The Puppet Show (Washington Poe)

Oldwater retrieved a slim file from a filing cabinet. He opened it and showed Poe. ‘The Church’s assets, Detective Sergeant Poe.’

It was a glossy financial spreadsheet. The number at the bottom was staggering. It was in the billions, not millions. He had no idea the Church was that wealthy.

‘You’re wondering why I showed you that?’

Poe was about to say that it was to demonstrate how powerful his organisation was, but the reply died on his lips. Oldwater didn’t seem angry. Perhaps it wasn’t that.

‘It’s not to show you how powerful we are, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

What was he, a bloody mind reader . . .?

‘Never occurred to me.’

‘No, it’s to show you how good we are. We have some of the finest accountants in the country. We don’t pay our clergy much and occasionally one or two are tempted from the path. My point is, we always find out. And when I tell you that the investigation was an investigation and not a cover-up, you can take that as fact. The Church protects its investments jealously.’

Poe looked at the spreadsheet again. It was true, he thought. The very rich seemed to know where every penny was, far more so than people like him. ‘OK then, tell me what you know. Tell me why the press thought he’d been embezzling Church money.’

Oldwater seemed to be trying to work things out in his mind.

‘Are you really a policeman, Detective Sergeant Poe?’

‘I am. Why?’

‘Because it appears you haven’t read your own files.’

‘We’re the National Crime Agency, Nicholas. We don’t always play well with others. We’re having some . . . communication problems at the minute.’

Oldwater nodded. Poe suspected the wily bishop knew there was far more going on than he’d been told, but he seemed keen to help anyway.

‘Detective Sergeant Poe, when Mr Carmichael disappeared, he had half a million pounds in his bank account, and it wasn’t money he embezzled from us. To this day, no one knows where it came from.’

Poe leaned forward. ‘Tell me everything,’ he urged.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

‘Quentin Carmichael was an upstanding member of the Church,’ Oldwater said. ‘He was ambitious but that’s not always a bad thing.’ He had retrieved a large manila file from another room, probably a staff file. He read it to refresh his memory then launched into a summary.

‘He was a dean?’ Poe asked.

Oldwater nodded. ‘He had the Derwentshire Deanery. Covers most of Allerdale. A very wealthy part of the county.’

‘And the charity work he was given the watch for?’

‘Above board and verified. The investigation found that at no point did any of the funds he’d raised pass through any bank account he had access to. He would take on a particular cause and act as a figurehead but leave the details to others.’

Poe paused. ‘Any chance he took backhanders from the charities? A sort of “give me some money and I’ll raise you ten times the amount” kind of thing?’

‘The police investigation considered that. They were all reputable and all had flawless accounts. It wasn’t them.’

‘Accounts can be faked,’ Poe said.

‘They can, yes. But there were some serious boys in blue going through them. Are you telling me that over twenty charities all did enough to fool a team of forensic accountants?’

‘It doesn’t seem plausible, no.’

‘But as he was high profile, and the money had been discovered shortly after he’d disappeared, the media put two and two together and came up with a cliché.’

‘What happened to the money?’ Poe asked. If money were the motive, then following it might lead him to either the killer, or at least Carmichael’s connection to the other victims.