Page 71 of The Final Vow (Washington Poe #7)

Two weeks later

Highgate Cemetery, north London

It was atmospheric carnage. The first summer storm of the year. Thunderclaps and sheet lightning. The graphite sky congested and bruised, the air charged and dangerous. Puffs of dust rising as the rain machinegunned the parched earth. Nature reminding humans of the fragility of their existence.

And two weeks since he had disappeared without a trace.

There had been no reason for the coroner to hold on to the body. Everyone knew what had killed Mathers. Everyone knew who had killed Mathers.

Poe hadn’t attended the church service. He hadn’t felt able to look her family in the eye.

Mathers was a senior police officer in the Met, but she was also a wife and a mother.

She’d left behind a husband and two young children.

Flynn had found the courage, and so had Bradshaw, but he was racked with guilt.

Flynn had told him he was being stupid. That she’d had the same doubts, the same sense of unease about Ezekiel Puck being caught on CCTV at the Can of Ham.

She’d said that they’d been right to keep their doubts from Mathers.

Doubt wasn’t actionable intelligence, and Mathers had a complex operation to manage.

Poe knew she was right, just as he knew the only person to blame was Ezekiel Puck, but it still consumed him.

He’d tried to book an appointment to talk it through with Clara Lang, but her doctors said she was still unavailable.

He’d hung up in the middle of their mealy-mouthed excuses.

So, Poe stood alone by the empty grave – a hand-dug trench, the rain turning the earth at the bottom into a thick black paste – and waited for the committal to start, his clothes and hair unable to get any wetter.

Water dripped from his nose. He made no move to wipe it away.

He knew he was being watched. Highgate was the most secure cemetery in the world right now.

There were cops everywhere. Poe didn’t know if it had been chosen because the heavily wooded grounds made it a sniper’s nightmare, or whether this had always been intended to be Mathers’s final resting place.

But he knew that everyone in Highgate Cemetery was being watched.

Not that there was anyone around. Ezekiel Puck had ended public displays of grief, the same way COVID had ended low interest rates.

Poe stared at the grave spoils until his eyes blurred, a loop in his head replaying everything that had happened on that rooftop.

Decisions made; decisions not made. There would be an investigation, of course.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct would pull apart Mathers’s operation like they were shredding crispy aromatic duck.

Poe would be called on to give evidence.

They’d all be called on to give evidence.

And those blessed with twenty-twenty hindsight would conclude that Mathers had made a mistake.

That she’d been too hasty in believing the evidence of her own eyes.

That she should have questioned it more vigorously.

And Poe knew that everyone on the panel would privately be thinking the same thing – that Ezekiel Puck had outmanoeuvred them at every turn and, if they’d been in Mathers’s shoes, they’d have been on that roof too.

Over the sound of the rain, Poe heard muted voices.

He stepped away from the grave – that was for family and close friends – and waited for the committal party.

People in black appeared out of the rain, spectral, like something out of a Stephen King movie.

They gathered around the grave, taking shelter under the trees, making sure to leave room for the family, who would follow the coffin.

Bradshaw arrived; her usual attire of cargo pants and a Marvel T-shirt replaced with a black pant suit and a crisp white shirt.

He wondered where she’d bought it. Then he wondered if this was her first funeral.

He thought it probably was. She joined him, her face streaked with tears.

She leaned in and rested her head on his shoulder. Poe put his arm around her.

Flynn stood next to them, her face stoic, her eyes full of rage. Of helplessness.

They waited in silence. The coffin bearers would be taking their time, careful not to slip on the treacherous mud.

The vicar arrived first. He held a bible in his right hand and an umbrella in his left.

Behind him, six uniformed police officers bore the polished oak coffin.

It was a simple and neat design. Sarcophagus shaped with brass fittings.

The family followed the bearer party. Mathers’s husband, holding the hands of his two children.

Brothers and sisters. Nephews and nieces.

Uncles and aunts. Supporting each other the way families do during this part of the service.

The final part.

And there, right at the back, was someone Poe hadn’t expected to see. Alastor Locke. The tall man was openly weeping. His back was bent. He seemed to have aged twenty years in the weeks since Poe had seen him in Yorkshire. He caught Poe’s eye and nodded. Poe returned it but kept his face neutral.

The vicar came to a halt. As soon as the bearer party had lowered the coffin on to the putlogs, the wooden posts that spanned the grave, he began the committal service.

‘I am the resurrection . . .’

Poe concentrated on the words. He wanted them to mean something.