‘I don’t, but you have good instincts. Why not get Tilly on it?’
‘I plan to.’
‘Speaking of Tilly, she tells me the sniper is rolling a pair of twenty-sided dice to get random locations.’
‘She proved it with maths.’
‘Then it’s settled,’ Doyle said. ‘She also tells me you’re infiltrating aDungeons & Dragonsconvention this weekend.’
Poe put his head in his hands and groaned. ‘She’s wearing her sky elf costume,’ he said.
‘You’ll have fun,’ Doyle said.
‘Really?’ Emma said.
‘Hell no. He’ll hate it more than he hates having a butler.’
They laughed.
‘I’m glad my pain amuses you,’ he muttered.
Doyle smiled. She reached across. Put her hands on his. They were cold. They always were. Sometimes Poe thought Doyle had more in common with her patients than she let on.
‘There’s only one thing to do, Poe,’ she said.
‘What’s that?’
‘We’ll get you blind drunk then you can help us feed flies to the plants.’ She picked up a tub of the fruit flies. Held it up to the vivarium-style lighting in the marquee. ‘Or, seeing as they don’t have wings, maybe they should be called walks?’
Edgar woofed. Poe had known his dog long enough to know he was doing something he shouldn’t be doing but having a great time doing it. He looked down at the spaniel. His tail was wagging. Fast. He was licking one of the plastic tubs, like it was ice cream.
Poe sighed. ‘Don’t eat the walks, Edgar,’ he said.
Chapter 27
Poe woke to the smell of hot lard. He reached across the bed, but Doyle was already up. He threw on a pair of shorts, a Dead Men Walking T-shirt from their 2024 ‘Freedom: It Still Ain’t on the Rise’ tour, a pair of cheap trainers. He joined Doyle in the kitchen. She was plating up bacon and eggs for her and Emma. Hangover food.
‘Grab a plate, Poe,’ she said when she saw him. ‘I’ve fried almost half a kilo of bacon.’
He pointed at the block of lard on the kitchen counter. It was unashamed. Lard didn’t mess about. It didn’t try to pretend it wasn’t the rendered fatty tissue of pigs. Poe loved lard. ‘Aren’t you both doctors?’
‘Yeah, but we’re not very good ones,’ Emma said, winking. She looked remarkably chipper. Poe wasn’t surprised. He’d yet to meet a hospital doctor who couldn’t hold their booze. ‘I’m going to eat this but take my coffee to go, if that’s OK, Est?’
‘I thought you were off today?’
‘I am,’ she said. ‘I want to pop into work for an hour, though. I have patients who like to see their doctor.’
She finished her breakfast, kissed Doyle and Poe on the cheek, then left them to it. Poe ate his bacon and eggs in silence, his mind on the case. He mopped up his egg yolk with that awful bread Doyle liked. The kind with gravel pebble-dashed on the crust. When he’d finished, Doyle said, ‘Walk?’
*
Poe and Doyle still split their time between Highwood and Herdwick Croft, Poe’s shepherd’s cottage on the bleak and desolate Shap Fell. Herdwick Croft had the advantage of isolation, something Poe had always appreciated. And now she was Lady Doyle, the late Marquess of Northumberland’s daughter, it was something she waslearningto appreciate. There was always something to do at Highwood. Elcid Doyle, her late father, had an estate manager. Estelle had kept him on but there were things he couldn’t do. Decisions he couldn’t make. When she was at Herdwick Croft, cut off from wi-fi and a mobile phone signal, it was as if she was having the kind of digital detox Londoners checked into two-grand-a-night spas for.
But Herdwick Croftwascramped. Two hundred years ago it had provided shelter to one man and his dog. Literally. A shepherd and his border collie. It wasn’t built for two people. It wasn’t designed as permanent accommodation. It was a waystation. Somewhere for the shepherd to hunker down when the weather got very bad very quickly. On Shap Fell, that happened a lot and without warning. Add a hyperactive springer spaniel to the mix and Herdwick Croft got full pretty darn quickly.
Highwood, on the other hand, had all those bedrooms. You could walk around the estate for days without seeing anyone. You could play hide and seek and never be found. It was the kind of house with wardrobes that led to magical wintery lands where white witches ruled and Turkish Delight was the local currency. Fifteen bedrooms meant Bradshaw could stay with them whenever she wanted. She even had her own room. She had a pair of wellies in the cloakroom.
Poe had thought it would be a wrench to leave Shap Fell for extended periods. And for a while it had been. He’d missed the wild beauty. The raw landscape. The smell of the heather, of the Herdwick sheep. The no-nonsense Cumbrians.
