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‘Crows?’ Doctor Lang said. ‘You’re having nightmares about crows?’

Poe nodded.

‘Is this a childhood thing, or something more recent?’

‘Recent. Just a few months.’

‘You’ve been through a traumatic experience, Sergeant . . . Look, can I call you Washington? Sergeant Poe is far too formal.’

‘Of course.’

‘You’ve been through a traumatic experience, Washington,’ she said. ‘I’ve read the case summary and, in my entire career, this is by far the most horrific thing I’ve read about. People died in front of you. You nearly died. Nightmares can be the mind’s way of making sense of things and crows have long been associated with loss. In some cultures they are mediator animals between life and death.’

‘So I’ve been told.’

‘And some therapists might try to palm you off with a clichéd diagnosis about how the nightmares are your way of coping with what you’ve been through. They’ll tell you that crows are a manifestation of the parts of the case you were unable to control. That your nightmares are little more than an unconscious defence mechanism.’

‘If you say so, Doc.’

Doctor Lang smiled. She had a nice smile. It lit up her face. ‘But I think you’re far too pragmatic to entertain fanciful ideas like Freudian displacement. I don’t think you’ve been redirecting a negative emotion from its original source on to a less threatening recipient.’ She put her hand on the file. ‘If you’ve been having nightmares about crows, I think it’s likely crows played a significant role in what happened. Literally, not figuratively.’

Poe’s spine stiffened as if it had received a blast of electricity.

‘And I find this odd, Washington,’ she continued.

‘You do? Why?’

‘Because I’ve read this file cover to cover and, not only is there no mention of crows, I don’t believe you saw anything that might have attracted them. I know crows are attracted to carrion, but by the time you arrived at the Lightning Tree the dead man had been removed. And everything else happened indoors.’

Doctor Lang picked up the file.

‘And because the activity log has no gaps, it means if you did encounter crows, it must have been before this case started. Am I right?’

Poe said nothing.

‘It would have seemed insignificant at the time,’ she continued. ‘It might not have even registered.’

‘Then why do I see them in my dreams?’ Poe asked.

‘The unconscious mind is a complex beast, Washington. It can make leaps our conscious mind doesn’t have the bandwidth for. It processes information differently. You can’t see it yet, but right now, in your mind, crows are the catalyst for everything that followed.’

‘So this is me now, is it?’ Poe said. ‘Every time I go to sleep, I’m going to wake up terrified and screaming.’

‘No, your mind will heal. At the minute the traumatic memory isn’t stored properly. It’s unprocessed and that means it’s easily accessible, easily triggered. We can fix this, but we need to take the first step together.’

‘Which is?’

‘We need to distinguish between the external threats that demand action and the internal threats that are causing this overwhelming, paralysing fear. In other words, you need to be able to dream of crows without reliving what happened.’

‘And how do we do that?’

‘Initially, by talking.’

‘I’m a man, I’m in my forties and I’m a police officer,’ Poe said. ‘I don’t talk about my feelings.’

‘And I don’t want you to talk about your feelings. The last thing I want you doing is talking about your feelings. This is about getting to know your history, the kind of difficulties you’re experiencing. We’ll then target the distressing memories.’

‘With what?’

‘We’ll come to that later, but nothing that will make you uncomfortable.’

Poe wasn’t convinced. It must have shown.

‘Do you trust me, Washington?’

‘You come highly recommended.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’

‘Trust is earned.’

‘Spoken like a true police officer. Why don’t you let me start earning your trust now?’

‘I have to do something,’ Poe admitted. ‘I can’t go on like this.’

‘Good man,’ Doctor Lang said. She turned to the activity log at the front of the file. ‘It says here the case officially began when you were asked to consult on the Lightning Tree murder,’ she said. ‘But why don’t you tell me when it really started? Why don’t you tell me about the crows?’

Poe looked at his empty cup. He wondered if he could get another tea. His mouth had gone dry. ‘It’s true that I encountered some crows,’ he said. ‘But this whole thing began a few hours earlier with another hooligan of the British countryside.’

‘Oh?’

‘What do you know about badgers, Doctor Lang?’