by M. W. Craven
‘Have I got a tale to tell you, Sergeant Poe,’ she said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
‘Hilary Swift resigned,’ Audrey Jackson said. ‘And it wasn’t a resignation “after years of dedicated service”. It was more like a “If you don’t resign, you will be sacked” kind of thing. And it all began with that charity event.’
Poe’s heart started beating that little bit faster. He leaned forward. ‘The one on Ullswater?’
Bradshaw flicked through the images on her tablet until she found the clearest one of the invitation they’d found at the gala. She passed it over.
Jackson barely glanced. ‘That’s it.’
‘You sure?’
‘I am. And the reason I know is because I was one of the investigating social workers after the incident.’
Poe looked at her in confusion. ‘Why would a social worker be doing the investigating? If misappropriation of funds was suspected, surely the council’s financial or legal team would be better placed?’
Her brow furrowed. ‘I know nothing about the finances, Sergeant Poe,’ she replied. ‘Although I haven’t seen the file, Mr Evans tells me that there was never a suspicion of any wrongdoing. My understanding is that Seven Pines did all right out of it.’
Poe frowned. His theory had just taken a dent.
But when one door closes . . .
‘No, I was involved in investigating what happened after the event.’
‘Explain,’ Poe said.
Jackson said, ‘What you won’t know, because it doesn’t say so on the invitation, is that not only was the event for Seven Pines, it was hosted by Seven Pines.’
Bradshaw began flicking through her exhibit photographs. She looked at Poe and shook her head.
Jackson continued, ‘And what I mean is that Hilary Swift was heavily involved in setting it up. Because it was a self-catered event – they basically hired the boat for the evening and did everything else themselves – four of the boys from the home were there working as waiters to cut down on costs. Fetching fresh drinks and plates of canapés for their guests, that type of thing.’
‘Sounds like child abuse,’ Poe said.
‘Not really. The home did this type of thing a few times a year and it was a bit of a racket for the kids really.’
‘Why is that, Audrey?’ Bradshaw asked.
‘Because they knew the more cute and helpless they looked, the more tips they’d get. Those kids were streetwise, and they knew how to tug on heartstrings. When I spoke to Hilary Swift afterwards, she said she reckoned the boys had each cleared more than five hundred pounds.’
‘In tips?’ Poe exclaimed. Twenty-six years ago, that was a staggering amount for a child.
‘In tips,’ Jackson confirmed. ‘And I suppose when you think about it, it’s not an absurd concept. The guests were all there to support the home; why not give to the boys directly?’
‘I can think of a few reasons,’ Poe said. ‘How old were they?’
‘Ten and eleven,’ she replied.
‘There you go then.’ He turned to Bradshaw. ‘How much was five hundred quid worth twenty-six years ago, Tilly?’
She searched and said, ‘According to the Bank of England’s inflation calculator, almost two thousand pounds, Poe.’
Poe turned to Jackson, ‘How many kids, especially those from deprived backgrounds, can handle suddenly being given the best part of two grand?’
‘It’s kind of hard when you make my argument for me.’
‘What happened?’
‘What do you think?’
Drugs, booze. Nothing good. Poe thought things through. He may have started with money as the motive but he wasn’t blinkered to everything else; lines of enquiry rarely followed a straight line. If the investigation took him away from where he was expecting it to go, so be it.
‘I’m going to need to speak to them, Mrs Jackson,’ he said. ‘See if they can shed any light on what happened that night. I’m assuming their names will be in the file?’
‘That’s going to be a bit harder than you think, Sergeant.’
‘How so?’
‘Because, Sergeant Poe, the very next day they all bought train tickets to London and, apart from some postcards to Hilary early on, no one has heard from them since.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Poe was gathering his thoughts, when Reid and Evans returned. They were carrying a stack of files.
Reid saw Poe’s expression and said, ‘What’s up?’
Poe remained tight-lipped. He wasn’t prepared to venture new theories in front of strangers. Ignoring Reid’s question, he addressed Jackson and said, ‘What happened? I’m assuming that’s why there was an investigation?’
‘Partly. Some of the men on the boat said that the boys had been drinking. That they were taking sips of everything they were bringing from the bar. It was a game, I think. See who could get the most drunk.’
Poe hadn’t been a shrinking violet in his youth; he knew keeping children away from free booze was a fight no one could win. ‘And that was a no-no, I take it?’
‘An absolute no-no,’ Jackson said. ‘It’s the main difference between being looked after by the state and being looked after by a family. The state has no discretion whatsoever. If the legal age of drinking is eighteen, then no one has the authority to allow, facilitate or even turn a blind eye to it.’
It was a fair point. The state couldn’t have rogue foster carers doing whatever they wanted. Turn a blind eye to alcohol and you might turn a blind eye to cannabis or the age of consent. ‘And Hilary Swift didn’t stop them?’
‘She wasn’t there. She should have been; our regulations are clear, no unsupervised activities.’
‘So . . .’
‘So why wasn’t she? I can assure you that it formed part of our investigation, Sergeant Poe. She said her daughter came down with a sudden fever, and as half the boys were on the cruise that night, there were fewer staff at the house to call up for cover. She said in one of the numerous interviews we had with her that the men on the boat were the pillars of the community and the boys had never been in any danger.’
Reid said, ‘Sounds like bollocks.’
‘It did to us, Sergeant Reid,’ Jackson said. ‘That and the drinking forced Hilary Swift’s hand in the end. Children do run away from homes and institutions, and occasionally they manage to evade the authorities until they’re of age, but we have processes to minimise the risk of that happening as much as we can.’
‘You called it in?’ Poe asked.
‘Well, not me obviously, but yes, it was called in,’ she replied. ‘There was a police investigation, but for us, in those days, it wasn’t exactly Missing White Girl Syndrome. Mr and Mrs Middle Class’s child goes walkabout and everyone panics, but when it was one of ours we got little more than a “Well, what do you expect? That’s what they do.”’
Poe knew she was right. Although the police had tightened up on children missing from care, he shuddered to think how many had slipped through the net. He shuddered even more when he thought about all the predators out there waiting for children like the boys from Seven Pines. For their sake, he hoped they were alive, well and thriving. He’d recently read that a child forced into prostitution at the age of sixteen would have made a pimp over two hundred thousand pounds before they were too old to attract punters. And with blowjobs costing as little as twenty quid in London, that was an awful lot of perverts to service before their youth had depreciated enough for them to be cast aside.
Reid said, ‘I remember reading about those boys, actually. The investigating officers took it seriously. Their train tickets had been bought for the first train out of Carlisle the day after the cruise. Cumbria contacted the Met and asked them to look out for them.’
‘And we contacted all thirty-four councils in London,’ Jackson added. ‘Told them we were missing four boys, and if they showed up asking for assistance we were to be contacted immediately. A few months after they’d run off, Hilary got postcards fr
om them. Said they were loving London. It didn’t mean the search was called off but it did ease the urgency somewhat.’
‘That’s it?’ Bradshaw asked. ‘That can’t be it, Poe. Can it?’
‘Children in care don’t always make good decisions, Tilly,’ Poe explained. ‘Sometimes they put themselves at risk. There’s only so much people like Ms Jackson here can do.’
Jackson nodded. ‘We assumed they’d pop up again at some point but they never did. They either made a success of things or . . .’
‘Or they didn’t,’ Poe finished for her.
Bradshaw was staring at him. Her eyes were wet. She was upset and Poe couldn’t give her the reassurances she wanted. Instinctively society felt an alarm should sound every time a child went missing, but the problem was there was no alarm, and even if there had been, some of these kids were fleeing far worse situations. Dragging them back wouldn’t always be the right thing to do. Not for the first time in his life, Poe wondered how social workers held on to their sanity. It had to be one of the most thankless jobs there was, even worse than being a cop. There were no good days; everything was on a sliding scale of bad to awful. Vilified for taking children away from families, crucified when they didn’t.
Fuck that . . .
Jackson didn’t feel like answering Bradshaw either. She said, ‘Our investigation found Hilary Swift had breached several of the protocols put in place to prevent children like that running away. She allowed them to drink – and there was no way when they got on that train to London they weren’t still drunk – and she gave them access to large amounts of money.’
‘And?’ Poe asked.
‘And finally, she wasn’t the best person to be running a home like that anyway. She was far too interested in the social side of it all. And yes, of course the manager had to be visible, the home relied on donations just as much as council funding, but the investigation found that she was obsessed by it. And if some rich and influential men thought it was funny to get children drunk, then even if she’d been there, the feeling was that she wouldn’t have stopped them.’
Poe needed to move on. The children running off to London might or might not be important, but getting a look at the file sitting on the table was. He turned to Evans. ‘I take it you know what’s in these files?’
‘I vet everything that goes out. Warrant or not.’
‘Direct me to where you think I might need to look then, please,’ Poe said.
Evans had a thin file on top. He slid it across to Poe. ‘I’ve copied some of the documents you might want to review first.’ He looked at his watch. ‘The court is still open. When you’ve seen the top sheet, you might want to go and get another warrant.’
Poe opened it and removed a sheet of A4. It was a twenty-six-year-old bank statement for Seven Pines. There were the usual mundane items found in everyone’s list of monthly outgoings. Food, TV licence, utilities. The amounts were all on the right side of the page. To the left of them was another set of figures. Fewer in number but greater in value. It was where the incoming money was listed. There were three different sources for that month. A grant, which looked as though it was a standing order from the charity that owned Seven Pines, and a local authority payment, which probably differed each month depending on how many bed spaces they were using.
Poe stared at the third. It was a payment by cheque.
He checked the page from the corresponding accounts ledger Evans had also supplied. The cheque was from Quentin Carmichael. It stated it was a donation resulting from the ‘Are You Feeling Lucky؟’ event. It was for nine thousand pounds.
Carmichael’s account number was also listed.
What the hell . . .?
His breath quickened.
‘What is it, Poe?’ Bradshaw asked. She was getting better at reading his facial expressions.
He slid the page across the table. She stared, not immediately seeing it.
‘You’ve still got photographs of the investigation into the money found in Carmichael’s bank accounts, haven’t you, Tilly?’
She nodded.
‘Cross-reference them with the account the cheque came from.’ He didn’t need her to. He’d always had the ability to imprint salient details into his memory.
Bradshaw turned on her tablet and began searching. She wasn’t as quick as usual. Eventually she looked up with a confused expression. ‘I can’t find it,’ she said.
‘Exactly,’ Poe said. ‘Quentin Carmichael made that payment from a bank account no one knew about.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
A Relationship Manager wasn’t a banking position with which Poe was familiar, but as soon as the branch manager had received head office’s verification of the validity of the additional warrant, he handed the three of them over to a Miss Jefferson. Poe suspected it was less to do with him not being interested – he clearly was – and more to do with him not knowing his way around his own system.
Miss Jefferson, who wanted to be called Rhona, found the unknown account on her computer. She frowned, ‘This is odd.’
She printed off some sheets, stapled them together and handed them a copy. ‘As you can see, Mr Carmichael opened the bank account in the May of that year and closed it one month later.’ She turned her own copy to show them where she was looking.
Poe studied it. As far as he could tell there’d been a flurry of activity before the cruise with six separate deposits of twenty-five thousand pounds, followed by another three deposits the day after the cruise: one of one hundred thousand pounds, one of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds and one of three hundred thousand pounds. Together, they totalled eight hundred thousand exactly.
‘Is there a withdrawals sheet?’ Poe asked.
‘Page two,’ Rhona replied.
He turned the page and read on. There’d been two withdrawals: a cheque for nine thousand pounds made payable to the Seven Pines Children’s Home, and a cash withdrawal of seven hundred and ninety-one thousand pounds made by Quentin Carmichael. With the balance at zero, the account had been closed.
What the hell had he been up to?
‘I see that the deposits into this account were all by cheque or bank transfer, Rhona,’ Poe said. ‘Any chance you can get me a list?’
She looked uncertain. ‘I’ll need to check your warrant covers that.’
‘You do that,’ Poe said.
Being the good employee that she was, she locked her computer before she left the room. Poe smiled. It was as if she’d known he’d have spun the monitor round the second she was gone.
It didn’t matter, though. The bank manager had checked with head office, and if someone had made a deposit into the account on the warrant, their name could be shared with the police. If Poe subsequently needed to dig into the accounts of someone on that list, they would need another warrant.
Rhona printed off another document.
This one had names on.
The sudden chill in the room was palpable. Poe stared at the first five names. In his head, he added a location after each one:
Graham Russell – Castlerigg stone circle, Keswick.
Joe Lowell – Swinside stone circle, Broughton-in-Furness.
Michael James – Long Meg and Her Daughters, Penrith.
Clement Owens – Elva Plain, Cockermouth.
Sebastian Doyle – the body in Quentin Carmichael’s coffin.
Five men.
Five victims.
Poe had his connection.
They’d all deposited twenty-five thousand pounds into Carmichael’s account before the cruise, and three of them had subsequently made additional, more sizeable donations after the event. Sebastian Doyle, the man Poe had found in Quentin Carmichael’s coffin, had made the largest deposit – three hundred thousand pounds – and Michael James had made the smallest at a measly one hundred thousand. Clement Owens was in the middle with two hundred and fifty thousand.
The sixth man on the list was called Montague Price. Like Joe Lowell and Graham
Russell, he’d made a twenty-five thousand pounds deposit before the cruise but nothing afterwards.
He’d have to get Flynn to check the HOLMES 2 database that Cumbria were managing, but Poe was sure Price hadn’t come up in the investigation so far. To be fair, until they’d burnt to death, none of the others had either.
Poe and Bradshaw looked at each other in bewildered silence. Reid was still studying the list. From the outset Poe had struggled to accept the men were being randomly selected, but never in his wildest dreams had he thought he’d find proof so absolute.
What he had in his hands was a death list.
Reid was staring at the document. His face was grim. ‘Unbelievable,’ he said. ‘You’ve found it.’
Bradshaw was looking excited and scared. Sometimes when the big cases broke, the feeling was overwhelming.
‘What do you think this means, Poe?’ she asked.
He read the list again. Six men got on the boat that night. Five of them were now dead.
‘It can only be one of two things, Tilly,’ he replied. ‘Montague Price is either the next victim or . . .’
‘Or?’
‘Or he’s the Immolation Man.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Poe was happy to let Gamble take over. Searching for a killer once he’d been identified was a job for the sledgehammer, not the scalpel; it needed a manhunt, not a man hunting. He’d called Gamble immediately and told him that they’d found the link between the victims. To his credit, he didn’t shout too much.
Flynn was back in Cumbria and insisted on being briefed. They met in the bar at Shap Wells and she seemed happy with what they’d achieved in her absence. SCAS had come out of it OK in the end. She said she’d let him know later how the meeting with the director and the minister had gone.
Bradshaw broke down the financial information in greater detail while Flynn took notes. She’d be the one writing up the official SCAS report. It would form part of any subsequent prosecution so it had to be meticulous. Reid sauntered into the bar halfway through but waited until the information exchange had finished.
