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Poe left Alice to her memories and gestured for Bradshaw and Linus to join him on the stage. The three of them were perched on the edge, facing the busy gymnasium, legs dangling. Bradshaw’s eyes were red, like she’d touched them after chopping chillies, and her face was pale and pinched. She knew what he’d seen, and even though he’d tried to downplay the horror of the videos, there wasn’t really any nice way of saying you’d watched six young lives being snuffed out. Linus looked even worse. The young spook didn’t seem to have enjoyed his first experience of a murder investigation. In fact, the more Poe thought about it, he realised they both had pale, pinched faces.

‘You’ve watched the videos, haven’t you?’ he said.

Bradshaw sniffed and nodded. ‘Only one.’

‘Even though I explicitly told you not to?’

She faced him, her expression defiant. ‘It’s not only your job to watch these things, Poe. Cumbria’s high-tech crime unit have a backlog, and even if they didn’t have, none of them know how to verify the authenticity of an old VHS tape. And also, DI Stephanie Flynn is my line manager, not you. You don’t have the authority to stop me.’

Poe sighed. He did have the authority. They both knew that. He was a sergeant and Bradshaw wasn’t. He’d explained many, many times how a command and control organisation worked, but as she’d only ever had him as a role model it had always been a case of monkey see/monkey do. He’d previously taken advantage of her newfound rebellious nature; he could hardly complain about it now. So, instead of getting cross, he said, ‘Is the video authentic?’

‘While I have no way of telling if the murder was staged, I can say with absolute certainty that the video has not been tampered with or edited in any way. It is a genuine recording.’

‘Why hasn’t the cadaver dog found anything in the basement then?’

‘I don’t know, Poe. But it was definitely filmed down there. I’ve compared the photos I took when Joshua Meade gave us a tour of the basement. The colour, shape and texture of the brickwork is distinctive.’

‘Did you watch the video, Snoopy?’

‘I did,’ Linus said. ‘I wish I hadn’t.’

‘So why did you?’

‘I’m here to observe.’

‘That’s a stupid answer,’ Poe said. ‘Like Tilly said, it’s our job to swim in this shit. And we do it so people like you can sit in your nice London offices and post things like “Defund the police” on Twitter. And that’s OK; that’s how it’s supposed to be. This isn’t a participation sport but you’ve gone out of your way to join in. Why?’

‘I told you, there’s an ongoing audit—’

‘Oh fuck off,’ Poe said. He turned his back on Linus. He wasn’t in the mood to be lied to. Not right now.

‘You must be hungry, Poe,’ Bradshaw said, rummaging in her bag. ‘We stopped off at an all-night supermarket on the way and got you something to eat.’

‘Did this “something” once have bones?’

‘Of course not.’

‘I don’t want it then,’ he said.

Bradshaw handed over a tub of pre-prepared food.

‘What’s this?’ he said, eyeing the contents suspiciously.

‘Don’t be so ungrateful, Poe.’

He pointed at some brown things sitting on top of what looked like tomatoes, carrots and weeds. They were the shape and colour of small onion bhajis, but he doubted he’d be that lucky. ‘What are those things?’

‘Falafels, Poe. They’re made from ground chickpeas. They’re an excellent source of fibre.’

He opened the lid and sniffed the tub’s contents. ‘They look like dog balls.’ He picked one up and nibbled on it. ‘Next,’ he said, passing the tub to Linus.

‘Oh, give it here,’ Bradshaw said, her face splitting into a grin. ‘That’s not really what I bought you.’ She reached into her bag again and pulled out a brown paper bag. It had the most gorgeous-looking grease stains. She passed it across. ‘I had to get Linus to buy this, Poe. The smell at the hot food counter was making me feel ill.’

Poe peered into the bag and breathed out in relief. It was an honest-to-goodness, no-frills butcher’s pork pie. Chopped pork, salty jelly and thick, crunchy pastry. He took a bite and sighed in satisfaction. He hadn’t realised just how hungry he was.

‘You do realise that every pork pie you eat takes scientifically measurable time off your expected life span, Poe?’ Bradshaw said.

Poe looked at the CSI investigators, the detectives, the rest of the cops in the gymnasium. Decided he didn’t like what he saw. ‘Is there any way to speed up the process?’ he said.

Bradshaw didn’t answer. She was munching on her weird salad and checking her emails. She looked OK, better than he felt. He wished she hadn’t had to watch a single second of those videos, but now that she had he at least knew the tapes were genuine. If she said they hadn’t been tampered with, they hadn’t been tampered with.

Poe jumped down from the stage. The basement was beneath his feet and he didn’t want to be near it any more. The night was still warm, the main hall was getting stuffy and he needed some fresh air. Eating a pork pie under the last of the night’s stars might lift his spirits. In fact, even the thought of eating a pie under the stars lifted his spirits. He started singing ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’ on his way out, loud enough that if Joshua was nearby he’d be sure to hear.

He reached the gymnasium exit just as he got to the part about life seeming jolly rotten. He stopped and looked at his feet. He muttered to himself then turned around and marched back down the hall. When he got to the crucifix on the stage, ignoring the open-mouthed Bradshaw and Linus, he turned round and started singing again, to himself this time, as he walked back out. He reached the exit at the jolly rotten bit again.

‘That’s weird,’ he said.