The Puppet Show (Washington Poe)

‘I’m not following you, Tilly.’

‘I said, this is a good example of it. How one small, seemingly insignificant event can snowball into what we have here.’

‘Explain.’

‘Well, all of this,’ she waved her arms at everything on the desks, computers and walls, ‘and everything you and I discovered, all came from that one small thing.’ She shook her head as if she were amazed. ‘The one thing that anchored everything else.’

It was often how the harder cases broke. Small pieces of evidence led to larger pieces and so on. ‘Yeah, we got lucky with that body in the salt store,’ he admitted.

‘Really? I think it goes back further than that. I think this whole thing goes back to a chance remark.’

The printer’s out-tray was overflowing. Poe walked over and emptied it. As he picked up the sheets that had fallen on the floor, he asked, ‘What chance remark was that, Tilly?’

‘When someone in Kendal police station reminded Kylian Reid about the body in the salt store. He’d forgotten about Tollund Man and you didn’t know about it. It wasn’t recorded as a crime so I wouldn’t have found it. Just think, everything started with that chance remark.’

She was right. Sort of. Poe was inclined to think it started when a psychopath carved his name into someone’s chest, but essentially she was correct. Without Reid coming back from Kendal with Tollund Man, they wouldn’t be where they were now.

Bradshaw mistook his silence for disagreement and began pushing her point. Poe was no longer listening. He’d picked up the top sheet off the printer and was staring at it. Bradshaw had searched in reverse chronological order, so the most recent records were first.

He hadn’t been expecting to see anything he would recognise – this was Bradshaw’s area, not his – but two results halfway down the page caused him to stop. A feeling of dread came over him. Acid churned in his stomach. His mouth went dry.

The results he was looking at were from one of the cameras covering the A591. They were there to help track the gangs that supplied drugs to the heart of the Lake District. Unless they had extraordinary local knowledge, anyone travelling to Ambleside or Windermere – whether it was from the Keswick end or the Kendal end – would pass one of the A591 ANPR cameras.

And Ambleside and Windermere weren’t the only places accessed via the A591.

There were several other small villages.

Once of which was Grasmere.

Where Seven Pines was located.

The dates matched.

The times matched.

If Poe’s notes were accurate – and he knew they were – the prisoner-escort van had driven past the ANPR camera about ten minutes before he and Reid had. Hilary Swift wasn’t the Immolation Man’s accomplice at all. She was his next victim.

He’d abducted her.

And taken her grandchildren with him.

CHAPTER FIFTY

‘The Immolation Man has the kids as well!’ Poe shouted into the phone. Flynn was on her hands free and the reception was scratchy. As she was on her way to see Gamble, giving her the information directly was the quickest way of getting it to the right people.

Flynn got the message, and even through the poor reception, Poe could hear the car’s revs increase as she put her foot down.

On the thousand-to-one chance that Flynn had an accident, Poe decided to cover all bases. He rang Reid but it went to voice-mail. He left a message and hung up. As far as he was concerned, the information had been passed on. He emailed Flynn the document showing that the Immolation Man’s vehicle had been in the Grasmere area on the day Swift and her grandchildren had disappeared.

He tried to calm his racing thoughts. Things were making a bit more sense. Swift being abducted was a better fit than her being involved in the murders. And in the scheme of things – including Poe’s new-found theory that the case was motivated by revenge rather than money – it all clicked. Whoever the Immolation Man was, he was systematically working his way through everyone on the charity cruise that night. Only Montague Price had avoided his fate, and that was because he’d had the foresight to flee as soon as he recognised the pattern.

The mechanics of snatching Swift from under the noses of two experienced cops were troubling him. How had the Immolation Man administered the drugs? Had he been in the house at the same time as they were? Had he sneaked in while they were talking to Swift and put propofol in the milk? A plan that relied on knowing when police officers were going to be drinking tea seemed too random for the Immolation Man; he’d never left anything to chance so far. It was typical of the case: each time they made a breakthrough more questions were posed.

Bradshaw was still working on the ANPR data for the prisoner-escort van, trying to find a pattern that might help them. In contrast to Poe’s hunt-and-stab method of typing, her fingers moved so quickly across the keyboard they were a blur. The printer had been a constant whir of noise, and for the next half hour Poe was little more than an office junior. He loaded the printer with paper and replaced empty ink cartridges. The staff must have been getting sick of Bradshaw’s printer – she’d exhausted the hotel’s conference stock again, but Poe convinced the staff to steal ink from other machines in the building.

Eventually Bradshaw stopped. ‘I’m going to need an hour to look at this. Can you go and get a map of Cumbria, Poe? The larger the better.’

Poe was about to say he’d send someone out for it, but realised she probably wanted him out of the way while she worked. He’d been like a caged beast while he waited.