Captain.
Poe studied it until the realisation hit him.
The men on the boat that night were all executives or higher. Hilary Swift was a social worker and the rest were children.
So, who’d sailed the boat?
Although it had been a self-catered event, someone would have had to navigate them around the lake. They couldn’t have done it themselves. There’d been six men bidding, there’d been Carmichael and Swift, and there’d been the four boys.
And there’d been the captain of the boat.
Who must have seen everything and not said a word. And to Reid, that made him just as culpable as everyone else.
How had they all missed that?
Reid hadn’t. He had the man’s badge.
But where was he?
Who was he?
He wasn’t the owner. Bradshaw confirmed he’d died of natural causes.
Poe went back to the laptop. There was one folder still to open; the unnamed one.
It was another video interview. Two men. One was wearing a balaclava and Poe assumed it was Reid hiding his identity in case things went wrong early on. The other was a man Poe didn’t recognise. He hadn’t come up in the investigation. He was in his late fifties or sixties and looked like a sailor. He had skin like saddle leather and his face wore a map of the world. He had the healthy complexion of a man who spent his working day outdoors and the physique of the manual worker.
Poe pressed play. The video lasted for almost an hour. It was the man who’d piloted the boat around Ullswater. He told the camera that he’d been unaware of what was going to happen on the ‘Are You Feeling Lucky?’ cruise but realised something was up during the auction. He’d been paid ten thousand pounds for his silence, and a combination of the money and the risk of upsetting powerful people had ensured he hadn’t breathed a word to anyone.
After the man had confessed everything to Reid they’d made a deal. He would stay in the ten-cell truck until it was all over, only leaving to do some small tasks for Reid. Nothing too illegal. Mainly driving jobs. Poe suspected it was the man who’d driven Graham Russell’s car to France and left it there. He was also in no doubt that it was this unknown man who’d taken Hilary Swift and her grandchildren. He was getting on a bit, but a lifetime on the lake had given him wiry strength – he would have been more than a match for the partially sedated Swift.
And if he did all that, the video confession – and his role in the boys’ murders – would never see the light of day. He could go home. But . . . if he let Reid down, two things would happen: he’d suffer the same fate as everyone else and his family name would be disgraced. The man agreed without hesitation. He seemed eager to please.
Poe had found Reid’s accomplice.
Another thought flashed through his mind. One of the cells in the ten-cell truck had been bleached clean. Was that the one in which the man had been kept? Earlier, when Poe had been reviewing the case, there’d been so many unanswered questions it seemed he was reading a book with missing pages. Now, it was making more sense.
Why had one cell been cleaned with bleach?
Why had Reid chosen to burn with Swift?
Why hadn’t he wanted to be buried with his friends?
A reluctant accomplice put a different slant on everything.
Had Reid done what he’d promised: let the man go when he’d fulfilled his side of the deal, or . . . had he killed him then kept his body until it was needed?
What did they really know about what happened that night at the farm? The official version was taken from his own eyewitness statement. But that was just his perspective. It didn’t mean it was the truth.
What if it had all been an illusion?
When Reid threw the Zippo and stepped back, Poe assumed he’d fallen and waited for his death. But Reid could have had time to switch with someone else. It would have been tight, but not impossible.
And Black Hollow Farm had a window at the back. Poe remembered seeing it when the fire blew the roof off.
Evidence of tricks like that can usually be detected for a long time after the event. Usually. But because of the blocked road to the farm, the fire had burned for a long time . . .
All detectives have to submit their DNA so it can be discarded at crime scenes, but with an accomplice to take samples from, who was to say what Reid had submitted. Poe was in no doubt Reid could have doctored a DNA sample. He knew that Gamble and his team had also taken DNA from Reid’s flat. Some hair, a discarded cotton bud, a toothbrush. All of it matched the sample he’d submitted at the beginning of the investigation. It was irrefutable evidence that the body at Black Hollow Farm was Sergeant Kylian Reid.