The Puppet Show (Washington Poe)

Bradshaw brought up the 3D image of Poe’s name and they all studied it. Reid said, ‘That the only one we have, Tilly?’

As before, she took them through a series of slides. The last one was a deeper image and showed fragments of the wounds used to make up the letters in Washington Poe. These were the wounds that had cut so deep they’d caught the ribs. Most of the others hadn’t gone as deep. None of the other images seemed to offer up anything new and she returned to the first one.

For five minutes, no one spoke as they absorbed what was projected onto Poe’s wall. Tilly opened as many screens as she could fit on the sheet and filled them with different pictures.

‘Anyone?’ Flynn asked.

Poe was staring so hard his eyes were beginning to blur. Like the percontation point, the top images were the most distorted by the fire. The edges of the wounds weren’t as sharp as the ones taken from deeper inside the body.

Bradshaw brought up some more. The new images were different to the ones they’d been viewing previously. The fire hadn’t managed to get that deep and the wounds Bradshaw was showing on the sheet were sharper. Thin and precise.

Poe leaned in, squinted at one of the images and said, ‘Is it just me or do those letters look different?’

Bradshaw responded first. ‘You’re right, Poe! The slant of the letters isn’t consistent. Neither is the spacing.’ She produced a laser pointer from nowhere and aimed it at the sheet. ‘I’ve studied forensic handwriting and I think the second, third and fourth letter in Washington and the first letter in Poe were written left-handed. The difference in the spacing would also suggest they were written before the right-handed letters were put in.’

Poe said, ‘Steph? This is your investigation. What do you think?’

She stood and walked to the makeshift screen. She traced the four letters with her hand. She turned and said, ‘I think you’re both right. I think those four letters are different and I think they do mean something. Unfortunately they’re of no help whatsoever.’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Poe felt deflated. He waited for Flynn’s explanation.

‘It’s an anagram,’ she said.

Poe had never been good at word puzzles; he was a lateral rather than analytical thinker. Reid was even worse than he was, which, for someone with his vocabulary, was surprising. Bradshaw could probably solve anagrams at the same time as she solved advanced equations.

But even he could have a decent stab at a four-letter problem.

Flynn didn’t give him time to think. ‘It’s Shap,’ she said. ‘That’s why the letters were different. It was to make sure we came to this Washington Poe.’

Poe immediately reflated; he knew something Flynn didn’t. He and Reid exchanged glances. He said, ‘You ever googled yourself, Steph?’

She blushed slightly and said she hadn’t.

Yeah, you have, he thought. Everyone has.

Poe was as ‘don’t give a shit what people think’ as they came, and he’d googled himself. When Peyton Williams had died, and someone – almost certainly Deputy Director Hanson – had leaked his name to the press, he’d stayed off the internet while the press called him a vigilante. In truth, it had been an easy thing to do; by then he’d been suspended and was living at Herdwick Croft where surfing the ‘net’ to idle away time was no longer possible. But curiosity is a funny thing. One evening he’d been in the bar at Shap Wells, and, taking advantage of the free wi-fi, he’d typed his name into Google. The first time he’d done it.

The results were astonishing. The vitriol aimed his way was bizarre. Peyton Williams had abducted and killed two women, had almost killed a third, and yet, in some people’s eyes, Poe was the bad guy. He remembered the good old days when having strong opinions about issues you knew nothing about was considered a negative thing. Facts no longer mattered. Populism and fake news had seemingly turned half the population into mindless trolls.

But . . . the other thing he’d learned from searching Google was that he shared his name with only one other person; an American politician from Georgia who had died in 1876.

He was sure there must be others out there, but he doubted Gamble would have needed his name and location to work out to which Washington Poe the Immolation Man was referring. He could imagine the detectives in Cumbria – some of whom he’d worked with for years – saying, ‘Oh, that Washington Poe. Now he’s mentioned Shap, I know exactly who he means.’

He explained that there were no other Washington Poes, but Flynn didn’t seem convinced.

‘It’s too much of a coincidence,’ she said. ‘And the Immolation Man wouldn’t necessarily know there’s only one of you on the internet.’

Poe shrugged. ‘I think it’s worth following up. If he hid Shap in the message just to make sure you came to me, then fair enough, but checking costs us nothing.’ He waited for her to make the right decision. She didn’t disappoint.

She nodded and turned to Reid. ‘I think this might be a job for our liaison officer. Can you get onto Cumbria’s intelligence systems? See if anything weird has happened here recently.’

‘Like?’

‘JDLR,’ Poe cut in. ‘You’ll know it when you see it.’

‘Just Doesn’t Look Right,’ Reid said. ‘OK, I’ll go to Kendal nick and check SLEUTH.’