The Puppet Show (Washington Poe)

Thinking about Bradshaw reminded him about something. She’d been the one who’d interpreted the data from the MSCT that uncovered his name in Michael James’s chest. And his own connection to the case was still unclear. Hilary Swift was involved somehow but Poe was certain she hadn’t recognised him or his name. If she were the Immolation Man’s accomplice, then she hadn’t been read into the wider plan. Gamble still had a detective going through Poe’s background in the slim hope of a name cropping up. So far there’d been nothing.

And Poe doubted the answer was in his past. Up until the Peyton Williams case, he’d been fairly uncontroversial. He’d put some nasty men behind bars, but none of them had been released in the last twelve months. But . . . Poe’s name had been carved into the chest of the third victim. That was an indisputable fact.

Which meant they were still missing something.

Poe looked across at Bradshaw. The printer was spitting out documents but she’d begun to pin some of the early ones to the wall. Automatic Number Plate Recognition, or ANPR, was the largest database of its type in the world. There would be a lot of data to get through.

‘How long do you think you’ll be before you’re finished sorting through all this chaos, Tilly?’ Poe asked, sweeping his arms around to indicate the various piles of documents.

Bradshaw stopped what she was doing. Poe could almost hear the mental calculations in her head; she didn’t do guesstimates.

‘Four hours, thirty minutes, Poe,’ she said. ‘I think I can have something for us to review by then.’

Poe turned to Flynn, ‘I think we need to consider a different motive, boss.’

‘I’m listening,’ she said.

‘We suspect that the men who deposited the six-figure amounts were paying to kill their victims, yes?’

Flynn nodded.

‘And if that’s the case, then before they died, the boys suffered appallingly.’

She nodded again.

‘Well . . . what if someone found out?’ Poe asked.

‘And they’re seeking some sort of natural justice?’

‘It would fit the ferocity of the killings.’

‘Could one of the boys have survived?’ Flynn asked.

Poe shook his head. ‘If one of them had, the six men would have been far warier than they had been. No, whoever’s doing this was unknown to them. Plus, why wait twenty-six years?’

‘Who then? We’ve identified everyone now.’

‘Have we?’ Poe replied. ‘I know they were in care but those boys had to have had families at some point. What if someone’s latent parental responsibility has woken?’

She didn’t look convinced.

‘Look, we have five hours to kill. We might as well do something.’

‘What do you have in mind?’

‘I think we need to go back to the beginning.’

‘How Carmichael ended up in a salt store? Surely that’s irrelevant now?’

‘No, earlier than that,’ he said. ‘The Seven Pines warrant was made out to us, not Cumbria police, and it’s still valid. I say we go back to Children’s Services and look at the lives of those boys. I want to know why they were at Seven Pines in the first place.’

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

‘What do you need?’ Audrey Jackson asked. Flynn and Poe were back at Carlisle Civic Centre. After he’d convinced Flynn that they should take advantage of their warrant, she’d been decisive. It seemed she’d grown tired of being Gamble’s assistant.

‘Background on the boys,’ Flynn replied.

‘And their families,’ Poe added. ‘Plus the staff and the rest of the kids who were in Seven Pines at the same time as they were.’