The Puppet Show (Washington Poe)

Poe read it off the fax he was holding. ‘To assist in an ongoing serious investigation.’

‘And the reason for urgency?’

It was the same reason. Poe repeated it. She stared but Poe didn’t elaborate.

Ackley went back to her form. ‘As the body’s a John Doe there isn’t a family to seek permission from and I can confirm that this section of the cemetery is neither consecrated ground nor a registered war grave. I can also confirm that the body can be disinterred without disturbing other remains and that the authority controlling the cemetery has no objection.’

‘We ready to go then?’

‘We are, DS Poe. My people will be here soon. We’ll start at eighteen minutes past five.’

Poe looked at her quizzically, he’d noticed the weird time on the exhumation order earlier.

‘It’s the official time for sunrise. If we do this during daylight we don’t need specialist lighting. And that means I don’t need health and safety to certify the generator, the lighting rigs and the cables. Reduces the paperwork and the amount of people who need to be here.’

A council employee who didn’t like bureaucracy? Poe liked Freya Ackley.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

At four-thirty, the gravediggers arrived. Three of them. They were prepared for the task in hand. They moved floral tributes from the adjacent graves and erected blue plastic screens to ensure privacy. With the preparation done they disappeared, returning with protective clothing for everyone. There’d be no more people coming; there’d been a thorough forensic post-mortem completed so Poe hadn’t needed – and wouldn’t have wanted – crime scene investigators. This was all about satisfying his curiosity; if he spotted anything out of the ordinary, he’d stop it all and call Flynn.

As the exhumation order only gave authority for a graveside examination of the remains, two of the gravediggers went for Tollund Man’s new coffin, a large casket called a ‘shell’. It was made of wood and tarred on the inside. It had a zinc liner and a leak-proof plastic membrane. The remains of Tollund Man, his coffin, and anything else found in the grave would be placed inside the ‘shell’, sealed, and reburied in the original grave.

Ackley was required to approve the ‘shell’ – a task that would ordinarily have been completed in her allotted five days. She checked the new nameplate on the lid to ensure it matched the one on the grave and the exhumation order. She asked Poe to double-check. He did. They matched.

They were ready. They only needed to wait until daylight. Ackley took the time to deliver her required briefing. As the environmental health officer, it was her job to ensure that respect for the deceased was maintained. More importantly, it was also her responsibility to ensure that public health was protected during the exhumation. She briefed Poe and the gravediggers on the risk of infection from human remains and the soil surrounding graves. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, tetanus, even smallpox were transmittable and were still viable after interment. Ackley was reading from prepared notes and Poe was paying as much attention as he would a pre-flight safety demonstration; Tollund Man had been buried in salt for decades and had been tested and autopsied – there was no risk. He doubted he’d been in the ground long enough to even start decomposing.

Poe glanced at his watch. It was officially morning: five-eighteen had happened. He closed his eyes and tried to calm himself. Tried not to imagine ‘Ex-cop Reduced to Grave Robbing’ as the lead in tomorrow’s newspapers.

It was at that point that someone leaned into him and snarled, ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Poe?’ into his ear.

Poe’s eyes snapped open. Flynn was glaring at him. He’d never seen her so angry.

He started to speak but she cut him off.

‘How dare you!’

‘Steph, listen—’

‘Don’t, Poe,’ she snapped. ‘Just fucking don’t.’

Poe did. ‘I spoke to van Zyl last night. He authorised it and chased everyone to get it done quickly,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry but here we are.’

‘You went above my head?’ Her voice was low.

Poe shrugged. ‘I’d hardly call it that.’

‘What would you call it?’

Poe didn’t have an answer and he had no intention of hiding behind banal platitudes. He’d have been furious if the roles had been reversed, but the Immolation Man hadn’t carved her name into someone’s chest. He didn’t have the luxury of kowtowing to procedural niceties. ‘It’s me he’s taunting, Steph. Not you, not Gamble. And you know who I am, why van Zyl wanted me in the first place – I go where the evidence takes me. And it’s taken me here.’

‘Fuck off, Poe,’ she growled. ‘That’s binary thinking and it’s unworthy of you. It’s not as simple as that. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things and this is absolutely the wrong way. What’s DCS Gamble going to say when he finds out the NCA has exhumed a body in his investigation without telling him? He’s going to go ballistic.’

‘Blame me,’ Poe replied.

‘Blame . . . who the fuck else would I blame?’

Fair point. This was the Peyton Williams case all over again; even when he was right he was wrong. He handed over the faxed copy of the exhumation order.