The Curator (Washington Poe)

by M. W. Craven

  Bradshaw passed him a folder.

  ‘Almost everything you need is in there, Poe,’ she said. ‘I’ve circumnavigated most of his security but, as he knew what he was doing, there are parts I need a password for. There are also things he’ll have done in live chatrooms that aren’t recoverable.’

  ‘Estelle Doyle’s completed the post-mortems on Rebecca Pridmore and Amanda Simpson, I take it?’

  ‘She asked me to tell you that you’re a reckless idiot, but yes, she worked through the night and finished this morning,’ Nightingale said.

  She handed him a thin file. Probably just summary sheets. The full reports would follow. ‘You have a messed up mind, Poe. It’s exactly as you said. He had practised on them, right down to the crude stitching.’

  A search of the island with ground-penetrating radar had found that there were more bodies in the old isolation hospital’s graveyard than there were headstones. The real Edward Atkinson had been interred on his own land, in the grave of a Chinese labourer. The bodies of Rebecca Pridmore and Amanda Simpson were in adjacent graves. Dave Coughlan had been found alive, but only just. He had bruising to his throat and had been zip-tied to a cast-iron radiator in one of the empty properties. Other than someone grabbing him from behind he had no recollection of what had happened. Nightingale said he’d make a full recovery. Poe didn’t doubt it – he was as tough as teak.

  ‘And the other thing?’ he asked.

  ‘Came through an hour ago.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. Now he didn’t have a compound fracture to threaten him with, he needed a different type of leverage.

  He made to go inside, stopped and turned.

  ‘Do we have a name for him yet?’

  Nightingale nodded.

  ‘The one he’s using at least. Tilly found it on his laptop and my team found a passport. It was in the same name.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He’s ex-army intelligence,’ she said. ‘Left under a cloud at the rank of captain. He’s called Oliver Hartley-Graham.’

  ‘What’s his story?’

  ‘Dishonourably discharged after he was caught passing on details of future troop deployments to the Chinese. Left the country and never came back. At least not under his real name.’

  Oliver Hartley-Graham looked like a man who’d been hit with a rock in a sock after having his testicles ruptured by a woman fighting for her life. He was wearing surgical shorts and a dressing gown. His face was so dry and flaky from the repeated use of rigid collodion that it was hard to tell what he actually looked like.

  Poe’s cosh had broken his left clavicle, or collarbone. Although it was a neat break and would be left to heal naturally, Oliver Hartley-Graham would need a sling to support the weight of his left arm for a couple of months.

  His right arm was a different matter.

  When Hartley-Graham had protected his face with it, his elbow had taken the full force of the rock. As well as the broken bone, he also had damaged nerves and blood vessels. He’d been in surgery for six hours. The plaster he’d have to wear for months ran from his shoulder to his hand and he’d never be able to lift his arm above his head again.

  And that wasn’t the worst injury. Because Poe’s first blow had hit Hartley-Graham’s hand while it was on the arm of the wheelchair, he had significant crush trauma. As well as compression fractures to all four fingers, three of his fingertips had burst under the pressure.

  He also had a head wound. The one he’d sustained when Poe clubbed him unconscious so he could find Flynn. Although there’d been no lasting damage, the bruise on his right temple had spread into his eye sockets. His right socket was stained yellow and had swollen shut. The left was open but not by much more than a squint. His nose had been set as straight as it could be, but it would always whistle when he breathed through it.

  Hartley-Graham was seated in a wheelchair. This time he needed one. He shifted in the seat and winced when he did. Poe suspected he was going to be in pain for a long time.

  His solicitor was seated beside him. She was called Lauretta Notman. She was from a local firm. The Barrow cops who knew her said she was tough but fair. She was dark-haired and wore a trouser suit, not unlike the ones Flynn used to wear before the pregnancy caused a wardrobe change.

  She was pulsating with anger.

  Poe ignored her. She would soon be irrelevant. Instead he locked eyes with Hartley-Graham and wordlessly reaffirmed that the agreement they’d reached in those final minutes on the island still held. Poe was confident it would; it was in neither of their interests for it to get out.

  ‘So, you’re the Curator, are you?’ he said, reading from his file. ‘A man who couldn’t be in more shit if he’d jumped into a swimming pool filled with shit.’

  Hartley-Graham said nothing.

  ‘I don’t often use the word ghoulish,’ Poe continued, ‘but in your case I can’t actually think of another.’

  He picked up a document and pretended to read it.

  ‘You were a captain in the British Army and you’re now a hired killer,’ he said. ‘Your mother must be so proud.’

  ‘My client will not be saying anything, Sergeant Poe,’ Notman snapped, clearly not used to being ignored. ‘We have prepared a statement, which you can read now or later.’

  She slid a two-page document across the table.

  Poe let it fall to the floor.

  ‘I think there’s been a misunderstanding, Mrs Notman,’ he said. ‘This is a Cumbrian case and I am no longer involved in it. Superintendent Nightingale’s team will be along soon if you still want to talk statements and assault charges. No, I’m here in a liaison capacity.’

  Poe opened his file and retrieved a document. He didn’t offer it to Notman. Not yet.

  ‘My colleague Tilly, who you met on the island, Oliver, broke most of the security on your laptop in under two minutes. We have your files, we have your Black Swan Challenge blueprints and we have the bitcoins you were presumably paid in.’

  Bradshaw had found over two million pounds’ worth of the cryptocurrency on Hartley-Graham’s laptop. She was trying to trace its origins but she wasn’t hopeful. She’d explained that he’d probably used random people to withdraw small amounts of his fee from his employer’s digital wallet, giving them a reasonable cut when they did. Tracing the person who’d hired him via his payment would be impossible.

  Poe continued, ‘I understand that, unless you give us the password, it will take specialist software to open the rest of it. Proprietary software, which I’m told is only available from the laptop’s manufacturer.’

  Notman frowned, unsure where Poe was going.

  ‘Anyway, I digress. If I may, I’d like to talk about an American called Stuart Wilson and a game called the White Elephant Challenge. Do you remember Stuart? He’s the rich college boy you thought would make the perfect patsy.’

  Hartley-Graham shifted in his seat. Poe knew he hadn’t expected to hear that name so early.

  ‘I know you remember him. You’re an intelligent and well-organised man, Oliver – there’s no way you set someone up unless you think you know all about them.’

  Poe opened his file and put on his reading glasses.

  ‘But this time you got it wrong. Stuart Wilson was from a wealthy family, and on the face of it, they weren’t going to garner much public sympathy. They’d got rich investing in the construction of Iran’s liquefied natural gas export facilities. As the self-declared sworn enemy of the United States, at best, anyone managing to do business there is seen as an opportunist.’

  ‘Are you going somewhere with this, Sergeant Poe?’ Notman said.

  Poe ignored her, kept his eyes on Hartley-Graham. He was watching Poe now. Curious and nervous.

  ‘And this is the thing you missed. Because of his success, Mr Wilson, Stuart’s father, was in delicate but advanced negotiations to provide safety equipment for some of the state-owned oil and gas sector.’

  Hartley-Graham said nothing.

  ‘
And that caught the attention of the US intelligence agencies,’ Poe continued. ‘They were very keen for this to happen. I’m not privy to all the details, but apparently they’d asked for some backdoors to be slipped in. Backdoors that would have allowed some of the American three-letter agencies unfettered access to raw data they’d previously struggled to get anywhere near.’

  ‘Spit it out, Sergeant Poe!’ Notman snapped.

  ‘OK then, I will. Long story short is that your stunt with his kid caused Mr Wilson to pull out of the Iranian deal. He needed time and money for his son’s court case. I also suspect he wasn’t feeling the love for his government right then either.’

  Poe slid a piece of paper across the table.

  ‘We’ve shared what evidence we have with them and told them that Stuart Wilson was set up. The Americans are now taking the view that you deliberately sabotaged this Iranian deal.’

  Hartley-Graham swallowed hard.

  ‘On the face of it, it’s a pretty reasonable interpretation of the facts,’ Poe said. ‘And, as you’ll be aware, in this day and age, to the Americans suspected terrorism is terrorism.’

  ‘I’m not a terrorist,’ Hartley-Graham whispered. He knew what was coming. Knew his options had become binary, neither of them good. He would have to deal.

  ‘I can see you’ve fast-forwarded to the next song. I’ve just passed Mrs Notman what’s called an “intention to apply for extradition”. The United States want you brought there under the Patriot Act.’

  Poe paused while they read it.

  When they’d finished, he said, ‘You have a simple choice to make, Oliver: where do you want to be prosecuted? In the UK for four murders or in the States for terrorism. I’ll be back in ten minutes. Read that extradition document. It’s real, it’s happening now.’

  He stood and left the room without a backwards glance.

  Chapter 85

  Nightingale and Bradshaw had watched the interview on the monitor. Bradshaw’s eyes were ringed with fatigue but she was still staring unblinking at the screen. Oliver Hartley-Graham had almost killed everyone she cared about.

  ‘You did well in there, Poe,’ Nightingale said.

  Poe grunted his thanks. He wasn’t taking plaudits until he knew who was behind it all. Hartley-Graham was someone’s employee. If he didn’t find out whose, Scrapper Flynn would never be safe. It didn’t matter how many ex-special forces people Jessica Flynn hired, a resourceful person would find a way through. They only had to be lucky once, Scrapper had to be lucky all the time.

  Poe couldn’t have that.

  ‘You think he’ll talk?’ Nightingale said.

  ‘He’ll talk.’

  ‘You seem sure.’

  ‘You should have seen how quickly he gave up the baby’s location when he thought I was going to pull on that protruding bone,’ Poe said. ‘He has no tolerance for pain. The thought of being waterboarded will terrify him. He’ll do anything to avoid extradition and the only way he can do that is to ensure he’s convicted of the crimes he committed in this country. Hope that if he’s ever released he’ll be too old to be of interest to the Yanks.’

  ‘You’re not worried he’ll come after you for assault?’

  Poe shook his head.

  ‘You don’t think he’ll press charges?’

  ‘No idea. I’m just not worried. I’ve gone through it over and over again and I firmly believe it was the only option I had. Oliver Hartley-Graham might be clever and organised but at the end of the day he’s a contract killer. Taking him down was the only way to save the boss’s baby. It isn’t always, but my conscience is clear on this occasion.’

  He didn’t add that there was another reason Hartley-Graham wouldn’t press charges, one Poe could only discuss with the person who’d hired him. It would happen soon, he hoped.

  Nightingale nodded. ‘You’re a disobedient bastard, Poe, but the chief constable agrees – under the circumstances you had no choice. Cumbria won’t be seeking to press charges and, unless they receive a complaint, neither will the CPS.’

  Director van Zyl had been in touch, too. He’d been calling about Flynn but he’d also told him that there would be no internal investigation on the actions he’d taken. When Poe had driven into the Walney Channel, jurisdiction was … unclear. It was a Cumbrian investigation so it was their case. But, an officer in the National Crime Agency had been in imminent danger and Poe had been within his rights to go to her aid. In the end common sense had prevailed and the whole thing was put down as a learning experience. Van Zyl and the chief constable would deliver a joint paper on it at a meeting they were attending in April.

  ‘If you’d waited for the tide to come in with the rest of us we’d have missed him by thirty minutes,’ Nightingale continued. ‘He and DI Flynn’s baby would have docked at the Isle of Man and caught a flight to mainland Europe. We wouldn’t have known where to start looking for him. We wouldn’t know what he looked like and we wouldn’t have had his name.’

  Poe already knew this. Bradshaw had found Hartley-Graham’s private charter details and subsequent travel plans on his laptop. If he’d got off Montague Island he’d have been gone for ever.

  ‘Hey, guys, get over here,’ Bradshaw said. ‘Something’s happening.’

  Hartley-Graham and his solicitor were having a heated argument. Notman looked to be reasoning with him. As best he could given his extensive injuries, Hartley-Graham was waving her away.

  ‘Looks like you’re on, Poe,’ Nightingale said.

  Poe retook his seat. It was still warm.

  The detective constable with him completed the formalities. It would be the last time she’d speak. Poe was in charge from now on.

  ‘I’d like to cooperate, Sergeant Poe,’ Hartley-Graham said.

  Poe said nothing.

  ‘I have three conditions,’ he continued. ‘One, my solicitor is legally absolved from all consequences. This is my decision and she has advised against it.’

  ‘Noted,’ Poe said. ‘If Mrs Notman draws up the relevant paperwork, you can sign it before she leaves the building.’ He turned to the solicitor. ‘Is this acceptable?’

  She nodded and visibly relaxed.

  ‘Two,’ Hartley-Graham said, ‘I’ll give you everything you want but I have to be prosecuted in this country.’

  ‘I’ll do everything I can to make sure you spend the rest of your life in a British prison,’ Poe said, ‘but if I think you’re lying, or lying by omission, I’ll take you to the bloody airport myself.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘What’s your third condition, Mr Hartley-Graham?’

  He tried to smile. It came out as a grotesque grimace.

  ‘I want to know what I did wrong.’

  ‘The criminal who doesn’t make mistakes is yet to exist,’ Poe replied, ‘and you didn’t have the discipline to stay in role …’

  Chapter 86

  It’s sometimes the smallest thing that cracks a case.

  Dennis Nilsen’s blocked drains.

  The BTK Killer sending a traceable floppy disc to a television station.

  The Son of Sam’s parking ticket …

  Small mistakes, unimaginable consequences.

  In Hartley-Graham’s case it had hinged on whether it had been Bradshaw or Poe who’d been first in the shower after the snowstorm had trapped them at Herdwick Croft.

  If it had been him then Hartley-Graham and Flynn’s baby would have disappeared without a trace and the murders of Edward Atkinson, Rebecca Pridmore, Amanda Simpson and Howard Teasdale would have remained unsolved.

  But he hadn’t gone first. Bradshaw had.

  And she wasn’t as tall as him …

  ‘The shower,’ Poe said. ‘I recently had a guest, and for the first time since it had been installed someone had lowered the shower on the shower rod. They aren’t as tall as me, you see. That was your mistake. If you’d stayed in role and used the shower chair like Edward had, you’d be a free man. But you didn’t stay in role. You wa
nted to stand in the shower and you raised the showerhead accordingly. When I readjusted my shower, it reminded me I’d seen witness marks on Atkinson’s shower rod that were way too high for a man sitting down. You’d put the shower back to where Edward had put it but it still left marks where you had it.’

  ‘That was it? You got the whole thing from a shower head?’

  Poe shrugged. Of course that hadn’t been it. Until he’d brought everything together it was just one more thing without any context. But … when he put it alongside a trail of bread-crumbs that had been difficult but not impossible to follow, and Melody Lee’s warning that when you thought you knew what the Curator was doing he had you exactly where he wanted you to be, it had all pointed to a complex but brilliant plan to isolate a single person.

  ‘I knew it couldn’t have been me you were after,’ Poe said. ‘You’d had me alone for a whole night and hadn’t made a move. And me being the target didn’t explain the female abductions or the anaesthetic we found in their blood. That suggested there was a medical angle and her pregnancy made DI Flynn the obvious choice.’

  Notman was staring, open-mouthed. Poe felt like leaning over and pushing up her lower jaw. Hartley-Graham said nothing.

  ‘It was enough for me to think that she could be at risk anyway.’

  Hartley-Graham nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘But I was only sure when I confirmed that DC Coughlan had asked to do a double shift on the island. You could only escape at high tide but you couldn’t risk being on the water when the marine unit brought in DC Coughlan’s replacement. They’d have discovered what you’d done and, as it’s a four-hour journey to the Isle of Man, they’d have chased you down. No way could you outrun one of their RIBs. No, the only way it could be done was if you had that tide cycle to yourself, and the only way you could achieve that was if you found a way of cancelling DC Coughlan’s replacement. I assume it was you and not him who radioed in volunteering for the overtime?’

  Hartley-Graham nodded. ‘It wasn’t difficult. No one wanted to do a long shift out there. I’d spent twenty-four hours with you so knew the callsigns and frequencies. The detective inspector I spoke to was delighted Coughlan wanted to stay on.’