Chapter 49

Poe didn't sleep well. Doyle had picked up a summer cold and snored the whole night, although he would rather have pickled his own tongue than tell her that. And at 3 a.m. Edgar had started barking at what Poe assumed to be rabbits. Possibly a fox. Whatever it was, they were long gone by the time he'd put on some clothes to let the excited spaniel out. At five he gave up on sleep and crept downstairs to read the bishop's file again. Bradshaw had downloaded it to his phone, and although the text was too small for his unaided eyes, he'd found a magnifying glass that made it bearable.

Usually he would have asked Bradshaw to print off everything and they would spend a couple of hours Blu Tacking it to the wall he kept free for exactly that purpose. The murder wall, they called it, and they'd spent many an hour in front of it, rocking back and forth on their heels as they stared at an unbound case file. Poe found it easier to make links this way. Murder files were arranged in a necessarily predetermined order but being able to see everything at once was how he liked to review the information. In this case, though, with him having sworn secrecy to the bishop, he didn't feel he had the right to print off anything.

So Poe made coffee and bent over his phone with his little magnifying glass until his back was crooked and he looked like Sherlock Holmes examining cigar ash. By the time Doyle came down he was no further forward. He got up, stretched, and poured her a cup of the rich dark roast he was drinking. Doyle said the smell of coffee was part of her day's rhythm and she drank it black and intense.

‘Couldn't sleep?' she said after she'd taken a sip. ‘I wasn't snoring, was I?'

‘Absolutely not,' Poe said.

‘Who were you referring to when you told Edgar, "She sounds like an asthmatic bulldog"?'

‘You heard that?'

She shrugged. ‘You woke me when you got up.'

‘Sorry.'

‘Don't be. I had another two hours uninterrupted sleep. Have you been staring at your phone all this time?'

‘I need to absorb what's in the bishop's file and I can't do that in front of Snoopy.'

‘As a medical doctor, you know what I'm going to say next, don't you?' she said.

Luckily Poe was spared another lecture on digital eyestrain as his phone jauntily chirped out the opening lyrics to ‘YMCA' by the Village People. Doyle raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. ‘How did you upset her this time?'

Bradshaw responded to Poe's numerous transgressions by changing his ringtone to songs she knew he'd hate, safe in the knowledge he wouldn't know how to change it back. Poe had said this was passive-aggressive behaviour. She had responded by making his ringtone Terry Wogan's ‘Floral Dance'. She hadn't changed it back until he had apologised.

‘I asked her why Obi-Wan Kenobi didn't recognise R2-D2 in A New Hope, when they'd been in the three prequels together.'

‘Ouch,' Doyle said. ‘She wouldn't have liked that. And when did you watch Star Wars? I can't even get you to watch The Wire.'

‘She made me watch them on the Spring-heeled Jack stakeout last year.'

‘Aren't you going to answer your phone?'

‘Not yet. I'm pretending the ringtone doesn't work so she'll change it to something less embarrassing.'

Doyle stared at him. ‘You're a peculiar adult, Poe,' she said eventually.

Poe stuck out his tongue. He reached for his phone and showed Doyle the screen. A photograph of a grinning Bradshaw was flashing on and off.

‘Told you,' he said. He pressed receive. ‘Tilly, this is early, even for you.'

‘I've found something you need to see, Poe,' she replied.

She told him what it was.

‘I'm on my way,' he said.