The Puppet Show (Washington Poe)

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

Poe was forced to spend another day in Westmorland Hospital before he was allowed home. The doctors, initially concerned that his throat had been damaged, were happy to discharge him as soon as it began to heal. They wanted a district nurse visiting his house once a day to change his dressings. He compromised by agreeing to attend outpatients; he didn’t think it was fair to ask someone to walk over two miles of moorland with a bag full of medical supplies.

During the next few days he received a plethora of phone calls. Director van Zyl thanked Poe, and, despite everything that had happened, offered him his inspector’s job back, this time on a permanent basis. Poe refused.

‘Flynn should get it, sir,’ he’d said. ‘She’s a far better DI than I ever was. This case was solved because she had the discipline to make us do our jobs. I only ever see trees, she sees the whole forest.’

Van Zyl agreed. Poe suspected he was only offering him the job because he knew he’d turn it down.

‘Is there anything you want to tell me, DS Poe?’ he’d asked finally.

Poe knew he was referring to Reid’s confession. Van Zyl wanted to see if he intended to do anything about it.

‘No, sir,’ he’d replied. He wanted to tell the director that the Peyton Williams case had been no mistake. That he’d purposefully put the unabridged document in the family file, knowing what would happen. Accept whatever came his way. He might have saved the life of Muriel Bristow, but a man had died because of his actions. He’d seen what happened when someone tried to keep hold of dark secrets and he didn’t want to end up like Reid. But in the end, he said nothing. Admitting it now would be selfish. Old cases would be reopened. Appeals would be filed. His integrity would be called into question. Killers would walk free.

The burden was his alone to carry.

Deputy Director Hanson rang, ostensibly to apologise for the hard time he’d been giving Poe lately. They’d made awkward small talk until Hanson got round to the real reason he’d called. There were a lot of clichés and platitudes: things best left unsaid, no need for careers to be ruined, sleeping dogs being allowed to lie. The upshot was: he also wanted to know Poe’s intentions.

Poe pretended he didn’t understand and Hanson didn’t have the balls to come out and ask him directly. Eventually he blurted out, ‘This alleged confession, DS Poe, it was the ranting of a mad man. Nothing more.’

The Bishop of Carlisle called, and Poe had some sympathy for the man who’d helped them so much. Oldwater wanted to know how much damage was going to be inflicted upon his beloved Church. In the end, Oldwater told him to follow his conscience.

For two weeks, Poe rested and took Edgar for long walks in the spring evenings. His scorched lungs healed and his voice returned. His hands recovered. Flynn called occasionally. Pretended she was keeping him up to date with what they were up to. Really she was just making sure he was OK. Poe appreciated it but couldn’t find the words to tell her.

Bradshaw emailed him twenty or thirty times a day. Each one made him

smile. She told him she was settling back into the day job but couldn’t wait to get out into the field with him. She was learning to drive and planned to come up and see him and Edgar as soon as she’d passed her test. Now that Reid was dead, Bradshaw was probably the closest friend he had. They were polar opposites – her light to his darkness – but sometimes those friendships were the strongest. She asked him when he’d be back at work.

He didn’t have an answer for her. He didn’t know if he would be. He wanted to see if he could do right by Reid first. Then he needed to speak to his father. He’d emailed and asked him to get in touch next time he was in the UK. So far there’d been no reply but that was OK; Poe had waited a long time, he could wait a bit longer. But there’d be a reckoning. One day, he and the person who raped his mother were going to be alone in a room together. There couldn’t have been that many diplomatic parties in Washington with a bunch of hippies in attendance. Someone would remember something. Poe never needed much to kick off investigations and he’d certainly worked rape cases with far less to go on.

The evidence at the farm had been analysed. DNA of all Reid’s victims had been found in the cells of the larger truck. Urine, vomit, blood and faeces had been in most of the cells. For some reason one cell had been bleached sterile. Gamble was satisfied that the farm was where the men had been held before making their final journey. George Reid’s grave had been found a few hundred yards from Black Hollow Farm, as Reid said it would be. He’d been telling the truth – the PM showed he’d been dead long before the killing spree began. The cause of death was a stroke. Cumbria police were looking for the other person involved in the murders: Reid’s elusive, unknown accomplice. Poe doubted they’d find him, though – his identity had disappeared along with the rest of the evidence and they had nothing to go on. They’d keep looking – they didn’t have a choice – but Flynn was privately admitting they weren’t holding out much hope.

The DNA results confirmed that the bodies found on the top floor of the farm were Swift and Reid.

The fire report stated that the farm had been stripped of anything toxic, which explained why the smoke hadn’t been as black as Poe would have expected. Gamble reckoned that Reid had wanted Swift to burn to death rather than succumb to smoke inhalation.

Poe and Gamble were seeing eye to eye for once. The cantankerous DCS had known Reid well and believed Poe’s account of what had happened at the farm. He’d done his best to seek the truth. Against the chief constable’s wishes, he’d ordered a post-mortem on the remains of each of the three boys Reid had recovered. Time and fire had beaten him, though. The pathologist was unable to find anything to suggest that they’d had contact with any of Reid’s victims. The coroner’s inquest recorded an unlawful killing verdict.

They were buried in the same cemetery where Poe had conducted the exhumation. Not in K-section, though, Poe insisted on that. There’d been a high turnout at the funerals. It was covered extensively in the news. Men from London came up, offered mealy-mouthed platitudes to the waiting cameras, then got back in their cars and rushed away as fast as they could.

With the case almost closed, the bodies of Reid’s victims – which technically belonged to the coroner – were released to their families. Poe was treated to a succession of grand funerals on the TV. Eventually he stopped watching them. The Home Secretary himself came up for Carmichael’s. Apparently, they’d known each other for years. They’d met at a charity event . . .

Reid’s funeral was a different matter. He was interred in a smaller, less well-maintained cemetery and, as no undertaker would accept Poe’s business, Reid ended up in a local authority coffin. Poe, Flynn and Bradshaw attended. From Cumbria police, there was only Gamble.

Poe was curiously unemotional.

After the funeral Gamble sought out Poe and told him he wouldn’t be taking things any further. He was close to retirement, felt he’d been lucky to keep his job, and still had children at university. Poe understood. Those men had ruined enough innocent lives.

The press and the spin-doctors had done what they’d been told, and painted Reid as a worse version of the monster he’d become. They’d twisted the facts, and rewritten their history to ensure the official narrative showed that Reid had been reliving the murders he’d committed as a child. Poe found it worryingly convincing. And then they shut up. The tabloid press might have the attention span of a sugar-filled two-year-old, but a police officer had been castrating and burning powerful men – it should have been more than a three-day story. They’d clearly been told not to linger on it.

The liberal press, despite smelling a turd, had no proof so remained quiet; the families involved were very powerful. The Carmichaels were even threatening to sue Cumbria police and the NCA. Van Zyl had called Poe and said he wasn’t to worry. ‘They wouldn’t fucking dare. They’re as terrified of the men in grey suits as we are. Duncan Carmichael is going be given a service-to-charity knighthood to shut him up. It’s how silence is bought with these people.’

It sickened Poe and he found he could no longer stomach hearing about it.

After one particularly distressing phone call when Flynn had informed him that Leonard Tapping, the Chief Constable of Cumbria, had been shortlisted for the Met’s vacant deputy commissioner’s job, Poe decided to stop working the case. It wasn’t doing him any good and it was pointless. The evidence had been burned. Or been destroyed later. It didn’t matter which; the results were the same.

When he made the decision to remove all the information they’d pinned to the wall at Herdwick Croft, Poe realised it was all over. He’d left it up in case something jogged his memory. Nothing had, even though he’d been staring at it for hours at a time.