The Curator (Washington Poe)

by M. W. Craven

  ‘I’ll call her later,’ he said, tucking the note into his pocket.

  Chapter 45

  The meeting with Public Health was scheduled for nine-thirty the following morning and Nightingale insisted that Poe call it a night. He offered perfunctory resistance but, in truth, he was glad to get away. His bones felt tired – payback for the long hours and cheap coffee – and his mind felt like a spreadsheet with too many tabs open. A meal, a walk in the snow with Edgar followed by a full night’s sleep would see him reinvigorated. He said goodbye to Flynn and Bradshaw, collected Edgar from the dog section and headed home.

  Robert and Rhona Cowell remained in his thoughts as he manoeuvred the BMW X1 through the deepening snow, the winter tyres and four-wheel-drive torque ensuring he fared better than most other road users. He thought Rhona was probably equally as involved as Robert and, although they made good suspects, a lot of unanswered questions remained. Neither of them looked like criminal masterminds, and although Poe knew that few crimes made complete sense, even if they were dealing with the two luckiest pinheads alive – bumbling clowns who’d somehow defied the odds and pulled off three almost perfect murders – nothing explained why they’d pumped two of their victims full of anaesthetic while one had simply been dispatched on the spot.

  They were still missing something.

  The weather had cleared and, with a Cumberland sausage and a potato in the oven, Poe took Edgar for a walk along his boundary walls. Herdwick sheep would use them as shelter and they’d occasionally get stuck if the snow drifted. More than once he’d had to drag them out by their feet.

  He walked the length of the dry stone wall that served as the demarcation between his and Victoria’s land. It was free of trapped animals. He was about to head home when he heard something. The idling engine of a quad.

  He turned to the noise and saw two headlights. It seemed that Victoria had been having one last check as well.

  ‘Washington,’ she said, when he popped his head over the wall, ‘what are you doing out so late?’

  ‘Same as you by the looks of it,’ he replied.

  ‘You couldn’t give me a hand, could you?’

  Poe leaned over.

  A large Herdwick lay on its side, its foot wedged in a gap in the wall. Poe couldn’t imagine how it had managed to get like that. It was trembling, which was unusual for the breed. Although they were prey animals, Poe’s experience of Herdwicks was that they wore the label lightly. The ones that hung around Herdwick Croft either ignored Edgar completely, or, if he was being particularly annoying, charged him – a reminder that he was a daft spaniel and they had heads designed for butting.

  ‘It’s not fully grown,’ Victoria continued. ‘We must have missed it when we gathered the fell last year.’

  Poe looked again. What he’d initially thought was a large sheep was in fact a young sheep weighed down with a fleece heavily matted with snow. The reason for its distress made sense now – if it hadn’t been gathered the previous lambing season it was possible that Victoria was the first human it had had contact with.

  Poe climbed over and grabbed it securely around the midriff, making sure he kept clear of its thrashing head. While he held it steady, Victoria worked on freeing its leg.

  It didn’t take long with the two of them. The Herdwick limped off without a backward look.

  ‘Thanks,’ Victoria said, blowing on her hands to warm them. ‘You OK? You look tired.’

  He shrugged. ‘We have a bad one.’

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  ‘Not yet.’ He sometimes offloaded to Victoria – she’d proved a useful sounding board in the past – but now wasn’t the time.

  ‘How are you managing with Edgar?’

  ‘Not great,’ he admitted. Edgar had been passed from pillar to post these last few days.

  ‘Shall I take him?’

  He looked at the spaniel. He’d jumped the wall and was sitting on the back of Poe’s quad. He’d obviously remembered there was a Cumberland sausage roasting in the oven.

  Poe sighed. ‘I suppose you’d better.’

  Poe walked back to Herdwick Croft alone. He’d miss Edgar but, although the spaniel had enjoyed the beach and the time he’d spent in the dog section, it wasn’t fair to push it. He was an energetic dog and needed constant exercise. Far better he was on Victoria’s farm for a while.

  The rescue of the trapped Herdwick meant he was home half an hour later than he’d planned. His baked potato resembled a prune and the sausage was black and crispy, more charcoal than pork. He threw the former and ate the latter. Never in his life had he thrown away a Cumberland sausage.

  He briefly considered cooking another but decided that he needed sleep more than he needed food.

  Poe woke eight hours older. Sunlight pushed through the slats in the window shutters – a new sensation for him; he was usually up before dawn. He’d slept in because Edgar wasn’t there, licking his face, reminding him that morning meant breakfast. He had another headache, not as ferocious as the bastard of the other day, more a dull throb than bone-splitting agony. He didn’t even reach for the analgesics.

  He got up and stepped under the shower, initially blasting himself with ice-cold water before turning it up way higher than was comfortable. He stood motionless as the scalding jets stung his skin and cleared his mind.

  As the hot water flushed his system, Poe visualised what he wanted to do next. There wasn’t an obvious role for him. They had their killers and the hunt for the Black Swan Challenge administrator would start and finish online. Now that she knew what she was looking for, Poe didn’t doubt that Bradshaw would find a way to track him down.

  He’d ask Nightingale if he could join the team she had going through the guesthouses where the single-board computers had been hidden. Poe didn’t think for a moment that the site administrator would be caught that way but at least it was police work.

  After he’d got out of the shower and towelled himself dry, he checked his phone for messages. There was a text from Bradshaw reminding him to take the vitamin pills she’d bought him and one from Flynn saying she wouldn’t be in until later. There was also a missed call from a withheld number, probably someone from Carleton Hall reminding him about the meeting with the council’s Blue Whale expert.

  He thumbed Bradshaw a reply confirming he’d taken the pills and that he’d have weird-smelling urine for the rest of the day. He sent another to Flynn telling her everything was in hand and he’d call her if there was anything she needed to know.

  The missed call he couldn’t do anything about.

  Chapter 46

  An online, challenge-based murder game taking place in Cumbria required a countywide multi-agency response. Public Health, the agency charged with protecting and improving the nation’s health, would lead but all agencies would be involved: the children safeguarding board, the adult safeguarding board, the police, schools, probation, everyone. A press strategy would be needed too. The pros and cons of sharing it with the public would be discussed and agreed.

  The pros being that parents, schools and social care agencies could identify vulnerable kids and adults and put interventions in place.

  The cons being copycats. In Bridgend, Wales, after a spate of young people had hanged themselves, the media had been accused of glamorising suicide and triggering more. So much so that the police had to ask them to stop covering it. They’d become part of the problem.

  Poe was glad the decision wouldn’t fall on him. There were no good choices, only bad ones.

  Poe arrived at Carleton Hall with ten minutes to spare. The road to the M6 had been slow going but the gritters had been out overnight and the motorway had been clear.

  Before he could get out of his car someone rapped on his window.

  It was Dave Coughlan. Poe opened the door. If there was going to be trouble he wanted to be standing.

  ‘What’s up, DC Coughlan? I’m sorry about Tilly’s deep-thinker remark. It shouldn’t have be
en made public.’

  Coughlan shrugged. ‘You’re going to the meeting with me today. Might as well go in my car – you have a parking space, I don’t.’

  Poe grabbed his bag.

  ‘Lead the way.’

  Coughlan, like most low-ranking cops at Carleton Hall, had more abandoned his car than parked it. It was half under a tree, half on the road, and nearer Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service’s headquarters complex than his own. He drove an aging, mud-spattered Volvo with new and faded Guide Dogs for the Blind stickers on the bumper and on the rear window.

  ‘Your friend Matilda seems to speak without thinking,’ Coughlan said when they were on the M6 and heading for Carlisle. ‘I’m surprised she got a job with the National Crime Agency, given how corporate they are.’

  ‘I wasn’t at SCAS when she applied but as I understand it she corrected seven questions on the entrance exam,’ Poe said. ‘The NCA might have an image to protect but it also recognises a once-in-a-generation mind when it sees one. If they’d knocked her back the intelligence services would have snapped her up in a heartbeat.’

  ‘She’s that good?’

  ‘Best I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Where were you when she joined?’

  Poe checked to see if he was taking the piss. He wasn’t.

  ‘I was suspended for eighteen months. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it – I was a cause célèbre up here for a while.’

  ‘I haven’t been in Cumbria long.’

  That was right. Nightingale had said as much.

  ‘Which force were you with before?’

  Coughlan glanced at him. He seemed irritated by the question.

  ‘I wasn’t. I’m a late entrant officer.’

  There was no longer an upper age limit in the police recruitment process so Coughlan could have joined any time. Poe put him to be in his early forties. Although it was the right age for a mid-life crisis career change, Poe wondered if there was a story behind the decision to join at the age most cops had one eye on retirement.

  ‘What did you do before?’

  ‘Bit of this and that.’

  Poe was spared asking an awkward follow up when his phone beeped. It was a text from Bradshaw. She wanted to know if he’d be back for lunch. By the time he’d replied, Coughlan had found one of Carlisle’s rare on-street parking places. It was close to where their meeting was: the Citadel, the immense oval towers that in the 1800s had been used as assize courts and a prison, and until recently had been used as county council offices. They were impressive and it was a shame their purpose was now so mundane.

  Poe had been to many boring meetings and the one concerning the Black Swan Challenge easily made his top twenty. It was clear that no one understood what it was, didn’t understand why kids would want to play and didn’t have a clue what to do.

  The last ten minutes had been a back and forth between someone from Public Health and a squat woman with a pudding-bowl haircut from probation. Poe suspected they were rehashing a long-running power play.

  He was saved from further silliness by his phone vibrating. He looked at the screen. It was a withheld number, probably the same one from that morning. He excused himself and left the room.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, when he was in a quiet corner.

  ‘Sergeant Poe? This is Special Agent Melody Lee. I’m with the FBI.’

  The woman with the peculiar name who’d been leaving him messages.

  ‘The FBI have been trying to get hold of me?’ Poe said, nonplussed.

  ‘I have.’

  ‘I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to call you back, Special Agent Lee. I haven’t found the time yet.’ Poe thought it sounded better than telling her he’d forgotten.

  ‘That’s OK, Sergeant Poe,’ she drawled. ‘I can’t tell you how glad I am to speak to you.’

  She pronounced her ‘I’ as ‘aah’ and her ‘can’t’ rhymed with paint not aunt. Poe reckoned she was originally from one of the southern states, maybe Louisiana or Mississippi.

  ‘How can I help you, Special Agent Lee?’

  ‘Can you tell me about the case you’re currently working on?’ she said.

  ‘Can you tell me about the case you’re currently working on?’

  Silence.

  ‘I didn’t think so,’ Poe said.

  More silence. This time he relented.

  ‘Look, why don’t you tell me what this is about? I can then decide if I’m in a sharing mood.’

  She did.

  And when she’d finished, Poe had to re-evaluate everything he thought he knew …

  Chapter 47

  ‘What I’m about to tell you is not the FBI’s formal position,’ Special Agent Melody Lee said. ‘This is my theory, and repeatedly voicing it is why, instead of being in DC, I’m in South Dakota investigating the crap that goes on in the oil-producing region of the Bakken.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ Poe replied. ‘You’re not the only person in this conversation who’s held a minority opinion before.’

  ‘You know that the FBI has liaison officers with all the world’s major law enforcement agencies, right?’

  ‘I do.’ He didn’t but, as a national agency, it was definitely the type of thing the NCA would be involved in.

  ‘For a while now I’ve had a standing request for our liaison officers to look for cases with … certain peculiarities. Yours is the only one I’ve found.’

  ‘Peculiarities?’

  ‘I need to give you some context,’ she said. ‘A few years ago, when I was with DC’s violent crime task force, we had a series of seemingly unrelated assaults that crossed state lines. “Happy slapping”, you guys might still be calling it. Initially we thought it must be a gang initiation ceremony we weren’t aware of, but when we eventually caught a couple of assailants they were good kids, not the usual gangbangers at all.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘Not much. By the time we got anywhere near them they’d lawyered up and taken the fifth. Eventually one of them agreed to speak to me off the record. She told me a right yarn.’

  ‘Go on,’ Poe said. ‘She said she’d been playing an online dare game and it had gotten a bit out of hand. Started with silly stuff but the final dare had them assaulting a stranger.’

  ‘She admitted it?’

  ‘Before her asshole lawyer stopped her.’

  ‘I’m assuming you’re not ringing because of an assault?’

  ‘I’m not. Predictably, one of the victims died.’

  ‘You get the perpetrator?’

  ‘We did. A sailing jock from Georgetown, guy named Stuart Wilson. He’d already played the game twice and the assaults had resulted in minor injuries – little more than a busted lip and a cricked neck. But with the third he went too far, beat the guy to death.’

  ‘He admit it?’

  ‘Came clean about the two assaults. Denied all knowledge of the homicide. Said that he’d logged into the chatroom but the site administrator wasn’t there.’

  ‘Anyone buy that?’ Poe said carefully.

  ‘Not really. We assumed he’d found himself up dime alley with just a nickel in his pocket. Admitting the misdemeanours but denying the homicide was the only play he had left.’

  ‘Was the evidence solid?’

  ‘Irrefutable,’ Melody Lee said. ‘Kind of stuff that gives the DA wet dreams. Overwhelming physical evidence and, if you knew what you were looking for, you could also follow everything online.’

  ‘What was the physical evidence?’

  ‘Victim’s blood in the grooves of his sneakers.’

  ‘Just the sole?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did the victim die?’

  ‘This is the thing: he was kicked and punched to death.’

  ‘So there should have been blood on the toe areas and spatters on the laces and eyelets as well.’

  ‘Exactly. But there wasn’t.’

  ‘How did the prosecution explain that away?’

  ‘
Convinced the jury that he’d almost succeeded in scrubbing off the blood. Claimed it was more evidence of his lack of remorse.’

  ‘So he’d washed them but forgotten to check the treads?’

  ‘You can see why I had doubts.’

  ‘You said you’re in South Dakota. Even I know the Badlands are a punishment posting. No way did you risk your career on a pair of trainers that may or may not have been scrubbed.’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘What else did you find?’

  ‘The make-up of the victims,’ Melody Lee said. ‘The nine who were assaulted were about as random as you could get. Two students, a bank clerk, a couple of store workers. An old lady getting off the bus.’

  ‘And the one who died?’

  ‘On the face of it there was nothing special about him either.’

  ‘And the face of it was as deep as the FBI were prepared to dig, I take it?’

  ‘They had their man, they had their evidence and they had their motive. They’d have liked a confession but they were happy with everything else. It was a slam-dunk case for the DA and, because Stuart Wilson was from a wealthy family, he could show he wasn’t soft on the Washington elite in an election year.’

  ‘So what was it about the victim that worried you?’

  ‘Not so much him as his business partner,’ she replied. ‘He’d tried to buy out the victim the previous year but their business was growing and the sum he offered was half of what it was worth. A death clause in their partnership contract meant that the victim dying in a random mugging game was extremely fortuitous.’

  ‘You’re thinking this was a hit. That the random victim wasn’t random at all? Someone hid a murder in the carnage of a happy-slapping game?’

  ‘That’s why I’m in the Badlands,’ she said.

  ‘It’s a bit thin.’

  ‘The victim’s business partner had taken one hundred thousand dollars out of his checking account that he couldn’t account for. Hid behind his lawyer who got onto the DA, who didn’t want his nice, easy conviction complicated. Shut me down.’