The Puppet Show (Washington Poe)

‘Anything?’ Flynn asked.

‘Nothing obvious. No suspicious deaths for years and nothing on the system weird enough to be linked to the Immolation Man.’

Poe could sense a ‘but’ coming.

‘But,’ Reid said, ‘and I’m loath to even mention this, as I was leaving the office, I gave a last shout out for anything.’

‘And?’ Poe asked.

‘And someone who lives in Shap reminded me that Tollund Man was found up here.’

Poe was nonplussed. His history recollection wasn’t perfect, but even he knew the two-and-a-half thousand-year-old mummified body of the Tollund Man had been found in Denmark, not Cumbria. It was one of the weird facts that had stuck from his school days. That, and the Spinning Jenny having had something to do with the Industrial Revolution.

‘Not the Tollund Man, obviously,’ Reid clarified. ‘But twelve months ago, a John Doe was found buried in a salt depot up here. Although the salt had dried him out to no more than a husk, he was perfectly preserved. The cops who worked on it gave him the nickname and it stuck. Total fuck-up from start to finish. The guy on the JCB had scooped him up in the bucket, panicked when his workmate saw a hand sticking out. Dumped the full load on his mate, who died of a heart attack.’

Poe hadn’t heard of it, but then again, why would he? He’d been little more than a hermit for the last year and a half. ‘Who was he?’

‘He was never identified. There were no obvious injuries and the pathologist thought the cause of death was probably natural. The prevailing theory is that he collapsed while trying to steal salt for his drive – a lot of that used to go on when the council stored salt and grit outside – and either died immediately or froze to death. The body gets covered with snow and then the digger doesn’t notice him when he’s loading the lorry.’

‘Surely he’d have clogged up the gritter, though?’

‘Not necessarily. He was found in the Hardendale Salt Store, that stupid-looking one at junction thirty-nine on the M6.’

Poe knew it well – it was only a few miles from Herdwick Croft. It was dome-shaped and he’d assumed it was some sort of air-defence installation when it first went up. He remembered feeling disappointed when he discovered its more mundane purpose.

Reid continued, ‘Anyway, Highways England have a contract with the council to keep it fully stocked. When the council closed some of their smaller depots, most of the salt was transferred to Hardendale. It’s likely Tollund Man was stealing salt from one of the smaller, outside deports when he died and was simply transported to Hardendale in the back of a council truck. If it hadn’t been for the brutal winter we’ve just had, it’s unlikely the salt would have been depleted low enough for him to be found.’

‘And it was definitely natural causes?’ Flynn asked.

‘That’s what the pathologist said.’

‘And the man who died at the scene?’

‘A walking heart attack apparently. The dickhead driving the JCB resigned before he could be sacked, but there was never any suspicion of foul play.’

‘Why was the body never identified? Surely someone must have missed him.’

‘He had nothing on him and, because of the salt, the pathologist couldn’t be sure how long he’d been dead,’ Reid replied. He removed a notebook from his inside pocket. ‘The official report is that he’d probably been in his early forties when he died but that could have been years ago.’

‘And missing persons was nowhere near as sophisticated back then,’ Poe said.

‘Exactly.’

Bradshaw had been busy on her computer for a change. Despite Tollund Man being seemingly irrelevant, she’d taken it personally that her beloved internet had let her down.

Poe heard the printer she’d set up whirr into action. She collected the information and passed them a sheet each. It was an article in the Westmorland Gazette entitled: Man Dies After Unidentified Body Found in Hardendale Salt Store. It was a summary of what the press knew. It was less than Reid had told them and mostly conjecture.

They read in silence.

Poe got to the pathologist’s report. It said that, for the unidentified man to become as desiccated as he had been, he had to have been buried in salt for at least three years, and the clothes he was wearing meant he couldn’t have been there for more than thirty. The jacket he’d been wearing had only been available since the mid 1980s.

But Poe wasn’t buying such a vague time of death. Not in the context of where they were, and what was happening. Not when you considered one other factor.

‘It’s him,’ he said. ‘This is who the Immolation Man is pointing us towards.’

His statement was greeted by silence.

‘Go on,’ Flynn said.