The Puppet Show (Washington Poe)

‘Wait! You haven’t heard everything. You haven’t heard about the good that came from the bad.’

Fuck that! He hadn’t heard why he’d been named after the city his mother was raped in. Bollocks to the good that came out of it, that was the question he wanted answering. He turned back.

‘Your mother hated the idea of bringing you to full-term, Poe. She didn’t want you – you were right about that – but not for the reasons you thought. She came back to the UK to get an abortion.’

‘Fucking great . . .’ Poe snarled. There was a red storm rising. Anger was controlling all his thoughts now. Before long it would consume him.

‘But when she got to the clinic, she couldn’t do it,’ Reid said. ‘She and your dad – because he is your dad, Poe – decided that something good should come of it all. According to your dad, she asked him if he would be prepared to raise you. She intended to give birth and leave the country before you’d drawn breath.’

‘And that’s what she did?’ he asked. ‘She gave birth then dumped me? I thought she’d hung on for—’

‘But instead of hating you as she’d expected to, she loved you intensely. “A burning love,” your dad called it. An immediate bond neither of them had expected.’

‘So . . .?’

‘According to your dad, she never wanted you to know about your start in life. And she knew if she stayed, there’d come a time when you’d begin to look like the man who’d raped her. She had to leave before that happened. She didn’t want you to see her expression when that happened. It would have broken her. She had to leave. But she couldn’t. She loved you too much. She needed something to make it easier. She needed something to remind her. She needed to force the issue before it became too late. Otherwise she’d keep putting it off.’

‘So, she named me Washington as an ever-present reminder,’ Poe finished for him. Every time someone said his name, it would have been a dagger in her heart. A constant reminder of who he was and who he’d eventually become. ‘She named me after the city she was raped in so that she’d have the strength to leave.’

‘Yes,’ said Reid.

‘My name was like the health warning on a packet of cigarettes then,’ Poe said. ‘Don’t get too attached to him; he will turn into his father.’

‘I wouldn’t put it like that.’

‘How would you put it?’

‘Nicer,’ he replied.

Poe’s anger fizzled and died. His name had allowed his mother to make a huge sacrifice. And he’d been embarrassed by it. Well, no more – he’d wear it with pride from now on.

He put it to one side. He’d deal with his parentage later. If whoever had raped his mother was still alive then he hoped they’d gone all cold because he was coming for them. It might take him months, it might take him years, but at some point in the future, he and his ‘father’ were going to meet.

But first he had a job to do.

And before they could move on, Reid had wanted an answer to a question. He deserved one. Reid had been raped. Poe’s mother had been raped. Little wonder they had a bond. So, if Reid wanted to hear the truth about Peyton Williams, then Poe would tell him.

Poe thought back to the day he visited the family of Muriel Bristow. He only had bad news for them. He had a suspect but he couldn’t tell them who. Worse, Peyton Williams knew they were on to him. If she were alive, Muriel would die of dehydration within the week. He had a choice: her life or his career.

And he’d known what would happen. How could he not? Muriel’s father was a tough, working-class man. Used to settling things with his fists. And his brother had a garage in the middle of nowhere.

Poe had handed over Peyton Williams’s name, knowing he was going to be abducted and tortured until he gave up Muriel’s location.

He’d known that and did it anyway.

‘It was no mistake,’ Poe said. ‘I gave them the wrong report on purpose.’

Reid nodded as if he’d known all along. He probably had. He knew Poe better than anyone. ‘And why did you do that?’

The answer to that was far from simple. He could spout all the excuses he’d used at the time to convince himself he was on the side of right. That they were exceptional circumstances. That he was out of time and out of options.

Flynn had accused him of binary thinking that night in the graveyard, but the truth was more complex. While he remained resolute in his belief that it had been the right thing to do – if the choice was between the rights of a murderer or the rights of an innocent victim, well . . . that was no choice at all. If he could have gone back in time, he’d have done the same thing. Because making sure the girl had a chance to live; dealing with Tilly’s bully in Hampshire and the idiots in the bar; all the ignored instructions – everything that others viewed as self-destructive was part of who he was. Who he’d always been.

The truth was, he did these things because the guilty had to be punished.

Was he sorry Peyton Williams was dead?

Of course he was.