The Puppet Show (Washington Poe)

Bradshaw nodded excitedly. ‘We’d assumed the killer had carved a number five into the chest of Michael James, but what if that was simply apophenia, which means—’

‘We know what apophenia means, Tilly,’ Flynn said.

‘—seeing patterns when there aren’t any,’ Bradshaw finished regardless. ‘What if we saw the number five because we’re conditioned to look for numbers? And my program works on probability – it wouldn’t have recognised a percontation point so would have simply inserted the nearest thing to it.’

‘The number five,’ Poe said.

‘Yes, Poe,’ she replied. ‘The number five would be the nearest match to the program’s reference points. The letter “S” would have been the closest after that.’

‘Is there any way to check the original wounds?’ Poe asked.

‘Yes, Poe. I still have the data on my laptop.’

She pressed a few buttons on her laptop and the 3D image of his name appeared on the wall. It was the clearest one of his name; the letters were all taken from different slides to ensure each one was the optimum for viewing.

‘Can you separate the symbol?’ Poe asked. In his mind, he’d already dismissed the number five.

Bradshaw fiddled some more. There were fifty images of the symbol, each one taken at a slightly different depth. She put them on a slideshow, shallowest first. Because of the damage caused by the burnt flesh, the first few did look like the number five. The deeper she went with the image, the clearer the cuts became. The last few weren’t clear at all, just some nicks in the breastbone. She came back up a couple of slides.

‘There,’ Reid said. ‘That’s the one.’

Bradshaw stopped the slideshow.

They stared at the screen. What they’d earlier assumed had been the bottom part of the number five was in fact a separate, albeit smaller, wound. The Immolation Man had added a single stab wound under the curved part of the percontation point to represent the dot. Probably stabbed then twisted to add depth and definition. When the

fire caused the flesh to split, the wound at the bottom had taken the path of least resistance and joined the bottom of the percontation point. While the top MSCT images had looked like a number five, the lower ones most certainly didn’t. It wasn’t a perfect explanation but Poe suspected that the Immolation Man, when trying to carve an elegant and obscure symbol into the chest of a wriggling, screaming victim, had simply done the best he could.

And because everyone had missed it, he’d followed it up with a postcard.

If they were right – and Poe thought they were – then he wasn’t the intended fifth victim. That was good news. The bad news was that the Immolation Man knew where he lived.

He said, ‘Well, boss, I don’t know about you but if I had to put my money on it, I’d say that wasn’t a number five after all, I’d say that was a perforation point.’

‘Percontation point,’ Bradshaw corrected.

‘Agreed,’ Flynn said. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence not to be.’

Poe felt a prickle of excitement. Bradshaw had said one of the percontation point’s uses was to denote that a sentence or passage had another layer or meaning. He picked up the evidence bag. ‘Do we all think this was sent because we didn’t get the first message?’

Flynn paused. ‘There’s nothing else we can think.’

‘And there was definitely nothing on the first two victims?’ he asked.

‘Nope,’ Reid replied. ‘They’ve been retrospectively checked.’

‘And SCAS were called in after the second victim, but after the post-mortem?’

Flynn nodded.

‘So it would be fair to say, if you did have a message for SCAS, the body of the third victim rather than the first would be the one to use.’

‘Logically, I can’t argue with that,’ Flynn said. ‘What do we need to do next?’

‘I think we should look at Michael James’s chest again,’ Poe said. ‘All the slides, not just the highlights. But this time we put on our lateral-thinking pants.’

Bradshaw’s hand shot up.

‘Our figurative lateral-thinking pants,’ Poe said without missing a beat. Her hand went back down.