The Puppet Show (Washington Poe)

Poe didn’t answer. He was watching Bradshaw.

Carmichael coughed. She clearly didn’t like being ignored, but that was a burden with which she’d have to learn to live. Bradshaw was staring at something in the display cabinet and her face had turned ashen. She turned and looked at him.

She’d seen something.

‘What is it, Washington?’ Oldwater asked.

‘Excuse me,’ Poe said and walked off to join Bradshaw. The bishop followed him.

‘What’s up, Tilly?’ Poe asked as soon as he reached her. His phone rang. He looked at the caller ID. It was Flynn. The chief constable had kept his side of the bargain. He switched the BlackBerry to silent.

Bradshaw couldn’t tear her eyes away from a photograph in the cabinet. It was of a boat, one of the steamers that ran up and down the more touristy lakes by the looks of it. Poe leaned in and studied it. He frowned. He couldn’t see what had got Bradshaw so rattled.

The bishop leaned in to look as well.

‘What’s in the photograph, Tilly?’ Poe asked. ‘Tell me what you see.’

‘Look, Poe.’ She pointed, but it wasn’t the photograph she wanted him to look at. It was the invitation card underneath. It was for another charity event, a boat ride round Ullswater. It predated the foundation, and was probably one of the last Quentin Carmichael had arranged.

Poe leaned in again and read it. It was what today’s invitation would have looked like if it had been printed – Poe looked at the date – twenty-six years ago. It was for a charity auction. The beneficiary was a local children’s home and the name of the event was called, ‘Are You Feeling Lucky?’ It was the kind of charitable event held up and down the country. A self-catered bash where businesses donate things and rich people bid on them. There was the usual mix of dinner for two at posh restaurants, weekends away, that kind of thing. Nothing that got Poe’s heart racing.

The card said, ‘By Invitation Only’.

‘What is it, dear girl?’ Oldwater asked.

And then, as if the clouds had just parted and the sun had shone through, realisation dawned on Poe. He knew what Bradshaw was looking at.

It was the title, ‘Are You Feeling Lucky?’ He’d read it the first time without seeing it.

‘Holy hell,’ Poe whispered. He’d expected stilted conversation and snobbery at the gala; instead he’d found something else entirely.

‘What is it, Washington? What have you seen?’ Nicholas Oldwater asked.

‘Everything, Nicholas,’ Poe replied quietly. ‘I’ve seen everything.’

Because ‘Are You Feeling Lucky?’ didn’t end with a question mark.

It ended with a percontation point.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Poe had assumed his discovery of the victim inside Quentin Carmichael’s coffin would be his bridge to the truth. He was wrong. Regardless of the obstacles he’d faced, in Poe’s opinion, the Immolation Man had pointed him towards the Kendal graveyard. He probably hadn’t expected Poe to get there so quickly, but he had expected him to get there.

Up until that evening, Poe was convinced everything they’d discovered had been orchestrated, but he didn’t care how clever the Immolation Man was; Bradshaw’s discovery of the percontation point on the twenty-six-year-old invitation wasn’t part of his plan. And if it weren’t, then for the first time in the investigation, the Immolation Man wasn’t in full control. Poe wasn’t yet sure if the Immolation Man had made a mistake, but if he hadn’t, he’d come close.

Every document in every display case was now evidence and he asked the chief constable to use his authority and declare it a crime scene. While Tapping flapped about achieving nothing, Jane Carmichael called her brother Duncan over and shouted that Poe was trying to ruin their evening.

He was a fleshy man with a pouchy face.

‘Do you know who I am?’ he said.

Poe bristled. He knew he shouldn’t, but he turned to Bradshaw. ‘Tilly, can you call the mental health team? We have someone here who doesn’t know who they are.’

‘I will, Poe.’ Out of the corner of his eye he saw her remove her tablet and turn it on.

‘Tilly.’

‘Yes, Poe?’