise,’ Nightingale said. ‘Some of my colleagues were away visiting family over Christmas and aren’t up to speed.’

She tapped her laptop’s keyboard and a photograph of a building appeared on a wall monitor.

‘This is the first crime scene. These are the admin offices of John Bull Haulage in Carlisle. On Christmas Eve a cargo administrator called Barbara Willoughby opened her Secret Santa present. She was supposed to be getting a mug with an engagement ring inside. Instead she got this.’

The photograph changed from the outside of the drab building to a close-up of a scuffed beige carpet tile, the hardwearing type found in offices up and down the country.

Two fingers lay in the middle.

They’d been severed close to the knuckle. The cuts appeared neat. The bloodied ends were clotted and dry and snagged with fluff. One of the fingers still bore a ring. It was thin, almost certainly a woman’s wedding band.

The photograph changed again. This time a mug appeared onscreen.