Chapter 81

‘Graves?' Poe said. ‘Does this mean Cornelius Green isn't our only victim? There might be six more bodies out there?'

‘I don't know what's out there, Poe,' Bradshaw replied. ‘I do know that each one of those tattoos represents the location of an officially registered grave.'

‘But we could have a serial killer?'

Bradshaw shook her head. ‘Not unless he's been active since the Second World War.'

‘I think you'd better explain, Tilly.'

She pulled a sheet of paper from the portable printer she carried everywhere.

‘This is the tattoo found on both Cornelius Green and Nathan Rose,' she said.

She placed the sheet on the desk.

CSM.12.R2.CL

She circled ‘CSM' with a red pen.

‘CSM stands for Christ and Saint Mary,' she said. ‘It's a church near Ulverston.'

‘There's more than one Christ and Saint Mary in Cumbria, Tilly,' Poe said. ‘How do you know it's that one?'

‘I'll get to that, Poe.' She circled ‘12' and ‘R2'. ‘Their graveyard is set up in rows. Therefore, the middle section of the tattoo refers to grave number twelve on row two.'

Poe nodded. ‘And CL?'

‘According to the cemetery map CL stands for "Circle Lawn". It's the name of that part of the graveyard. I assume it's circular and grassy.'

‘But how do you know you have the right church?'

‘Apart from the fact there is only one Christ and Saint Mary with a Circle Lawn in the north of England, the dates line up.'

‘What dates?'

‘The grave belongs to a woman called Hazel Rampling. She was sixty-three years old when she died.'

‘She was murdered?'

‘No, Poe. She died in a car crash in 2004.'

Poe made the link. ‘Nathan Rose attended his course at the Children of Job in 2004. How close do the dates match?'

‘Hazel Rampling was buried on the fourth of June, Poe. Nathan attended his course on the second of June.'

‘I'm not following this at all,' Linus said. ‘Nathan Rose attends a course at the start of June and two days later Hazel Rampling is buried in a Cumbrian graveyard at the other end of the county. For some reason both Cornelius Green and Nathan Rose feel the need to tattoo themselves with the location of Hazel's grave. Is that about it?'

‘It is, Linus.'

‘What links a car-crash victim to a man who attended a conversion therapy course? A man who later kills himself when he's asked about it?'

‘I have no idea,' Bradshaw admitted.

‘There was definitely nothing suspicious about Hazel Rampling's death?' Poe asked.

‘Nothing I could find, Poe. But you're missing the wider point, I think.'

‘Which is?'

‘Hazel Rampling wasn't an isolated incident.'

‘She wasn't?'

‘No, Poe.'

‘I think you'd better talk me through the others, Tilly,' Poe said. ‘There has to be an explanation for this. Let's see if we can figure it out.'

Bradshaw began talking them through the remaining five tattoos.

‘CC.58.R4.HI is Christ Church in Barrow. Grave fifty-eight, row four in the Holy Innocent plot, belongs to Alex Stanton. He was twelve years old when he died of leukaemia. He was buried in 2001, a week after one of Cornelius Green's undisclosed courses.'

Bradshaw raced through the rest. SJE.77.PC was Saint John the Evangelist in Maryport. The church graveyard didn't have rows, simply numbers, and a thirty-six-year-old called Aleksy Nowak was buried in PC, the Polish community plot.

SB.47.R9.SG was grave forty-seven, row nine in Saint Bega in Appleby. SG was the Saint George plot.

‘AS.104X.GO was the tricky one, Poe,' Bradshaw explained. ‘There are four All Saints churches in the north of England and the south of Scotland, but only one with a grave that matched Cornelius Green's AS.104X.GO tattoo.'

‘The church we've just been to?'

‘Yes, Poe.'

‘Why did we need to go to that one and not any of the others?'

Bradshaw pointed at AS.104X.GO and said, ‘As you've no doubt worked out, AS stands for the All Saints. One hundred and four is the grave number and X means there is an extra grave there, almost certainly to do with lack of space. Instead of renumbering all the graves, they simply add an X to denote the extra one. The grave belongs to a man called Erich Brandt.'

‘Fewer and fewer people can get buried these days,' Poe said. ‘The graveyards are all full. What does the GO stand for, Tilly?'

‘It stands for German Officer, Poe.'

She waited for the significance of what she'd said to register.

‘German Officer?' Poe said. ‘Hence the Second World War reference.'

‘I don't get it,' Linus said. ‘Why would a German officer be buried in a graveyard in Kendal?'

‘Shap Wells, the hotel you and Tilly stayed at, used to be prisoner-of-war camp number fifteen, Snoopy. It was mainly used for German officers. Presumably when they died, they were buried in local graveyards.'

‘That's right, Poe,' Bradshaw confirmed.

‘But this doesn't fit with the pattern, does it?' Poe said. ‘You said all the graves tattooed on Cornelius Green were of people buried between 2001 and 2007. I failed O-level history, but even I know the Second World War ended in 1945.'

‘Which was why I needed the church records, Poe. Everything fit, but not the AS.104X.GO tattoo. Erich Brandt was buried in 1943 after a brief bout of pneumonia.'

Poe shrugged. ‘I wouldn't worry about it, Tilly. The one thing I've learned on this case is that Cornelius Green was a nutter. Trying to second guess the meaning behind his tattoos is the quickest way to a padded cell.'

‘But I do worry about it, Poe. Cornelius didn't invent the grave location system; it was well-established and in use long before he was born. Each grave's location is correctly identified by his tattoos, and five of them were of people who were interred within days of one of those six secret courses. I needed to know why one grave was different. If I couldn't answer that, none of it made sense. Like I said, when it comes to deciphering codes it all works or none of it works.'

Poe looked at the masses of church records he and Linus had brought back from All Saints. They had only been at the restaurant fifteen minutes; no way had Bradshaw had the time to go through it all. But she'd called them back anyway.

‘You know why Cornelius had the location of the German officer's grave tattooed on his torso, don't you?'

‘I do, Poe. In 2007 some of the German graves were vandalised. The headstones were knocked over and smashed and chemical waste was poured on the ground. The church moved them all.'

‘And when was Erich Brandt's grave moved, Tilly?' Poe asked, already knowing the answer.

‘Four days after Aaron Bowman's course ended, Poe.'

‘OK, I think I need to call Superintendent Nightingale now. She needs to know that Cornelius Green had the location of six random graves tattooed on his body.' He selected her number. ‘This was an odd dot to connect, Tilly,' he said while he waited for Nightingale to answer her phone.

‘It was your diet, Poe,' Bradshaw said. ‘When I said your epitaph would read "Washington Poe: Died of a Saturated Fat Overdose. What an Idiot", it reminded me that grave location systems use letters and numbers. I thought it was worth checking out.'

‘Poe?' Nightingale said. ‘Is this urgent? I'm about to chair a meeting.'

Poe told her what Bradshaw had discovered. She asked a few questions but there really wasn't much to misunderstand: Cornelius Green's tattoos were the locations of graves.

‘There's definitely no link between the people buried?' Nightingale asked.

‘One of them was a German prisoner of war. He died in 1943.'

‘But there's a connection to the courses Cornelius ran?'

‘Tilly thinks there is.'

‘Good enough for me,' Nightingale said. ‘I'll work on an exhumation order. We'll get one out of the ground and see what we find. That work for you, Poe?'

But Poe didn't answer. He had just noticed Bradshaw's handwritten notes next to the last grave on the list. The one they hadn't discussed yet. He swallowed hard and bit down the urge to vomit.

‘What is it, Poe?' Nightingale said.

‘I know what we're going to find, ma'am.'

Bradshaw and Linus stared at him in astonishment.

‘You do?' Nightingale said. ‘How?'

‘A badger told me,' he said.