Chapter 7

‘A murder?' Doctor Lang said.

‘Of crows,' Poe explained. ‘Technically they were carrion crows. Corvus corone. There were some magpies as well, but they're skittish and didn't hang around.'

‘But the crows did?'

‘They were full of meat and are lazy at the best of times. So, yes, they did hang around. Stood around like vultures. A few cocked their heads like they were waiting for me to make a speech, but the rest remained motionless. I think this is the bit I remember most of all – the way they just stared. Watching, waiting, emotionless.'

‘This is what you see when you sleep?'

Poe nodded. ‘It was like something out of Hammer House of Horror, Doctor Lang,' he said. ‘There were at least twenty on the ground, more in the trees. Creepy bastards, pardon my French.'

She waved away his apology. ‘We're in a psychiatric hospital,' she said. ‘This won't be the last expletive I hear today. What happened next?'

‘Anthony, the bloke who'd fetched me from the pub, grabbed a fallen branch and started yelling and swinging it about.'

‘That scared them away?'

‘It did. To the trees at least. They watched us for the rest of the afternoon.'

‘And it was badgers?'

‘It was. The plot behind the church tower looked like a ploughed field. Clawed mounds of earth, two metres high.'

‘I knew badgers ate worms; I didn't realise they also ate corpses.'

‘It's not the corpses they like, it's the easy digging.'

‘Easy digging?'

‘Yep. Although they have powerful forelegs, and long, non-retractable claws, at this time of year the ground is frosty and digging is hard. But, because graveyards are quiet and tend to be on ground that can be dug up with nothing more than a spade, they're attractive to badgers. In other words, the essential characteristics of a graveyard are the same essential characteristics of a badger sett.'

‘And this badger was digging a new one?'

‘Judging by the amount of spill, it was a medium-sized cete.'

‘Cete?'

‘A group of badgers. At least four adults, Anthony reckoned.'

‘And they'd unearthed the grave of that man's mother?'

‘They'd been digging parallel to it, and when they went deeper than six feet, they completely collapsed her grave. The coffin had toppled into the half-constructed sett. And that loosened the earth above. Foxes smelled a cheap meal and dug down for it. And in the morning, after the foxes had slunk back into their holes, the crows began feasting.'

‘How disgusting,' Doctor Lang said. ‘I assume the coffin had cracked open. That's what the foxes and crows were eating?'

‘The coffin was intact,' Poe said.

‘Oh? But I thought this man Anthony told you there was a body that wasn't supposed to be in the grave.'

‘He did and there was. The corpse he wanted me to see had been hidden underneath the coffin.'

‘Underneath?'

‘The body of a young man, I found out later. And he wasn't fresh. There was barely anything left of him. He had been wrapped in plastic but as soon as the badgers unearthed him, the foxes and crows started picking him clean. That man's mum had been in the ground seventeen years. We assume the young man had been there for as long.'

‘But . . . why?'

‘Why not?' Poe said. ‘I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often to be honest. As a way of getting rid of a corpse, a grave is practically foolproof. They're always dug the night before so it would have been a simple case of digging down a couple more feet and hiding the body. The next morning a bunch of people stand around while a coffin is lowered into it, no one realising that when the vicar does his "I am the resurrection" bit, he's blessing two corpses, not one. A headstone is whacked on top like a giant full stop, and the body underneath the coffin is gone, if not forever, then at least until someone gets an exhumation order.'

‘That's . . . creative.'

‘But, unfortunately for whomever did this, badgers don't bother with exhumation orders.'

‘Who was he?'

‘My involvement stopped there.'

‘It did? But you're a detective and surely this was a murder. Did you not have, what do you call it . . . jurisdiction?'

‘I was with the National Crime Agency's Serious Crime Analysis Section, Doctor Lang,' Poe explained. ‘My job was to catch serial killers. All I did at St Michael's was call Cumbria Constabulary to tell them they had a deposition site. My role ended there.'

‘But you must have wondered?'

‘I did,' Poe admitted. ‘The senior investigating officer eventually put it down to an undocumented economic migrant dying in an accident at one of the illegal quarries up near the church. The post-mortem had revealed head and upper torso injuries consistent with a bad rock fall. They believe the gangmaster must have panicked and, instead of reporting the death, taken the easy way out and hid the body before fleeing back to mainland Europe. The coroner recorded an open verdict.'

‘And you accepted that?'

‘Like I said, it wasn't my case. The lead detective handed the whole thing over to the Health and Safety Executive in the end.'

‘But something happened to change your mind?'

‘Why do you say that?'

‘Because, if in your mind the crows are the catalyst for everything that happened in here,' she said, placing the palm of her hand on the file, ‘that means the man in the grave is somehow linked to the man at the Lightning Tree.'

Poe took his time, but eventually nodded.

‘And the Lightning Tree is where I officially enter this story,' he said.