She grinned. ‘Just put your little sticker by the bowl and choose another four dishes, Poe.’
‘Who are all these people?’ he said, gesturing at the strangers in the large marquee that had been put up in the grounds of Highwood, Doyle’s ancestral home near Corbridge. He guessed it would soon be his home too. As the day got nearer, more marquees would be added to this one. A disco tent that Poe hoped to never set foot in, and a taproom run by the Carlisle Brewing Company that he hoped to never leave.
‘I’m not nineteen, Poe,’ she said. ‘I don’t have a large circle of friends any more. I have asmallcircle of friends. Admittedly, it’s not as small as your circle, which at best can be described as a triangle, but the friends I do have want to be involved.’
‘I get that. Why are they herenow? Isn’t tonight just to practise?’
‘Practise what? Standing in a tent? Sod that. No, tonight is for you to get used to the idea of being married, to meet, and no doubt immediately dislike, some of my friends who can’t make the wedding, and to choose the food we’ll feed to the ones who can.’
‘Why can’t they come?’
‘Some are on call, some are out of the country. Some are even more misanthropic than you.’ She gestured at a bunch of older men and women. Looked like they were tweed fetishists. ‘And that crusty lot were friends of my father’s. They’re not invited to the actual wedding, but they wanted to wish me well.’
‘Nice of them.’
‘Not really,’ Doyle said. ‘I’ve been asked three times tonight about my plans for my father’s grouse moor.’
Elcid Doyle, the old Marquess of Northumberland, had owned one of the biggest grouse moors outside Scotland. He had been murdered and Doyle was accused of patricide. Eventually, Poe was able to clear her name and put the real killer behind bars. Her father’s estate had passed to her.
‘Whatareyour plans?’ Poe asked.
‘I haven’t discussed it with him yet.’
‘Discussed it with who?’
‘My future husband.’
And then she disappeared into a throng of well-wishers. She glanced back at Poe and winked. He reddened and went back to selecting his five dishes. He picked up another. It contained a perfectly cut cube of belly pork, crispy skin, layers of mouthwatering fat. He put a sticker beside the dish before he’d even tried it. Then he ate it. It was even nicer than it looked. Two down, three to go. He glanced at Doyle again, thought about how much he loved her.
Thought about how happy he was.
It was time. The marquee was full. The man in the ghillie suit didn’t think it was worth waiting any longer. Another twenty minutes and light would start to be a problem. It was very rural here. It got dark quickly and stayed dark. No light pollution in this part of the UK.
He lifted his rifle and settled into the prone position. He lowered his head and put his eye to the Schmidt & Bender sight. Everyone was seated, the bride-to-be at the head of the long wooden table. Her husband-to-be by her side. They were laughing together. Happy. He adjusted the magnification until the bride-to-be’s head filled the crosshair. He breathed in, held it on the way back out.
Stable.
He squeezed the trigger. Gently. One fluid motion.
Estelle Doyle exploded into laughter.
Bradshaw had just finished her rehearsal speech and it was even worse than Poe had feared. She’d discussed their first case, the Immolation Man, and she didn’t spare the gory stuff. She talked about their investigations over the years: the murderous chef; the idiot who called himself the Curator; the idiot the press called the Botanist. A bunch of other idiots. She explained the science in the way only Bradshaw could: she made something complicated sound even more complicated. She spent ten minutes on Benford’s law, a mathematical model about real-life sets of numerical data. But she also told everyone about how they’d met, and how their friendship had formed and blossomed. She said she’d never had a friend until she met Poe, now she had five – Poe, Flynn, Doyle, Poe’s nearest neighbour Victoria Hume, and Edgar – and how she’d never thought she’d ever go to a wedding, never mind give a best man’s speech. ‘AndI don’t even have a penis!’ she’d said excitedly. She explained, in detail, why pasta wouldn’t be served at the wedding breakfast. ‘Poe says it doesn’t taste of anything and he can’t go to the toilet properly afterwards.’ She mentioned Edgar seventeen times. She said he didn’t drink enough water twice. At one point Flynn was laughing so hard she had to go outside.
She went on to describe how he still had PTSD after their last major case but somehow made it funny – ‘He wakes up screaming so loud it’s as if he’s accidentally drunk low-alcohol beer’ – then finished with a delightful anecdote about how Poe had been drinking breast milk when he found out Doyle had been arrested for her father’s murder.
Bradshaw sat down to thunderous applause. Poe doubted there’d been a best man’s speech like it in recorded history. He smiled at his friend and nodded his approval. She breathed a sigh of relief and gave him a goofy wave in return. He was reaching for his fourteenth cube of belly pork when his phone began to ring. So did Flynn’s and Bradshaw’s.
Doyle stopped laughing. Flynn answered her mobile and listened for less than a minute. Her face darkened. She hung up and looked at Poe.
‘There’s been another one?’ Doyle asked.
Flynn nodded.
‘Go,’ Doyle said. ‘All of you.’
Chapter 18
The second before she was shot in the head, Jools Arreghini had been the only daughter of Archie and Clarice. The second after the .50-inch calibre bullet had blown off the top of her skull like her head was a soft-boiled egg and the bullet was a sharp-edged spoon, she became thelatedaughter of Archie and Clarice.
