by M. W. Craven
‘I know what it means, it means there’s an underlying message in the preceding sentence.’
Price and Ward looked at each other. Ward said, ‘May I ask how you have knowledge of this? It is unused today.’
‘No, you may not,’ Gamble said. He continued. ‘Your client believed that the cruise was a cover for an adult party. High-class call girls and unlimited cocaine. Have I understood that correctly?’
‘You have,’ Ward replied.
‘And for this he was willing to pay, upfront I may add, twenty-five thousand pounds?’
‘He was and he did.’
‘Twenty-five grand for some hookers and coke? Bit steep, wasn’t it?’
‘My client was not familiar with the going rate for such things. Naivety is not a crime.’
Gamble did an admirable job of keeping calm. Just watching the interview through the medium of a small laptop screen was making Poe’s teeth itch. The whole point of Price’s statement was to limit his exposure to the bad stuff. He would admit what could be proved and deny what couldn’t.
‘And once he got on board, he realised it wasn’t cocaine and prostitutes, but children that were for sale?’
‘That is correct.’
‘The four boys Hilary Swift had brought with her to act as waiters?’
Price tried to suppress a smile. Poe could tell that even after all this time he was still getting off on it. ‘There were six of us but only three boys were available. Carmichael kept one for himself. He wanted us bidding against each other to drive up the price,’ he explained.
Ward put his hand on his shoulder: ‘I do the talking. The boys – just like my client – were unaware they were the star attractions, and by the time Mr Price realised what was happening, the boat had long left the shore. He had no choice but to go along with it.’
‘Why?’
‘He feared for his life,’ Ward said. ‘A fear you’ll agree was rational given the circumstances we now find ourselves in.’
Gamble didn’t take the bait. He kept going, summarising the statement.
‘The boys were plied with alcohol before the auction began and one by one Hilary Swift paraded them for everyone. When they’d all been up and down a few times, and the men had had a chance to inspect the goods, the bidding be—’
‘Hang on,’ Flynn interjected. ‘Are you saying Hilary Swift was on the boat?’
‘Most certainly she was. She and Carmichael organised it all,’ said Ward. ‘Is that a problem?’
Gamble and Flynn leaned in and whispered together. Flynn left the room. Presumably that had been when she’d called Poe and asked him to arrest Hilary Swift.
Flynn being out of the interview room didn’t stop Ward. ‘Obviously my client was appalled by what was happening and took no further part in the proceedings.’
‘Obviously,’ Gamble deadpanned. ‘And after the bidding the boat came back to shore and the men disappeared with what they’d bought?’
Ward shook his head. ‘No, first Quentin Carmichael produced a video he’d taken of the whole thing and explained it was everyone’s insurance.’
‘And then . . .?’
‘And then nothing. My client never saw any of the men again. He cut off all contact with them.’
‘And his understanding about the fate of the boys?’
‘He doesn’t know. He would like it placed on record that he hopes no harm came to them.’
The DC in the room, quiet up until then, burst out of his chair and shouted, ‘Lying fucking bastard!’ He tried to punch Price but Gamble bearhugged him and shouted for assistance. A pair of uniformed officers rushed in and dragged the struggling detective out.
Ward spread his arms as if a point had been made. ‘This is why he hasn’t come forward until now.’
‘Wait until he gets to prison,’ Gamble murmured. ‘They’re going to fucking love him there.’
‘Ah,’ said Ward, ‘I think we might have a problem then. Because if you want my client to testify against the real culprits, Hilary Swift and Quentin Carmichael, then he’s going to need assurances that he will not be charged with anything more than assisting an offender.’
‘Fuck you,’ said Gamble. ‘No way is he walking away from this. I already knew most of what’s in this statement. Oh, and by the way, Quentin Carmichael has been dead for about a quarter of a century so half your bargaining chips are already gone.’
This was news to them. They began whispering urgently. Price started gesticulating at Ward. For the first time he looked worried.
At that point the door opened and Flynn rushed in. She bent down and spoke into Gamble’s ear.
‘Interview suspended,’ Gamble said.
Ward and Price both looked at him.
‘You’re shit out of luck; Hilary Swift’s disappeared. Looks like the music’s stopped and you don’t have a chair, Mr Price.’
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Flynn found them in the Garden Room at Shap Wells. Reid was more useful to Gamble now and had been reassigned to the main investigation.
‘Gruesome, isn’t it?’ Flynn asked.
‘To put it mildly,’ Poe replied. ‘Where is Price now?’
‘Still in a cell in Carlisle nick. Gamble’s meeting the CPS soon to see what they can charge him with.’
‘A holding charge?’
‘Enough to get him remanded certainly. The full charges will follow when the investigation ends.’
‘The evidence found in his home?’
‘Looks like Swift was setting him up. The evidence might be real but he has a cast-iron alibi for the last two murders. He can prove he was hiding out in London. Gamble thinks – and I agree – that Swift was trying to buy some time. Probably wasn’t banking on Price handing himself in so soon.’
Poe ignored the assumption of Swift’s guilt. She was involved; but that didn’t mean she was the all and everything. ‘If Price was in hiding, by leaving evidence at his home the real Immolation Man could have been trying to flush him out.’
Flynn frowned. ‘You think he’s a potential victim?’
‘Why not?’ he replied. ‘Everyone else on that boat seems to have been. What makes him so different? And if whoever is doing this had managed to abduct him and quietly make him disappear, would any of us have looked any further than him?’
‘Probably not,’ she admitted. ‘And you said “Immolation Man” instead of Swift. I take it you’re not yet convinced of her guilt?’
‘She’s definitely working with the Immolation Man; her use of propofol can’t be ignored. It might even have been her who left all the evidence at Price’s. Whether or not she’s been burning people is a different matter entirely. Tilly has some sums you probably need to see.’
‘I’ll have a look later. What else do you have?’
‘Well . . . up until now the only motive we’d been able to come up with had been financial,’ Poe said. ‘And that never made sense. Not really. Castrations and burnings? Over money? I don’t think so.’
‘Then what?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ he said. He did, but he didn’t want to voice it out loud. Not in front of Bradshaw . . .
Flynn steepled her fingers and closed her eyes. She opened them after a minute and leaned forwards. ‘OK then, let’s do what we’re paid to do then. Gamble can chase Swift; we’re the Serious Crime Analysis Section, and that means we do the things others can’t.’
Bradshaw nodded. Eventually Poe did too.
Poe said, ‘We start with the transport. We have five abductions and five murders, and because there was no trace of propofol in any of the victims, we now know for sure the victims had to have been kept somewhere before they were killed. That’s additional journeys we didn’t know about.’
‘So the killer had to drive to the abduction site, from the abduction site to the containment site, then from the containment site to the murder site,’ Bradshaw summarised. ‘That’s a lot of data, Poe.’
‘I thought you liked data.’
>
She smiled and said, ‘I love data!’ She punched some keys and before long the printer was whirring. ‘The more I have, the more I can do. I’ll open up our link to the Automatic Number Plate Recognition database and get cracking.’
Poe led Flynn away from Bradshaw, and, making sure she was out of earshot, told her what he hadn’t wanted to say earlier. ‘I think we need to assume those boys are dead.’
Flynn nodded. Her face was grim. ‘That much I’d worked out. You have a theory?’
‘I do. I think twenty-five grand bought you the right to abuse them.’
‘And the three who paid the six-figure amounts?’
‘For that amount of money, I think you got to kill them.’
‘That’s what I think too,’ Flynn said after a long moment.
Neither of them had noticed the printer had stopped. Bradshaw had heard them. ‘Oh no!’ she gasped. Tears flooded her eyes and before long she was crying. Flynn sat next to her and put her arms around her shoulders.
For over a year, Bradshaw had worked on some of the worst cases in the country, but up until then it had always been long-arm. Even when she’d studied the carving of his name in Michael James’s chest, it had been computer images rather than an actual body she’d been looking at. Here, out in the field, she had as much invested as he did. More perhaps – she was nice, Poe wasn’t.
It was more than an hour before Bradshaw was composed enough to resume work. Poe felt guilty. If he hadn’t insisted she accompanied them up to Cumbria – and he knew he’d only been making a point at the time – she could have been spared all this.
Flynn said quietly, ‘You and Tilly seem to be getting on OK. Despite what’s just happened, getting her out of the office has done her the world of good.’
Poe looked at his new friend. She’d pushed her glasses up and her tongue was sticking out in determination. Tear tracks were still on her face. A wisp of hair flapped about in the air-conditioning. She stuck out her bottom lip and blew it away from her eyes. A feeling of protective warmth spread over Poe. There were only a few years between them, but in terms of life experiences there were decades. Her naivety and innocence contrasted sharply with his own dark nature, but in many ways they were alike; they were both obsessives, and they both rubbed people up the wrong way.
Thinking about Bradshaw reminded him about something. She’d been the one who’d interpreted the data from the MSCT that uncovered his name in Michael James’s chest. And his own connection to the case was still unclear. Hilary Swift was involved somehow but Poe was certain she hadn’t recognised him or his name. If she were the Immolation Man’s accomplice, then she hadn’t been read into the wider plan. Gamble still had a detective going through Poe’s background in the slim hope of a name cropping up. So far there’d been nothing.
And Poe doubted the answer was in his past. Up until the Peyton Williams case, he’d been fairly uncontroversial. He’d put some nasty men behind bars, but none of them had been released in the last twelve months. But . . . Poe’s name had been carved into the chest of the third victim. That was an indisputable fact.
Which meant they were still missing something.
Poe looked across at Bradshaw. The printer was spitting out documents but she’d begun to pin some of the early ones to the wall. Automatic Number Plate Recognition, or ANPR, was the largest database of its type in the world. There would be a lot of data to get through.
‘How long do you think you’ll be before you’re finished sorting through all this chaos, Tilly?’ Poe asked, sweeping his arms around to indicate the various piles of documents.
Bradshaw stopped what she was doing. Poe could almost hear the mental calculations in her head; she didn’t do guesstimates.
‘Four hours, thirty minutes, Poe,’ she said. ‘I think I can have something for us to review by then.’
Poe turned to Flynn, ‘I think we need to consider a different motive, boss.’
‘I’m listening,’ she said.
‘We suspect that the men who deposited the six-figure amounts were paying to kill their victims, yes?’
Flynn nodded.
‘And if that’s the case, then before they died, the boys suffered appallingly.’
She nodded again.
‘Well . . . what if someone found out?’ Poe asked.
‘And they’re seeking some sort of natural justice?’
‘It would fit the ferocity of the killings.’
‘Could one of the boys have survived?’ Flynn asked.
Poe shook his head. ‘If one of them had, the six men would have been far warier than they had been. No, whoever’s doing this was unknown to them. Plus, why wait twenty-six years?’
‘Who then? We’ve identified everyone now.’
‘Have we?’ Poe replied. ‘I know they were in care but those boys had to have had families at some point. What if someone’s latent parental responsibility has woken?’
She didn’t look convinced.
‘Look, we have five hours to kill. We might as well do something.’
‘What do you have in mind?’
‘I think we need to go back to the beginning.’
‘How Carmichael ended up in a salt store? Surely that’s irrelevant now?’
‘No, earlier than that,’ he said. ‘The Seven Pines warrant was made out to us, not Cumbria police, and it’s still valid. I say we go back to Children’s Services and look at the lives of those boys. I want to know why they were at Seven Pines in the first place.’
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
‘What do you need?’ Audrey Jackson asked. Flynn and Poe were back at Carlisle Civic Centre. After he’d convinced Flynn that they should take advantage of their warrant, she’d been decisive. It seemed she’d grown tired of being Gamble’s assistant.
‘Background on the boys,’ Flynn replied.
‘And their families,’ Poe added. ‘Plus the staff and the rest of the kids who were in Seven Pines at the same time as they were.’
‘That’s going to be a big list. Part of the home’s role was short-term assessments. Some beds had a pretty high turnover.’
Neither of them responded. Flynn folded her arms.
‘I’ll see what I can dig up,’ Jackson said.
She returned with files on the boys. Poe suspected she’d recently been looking at them. She placed them on the table. They were pitifully thin.
There were four of them. One for each boy. Four kids who’d been dealt a shit hand. Looked after by the state because their parents couldn’t, wouldn’t, or shouldn’t. Seven Pines should have been their sanctuary. A place for them to mend, to learn how to love and to be loved. A place for them to trust adults again.
Instead, they were sold for the sport of rich, bored men.
Poe’s resolve hardened. He didn’t care if he had to look at paperwork for the next ten years, if the answer was in these files, he’d find it.
He opened them all and laid out the basic information side by side.
Michael Hilton.
Mathew Malone.
Andrew Smith.
Scott Johnston.
Four lives snuffed out. He took a sip from the coffee Jackson had brought for them and began reading. Flynn started on the other children.
An hour later and his despair had deepened. Each file was horribly different and depressingly similar.
Michael Hilton: neglected so much that, at the age of nine, he weighed less than the average five-year-old. When the social workers finally managed to remove him from the family home, he’d been eating flies to stay alive. The parents each got a year in custody. Poe hoped they’d been force-fed insects in prison. Michael had been passed around the system, but behavioural problems rooted in the appalling start he had to life meant he couldn’t settle. Seven Pines was his last chance and he appeared to have grabbed it with both hands.
Andrew Smith: a star pupil at school until his grades began slipping. When he was asked to stay behind one night to discuss why, he’d freaked out
. He told his teacher he had to go to work. Mystified, they’d called the police who found heroin in his satchel. His father had been using him as a drug mule. Both his parents fled to Spain, where they still lived, apparently. They sent Children’s Services a birthday card for him every year, along with some money. With no forwarding address for Andrew, the last few were still in the file.
Scott Johnston probably had the most common reason for being removed from the family home. His mother was a domestic abuse victim who refused to leave her partner. Poe wasn’t surprised. It happened more than people realised. Regardless of the consequences, some women found it impossible to leave their abusers. When Children’s Services said that the home wasn’t safe for young Scott, and that she had to make a choice – her partner or her child – she chose her partner. The social worker had tried to locate his natural father, without success. Scott entered the system and never left it. Poe made a note about his father. He’d get Reid to chase it up later. So far, he was the only person who’d had even the hint of motive.
And finally, Mathew Malone. Perhaps the saddest case of all because he’d come from a happy, well-adjusted family in Brighton. His mother had died when he was young and, proving just how fragile family units could be, his father had hooked up with a heroin addict from Zaire. Within a month they’d fled her drug debts in Brighton and moved up to Cumbria. A month after that, the woman was accusing Mathew of being a sorcerer. His father – who by then had an eighty-pound a day habit of his own – had either been oblivious to it or happy to let it happen. The woman was obsessed with the idea of ridding the boy of his demons, and believed the best way to do that was by driving them out with pain. Mathew was tied to a hard-backed chair while she stubbed out cigarettes on his arms and torso. Mathew, to his credit, wasn’t having any of that. As soon as he could get away, he fled to Workington police station. His father was imprisoned for four years for allowing it to happen. He served two, and, according to the file, overdosed on the day of release – an all too familiar tale of addicts underestimating the strength of ‘street’ heroin compared to ‘prison’ heroin. The woman got nine years for grievous bodily harm with intent but died during her first year in prison – the result of the same type of shit. This time, though, instead of an eight-year-old boy, it was her cellmate, a fifteen-stone Glaswegian head case, whom she’d accused of being a witch. The Scot, a lifer who’d murdered her husband, smashed her accuser’s head onto the rim of the cell toilet until her skull had the consistency of an over-ripe banana.
