‘I haven’t, Poe. I’ve rearranged the photographs so they’re now displayed on the day the victims were murdered. Each block is a separate day. I only had one photograph per vehicle so if they appeared on more than one day I had to print another copy.’
She’d obviously hammered more of SCAS’s printing budget because some of the vehicles were on all four days. Bradshaw had put the date and the victim’s name beside each block. Poe ran his eyes over how the information was now being presented to them.
Bradshaw said, ‘While you look, Poe, I’ll go and get a boiled egg.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Rats. Breakfast finished at ten. I’ve just missed it.’
‘Only on Wednesdays and Sundays, Tilly. They need to set up for the carvery lunch on those days. It’s open until eleven today, you go and get your boiled . . .’ The rest of the sentence died on his lips.
‘What is it, Poe?’ Bradshaw asked.
He ignored her and marched up to the block of the second victim. Joe Lowell had been immolated in the middle of the Swinside stone circle near Broughton-in-Furness. Telling Bradshaw about the hotel’s breakfast had jolted something in the recesses of his mind. He could almost reach it. Almost but not quite. Poe stared at the vehicles until they were burned into his retina. For twenty minutes he looked without seeing anything.
Five times he studied the block of vehicles. And on the sixth he saw the photograph that changed everything.
There it was. Bold as brass. The anomaly. The vehicle that had no right to be there. Poe felt the hairs on his neck stand up.
Surely it couldn’t be so simple?
‘Poe?’ Flynn asked.
For several moments he didn’t dare open his mouth, and when he did he ignored her question. Instead, he said to Bradshaw, ‘Tilly, can you get on to the HMCTS website and see which Cumbrian courts sat on the day Joe Lowell was murdered? Check Preston Crown Court as well.’
She glanced between Poe and Flynn, unsure what to do.
Flynn said, ‘Do as he asks, Tilly.’
They waited while Bradshaw logged into Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service website. The information Poe wanted was publicly available and he could have found it himself, but Bradshaw was quicker. Flynn had known him long enough to know she wouldn’t get anything out of him until he was ready so she didn’t bother trying.
Five minutes later Tilly said, ‘No courts sat on the day Joe Lowell was murdered, Poe. It was a Sunday.’
Poe nodded. He was right. He jabbed his finger against a vehicle in the Joe Lowell block, before turning to face Bradshaw and Flynn.
‘So what the fuck is that GU prisoner-escort van doing there?’
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Like most cops, Poe held strong views on the prisoner-escort service and the shameful low it took in 2004 when it was taken out of the hands of the prison service and sold to huge multinational companies. For some time, those companies had been looking upon the annual one-and-a-half million prisoner transportations with their insatiable lust for profit. The fact that it was a Labour government that did this was no surprise to him; they were as susceptible as anyone else to those false promises of the private sector: efficiencies and innovations.
Innovations that included cramming prisoners into cells measuring no more than two feet squared, and efficiencies that included refusing to stop for toilet breaks, with the result that prisoners – some of whom were on remand and hadn’t been convicted of any offence – had to piss and shit in their cells. Legally, animals being taken to slaughter were entitled to better conditions. By the time the Home Office realised what was happening, it was too late – palms had been greased, directorships had been promised and contracts had been signed – so they did what every government does; they lied and manipulated statistics. Poe knew there were no votes in telling the truth.
As an extra kick in the public’s teeth, and as an example of the law of unintended consequences, no one in the Home Office had considered what would happen when the first tranche of contracts ended and new providers took over. In a remarkable lack of foresight, no one had thought to regulate what happened to the vehicles owned by the original contractor when they were no longer needed.
Entire fleets were offered for sale on the open market, and although a Daily Mail article highlighted the potential for abuse, the government was powerless to stop it. While the minister in charge blamed his civil servants and the civil servants blamed their minister, the result was that, for a few thousand pounds, anyone could legally purchase a vehicle that was, in all but name, a mobile prison.
The prisoner-escort van that Bradshaw had placed on the Sunday block of vehicles was one of the smaller models. It contained four cells. Poe knew that some of the larger ones could transport three times that number. The smaller size meant it was nippy enough to get to all the locations to which the Immolation Man had been.
None of the photographs had the driver in shot. The windscreen seemed to have been treated with some sort of tinting agent. Poe was unsurprised.
There was some immediate work to do. Flynn called Gamble to tell him what they’d uncovered, and Bradshaw checked PNC. She found the registration number was still with GU Security. A call to their operation’s centre was met with an unsurprising eagerness to cooperate; image is everything with the private companies who compete for public sector contracts.
Yes, that was one of their four-cell vans.
No, it had never been in Cumbria, and no it had never been involved in any part of the north-west’s prisoner escort contract. Vehicle Number 236, as they called it, was used for a UK Border Agency contract in the south-west.
And, yes, they could prove it. All their vehicles were fitted with satellite tracking equipment so the control room knew where they were at all times.
After GU promised to email the information, Poe ended the call. Bradshaw said, ‘What does that all mean, Poe?’
‘It means the registration number was cloned to make sure it wouldn’t be flagged as false or on the wrong type of vehicle.’