The Puppet Show (Washington Poe Book 1)

by M. W. Craven

  Black Hollow Farm was the end of the road. The track stopped where Poe was parked. He turned off the engine and surveyed his surroundings.

  The farmhouse was bleak and imposing. Poe had thought he lived an isolated existence, but he realised, compared to the men and women who worked these fells, he was almost a city boy. This was extreme farming.

  Black Hollow Farm was well named. A dark atmosphere hung over it like a veil: fear, despair, anger. It was in a deep basin – Poe suspected it had once been a quarry – and was cast in perpetual shadow. It was the type of Lake District farmhouse that would never make money from the lucrative bed-and-breakfast trade. It was a low and stocky building, built to withstand ferocious winters with little regard to aesthetics. It stuck to the ground like a limpet on a rock and looked to be two hundred years old.

  A sheepfold – a stone pen that afforded sheep shelter in the very worst weather – was attached to the side of the main building. Poe had one on his own land. They were usually circular or oval, the walls about three feet tall, and there was a single narrow entrance. The one at Black Hollow Farm was slightly different. The entrance had been widened and a huge military camouflage net covered it.

  Inside was the ten-cell prisoner-transport lorry no one had been able to locate.

  Three other vehicles were parked by the side of the building: the four-cell van Poe had spent hours studying, Reid’s old Volvo and a beat-up Mercedes that was presumably George Reid’s personal vehicle.

  Poe took this all in without leaving his car. He removed his phone. Unbelievably, he still had a signal. Now that he’d arrived, the foolhardiness of what he was doing came home to him. No one knew where he was and, even if they did, he was a good forty minutes from assistance.

  So why had he come? The smart play would be to call Gamble and leave it to a hostage negotiator or an armed response unit. Anything else was foolhardy. But . . . Reid was his friend. A friend with secrets but a friend all the same.

  He didn’t know what to do.

  His text alert went off again. It was the same number as before. It was a five-word message: You’re in no danger, Poe.

  Still he didn’t move. Getting out of the car and walking the shale track to the farmhouse was the end of his career. Whatever happened, people would say he should have waited.

  He thought back to the boy in the photograph. A boy covered in scars. A boy who’d survived against overwhelming odds. His friend. And Reid – despite what he’d become – had been his friend. Nobody could fake a friendship for that long. And Poe owed him the chance to tell his story.

  Another text: It’s OK, Washington.

  His jaw hardened.

  Washington Poe swallowed his rising bile, got out of his car and walked towards hell.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  What was left of the fog-trapped sun was behind the farmhouse. The front was cast in long shadows. It was as silent as the sheeted dead. Although the air was cooling, Poe was sweating; it ran down his spine and pooled in the small of his back.

  When he was seventy yards away he stopped. In front of him, and less than forty yards away, were rectangular shapes. The shadows made it difficult to see what they were. They must have been placed in his path deliberately, like stage props. He approached them.

  Coffins.

  Three of them.

  Oh no . . . Surely not?

  His forehead knotted with tension. They were laid out on clean blankets. Poe ran his fingers along the warm pine of the first one. The polished brass fittings gleamed.

  He found his phone’s torch function and shone the light on the brass plates. His heart felt as though it would burst.

  Three names that would forever remain etched into his soul.

  Michael Hilton.

  Andrew Smith.

  Scott Johnston.

  The three boys were missing no more.

  Poe snapped some photographs, then looked at the bleak and silent farmhouse.

  Where the fourth boy waited for him.

  * * *

  Poe walked towards Black Hollow Farm. The front door was made of oak, and was dense and heavy. It was mounted on huge forged hinges, built in an age when things were only made once. The windows were shuttered with the same heavy wood. The natural courtyard was well-trodden shale.

  It looked more like a fortified keep than a domestic home.

  As he got closer, a familiar chemical stench assaulted his nostrils.

  Petrol . . .

  Poe’s stomach lurched. The back of his throat began burning. Judging by the pervasiveness of the smell, the farmhouse was primed like an incendiary bomb. It was time to run like hell, but not before he found the two children. He looked towards the ten-cell prisoner-escort lorry. The wheels had been removed. If the farmhouse burned, the lorry went up too.

  Were the children in there? He headed towards it.

  One of the farm’s wooden shutters opened.

  Reid appeared at the first-floor window.

  ‘This our High Noon, Kylian?’ Poe said. ‘Or should I call you Mathew?’ He kept on walking towards the truck. He had to find Swift’s grandchildren before anything else could happen.

  Reid said, ‘I don’t suppose I can ask you to stop?’

  Poe entered the sheepfold and walked up the metal steps to the mobile prison. He tried the door but it was locked. A keypad, black, with silver numbers, kept whoever was inside from getting out.

  Reid called out. ‘The number’s one-two-three-four. I’ll be here when you’ve finished. Don’t be long.’

  Poe punched in the code and heard an electronic click. He opened the door.

  He was hit by a putridness the likes of which he’d never smelled before. It coated the inside of his nostrils and overpowered even the smell of petrol. Faeces, urine and vomit competed with sour sweat and rancid bodies. It was the stench of misery and death. The floor of the central corridor was wet with a brown liquid.

  The smell worsened as he entered the cell corridor. There were five cells on either side and Poe looked through the thick glass observation windows without seeing anything except the remnants of long and unpleasant stays.

  They were all empty.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Poe climbed back out of the lorry and took a deep breath. He marched round to the front of the building and tried the front door. It was locked. He attempted to force it but only succeeded in hurting his shoulder.

  ‘The children. Where are they?’ shouted Poe.

  ‘You know they’re descended from evil?’

  Oh God . . . What have you done? ‘Where are they, Kylian?’

  ‘They’re fine, Poe. They’re staying at the Whinfell Forest Center Parcs with a friend of mine. I checked in this morning and they’re having a whale of a time. They think their mother arranged it all.’

  Whinfell Forest was about three miles from Carleton Hall, Cumbria police’s headquarters building. Unless Reid was lying, they’d been under everyone’s noses all that time. While they’d been checking the airports and ferry terminals, they should have been checking the swimming pool.

  ‘I’m texting Flynn.’

  Reid nodded.

  As he typed, a thought occurred to him. ‘Their photographs were circulated. What if they’d been recognised?’

  ‘Do you know what they look like?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’ve seen the photos . . .’ Poe trailed off. ‘You swapped them. You told Gamble you’d get the photographs from their mother and you swapped them when they came in.’

  ‘At the minute my colleagues are looking for two American kids I pulled off Facebook.’

  ‘So—’

  ‘So why bother taking them at all? Why not leave them both at Seven Pines?’

  Poe nodded.

  ‘I needed to get you up here. I thought you’d probably come on your own regardless if I asked you to, but the children guaranteed it.’

  Poe had been played again.


  ‘You’ll have questions,’ Reid said.

  ‘Why am I here, Kylian?’

  ‘How much do you know now?’ Reid asked.

  ‘I know that four boys were supposed to die after that charity auction but only three did. I know the fourth boy somehow escaped and has been taking his revenge.’ Poe continued. ‘So, do I keep calling you Kylian or would you like to be called Mathew again?’

  Reid nodded. Tears had begun running down his face. ‘Mathew Malone died that night. I’m Kylian Reid now.’

  ‘OK, Kylian,’ Poe said. ‘Where’s Hilary Swift?’

  Reid disappeared inside. Poe could hear something being dragged to the window. Swift appeared. Her head was bloodied and bruised but she was alive. She was gagged with masking tape and looked terrified. Reid ripped it off and said, ‘Say hello to Poe again, Hilary.’

  ‘Help me! You must help me!’ she screeched.

  ‘Help you?’ Reid said before punching her in the face. ‘Poe isn’t here to help you, Hilary.’

  Poe knew that Hilary Swift was going to die. There wasn’t a thing he could do to save her. She’d made a deal with the devil twenty-six years ago and this was the price she had to pay. A thought occurred to him. ‘Where’s Quentin Carmichael’s body?’ he asked.

  Reid flicked his head to what Poe had earlier assumed was a discarded hessian sack. He walked over and lifted the opening with his shit-covered shoes.

  Inside was the wizened body of a man who’d been lying in salt for almost three decades. His exposure to some moisture over the last year or so meant he’d finally started to decompose. It would be a long and drawn-out process. Reid had discarded him like a piss-stained mattress. His fingers and toes were missing. It looked as if foxes and rats had already been having a go at him.

  Poe stepped towards Reid’s window. Swift was no longer visible.

  ‘Are you sure you’re ready to hear this, Poe?’

  Poe wasn’t but he nodded nevertheless.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ Reid said. ‘Every bit of evidence I’ve collected over the years, the confessions I’ve recorded, it’s all in a secure box in the four-cell van over there.’

  Poe said, ‘Tell me what happened, Kylian.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  ‘I’ve read your notes on Seven Pines, Poe,’ Reid said. ‘I know that Audrey Jackson told you and DI Flynn that the four of us had been as tight as any group of children in care she’d ever seen.’

  Poe gestured for him to continue.

  ‘We loved Hilary Swift. Everyone did. She seemed kind and dedicated. If my friends were my brothers, she was certainly my mother. When she asked if we wanted to make a bit of money, we jumped at it. Why wouldn’t we? She told us if we behaved she would take us to London to spend it. Even had us fill out some postcards to save time when we got there.’

  So that was how the postcards had been sent. That was why the search for the boys had been down south and not up north where it should have been. They’d been drip-fed into the postal system, probably every time one of the men had been down there on business. The handwriting and fingerprints had matched. How could anyone have predicted it was anything other than what it seemed to be?

  Reid began talking again. ‘You’ve got to the truth of that night, Poe – a bit earlier than planned, I may add – and Montague Price filled in the rest. It was us being bid on. Carmichael had arranged it with our surrogate mother. So, while we were showing off and generally acting the way boys do when they’re excited, the men were bidding for the right to own us.’

  The sun was almost gone now and the shadows had all but disappeared. The full moon gave off a pale, ethereal light. It was enough for Poe to see how much Reid was suffering as he relived his nightmares.

  ‘Carmichael told the men that he would be keeping one of the “prizes” for himself. He was clever. Three boys, six paedophiles. Supply and demand. I’m sure Swift could have got him more children, but if there was one for everybody, the price would stay low.’

  Montague Price had already hinted at this.

  ‘Did you realise what was happening?’ Poe asked.

  ‘We were getting wind of it. The men were getting giggly and grabby. But no, I thought this was what rich men did when they were on the piss. It wasn’t until we went back to a house somewhere for a “party” that the truth became apparent. You can imagine what happened there.’

  ‘Jesus,’ he muttered. ‘And Price? Was he as blameless as he claimed?’

  ‘No, he was not,’ Reid snarled. ‘Which was why he burned along with the others.’

  It was what he’d feared, but to hear Reid tell it was heart-breaking. ‘And the men with the winning bids took their boys away with them?’

  ‘Yes. I went off with Carmichael. Drugged and drunk. Spent the next few weeks in a room somewhere. He would bring men to “play” with me every now and then, but most of the time it was just him. I assume my friends went through similar arrangements.’

  ‘So, the party after the boat was the last time you saw them?’

  ‘I wish,’ he spat. He looked down and stamped on something on the floor. Swift groaned but it faded into a gurgle. ‘No, these men were sadists, Poe. Not satisfied with abusing us for weeks, when it came to finally disposing of the evidence, they gathered together one last time. A way to bind everyone together in murder. Can you guess where my friends were killed, Poe?’

  Poe didn’t need to guess. ‘A stone circle, they were killed in a stone circle.’

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  ‘A stone circle,’ Reid agreed. ‘They drove us to a remote one not far from here. I was forced to watch as, one by one, my friends were set on fire. I don’t think the men were all comfortable with it but by then there was an escalation of commitment thing going on. Carmichael had videoed them on the boat so no one could back out, and I think, from his perspective, the worse the murders were, the safer they’d all be. Nothing binds people together like a shared atrocity.’

  Poe had started this case with the assumption that he was hunting a monster killing innocent men. He might not be able to condone what Reid had done, but he understood it: those men had created the monster they deserved.

  ‘How did you survive, Kylian?’ For their security, all the boys had to die. Leaving one alive was worse than leaving them all alive.

  ‘Carmichael,’ he said. ‘The other men begged him to kill me as well but he refused. “It belongs to me” he said. He referred to me as an “it”, Poe.’

  ‘So . . .?’

  ‘So eventually he either tired of me or – and this is what I think – he’d started to listen to the men on the boat. Why keep me alive? The risk was too great. He woke me early one morning – it was pitch black and snowing – and drove me to Keswick. Told me we were going to take a walk up to the Castlerigg stone circle. I think he wanted the thrill of doing it outside like the others had.’

  ‘And you escaped?’

  ‘No. We were walking through one of the council yards – I later discovered it was a short cut to the circle. It meant he wouldn’t have to park his car too close. We were climbing over one of the salt piles when he suddenly keeled over. Dead before he hit the ground. I think it might have been the excitement of what he’d been about to do.’

  Common sense suggested Reid would have gone straight to the authorities yet . . . that didn’t happen.

  ‘You’re wondering why I didn’t run to the police?’

  Poe didn’t say anything. It was what he’d been wondering but it couldn’t be as simple as that. Not when he was carrying that amount of baggage.

  ‘I think there were two reasons,’ Reid said. ‘One of the men who raped me at Carmichael’s invitation said he was a cop. I had no idea where he worked. In my mind, I was only eleven at the time, all cops were bad. I was scared of them.’

  ‘And the second reason?’

  ‘Carmichael had told me that I was complicit in what had been going on. That I was alive and my friends weren’t. He convinced me that if
anyone found out, I’d go to prison along with everyone else.’

  At that age, and after that much abuse, you’d believe anything. Carmichael had got off easy with a heart attack. Evil bastard.

  ‘So, I did the only thing I could think of – I took Carmichael’s wallet and money and ran.’

  ‘And Carmichael?’

  ‘Left him where he fell. The snow must have covered him.’

  It fitted with what he knew. The fact it was snowing meant that the gritters would have been working. He doubted the road crews bothered to clear snow off the salt before they loaded their wagons. Carmichael must have been scooped up with the mound he was on and taken to the Hardendale Salt Store as part of the M6 reserves. He’d stayed there for quarter of a century.

  ‘And then I did what I was supposed to have done all those weeks ago,’ Reid continued. ‘I got on a train to London. Got another one to Brighton and went and found my aunt.’

  ‘No,’ Poe said. ‘I’ve been through your file. You didn’t have an aunt in Brighton. You had no relatives you’d have been happy staying with.’

  ‘Poe, don’t be stupid. We’re northerners. You don’t have to be related to someone to call them auntie. It was my mum’s best friend I went to see – Victoria Reid. She’d always been nice to me and I trusted her. I thought she’d know what to do.’

  ‘And she did?’ Poe accepted his explanation. He’d called Reid’s mother Auntie Victoria and his father Uncle George. It’s just what you did when you were a kid.

  ‘Not really. How could she? She didn’t even know I’d been in care; my father hadn’t stayed in touch with anyone when we moved up here. I told them what had happened. Everything. George was all for going to the police but she was thinking of me, not the men who killed my friends. She was a cognitive behavioural therapist specialising in PTSD. It had only just been identified back then and she didn’t think I would get the help I needed. She thought the criminal justice system would eat me up and shit me out an even bigger mess than I was.’