The Puppet Show (Washington Poe)

‘And what, you forgot you had it?’

‘I did. When I found it later I was scared the police might think I’d stolen it.’

‘Imagine that,’ Poe said. ‘So where is it?’

He didn’t have an answer. Poe suspected he’d sold it. Sharples continued to stare at the floor.

‘I said—’

‘I don’t have it any more!’

‘I want the serial number and photographs,’ Poe said. He turned to Bradshaw. It was what you did when you wanted something checking on the internet. She was already on her phone.

‘Value?’ Poe asked her.

‘A Breitling 1962 model would cost approximately ten thousand pounds, Poe,’ she replied. She seemed to be enjoying her first trip out into the field. At some point Poe would have to explain that it wasn’t official. Let her decide whether she wanted to carry on or not. But not just yet.

Poe turned to Sharples and asked, ‘Who did you sell it to?’

‘I want a deal.’

Poe snorted. Even Bradshaw giggled.

‘You watch too much shit television, Mr Sharples,’ he said. ‘This isn’t America. There’ll be no deal. What there might be is mitigation. That’s where the judge looks at something good you might have done, instead of just the bad. And the only way you’ll get mitigation is if I get hold of that fucking watch. Now, tell me who you sold it to.’

‘I can’t,’ he whispered. ‘I sold it on a specialist watch site to an anonymous collector in the States.’

‘Tilly?’

‘Please can you move out of the way, Mr Sharples,’ she said as she pushed past Sharples and powered up his Mac. ‘Password, please?’

He told her.

While Bradshaw searched the computer, Poe asked, ‘How much did you get for it?’

‘Certainly not ten thousand pounds!’ he said. He seemed annoyed he’d been fleeced. ‘I got five thousand dollars, which came to a touch over three thousand sterling.’ He eyed Bradshaw nervously. ‘What’s she doing?’

Poe said, ‘What most people don’t realise, Mr Sharples, is that you can delete things from your computer all you want, but everything’s recoverable. Tilly here will uncover anything you’ve written about that Breitling. How long, Tilly?’

‘Found it, Poe’ she said. ‘Do you have a printer, Mr Sharples?’

He opened a cupboard and pressed a button. A green light came on and the printer whirred and clunked its way to being ready. ‘It’s wireless,’ he said.

Bradshaw rolled her eyes and said, ‘Duh.’

She printed off some documents. She handed them to Poe without looking at them.

He flicked through them. They were colour and the first few pages were good – certainly enough to secure Sharples’s conviction – but it wasn’t until the last two that he hit the mother lode.

The buyer had wanted to see what he was buying and Sharples had been happy to oblige. Six full-colour photographs, three to a page. It was the fifth that made Poe smile.

It was of the back of the watch.

And there, as clear as day, was its unique serial number.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

They left Sharples but told him to stay where he was. Uniformed officers would be coming for him. They would be, but not for a while and not until Poe had finished chasing down the watch’s original owner.