The Puppet Show (Washington Poe)

‘Enough to get him remanded certainly. The full charges will follow when the investigation ends.’

‘The evidence found in his home?’

‘Looks like Swift was setting him up. The evidence might be real but he has a cast-iron alibi for the last two murders. He can prove he was hiding out in London. Gamble thinks – and I agree – that Swift was trying to buy some time. Probably wasn’t banking on Price handing himself in so soon.’

Poe ignored the assumption of Swift’s guilt. She was involved; but that didn’t mean she was the all and everything. ‘If Price was in hiding, by leaving evidence at his home the real Immolation Man could have been trying to flush him out.’

Flynn frowned. ‘You think he’s a potential victim?’

‘Why not?’ he replied. ‘Everyone else on that boat seems to have been. What makes him so different? And if whoever is doing this had managed to abduct him and quietly make him disappear, would any of us have looked any further than him?’

‘Probably not,’ she admitted. ‘And you said “Immolation Man” instead of Swift. I take it you’re not yet convinced of her guilt?’

‘She’s definitely working with the Immolation Man; her use of propofol can’t be ignored. It might even have been her who left all the evidence at Price’s. Whether or not she’s been burning people is a different matter entirely. Tilly has some sums you probably need to see.’

‘I’ll have a look later. What else do you have?’

‘Well . . . up until now the only motive we’d been able to come up with had been financial,’ Poe said. ‘And that never made sense. Not really. Castrations and burnings? Over money? I don’t think so.’

‘Then what?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ he said. He did, but he didn’t want to voice it out loud. Not in front of Bradshaw . . .

Flynn steepled her fingers and closed her eyes. She opened them after a minute and leaned forwards. ‘OK then, let’s do what we’re paid to do then. Gamble can chase Swift; we’re the Serious Crime Analysis Section, and that means we do the things others can’t.’

Bradshaw nodded. Eventually Poe did too.

Poe said, ‘We start with the transport. We have five abductions and five murders, and because there was no trace of propofol in any of the victims, we now know for sure the victims had to have been kept somewhere before they were killed. That’s additional journeys we didn’t know about.’

‘So the killer had to drive to the abduction site, from the abduction site to the containment site, then from the containment site to the murder site,’ Bradshaw summarised. ‘That’s a lot of data, Poe.’

‘I thought you liked data.’

>

She smiled and said, ‘I love data!’ She punched some keys and before long the printer was whirring. ‘The more I have, the more I can do. I’ll open up our link to the Automatic Number Plate Recognition database and get cracking.’

Poe led Flynn away from Bradshaw, and, making sure she was out of earshot, told her what he hadn’t wanted to say earlier. ‘I think we need to assume those boys are dead.’

Flynn nodded. Her face was grim. ‘That much I’d worked out. You have a theory?’

‘I do. I think twenty-five grand bought you the right to abuse them.’

‘And the three who paid the six-figure amounts?’

‘For that amount of money, I think you got to kill them.’

‘That’s what I think too,’ Flynn said after a long moment.

Neither of them had noticed the printer had stopped. Bradshaw had heard them. ‘Oh no!’ she gasped. Tears flooded her eyes and before long she was crying. Flynn sat next to her and put her arms around her shoulders.

For over a year, Bradshaw had worked on some of the worst cases in the country, but up until then it had always been long-arm. Even when she’d studied the carving of his name in Michael James’s chest, it had been computer images rather than an actual body she’d been looking at. Here, out in the field, she had as much invested as he did. More perhaps – she was nice, Poe wasn’t.

It was more than an hour before Bradshaw was composed enough to resume work. Poe felt guilty. If he hadn’t insisted she accompanied them up to Cumbria – and he knew he’d only been making a point at the time – she could have been spared all this.

Flynn said quietly, ‘You and Tilly seem to be getting on OK. Despite what’s just happened, getting her out of the office has done her the world of good.’

Poe looked at his new friend. She’d pushed her glasses up and her tongue was sticking out in determination. Tear tracks were still on her face. A wisp of hair flapped about in the air-conditioning. She stuck out her bottom lip and blew it away from her eyes. A feeling of protective warmth spread over Poe. There were only a few years between them, but in terms of life experiences there were decades. Her naivety and innocence contrasted sharply with his own dark nature, but in many ways they were alike; they were both obsessives, and they both rubbed people up the wrong way.