The Puppet Show (Washington Poe)

‘That’s it?’ Bradshaw asked. ‘That can’t be it, Poe. Can it?’

‘Children in care don’t always make good decisions, Tilly,’ Poe explained. ‘Sometimes they put themselves at risk. There’s only so much people like Ms Jackson here can do.’

Jackson nodded. ‘We assumed they’d pop up again at some point but they never did. They either made a success of things or . . .’

‘Or they didn’t,’ Poe finished for her.

Bradshaw was staring at him. Her eyes were wet. She was upset and Poe couldn’t give her the reassurances she wanted. Instinctively society felt an alarm should sound every time a child went missing, but the problem was there was no alarm, and even if there had been, some of these kids were fleeing far worse situations. Dragging them back wouldn’t always be the right thing to do. Not for the first time in his life, Poe wondered how social workers held on to their sanity. It had to be one of the most thankless jobs there was, even worse than being a cop. There were no good days; everything was on a sliding scale of bad to awful. Vilified for taking children away from families, crucified when they didn’t.

Fuck that . . .

Jackson didn’t feel like answering Bradshaw either. She said, ‘Our investigation found Hilary Swift had breached several of the protocols put in place to prevent children like that running away. She allowed them to drink – and there was no way when they got on that train to London they weren’t still drunk – and she gave them access to large amounts of money.’

‘And?’ Poe asked.

‘And finally, she wasn’t the best person to be running a home like that anyway. She was far too interested in the social side of it all. And yes, of course the manager had to be visible, the home relied on donations just as much as council funding, but the investigation found that she was obsessed by it. And if some rich and influential men thought it was funny to get children drunk, then even if she’d been there, the feeling was that she wouldn’t have stopped them.’

Poe needed to move on. The children running off to London might or might not be important, but getting a look at the file sitting on the table was. He turned to Evans. ‘I take it you know what’s in these files?’

‘I vet everything that goes out. Warrant or not.’

‘Direct me to where you think I might need to look then, please,’ Poe said.

Evans had a thin file on top. He slid it across to Poe. ‘I’ve copied some of the documents you might want to review first.’ He looked at his watch. ‘The court is still open. When you’ve seen the top sheet, you might want to go and get another warrant.’

Poe opened it and removed a sheet of A4. It was a twenty-six-year-old bank statement for Seven Pines. There were the usual mundane items found in everyone’s list of monthly outgoings. Food, TV licence, utilities. The amounts were all on the right side of the page. To the left of them was another set of figures. Fewer in number but greater in value. It was where the incoming money was listed. There were three different sources for that month. A grant, which looked as though it was a standing order from the charity that owned Seven Pines, and a local authority payment, which probably differed each month depending on how many bed spaces they were using.

Poe stared at the third. It was a payment by cheque.

He checked the page from the corresponding accounts ledger Evans had also supplied. The cheque was from Quentin Carmichael. It stated it was a donation resulting from the ‘Are You Feeling Lucky?’ event. It was for nine thousand pounds.

Carmichael’s account number was also listed.

What the hell . . .?

His breath quickened.

‘What is it, Poe?’ Bradshaw asked. She was getting better at reading his facial expressions.

He slid the page across the table. She stared, not immediately seeing it.

‘You’ve still got photographs of the investigation into the money found in Carmichael’s bank accounts, haven’t you, Tilly?’

She nodded.

‘Cross-reference them with the account the cheque came from.’ He didn’t need her to. He’d always had the ability to imprint salient details into his memory.

Bradshaw turned on her tablet and began searching. She wasn’t as quick as usual. Eventually she looked up with a confused expression. ‘I can’t find it,’ she said.

‘Exactly,’ Poe said. ‘Quentin Carmichael made that payment from a bank account no one knew about.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

A Relationship Manager wasn’t a banking position with which Poe was familiar, but as soon as the branch manager had received head office’s verification of the validity of the additional warrant, he handed the three of them over to a Miss Jefferson. Poe suspected it was less to do with him not being interested – he clearly was – and more to do with him not knowing his way around his own system.

Miss Jefferson, who wanted to be called Rhona, found the unknown account on her computer. She frowned, ‘This is odd.’

She printed off some sheets, stapled them together and handed them a copy. ‘As you can see, Mr Carmichael opened the bank account in the May of that year and closed it one month later.’ She turned her own copy to show them where she was looking.