The Puppet Show (Washington Poe)

Flynn called across to Reid. ‘DS Reid, DS Poe says there were children here.’

‘Two, I think,’ Reid confirmed.

She shouted for Gamble and he hurried over, an annoyed look on his face. ‘DS Reid and DS Poe both say there were children here when they arrived, sir. I think she’s running with them.’

‘That’s all I fucking need,’ Gamble growled. He turned to one of the detectives with him. ‘Get onto the border agency now. Tell them she could be travelling with children.’ He turned to Reid. ‘Age? Sex? Description? Anything that can help?’

‘Didn’t see them, boss,’ Reid said. ‘They were upstairs. I think she said they were called Annabel and Geoffrey.’

‘Jeremy,’ Poe corrected.

‘Annabe

l and Jeremy,’ Reid confirmed. ‘The one who called Swift “Grandma” sounded young.’

‘Bollocks!’ Gamble shouted.

Poe understood his anger. If the UKBA had been told to look out for a woman on her own, they wouldn’t have been paying as much attention to anyone with children. And if Swift made it through a border, Poe doubted they’d ever see her again.

‘I’ll get on to Swift’s daughter and get some photos emailed over, boss,’ Reid said.

It looked as though Gamble was about to argue. To tell Reid he wasn’t doing anything. Instead he said, ‘At least you can explain your own fuck-up. Tell her how her children were abducted from underneath your nose.’

Reid reddened and nodded.

It was unfair and Poe wasn’t sure of the significance of Swift’s rapid disappearance, but the fact she had drugs to hand surely meant she was involved. He’d already heard one of Gamble’s detectives voice the opinion that they were now looking for the Immolation Woman. A consensus was forming.

It fitted the facts, as they knew them. It answered all Gamble’s questions.

That was all well and good, he thought, but it didn’t answer all his questions. The big one was still unanswered.

Why?

He didn’t care what the others were thinking. He had the same problem with Swift being the killer as he did with Price. Why wait all these years? Of course, with all the evidence pointing her way, it was probable Swift was their killer, and that she had a lucid explanation why she’d waited all this time to kill her partners in crime. But Poe didn’t want to die wondering; he wouldn’t be able to sleep until he’d understood her motive. Or how he was involved.

To coin one of Bradshaw’s favourite phrases, he needed more data.

And there was only one place to start.

Montague Price’s confession.

He tried to stand up but his legs were rubbery. They collapsed under him.

‘Whoa,’ said the paramedic. ‘You’re going nowhere until a doctor has checked you out. We need to put some saline into you.’

‘And you can consider that an order, DS Poe,’ Flynn said from across the room.

For once he had no intention of disobeying.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

The incident room was jammed. Every moulded plastic seat had a hairy-arsed cop wedged into it. The high ceiling had flickering lights and off-white drop-in panels. Some were newer than the rest and were an annoyingly different colour. Like every police incident room, it smelled of fried food, coffee and frustration. Poe found it comforting.

He stood at the back and listened to Gamble update the massed ranks of the team searching for Hilary Swift. It was two days after she’d drugged Poe and Reid and made her escape. It was Poe’s first day back on the job. So far there hadn’t been a hint of a sighting. She’d either successfully fled the country, or hadn’t yet tried.

As well as the search for Swift, Gamble was trying to locate the boys that Price claimed had been sold on the night of the auction. His theory being that if the train tickets had been a ruse to make the police think they’d fled to London, then they had to be somewhere else. Gamble was convinced that if they found just one of them, the rest of the puzzle would slot neatly into place. He had teams of detectives assigned to it.

Poe wished them luck but he wasn’t convinced. One of the unintended consequences of Operation Yewtree – the high-profile national investigation into historic sexual offences against children – was that the reporting of abuse was now at a record level. More and more victims were coming out of the shadows. Their allegations were being taken seriously.