The Curator (Washington Poe)

by M. W. Craven

  ‘What are you saying?’ Lear said.

  ‘You know what we’re saying, Mr Lear,’ Poe said. ‘The documents used to wrap the mug, the ones found in the church and the food hall, and the one found in your client’s bin, all came from the same printer. Robert tried to disguise this by changing drums for each murder but yellow dot tracking is embedded into the printer’s software – it cannot be cheated.’

  Lear made some notes.

  ‘I would like to confer with my client, please.’

  Poe stood. Bradshaw did too.

  ‘Take your time. You have a lot to discuss.’

  Cowell was sweating and shaking when they resumed. He looked subdued, his solicitor looked grim. Poe thought Cowell probably wanted to talk but Lear had overruled him. Poe didn’t blame him; he was just doing his job. Even when caught red-handed – and with the kite, photoreceptor drum flaws and yellow dot tracking, Poe reckoned Cowell almost had been – remaining silent and letting the solicitor talk was invariably the best legal strategy.

  ‘When did these murders occur, Sergeant Poe?’ Lear asked, pen poised over his notebook.

  ‘We only have a rough timescale with the fingers in the Secret Santa mug,’ Poe replied, ‘but we know that the fingers were left in the food hall on Boxing Day as Robert was caught on CCTV, and we’re fairly sure when the fingers were left in the church in Barrow.’

  Lear looked up from his scribbling. ‘Fairly sure?’

  ‘We think Robert mingled with the Midnight Mass congregation on Christmas Eve, found somewhere to hide when it finished then let himself out when the caretaker came in on Christmas Day morning to—’

  ‘After Midnight Mass?’ Cowell said. He shook his head violently. ‘No, that’s not fair. That’s not fair at all!’ He began breathing through his nose, fast and loud like an angry bull.

  ‘What’s wrong, Robert?’ Lear said.

  ‘Bitch! Bitch! FUCKING BITCH!’

  Before Poe could stop him, Cowell had leant back and then smashed his face onto the table. He raised his head, his nose spurting blood, and, with even more force than before, did it again. Poe heard the crunch of bone. When he raised his head this time, his nose was mushy and his eyes were unfocused.

  He reared back for the third time, readying himself for one final act of self-harm.

  Poe launched himself across the table and bear-hugged him.

  Chapter 41

  ‘So he still hasn’t been charged?’ Nightingale said.

  ‘We didn’t get that far,’ Poe said. ‘He wigged out as soon as I mentioned Midnight Mass.’

  Nightingale had missed the latter parts of the interview and wanted to hear what had happened first-hand. Cowell was still in hospital. He’d been patched up and psychiatrically assessed.

  ‘I’ve just heard from his solicitor,’ Poe continued. ‘He’s being discharged in an hour. You want me to continue?’

  ‘Please,’ Nightingale said. ‘Keep pushing him. I want this boxed off today so we can start building an airtight case against him. His sister too, if she’s involved. There has to be a reason she told him to keep quiet. She might be calm and collected now but she wasn’t when she was arrested, I can assure you.’

  ‘Can you send me a link to her most recent interviews?’

  ‘I will. I don’t know how useful they’ll be, though; she’s still barely saying a word. Even her solicitor is getting pissed off.’

  ‘Cheers. I’ll take a look anyway.’

  ‘How’s DI Flynn?’

  ‘Duvet day.’

  ‘I’m not sure she should still be here.’

  ‘You going to tell her?’

  Nightingale laughed. ‘Do I look stupid? Ah, here’s DC Coughlan. Dave, do you have a minute?’

  It was the hulking detective, the one with the monobrow who’d stormed out of the pointless semiotics briefing.

  ‘Ma’am,’ he said, eyeing Poe with suspicion.

  ‘Can you make sure Sergeant Poe is given access to all the Rhona Cowell interviews?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  He lumbered off. They both watched him go.

  ‘DC Coughlan hasn’t been with us long. He’s hardworking and trustworthy,’ she said. They watched as he tried and failed to key in the right sequence to the interview suite’s security pad. ‘But he’s not one of our deep thinkers …’

  Poe sat for an hour and watched the last Rhona Cowell interview. The detective had laid down the same information that Poe had laid in front of Robert. Rhona didn’t react to any of it. Even when she was told about the yellow dot tracking and how her brother had been linked to three murders.

  His BlackBerry alerted him to an incoming call. It was Bradshaw. Poe muted the sound and tapped the accept button.

  ‘Hello, Poe. How are you feeling?’

  ‘I’m fine, Tilly. What’s up?’

  ‘Robert Cowell is back from hospital.’

  ‘His solicitor with him?’

  ‘I think so. I’m just passing on the message, though. I think they’re ready for you.’

  Poe didn’t answer.

  ‘Poe?’

  Poe stared at the screen. He unmuted the sound and rewound it ten seconds. Played it again.

  Did it one more time to be sure.

  ‘Tilly, I’ve seen something odd.’

  Cowell had broken his nose when he’d headbutted the table. The ugly, beaklike metal splint he was wearing made him look like RoboDuck. His eyes were bloodshot and his sockets were puffy and yellowing.

  ‘My client is not prepared to talk about what happened earlier,’ Jon Lear said. ‘We’ll put it down to stress and move on.’

  Poe ignored him. Solicitors didn’t determine the parameters of interviews. Especially after what he’d just seen. He opened the laptop Bradshaw had set up for him. It was prearranged to start when the evidence in the church had been laid before his sister. The same bit of evidence that had caused Robert to lose it.

  ‘I don’t intend to make you sit through the whole interview but, rest assured, up until this point your sister hasn’t reacted to anything put before her. Now, please watch.’

  Poe pressed play.

  The interviewing detective said, ‘The only time your brother could have put these fingers in the font was after Midnight Mass but before the caretaker came in at 6 a.m. on Christmas morning. That’s a pretty narrow window. We want to know how much you knew.’

  Poe made them watch it three times.

  ‘When I put this to you earlier, Robert, you had a … psychiatric episode and, although your sister’s reaction wasn’t so extreme, she did react.’

  Barely …

  Rhona Cowell had smirked. On its own it wouldn’t have meant much, but in the context of what had happened with her brother, it was everything. The timing of the church crime scene meant something to them both. Poe was sure of it.

  He just didn’t know what.

  ‘Your sister reacted to the same thing you did, Robert, almost to the second,’ Poe said. ‘It’s only a smirk but it’s the only time she’s shown any emotion at all.’

  That wasn’t entirely truthful. At the end of the interview Rhona Cowell had also spoken. It was little more than a mumble and even with the sound turned up full he hadn’t been able to make it out. He was waiting for the interview transcript, although the detective who’d been observing had told him it was ‘just some hippy-dippy bullshit about staring into her soul and seeing the truth’. Poe would wait and read the transcript but he couldn’t see how it would be relevant. The only reason the detective had mentioned it at all was because it was the one and only time she’d opened her mouth.

  ‘The Midnight Mass evidence isn’t the first time you’ve reacted to something, though, is it, Robert?’ Poe said.

  Cowell looked up, confused.

  ‘You didn’t react when we showed you your kite and, other than revulsion, you didn’t really react when we showed you a picture of Rebecca Pridmore’s fingers on the carpet at John Bull Haulage. But you did re
act when you saw the mug the fingers came in. The mug with hashtag BSC6 written on it.’

  Cowell slumped in his chair and began biting his lips.

  ‘You see, hashtag BSC6 has cropped up at every crime scene, Robert,’ Poe continued. ‘You’ve seen how it was written on the Secret Santa mug at John Bull Haulage and you’ve seen how it was inserted into the hymn board at the church and fixed like a price tag at the food hall.’

  Cowell was watching him carefully.

  ‘We don’t know what hashtag BSC6 means.’ He met Cowell’s eyes and didn’t break contact. ‘But I think you do.’

  For a moment the two men stared at each other.

  ‘Am I right, Robert?’ Poe said.

  Cowell nodded slowly, his eyes glued to Poe’s.

  ‘And are you finally ready to tell me?’

  Cowell nodded again.

  Chapter 42

  Despite the late hour the incident room was packed tighter than two coats of paint. Detectives and uniformed cops, civilian staff and press officers had squeezed themselves into a room meant for a quarter of their number. Even Shirley Becke, Cumbria’s chief constable, was there. It was hot and humid. A background of excited chatter filled the air. It faded when Nightingale stood up.

  ‘Robert Cowell has admitted to competing in something called the Black Swan Challenge,’ she said. ‘It’s an escalating contest where tasks are set by an as yet unknown administrator. I’m going to ask Tilly Bradshaw from the National Crime Agency to take you through the next bit. She’s the one who put it all together.’

  A nervous Bradshaw made her way to the front. She looked down at Poe on the front row and waved. He gave her a thumbs up. This was the largest crowd she’d been asked to brief and she wanted to do well. She said she was representing SCAS. Poe knew she’d be fine if she stuck to the science. It was the audience participation he was worried about.

  ‘Hello, everyone,’ she said. ‘My name is Matilda Bradshaw and I’m a civilian analyst with the Serious Crime Analysis Section. We are part of the National Crime Agency.’

  The room stayed silent.

  She nervously adjusted her glasses then checked her PowerPoint presentation. She clicked her handheld remote and the screen changed into a black swan.

  ‘The Black Swan Challenge, or hashtag-BSC, isn’t, as Detective Superintendent Nightingale has just said, an online escalating challenge game, it’s actually a sophisticated control and manipulation scheme aimed at vulnerable people.’

  Nightingale frowned and glanced at the chief constable.

  ‘It cannot be found except by those who have been told how to find it,’ Bradshaw continued. ‘And it’s not new.’

  A click and the black swan disappeared. A blue whale replaced it.

  ‘The Blue Whale Challenge,’ Bradshaw said. ‘Believed to originate in Russia, it was a series of tests, one a day over fifty days, that ultimately groomed the victim into committing suicide. The full number is disputed but it is believed that over one hundred vulnerable people killed themselves in Russia alone.’

  The image on the monitor changed to a list of tests.

  ‘The first few tests on the Blue Whale Challenge seem easy, don’t they?’ she said. ‘The first is to cut a blue whale symbol into your hand and send a picture to the game’s administrator. It doesn’t even have to be deep. It’s all about demonstrating commitment to the game. The next is even easier. All you have to do is get up at four o’clock in the morning to watch horror films and listen to death metal. The third is cutting yourself along a vein.’

  Bradshaw clicked her remote and the Blue Whale Challenge task list image disappeared. A diagram of the human brain replaced it.

  ‘These instructions can be sequentially classified as the psychological principles of induction, habituation and preparation. Induction is ensuring the victim commits to the Blue Whale Challenge by psychologically rewarding compliance and admonishing disobedience. In a vulnerable person, particularly one who hasn’t had a lot of positive reinforcement, this can be a powerful, sometimes even addictive, motivator.

  ‘The habituation instructions are designed to interrupt the victim’s usual sleep pattern, which, combined with the constant exposure to horror films and songs about death and suicide, leads to dysregulation of the orbitofrontal cortex. This of course is the part of the brain that regulates emotional decisions—’

  Dave Coughlan, the detective with the monobrow, stood and said, ‘What is this nonsense?’

  Nightingale turned in her seat. ‘I beg your pardon, DC Coughlan?’

  ‘This is that semiotic briefing all over again, ma’am,’ he said. ‘We’re sitting here like social workers when we should be out looking for the bastard behind it all.’

  ‘And how do you propose we do that?’ Nightingale snapped.

  Coughlan said nothing.

  ‘This is a briefing on how a person can be remotely manipulated into committing murder,’ Nightingale continued. ‘It’s important, so either sit down and shut up or leave the room.’

  ‘If it’s that important shouldn’t we get someone normal to do it then?’ he muttered.

  There were a couple of titters but probably not as many as he’d hoped.

  Poe’s jaw hardened but he remained seated. A year ago a remark like that would have reduced Bradshaw to tears and him to violence. These days, though, insults seemed to bother her about as much as farts bothered dogs. And her beguiling honesty meant she flipped most of them anyway.

  ‘Don’t get angry, Detective Constable Dave Coughlan,’ Bradshaw said. ‘Not everyone has the intellect for complex briefings like this.’

  Coughlan reddened. ‘And what makes you think I don’t have the intellect? You don’t even know me.’

  Poe turned in his seat. ‘She’s a profiler, dickhead. She’ll have been analysing your speech patterns, non-verbal communication and mannerisms since the moment she met you.’

  Bradshaw nodded enthusiastically. ‘And also Detective Superintendent Nightingale told Poe that you aren’t a deep thinker.’

  The room erupted into laughter.

  Coughlan scowled but eventually said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s OK, Detective Constable Dave Coughlan, Poe doesn’t understand complex briefings either. He doesn’t even know how to use his new BlackBerry. He was trying to send me a text last week but all I received was empty speech bubbles.’

  Poe grimaced. Bloody NCA, always changing things. He’d only just got used to his old phone.

  ‘It was like having a conversation with a fish,’ she added.

  More laughter.

  Nightingale stood up.

  ‘OK, settle down. I know cracking a case can feel like the last day of school but may I remind you all that we haven’t finished yet. We don’t know who is behind all this and we don’t know why.’ She sat down. ‘Miss Bradshaw, please continue.’

  ‘Dysregulation of the orbitofrontal cortex is perhaps better known as brainwashing, DC Coughlan,’ Bradshaw said, picking up where she’d left off. ‘The final psychological principle in the Blue Whale Suicide Challenge is preparation. This is simply desensitising the victim to pain and harm, which in turn gradually erodes their survival instincts. After completing forty-nine tasks, when given the fiftieth – to jump off a high building and take your life – it doesn’t seem such an impossible choice.’

  ‘That’s it?’ Nightingale said. ‘That’s all it took to make these kids kill themselves?’

  Bradshaw shook her head.

  ‘I believe that when selecting victims, the administrator will have looked for four preconditions: bad life experiences, unwanted isolation, depression and a borderline personality disorder. Unfortunately, young people, whose neural pathways haven’t yet fully developed, tend to unwittingly share these characteristics on social media. We have a saying in SCAS: there are some things that can only be shared with a psychiatrist and one hundred thousand people on the internet. It means that the most vulnerable young adults are easily identified
by the predators out there, which in turn makes them even more vulnerable.’

  ‘It’s a chicken and egg thing,’ Coughlan said, eager to make up for his earlier outburst.

  Bradshaw looked at him blankly.

  ‘You know, what came first – the vulnerability or the person making them vulnerable.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Bradshaw said. ‘But what does that have to do with a chicken?’

  ‘It’s a saying. What came first, the chicken or the egg? It’s an unanswerable question.’

  ‘The chicken came first, obviously,’ Bradshaw said. ‘The proteins found in eggshells can only be produced by hens.’

  Laughter.

  ‘Really?’ Coughlan said. He turned to Nightingale. ‘I’ve changed my mind, ma’am, I’m glad she’s on our side.’

  ‘Sit down, Dave,’ Nightingale replied.

  ‘But … but why?’ someone at the back said. ‘What’s in it for the administrator?’

  ‘The only person convicted of administering a Blue Whale Challenge game is a Russian called Philipp Budeikin. He claimed he was cleansing society and that his victims were nothing more than biological waste.’

  ‘And do you believe that?’ Nightingale said.

  ‘I don’t. I’ve studied his profile and I think Philipp Budeikin was an intelligent young man who had failed to build any connections with anyone. He developed his methods and honed his manipulations until eventually he felt like God. He had the power of life and death over people. That’s why he did it. He was simply an evil man.’

  ‘Why have I not heard about this?’ the chief constable asked.

  Poe stood.

  ‘Couple of reasons, ma’am.’ He held up a finger. ‘First, there haven’t been any Blue Whale attributable deaths in the UK.’ He held up a second finger. ‘And two, everyone did what we would have done: downplayed it to discourage copycats.’