The Puppet Show (Washington Poe Book 1)

by M. W. Craven

  ‘Sorry, Grandma,’ a child replied.

  Poe noticed that when Swift raised her voice, her cultured accent slipped and the Maryport girl shone through. ‘Do you know why we’re here, Mrs Swift?’ he asked when she’d retaken her seat.

  ‘If I were pressed, I’d say one of the home’s ex-residents has been naughty and you want some background information on them? That’s what it normally is. I retired a long time ago but I still keep in touch with some of the children I looked after.’

  ‘Do you remember a man called Quentin Carmichael?’ Poe asked.

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘So, that’s why you’re here. Because of what happened on Ullswater. But why now? It was over twenty-five years ago.’

  ‘Something’s come up,’ he replied.

  ‘About the boys who ran away or about the cruise itself?’

  Poe didn’t answer. Sometimes it was best to let witnesses take you where they thought you wanted to go.

  Swift’s face hardened as she stared into the distance. ‘Those damn boys!’

  Poe waited to see if she would expand.

  ‘Over my years here, Sergeant Poe, I looked after more than one hundred children, and I’m not blowing my own trumpet when I say I had more than a small impact on their lives. The children appreciated the home I kept for them, they appreciated the boundaries I set and they appreciated the jump-start their lives needed.’

  ‘Sounds like you were a pillar of the community,’ he said.

  ‘But those four boys . . . well, some children just don’t want to be helped. I got them a marvellous opportunity with some marvellous people. If they’d done what I’d asked, they’d all have got decent apprenticeships out of it when it was time for them to leave school. Those men had excellent connections and were keen to help in any way they could. All I asked was for them to behave themselves. But did they? No, as soon as they realised they weren’t going to be supervised, they all got drunk. Like common yobbos. They thought nothing of the home and nothing of my reputation.’

  ‘Seems they were a bit ungrateful,’ Poe said.

  ‘Doesn’t it? Well, I don’t mind telling you, I tore an almighty strip off them when they came back. Damn near woke the whole house up.’

  ‘Really?’ Poe had been in enough interviews to know when someone was lying. Swift’s anger sounded forced.

  ‘Yes, really,’ she said.

  ‘So they ran off?’

  ‘They did. Took their stuff – and the money they’d made in tips – and hitched a ride to Carlisle station.’

  ‘Why Carlisle?’ Poe asked. ‘Penrith’s nearer.’

  Swift said she didn’t know. It was just what the police had told her.

  He glanced at Reid to see if he had any questions. Other than helping with the tea, he hadn’t asked her anything. Unbelievably he was starting to nod off. How much had he drunk last night?

  However, Poe was starting to flag as well. The room was warm and it had been a late night. Still . . . to fall asleep in front of a witness was something new. His phone was on silent but it vibrated in his pocket. He asked Swift for permission to answer but pressed receive before she had a chance to reply. It was Flynn.

  ‘What’s up?’ he said.

  ‘Where are you?’

  Poe glanced at Swift, who was smiling. His eyelids were starting to feel heavy. If he weren’t careful, he’d be joining Reid soon.

  ‘I’m at Mrs Swift’s home. DS Reid and I arrived about forty minutes ago, why?’

  ‘Poe, listen to me carefully. I’m going to tell you something but you can’t react. Do you understand?’

  Poe said he did. He noticed his voice was slurred and his tongue seemed to be thicker than usual. He looked across at Reid who was now flat out. He was drooling.

  What the hell . . .?

  ‘Montague Price has just given a full statement. He’s denying he’s the Immolation Man,’ Flynn said.

  ‘Yes, he is,’ Poe said, his thoughts becoming jumbled.

  ‘You’re slurring, Poe. Are you drunk?’ Flynn shouted.

  Poe didn’t answer. He had been drunk. He didn’t think he was now.

  Flynn didn’t wait for him to gather his thoughts. ‘Whatever, I don’t have time for this now. Just pay attention, Price has admitted to being on the boat but it wasn’t weekend breaks being auctioned.’

  ‘What was it?’ Poe could barely understand what she was saying.

  ‘It was the children, Poe,’ she replied. ‘It was the children being sold!’

  That got through. Oh shit . . .

  He looked across at Swift who was looking at him strangely.

  ‘And Poe, Hilary Swift was on the boat.’

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  ‘She and Carmichael organised the whole thing.’

  Poe tried to focus on the woman opposite. His vision was blurring and he realised it was nothing to do with a hangover or late-night fatigue.

  This was something different.

  ‘We don’t have anyone near. You and DS Reid are going to have to detain her. Can you do that, Poe?’

  Poe recognised the early stages of sedation. He tried to fight it but had no chance; he was about to succumb to whatever he’d been given. ‘Steph,’ he slurred, ‘she’s fucking drugged us.’

  He tried to stand but fell back onto the sofa. He dropped the phone. He was vaguely aware of Flynn shouting through the BlackBerry’s microphone.

  ‘Poe! Poe! Are you all right?’

  Eventually the voice faded and his eyes rolled back. Ten seconds later everything disappeared.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Poe came round in instalments. He tried consciousness a few times before it fully took. He had no idea how long he’d been out; it could have been days, it could have been minutes. He opened his eyes and tried to focus on the people milling around him.

  ‘Jesus, what happened?’ he heard Reid say. ‘I’ve a mouth like a camel’s scrotum.’

  Poe’s throat was parched as well. His head was thumping.

  He tried putting the pieces together. After a while, fragments of memory began to take shape and his brain could form thoughts. Hilary Swift had drugged them both, and judging by the hideous pink colour scheme, they were still in her house. If that were the case, then they couldn’t have been out for long. There were over twenty people in her front room, and some were wearing the green of paramedics. He looked down when he felt something tightening on his arm. His blood pressure was being taken. Some idiot tried to stick something in his ear and he jerked away.

  ‘Poe, stop being a dick and let her take your temperature.’

  It was Flynn.

  ‘Steph?’ His voice was little more than a croak.

  ‘You and DS Reid have been drugged.’

  Poe scowled. ‘That much I’ve worked out.’ Another thought formed. ‘Where’s Swift?’

  ‘She’s gone, Poe. DCS Gamble’s team are searching the house now but it looks like she left in a hurry. Must have been picked up as her car’s still outside.’

  ‘What about the grandchildren?’

  ‘What grandchildren?’

  ‘There were kids in the house.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked urgently.

  ‘I heard them.’

  Flynn called across to Reid. ‘DS Reid, DS Poe says there were children here.’

  ‘Two, I think,’ Reid confirmed.

  She shouted for Gamble and he hurried over, an annoyed look on his face. ‘DS Reid and DS Poe both say there were children here when they arrived, sir. I think she’s running with them.’

  ‘That’s all I fucking need,’ Gamble growled. He turned to one of the detectives with him. ‘Get onto the border agency now. Tell them she could be travelling with children.’ He turned to Reid. ‘Age? Sex? Description? Anything that can help?’

  ‘Didn’t see them, boss,’ Reid said. ‘They were upstairs. I think she said they were called Annabel and Geoffrey.’

  ‘Jeremy,’ Poe corrected.

  ‘Annabe
l and Jeremy,’ Reid confirmed. ‘The one who called Swift “Grandma” sounded young.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ Gamble shouted.

  Poe understood his anger. If the UKBA had been told to look out for a woman on her own, they wouldn’t have been paying as much attention to anyone with children. And if Swift made it through a border, Poe doubted they’d ever see her again.

  ‘I’ll get on to Swift’s daughter and get some photos emailed over, boss,’ Reid said.

  It looked as though Gamble was about to argue. To tell Reid he wasn’t doing anything. Instead he said, ‘At least you can explain your own fuck-up. Tell her how her children were abducted from underneath your nose.’

  Reid reddened and nodded.

  It was unfair and Poe wasn’t sure of the significance of Swift’s rapid disappearance, but the fact she had drugs to hand surely meant she was involved. He’d already heard one of Gamble’s detectives voice the opinion that they were now looking for the Immolation Woman. A consensus was forming.

  It fitted the facts, as they knew them. It answered all Gamble’s questions.

  That was all well and good, he thought, but it didn’t answer all his questions. The big one was still unanswered.

  Why?

  He didn’t care what the others were thinking. He had the same problem with Swift being the killer as he did with Price. Why wait all these years? Of course, with all the evidence pointing her way, it was probable Swift was their killer, and that she had a lucid explanation why she’d waited all this time to kill her partners in crime. But Poe didn’t want to die wondering; he wouldn’t be able to sleep until he’d understood her motive. Or how he was involved.

  To coin one of Bradshaw’s favourite phrases, he needed more data.

  And there was only one place to start.

  Montague Price’s confession.

  He tried to stand up but his legs were rubbery. They collapsed under him.

  ‘Whoa,’ said the paramedic. ‘You’re going nowhere until a doctor has checked you out. We need to put some saline into you.’

  ‘And you can consider that an order, DS Poe,’ Flynn said from across the room.

  For once he had no intention of disobeying.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  The incident room was jammed. Every moulded plastic seat had a hairy-arsed cop wedged into it. The high ceiling had flickering lights and off-white drop-in panels. Some were newer than the rest and were an annoyingly different colour. Like every police incident room, it smelled of fried food, coffee and frustration. Poe found it comforting.

  He stood at the back and listened to Gamble update the massed ranks of the team searching for Hilary Swift. It was two days after she’d drugged Poe and Reid and made her escape. It was Poe’s first day back on the job. So far there hadn’t been a hint of a sighting. She’d either successfully fled the country, or hadn’t yet tried.

  As well as the search for Swift, Gamble was trying to locate the boys that Price claimed had been sold on the night of the auction. His theory being that if the train tickets had been a ruse to make the police think they’d fled to London, then they had to be somewhere else. Gamble was convinced that if they found just one of them, the rest of the puzzle would slot neatly into place. He had teams of detectives assigned to it.

  Poe wished them luck but he wasn’t convinced. One of the unintended consequences of Operation Yewtree – the high-profile national investigation into historic sexual offences against children – was that the reporting of abuse was now at a record level. More and more victims were coming out of the shadows. Their allegations were being taken seriously.

  But for twenty-six years these boys had said nothing? Even with all the press the Immolation Man’s victims had been getting recently? One of them would have come forward. Even if it were just to ask how much compensation they might be entitled to.

  In Poe’s opinion, the explanation for the boys’ continued silence was simpler. And far darker.

  They were dead.

  It was a thought he kept to himself.

  During Poe’s overnight stay in hospital, Bradshaw had kept him up to date with what had happened in his absence. Swift had used a drug called propofol to put him and Reid to sleep. The tests on the evidence found at Montague Price’s home had been completed. Propofol was the unknown liquid in the vial.

  It was one of the most commonly used anaesthetics. It was fast acting, could be taken orally, and didn’t stay in the body long. It was a heavily controlled substance, and Gamble had assigned four detectives to try and locate her source.

  They might not yet know where she got the propofol from, but its use did provide an answer to one of the unanswered questions: how had five men been abducted without any sign of a struggle? They’d almost certainly been drugged and taken when they were semiconscious. Gamble’s working theory now was that they were either in on it together, or Swift had been trying to set up Price. With the ‘how’ answered, the ‘why’ could wait, apparently.

  All the victims had empty stomachs, which gave additional credence to the theory that propofol had been used to facilitate their abduction. To keep her method unknown, Gamble believed Swift had kept her victims captive until the propofol was out of their systems – at least two days, according to the medical advice they’d been given. The search was on for her makeshift containment facility.

  As Gamble prattled on, Poe caught Bradshaw’s eye and gestured for her to join him at the back of the room. ‘What do you reckon the two of us get out of here?’ he said. ‘Go back to Shap Wells and do some police work?’

  ‘Thought you’d never ask, Poe.’

  Poe knew Flynn had been in on Montague Price’s interview, and that she’d already emailed Bradshaw a copy of the video.

  ‘Do you think Hilary Swift is the Immolation Woman, Poe? I’d be ever so surprised if she was.’

  ‘Why’d you say that, Tilly?’

  ‘Statistics. Eight-five per cent of serial killers are male.’

  ‘Still leaves fifteen per cent,’ Poe replied.

  ‘And less than two per cent of females have used fire to kill.’

  ‘Go on then.’

  ‘Go on then what?’

  ‘I know you’ve done the maths. What are the chances of a female serial killer who also uses fire?’

  ‘Statistically improbable, Poe.’

  He sighed. An absence of motive and now he had Bradshaw’s maths. He didn’t care what Gamble thought, Poe’s gut was telling him that, although Swift was involved, she wasn’t their killer.

  ‘Come on, let’s go and see Price’s confession.’

  The video was as clear as a 4K television. The interview room Gamble had used was small and square. Every line was straight and every corner sharp. The walls were cream and bare. The only things in the room were chairs, a table and some recording equipment. It was a serious room with a serious purpose.

  Montague Price was a thin man in his seventies. Poe could see liver spots on his hands. He was resplendent in a tweed suit, complete with waistcoat and tiepin; every inch the country gent everyone believed him to be.

  He’d been a big man in the hunting and shooting fraternity. He’d represented Great Britain in clay-pigeon shooting. That made him virtual royalty in Cumbria.

  He was visibly shaking. Poe suspected the underlying reason was medical, rather than a fear of what was coming. Bartholomew Ward, his solicitor, had travelled up from London and was rumoured to be costing Price three thousand pounds a day.

  Gamble, as chief superintendent, was too high in rank to sit in on interviews, but Price and his solicitor had agreed beforehand to waiver this in the spirit of cooperation. Flynn was in the room representing the NCA, and a detective Poe didn’t know was also present.

  When the introductions had been made, and the recording equipment had been double-checked, Bartholomew Ward kicked it off.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, with no deference to the fact Flynn was in the room, ‘I am about to give you a prepared statement by
my client. I would like it formally acknowledged that my client has surrendered himself to your custody voluntarily.’

  Gamble snorted. ‘His face was all over the news.’

  ‘Nevertheless.’

  ‘Noted,’ said Gamble.

  ‘And agreed?’ asked Ward.

  Gamble paused. ‘Agreed. Your client attended Durranhill voluntarily.’

  Without taking her eyes off the screen, Bradshaw asked Poe, ‘Durranhill?’

  ‘Carlisle’s newest police station. They moved there a few years after the 2005 floods wrecked the old one. Cost eight million quid and it looks like the back of a football stand.’

  They turned to the interview.

  ‘And I’d also like it acknowledged that my client has not been charged with anything.’

  ‘Agreed, your client has not been charged with anything . . . yet.’

  With those two small victories in the bag, Ward said, ‘My client is deeply ashamed of his small part in the terrible events of that night twenty-six years ago. He acknowledges he should have approached the authorities sooner than he did, but you’ll note that at no point was he involved in the planning or the execution of what happened.’ With his mitigation out of the way, Ward handed Gamble a document.

  For the next five minutes no one spoke. Every now and then Gamble would look up in disbelief. Price and Ward remained expressionless.

  Gamble put down the document and said, ‘I think it would be helpful if I summarised for the benefit of the video and my two colleagues.’

  Ward nodded.

  ‘Your client was one of six men invited to a charity auction on Ullswater. He knew something illegal was going to happen as the invitation was coded.’ Gamble looked up, and although he already knew, he asked, ‘Coded how?’

  Price spoke for the first time and his voice was as croaky as Poe’s had been two days earlier. ‘The invitation had an archaic punctuation mark in the title. It’s called a percontation point and it means—’