The door opened and a thin bespectacled woman entered. She was clutching some papers and looked like the physical manifestation of the word ‘bookworm’. She was bright and she was silly and she was brave and loyal and everything that was good. Her name was Tilly Bradshaw and she was Poe’s favourite person in the world.
‘I’m not sure I like everyone comparing me to a goose, Poe,’ she said. ‘They’re particularly dumb birds.’
Poe stared in astonishment. Bradshaw grinned back.
‘Have you missed me?’ she said.
Chapter 8
‘Have you ever seen a goose, Tilly?’ Poe said, smiling wildly. He hadn’t seen Bradshaw for almost two months, and he hadn’t realised how much he’d missed her. ‘And I don’t mean a cartoon one like Donald Duck.’
‘Donald Duck is a duck, Poe,’ Bradshaw said. ‘The clue is in his surname. It’s “Duck”.’
‘You make a good point. But here’s something I bet you didn’t know: Donald Duck speaks like that because he had PTSD.’
‘Gosh, really?’
Poe nodded. ‘It’s why he keeps flying into a rage. He wears a naval uniform and was around during the Second World War. He’ll have almost certainly seen active service.’
‘Butyouhave PTSD and keep flying into a rage, Poe. You don’t speak like Donald Duck.’
Poe said, ‘Quack.’
‘If you’re both finished?’ Spiggens said irritably.
‘Finished?’ Flynn said. ‘They’re only getting started, mate. They can keep this shit up for weeks.’
Poe said, ‘What are you doing here, Tilly?’
‘Alastor Locke made me come,’ Bradshaw replied. ‘I’m supposed to help change your mind. He says you’re as stubborn as a Muirkirk iron—’
‘I don’t know if that’s good or bad,’ Poe said.
‘I don’t either, but he seemed awfully keen for me to be here.’
‘To persuade me to go and work with him?’
‘Yes, Poe.’
‘And do you think I should?’
‘Not if you don’t want to. That last case almost killed you. You’re still seeing Doctor Clara Lang and you have a wonderful life ahead with Estelle Doyle. I think you should let someone else do it this time.’
‘This isn’t what we discussed, Miss Bradshaw,’ Locke said.
Locke may as well have not spoken. Bradshaw was like a mother bear when it came to Poe. Protective didn’t come close to describing how far she’d go when it came to watching his back.
‘But we’d be working together again,’ he said. ‘That’d be fun.’
‘Actually, Miss Bradshaw is needed elsewhere, Poe,’ Locke said. ‘It would only be you and DCI Flynn.’
Bradshaw’s shoulders slumped. She tried to smile but couldn’t manage it.
‘Do you enjoy what you’re doing for Alastor, Tilly?’ Poe said.
‘I hate it, Poe,’ she said. ‘The people I work with are nitwits and the work is unchallenging. And I never know if what Alastor Locke orders me to do is a good thing or not. At least when I worked with you and DCI Flynn, I never doubted that what we were doing was just, even if we did upset a lot of people along the way.’
‘That was mainly Poe to be fair, Tilly,’ Flynn said.
