The Curator (Washington Poe)

by M. W. Craven

Poe didn’t think they would but it was worth a try.

  ‘And the CEO’s son?’ he asked. ‘The one who was actually responsible for blinding those kids?’

  ‘He’s out of prison and we’re looking into him but it’s a long shot. The civil action that Atkinson and the families took, along with the massive fines they received after the Environment Agency prosecution, bankrupted the company. Made them social pariahs, so they haven’t been able to restart. I can’t see how they could afford someone like the Curator.’

  ‘When do we think this all started?’ he asked.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the whistleblower’s bothering me,’ Poe said. ‘If this is a plan a long time in the making then Atkinson’s exoneration should have changed things. The Baldwins should be the targets now. But they’re not. So it either didn’t change things or this isn’t what we think it is.’

  ‘You’re thinking this might not be revenge for what happened to those kids, it could be revenge for what happened to the Baldwins?’

  ‘Why not?’ Poe said. ‘When J. Baldwin went bankrupt people will have lost money. That’s hopefully a much smaller pool of suspects.’

  Nightingale made a note.

  ‘There’s a third option,’ Flynn said. ‘Someone who has held on to their hatred. Nurtured it to the point that new information wasn’t going to change things.’

  ‘Belief perseverance, it’s called,’ Bradshaw said, the first time she’d spoken in a while. When cops were talking cop stuff she tended to hover in the background.

  ‘Which is?’ Nightingale said.

  ‘It’s when a belief is maintained despite new information that definitively contradicts it. And it isn’t just restricted to people with low levels of education. In the 2009 paper “Experimental Studies of Belief Dependence of Observations and of Resistance to Conceptual Change”, Moti Nissani and his wife Donna did an experiment on nineteen PhD students. They were all given a flawed formula on how to determine the volume of a sphere. They were then given a measuring container to check their results. Eighteen of the nineteen refused to believe the measurements, despite their empirical observations.’

  ‘How’s that different to what I said?’ Flynn said.

  ‘I quoted actual research, DI Flynn,’ Bradshaw replied. ‘You guess—’

  ‘Tilly, you’re getting right on my fucking tits,’ Flynn snapped.

  ‘Are they still leak—’

  ‘How common is it, Tilly?’ Poe asked before things had a chance to escalate.

  ‘Common enough not to rule it out, Poe.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ Nightingale said. ‘If we can’t rule it out then I need to look at both suspect pools: people who either didn’t respect the lack of a guilty verdict or didn’t believe the whistleblower, and people who have a grudge against Atkinson because of what happened to J. Baldwin. I need more resources and we’re already stretched thin. I’m going to need a new budget meeting.’

  ‘While you’re trying to get blood out of a stone, ma’am, I’m going to get an address for Atkinson.’

  ‘How on earth are you going to do that?’

  ‘By playing to my strengths.’

  ‘Which are?’

  ‘Politics, obviously,’ Poe grinned.

  Nightingale put her head in her hands and groaned.

  ‘We’re all doomed,’ she said.

  Chapter 56

  ‘It’s more than a credible threat, sir; I think there’s now an inevitability to it,’ Poe said.

  Poe was speaking to Edward van Zyl, the director of intelligence and his ultimate superior. He’d called him on his personal mobile and van Zyl had known him long enough to know he only ever did that when it was serious.

  ‘UKPPS are happy with his security,’ van Zyl said.

  ‘I’m not. My FBI contact says the Curator might have been behind that death the US Marshals had in their witness protection programme last year. If he can breach their systems, he can certainly breach ours.’

  Melody Lee had said no such thing. Poe didn’t like lying to the director but it was the lie he needed to hear. He knew that van Zyl wanted to help and Poe’s job was to give him the cover to do so.

  Van Zyl didn’t respond.

  ‘I also think we have a unique opportunity,’ Poe continued, ‘not only to catch a very dangerous man, but also to elevate the NCA’s standing in law enforcement globally.’

  ‘Appealing to my vanity, Poe?’

  ‘If I thought it would work on you, I would, sir. No, but apart from my source, the Yanks don’t believe he exists. If we can prove he does, not only will we have one up on the FBI, they’ll be desperate to speak to him. It’d be nice to have them owing us a favour for once.’

  Like anything else, international law enforcement worked on relationships and favours as much as it did protocols and intelligence-sharing agreements. An FBI favour in van Zyl’s back pocket would be a valuable thing to have later down the line.

  ‘I’m listening,’ he said.

  ‘We get the name and we go in gently. Set up covert surveillance and wait for the Curator to find him.’

  ‘We can’t leak Atkinson’s name, Poe.’

  ‘We won’t need to, sir. If the Curator is half the adversary I think he is, it won’t take him long to get it.’

  ‘Honestly, Poe,’ Bradshaw grumbled, ‘when are you going to realise that vegetables won’t kill you?’

  ‘It’s only a sandwich,’ he protested. ‘And I need to build up my strength.’

  ‘It’s a loaf of bread stuffed with meatballs and cheese.’

  They’d gone to a local café while they waited for van Zyl. Bradshaw had ordered the five-bean salad and he’d ordered the meatball sub, extra Monterey Jack, extra jalapeños. He pulled out a bit of limp lettuce and held it up.

  ‘See, it’s got salad in it.’

  Bradshaw put down her fork. She looked troubled.

  ‘DI Flynn was cross with me before, wasn’t she, Poe?’

  ‘She’s cross with everyone right now, Tilly. My advice is don’t worry about it. It’s a symptom of what she’s going through, not a reflection of what she thinks.’

  Bradshaw thought about that for a moment then nodded decisively.

  ‘OK, I shan’t worry about it.’ She started eating again.

  ‘But you might want to stop asking her about her leaking …’

  His phone rang. Van Zyl’s name was on the caller ID. He answered it.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Poe, how soon can you get to a secure laptop and an internet connection?’

  ‘Is that thing secure, Tilly?’ Poe said, pointing at her MacBook.

  ‘It is, Poe.’

  ‘What about the café’s wi-fi?’

  ‘Not at the minute. If it’s important I can hijack it and make it secure. It will mean everyone else will lose their connection, though.’

  Poe looked round. There were half a dozen people still in the café. Four of them were reading and another was on a tablet. The sixth was staring into space like a weirdo.

  ‘Do it,’ he said. ‘Give me a minute, sir … how long, Tilly?’

  She held a finger in the air while she fiddled about on the Mac’s trackpad.

  ‘Done,’ she said.

  ‘We’re up and running, sir,’ Poe said.

  After Bradshaw had given van Zyl her details he said, ‘Someone’s going to call you now.’

  He then hung up.

  Two minutes later the videoconference icon on Bradshaw’s laptop began flashing.

  Chapter 57

  ‘Edward Atkinson is now called Ian Carruthers,’ Poe said to the small team he’d been authorised to brief. ‘And he wasn’t ghosted somewhere new, he’s still living in Cumbria.’

  There was a burst of muttering. Atkinson being in their area wasn’t just surprising – it gave them a whole new set of problems, one of which was resourcing. Nightingale and the assistant chief exchanged a worried glance. They’d just won a hard-fought increase in their budget – now
they were going to need even more.

  ‘When I called, I was told this information was classified,’ Nightingale said. ‘Why were they happy to tell you, Poe?’

  ‘I explained how there would be certain … political advantages to the NCA being involved in this arrest,’ Poe said. ‘Ultimately, though, the only reason they released the information is that they aren’t actively involved any more. Atkinson accepted a new identity and then opted out of the scheme altogether. As you know, it’s voluntary.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  Poe didn’t know for sure but he could guess.

  ‘I think it was because they wanted to move him out of Cumbria,’ he said. ‘Miles on the map is the best tool UKPPS have at their disposal, but he’s lived here all his life and you know what home birds Cumbrians are. And because of the compensation he received from the police and the civil action, he wasn’t short of money.’

  ‘So he decided to arrange his own protection?’ Nightingale said.

  ‘Sort of … He bought an island.’

  The resulting silence wasn’t unexpected. Poe had had exactly the same reaction. The only people who owned islands were whacky billionaires and Bond villains.

  ‘An island?’ Flynn said eventually. ‘An actual island?’

  ‘Well, not all of it,’ Poe said. ‘But most of it. Montague Island. It’s one of the Islands of Furness.’

  He hadn’t known much about the islands so Bradshaw had researched them on the way back to Carleton Hall. They were all situated off the Furness Peninsula and 20 per cent of the district of Barrow’s population lived on them, almost all on the largest island, Walney Island.

  Walney was eleven miles long but less than a mile wide. It was crescent-shaped, like a quarter moon. Although it was officially the windiest lowland site in Britain, it pinched up against the mainland and formed the Walney Channel that protected the islands that sat within it from the ravaging Irish Sea. At low tide, most of them could be accessed on foot, carefully and under the guidance of someone who knew where the quicksand and deep channels were. Piel Island, with the popular Ship Inn whose landlord was officially the ‘King of Piel’, was a particular favourite with tourists.

  Montague Island, the island that Atkinson owned most of, was outside the Walney Channel, although it was still accessible on foot. Just. It was farther out to sea and the tide didn’t stay low for as long as it did in the sheltered areas of the channel.

  Poe had never heard of it. According to Bradshaw, like the nearby Sheep Island, an isolation hospital had been built on it in 1892. Unlike Sheep Island, Montague Island’s had been used. In 1894, a plague ship had attempted to berth at Devonshire Dock in Barrow. It was carrying Chinese labourers needed for the construction of Royal Navy warships. It had suffered an outbreak of typhus en-route. It was redirected to the isolation hospital on Montague Island where care was given. Twelve Chinese labourers died and their unmarked graves were still at the western end. Bradshaw said that it was rumoured that the island’s rats still carried the virus. It was all nonsense, of course, but that, and the exposed, isolated nature of the island, explained how Atkinson had been able to purchase so much of it.

  The assistant chief of operations was called Pete Nippress. He was a big man with a nose like a baked potato. He’d transferred in from Greater Manchester so Poe only knew him by reputation. He was well liked and known to be supportive of the cops on the ground.

  ‘Do the NCA have any preferences on how this situation with Atkinson is handled?’ he said.

  ‘I think they’d prefer something low-key.’

  ‘Use him as bait?’

  ‘At the minute we have an advantage: the Curator probably doesn’t know that we know who his primary target is. We have a unique opportunity to catch him in the act. If we go in mob-handed we’ll tip him off and Atkinson will spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder.’

  Nippress turned to Nightingale. ‘Jo, the NCA can piss off – this is your op, what do you want to do?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Poe, but I can’t risk Atkinson’s life that way,’ she said. ‘I’ll dispatch two detectives to transport him to Barrow nick. I’ll be waiting for him when he arrives to explain what’s happened. By then I’m hoping I’ll have authority to put something more suitable in place. We don’t know how long this will last but he’s disabled and he can’t stay in the nick for more than a night. We’re not geared up for it.’

  ‘I’ll get you what you need,’ Nippress said.

  ‘It may be moot anyway,’ Poe said. ‘According to the person Tilly and I spoke to, Atkinson hates Cumbria Police. Really hates them. Blames them for everything, from the botched investigation that led to his arrest, to the acid attack – even the failed suicide attempt that put him in a chair. He bought the island to get as far away from everyone as he could.’

  ‘You don’t think he’ll come back to the nick?’ Nightingale asked.

  ‘I don’t think a couple of cops rocking up with even more bad news is going to change his mind about you. I think he’ll tell them to fu … to go away.’

  ‘Even when we tell him he’s in danger?’

  ‘UKPPS reckon no one knows he’s there. Monthly deliveries come in by boat and he has a private doctor on-call if he needs one. He never leaves the island and he never has visitors. Montague Island is barren, privately owned and very dangerous to walk to so they don’t get the tourists that Piel, Sheep and Roa Islands get.’

  ‘Still …’

  ‘I agree with you, ma’am,’ Poe said. ‘I think he is in danger. UKPPS’s assertion that no one knows he’s there is flawed. No one knew he was there while no one was looking for him. But if someone puts the word out … He’s in a wheelchair and he either still wears a mask or he has a face that’s basically one big scar; someone will know of him.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I don’t have an answer for you,’ he said. ‘I’m just saying I don’t think he’s going to be amenable to the shock and awe approach. I think you’re going to have to be more subtle.’

  ‘What do you suggest?’

  Poe grinned. ‘Do you own a pair of wellies, ma’am?’

  Chapter 58

  Despite Poe’s misgivings, Nightingale planned to send two detectives out to Montague Island immediately, tasked with bringing Atkinson back to the mainland. They hadn’t been told why, only that he was at risk. As the tide was in, the North West Police Underwater and Marine Unit, a collaboration between six of the northern constabularies, were taking them out.

  She’d then sent SCAS home with instructions to meet on Walney Island at 7 a.m. the next day. Poe had gone home and slept soundly all night.

  Poe arrived at Snab Point on Walney Island at 6.30 a.m. It was where the majority of walks across the Walney Channel to Piel Island departed from and, as they were trying to blend in, it made sense to start where everyone else started.

  Nightingale had arrived before him and she was in a foul mood. She’d been up all night coordinating her response to the new threat but she hadn’t had much luck. It had been after midnight when she’d driven across the bridge that connected Barrow Docks with Walney Island and by then Poe had already been proved right: Atkinson had thanked the two detectives she’d sent ahead but had politely asked them to leave his land. Without contradictory instructions, and as they hadn’t been read in on who he actually was, they’d done as he asked and returned to the mainland with the marine unit.

  ‘Rough night?’ Poe said as he handed her a coffee.

  She stamped her feet in frustration. The tide in the Walney Channel was too high to walk across but too low to sail. She paced up and down the shoreline, straining her eyes to see the mist-shrouded Montague Island in the distance, oblivious to the seawater ruining her shoes and the wind buffeting her hair.

  ‘What’s he playing at, Poe?’

  ‘He’s still angry, ma’am.’

  ‘Well he doesn’t own the whole island,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve a good mind to surround him with a
ring of blue steel. Patrol cars, command tents, air support, the works. Now we’ve identified the risk it’s indefensible not to take robust countermeasures.’

  Poe knew she was just blowing off steam. He didn’t blame her. Whether Atkinson liked it or not, protecting him was her responsibility. Someone not wanting protection didn’t absolve her of the obligation.

  As Nightingale continued to fume at the tide, at the two detectives and at Atkinson himself, Poe found himself tuning her out. He wandered across to the white sign emblazoned with ‘Danger’ in big red letters. It warned against soft sands and incoming tides, and that using a mechanically propelled vehicle on a Site of Special Scientific Interest was strictly prohibited. The waves that lapped at its base were neither gentle nor urgent. They moved with force but died and retreated, leaving nothing behind but sea foam. Poe found something Zen about the tide. Watching something being controlled by a planetary satellite hundreds of thousands of miles away put things into perspective.

  Barrow-in-Furness had never scored well on any of the health and wellbeing indicators, despite being set among some of the most striking scenery in the UK. Low self-esteem, high unemployment, low levels of entrepreneurship and a poor sense of identity all contributed to the feeling that Barrow was marking time, waiting for something to happen.

  However, despite being linked by road, Walney Island had a different zeitgeist altogether. It was wild and rugged and, to Poe, felt like it was straining to get away from the mainland. As the violent wind took hold of his coat tails, making them crack like a snapped towel, Poe tucked his head into his chin and wondered how many people had stood before him on the same bit of land, shielding their faces against the elements as they squinted at the bleak horizon, pondering a life beyond the Irish Sea. Somewhere exotic, where the sun warmed your back and the air cleared your lungs. In a country where no one lived farther than seventy miles from the coast, he suspected the urge to get in a boat and go exploring was a uniquely British thing.

  Nightingale stomped up. Her shoes were ruined and her trouser legs were sodden and muddy. The wind was beating her hair into her face and blowing it above her head. Her eyes looked gritty and tired.