The Curator (Washington Poe)

by M. W. Craven

  Bradshaw wasn’t faring much better. Her hair was plastered wetly against her head and her lips had a blue tinge.

  She gave him a fierce smile.

  He’d worried she’d slow him down but the reverse was true – because he was wearing heavy jeans and she was wearing lightweight cargo pants, he was slowing her down. And she’d been right: it was easier to walk barefoot. Where Poe’s thick hiking boots meant he had to pull his feet out of the wet sand step-by-step using brute force, she was breaking the suction just by wiggling her toes.

  Cramp ripped up his hamstrings. It was excruciating and the pain brought him to his knees. He screamed but forced himself to get up and wait for it to pass. Eventually it did.

  ‘Are you OK, Poe?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said, massaging the back of his legs. ‘Come on, we’re nearly there.’

  The tide was laced with sea foam and Poe knew that was because it was moving faster than before. It was surging at knee height and the weight of the water was almost enough to topple him.

  In front of him Bradshaw fell, and for a moment disappeared from view. Poe couldn’t move any faster. By the time he reached her she was up and on the move again, not even stopping to cough out a mouthful of seawater.

  ‘Tilly!’ he yelled. ‘Five more minutes!’

  He could see the pier. Could even make out the stone steps to the side.

  The current he was bracing himself against changed direction slightly and, because he wasn’t paying attention, it caught him unawares.

  He fell.

  Bradshaw struggled on ahead, oblivious to what had happened.

  His head went under the water and the world went silent.

  Chapter 77

  Poe struggled to his hands and knees, vomiting salt water. He couldn’t get to his feet. Each time he tried the weight of his wet clothes sucked him back down. And each time he tried, the weaker he became.

  He felt dizzy.

  He knew this was how people drowned in the Walney Channel. The tide came in slowly, lulling you into a false sense of security, but before you knew it, it had drained you of every ounce of strength. And once you were down it kept you down.

  He thought of Flynn. Tried to extract one last bit of moisture from the well. Fell back again. Shouted in frustration.

  A thin arm grabbed him under his shoulders. Began pulling.

  ‘Come on, Poe!’ Bradshaw yelled. ‘Don’t give up now!’

  With one final heave he put everything he had into his legs and forced his body out of the foaming surf. Bradshaw steadied him before he could topple back over.

  ‘We’ll hold on to each other, Poe! DI Flynn needs you rather than me – my job is to get you onto that island.’

  Poe nodded, too exhausted to speak.

  By the time they reached the pier and the adjacent steps carved into the stone, they were wading rather than walking. Another five minutes and they’d have been swept out to sea.

  Bradshaw wanted him to go up first but Poe refused. Once he was up he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get back down.

  He held her by the hips as if he was footing a ladder and steadied her as she climbed. One final push on her backside and she was up. She immediately turned and offered him her hand. Poe wasn’t taking any chances; he went up like Edgar would have done: on all fours.

  He looked round. The natural alcove that acted as the observation point for the eastern side of Montague Island was empty.

  Dave Coughlan was nowhere to be seen.

  Poe gingerly got to his feet. He felt wobbly and he couldn’t feel his fingers and toes but that was to be expected – in the last hour they’d been caught in a snowstorm and had been wading in the Irish Sea.

  Bradshaw was shivering so much it looked like she was vibrating. She needed to get some heat back in her. He removed his sodden jacket and wrapped it round her shoulders. It was better than nothing.

  ‘Put your shoes and socks back on then start moving, Tilly,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we were in long enough to lose core body heat so we should be able to generate the warmth ourselves. Watch me.’

  Poe blew on his hands to get the blood pumping again then stuffed them in his armpits. He jogged on the spot and jumped up and down a few times to demonstrate.

  Bradshaw copied him.

  ‘What are we going to do now, Poe?’ she said through chattering teeth.

  And that was the question. The one that constant movement and panic had allowed him to put off.

  Just what were they going to do now?

  ‘You need to stay at the pier, Tilly. Armed response will be here soon and they won’t know where they’re going. You’ll need to guide them in.’

  She folded her arms in defiance. ‘Estelle Doyle said you weren’t to try to do anything yourself, Poe. She said he’s not a street fighter like you, he’s a stone cold killer.’

  ‘I’ll be careful,’ he said.

  ‘She said that calling in the men with guns isn’t a sign of weakness. I think you should wait.’

  ‘It’s right that you should have second thoughts, Tilly, and I don’t want to do this any more than you but I’m not sure we have enough time.’

  ‘You need a weapon then.’

  She was right; he needed something. People who knew how to use a garrotte knew how to use other weapons.

  His car was kitted out for winter with a shovel and rope in the boot. There was even a small pickaxe. He wished he’d had the foresight to bring it. What he’d give for a pickaxe handle right now. Like a baseball bat but with a lump of metal on the end.

  He thrust his hand in his pockets – in an emergency he could use his keys. Grab the main bunch to put some weight in his fist – like holding a roll of ten-pence pieces – and leave one or two poking out between his fingers to act as a knuckleduster. A fistful of keys jabbed into the sensitive muscles around the eyes would spoil anyone’s day.

  ‘Bollocks,’ he said. He’d left his keys in his car.

  He wondered what Bradshaw had in her bag. She had a laptop and it was a Mac and made of metal. He certainly wouldn’t want to get cracked on the side of the head with one. He dismissed it. You could maybe start a fight with one but he doubted you could end one. It was too unwieldy.

  His thoughts raced back to his time in the army and a day spent in the classroom discussing improvised weapons. The difference between a thing and a weapon was intent, the instructor had told them. He’d explained that when the police began searching football hooligans at the turnstiles they’d had to find new ways of getting weapons into the ground. They’d had to improvise. So, instead of knuckledusters and coshes, they brought newspapers into the stadiums. Once inside they folded them until the newspaper was a wedge-shaped club. Bash someone with a Millwall Brick and they didn’t get up for a while.

  Poe looked down.

  He didn’t have an improvised brick but he didn’t need one. He was standing among a pile of rocks.

  Big rocks. Small rocks. All potential weapons. Primitive but effective. Probably the first weapon in the history of the human race.

  He picked one up and tested it in his hand. Swung it a couple of times. It would have to do.

  Bradshaw watched him. He expected her to tell him that hitting someone with a rock was wrong. It was, but he’d rather have a rock and not need it …

  ‘Do you still have those green socks, Poe?’

  He stared at her. Knew she wasn’t being Bradshaw this time, she was trying to help.

  ‘In the jacket you’re wearing.’

  Bradshaw reached into the pockets and removed one. It was wringing wet.

  ‘Did you do physics at school? Specifically the relationship between acceleration and velocity?’

  He was about to shake his head. Tell her he didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.

  But all of a sudden he did.

  Chapter 78

  Poe had the eye of an ex-infantryman and he’d already plotted an approach that got within fifty yards of Atkin
son’s bungalow without him having to leave dead ground – ground that couldn’t be seen from the western tip of the island. Unless someone had watched him arrive on the island he’d be approaching under cover. Even with his aching muscles the dash across the last fifty yards would take no more than fifteen seconds.

  It was tempting. It really was.

  But … he wasn’t a soldier any more; he was a police officer. And police officers didn’t skulk around in the bushes; they walked up the garden path and knocked on the door.

  And right now, Poe needed to be a police officer.

  The moonlight was pale and delicate and, although it painted the island grey, it was more than enough to navigate by. The grass was wet and quiet underfoot. Poe took the route he’d taken previously. He passed the outline of the isolation hospital and he passed the five empty cottages. He startled the same rabbits and they bolted into the same burrows.

  This time he didn’t turn to see if they’d reappeared after he’d passed.

  His eyes never left the bungalow.

  He was soon stepping over the remnants of the dry stone wall that marked the border of Atkinson’s land. The front of the bungalow, the side Atkinson never used, was in full view, all neglected and forlorn.

  The wind dropped and the island became shrouded in silence. Poe could hear his own breath. He was panting and it was nothing to do with the struggle to get there.

  He felt very alone.

  Being a police officer had installed in Poe the belief he had the inherent right to knock on any door he felt like, at any time he wanted. It didn’t mean he had to rattle a bucket of spoons at the same time, though. He walked the final fifty yards quietly and with caution.

  Poe ignored the unused front door and instead followed the wheelchair-friendly path around the side of the building. He paused before he reached the stone terrace. Took a deep breath and gathered his thoughts.

  It was possible he was wrong. That Nightingale was right and the storm had knocked out the police communications the same way the cell-phone tower had been silenced. That Coughlan had fancied the overtime and he was on the island patrolling somewhere.

  Nightingale’s armed response would be on the island in thirty minutes. Officers who would bring guns to a garrotte fight. All he had was a rock and an untested theory.

  The sensible choice was to wait.

  But then he thought about Flynn and his resolve hardened. He wasn’t certain there was a threat against his friend, only that there was the possibility of a threat.

  It was enough.

  Poe stepped round the side of the building and onto the stone terrace.

  It was empty.

  He didn’t hesitate. Marched straight up to the French doors and tried the handles.

  Locked.

  He banged on the wooden frame, rattling the glass. Waited ten seconds. He looked round for something to break the window. Saw a terracotta pot he reckoned he could just about manage to lift. He was about to pick it up when a noise turned his head back to the inside of the bungalow.

  Atkinson had wheeled himself to the door, a look of confusion on his face.

  ‘Can you open the door, Mr Atkinson?’ Poe said loudly.

  Atkinson reached forwards and turned the key, opened the door and reversed his wheelchair to let him in.

  ‘Where’s DI Flynn?’ Poe barked.

  Atkinson’s eyes widened.

  ‘What’s up, Sergeant Poe? You’re scaring me.’

  Poe stepped inside.

  ‘Where is she?’ he urged.

  ‘She’s with DC Coughlan,’ Atkinson said. ‘He said he had something he needed to show her. Wouldn’t say what it was. Why, what’s happened?’

  Poe nodded.

  He then reached into his pocket, unfurled Bradshaw’s weapon and smashed it down onto Atkinson’s hand.

  Chapter 79

  The Curator screamed, his right hand ruined.

  Poe didn’t hesitate. He swung the improvised cosh again, this time aiming for his other hand. Can’t use a garrotte if you don’t have the use of your hands.

  The army sock with an orange-sized rock inside was wildly inaccurate, though, and he didn’t have the element of surprise for the second blow. The Curator was already moving and, instead of his hand, the second blow caught him on the shoulder. Poe heard a bone break and watched as his left arm went limp.

  Despite this, he managed to launch himself out of the wheelchair, a calculating look on his face. He jabbed at Poe’s throat with his ruined right hand. Poe dipped his head and the man’s broken fist bounced off his chin.

  Poe stepped back and for a moment the two men stared at each other, panting. Poe had a problem: the cosh was an impact weapon and didn’t have a stun setting – if he hit him on the head he risked killing him and, while that was less important than Flynn’s safety, he needed to know who’d hired him.

  He remembered Bradshaw’s rushed instructions: ‘Using a sock will lengthen the weapon. Even a small acceleration at the centre will create massive velocity at the other end.’

  Poe shortened the length of the sock to about six inches. Enough to put him down but hopefully not enough to kill him. It was guesswork but it was all he had.

  The disadvantage of the shortened weapon was that he’d have to get in closer and, while the Curator had a broken right hand and an unusable left, he was still a dangerous man.

  But right now, so was he.

  Poe charged forwards, swinging the cosh ahead of him in a figure of eight pattern, driving the Curator back against the back wall where there was no escape. He aimed for his head again. The Curator threw up his right arm to protect himself.

  The rock shattered his elbow.

  He screamed again, both arms now hanging limply by his side.

  It had been short and violent but as a fight it was over.

  ‘OK, OK!’ he shouted. ‘No more! I’ve had enough.’

  Poe stared but saw nothing but defeat in his eyes. He didn’t care – there was no honour in what had just happened, no code of conduct, no points deducted for style. All that mattered was that he finished it.

  He heard a noise at the French doors.

  Bradshaw was standing in the doorway. She was holding a piece of driftwood no bigger than a headmaster’s cane. She looked terrified but determined.

  ‘Freeze, dirtbag!’ she shouted.

  Poe looked at the Curator.

  ‘What she said.’

  He then stepped forward and clubbed him on the side of the head.

  And this time he did go down.

  Poe had to secure the Curator before he could search for Flynn. He ripped a reading lamp from the wall socket and used the cable to bind his legs. Used another to tie his hands behind his back. He used a third to tie him to the wheelchair he’d been squatting in.

  ‘Put your stick down, Tilly,’ Poe said.

  Bradshaw said nothing. Just looked at the man on the floor and the blood coming from the compound fractures in his hands and elbow. She was trembling. He needed to keep her busy.

  He walked up to her and gently prised the stick out of her cold hands.

  ‘Let’s go and find DI Flynn, Tilly.’

  Bradshaw tore her eyes away from the devastation on the floor and nodded. She looked at the Curator.

  ‘OK, Poe,’ she said softly. ‘But if this man has killed DI Stephanie Flynn I … I don’t know what I’ll do to him.’

  ‘If the boss is dead, Tilly, this bastard’s going in the sea.’

  Poe stood and headed into the guts of the bungalow. He ignored the bedroom and en suite and headed for Atkinson’s treatment room, hoping he wasn’t too late. He tried the door but it was locked.

  He didn’t bother searching the Curator for the key – he walked back five paces and ran at it shoulder first. The flimsy internal door was no match for his anger. It tore from its hinges and fell inwards.

  Poe stepped over the splintered wood and in a single glance understood why the female victims had been abducte
d and why there’d been anaesthetic in their blood.

  He understood everything …

  Chapter 80

  It was worse than anything Poe had dared fear.

  Flynn was lying half-naked on the treatment table. She was stony pale and wasn’t moving. A blue hygiene towel covered her midriff and groin. It was soaked with blood. Too much blood.

  A purple bruise covered one side of her lifeless face. Two empty bags hung from an IV stand at the top of the treatment table. Stained tubes ran from them to the cannula taped to the back of her hand. One bag had contained blood; the other had contained a clear liquid. Possibly a sedative, possibly an anaesthetic.

  Poe rushed over and pushed two fingers into Flynn’s neck. She had a pulse. It was faint and rapid but it was there. Her eyelids fluttered and she let out a small groan but didn’t wake.

  Poe knew he had to check her wound but he didn’t want to look under the blue hygiene paper. He’d never be the same once he had. He knew what he’d see.

  And he also knew what he wouldn’t see.

  He had no choice, though – the price of being able to do the things that others wouldn’t is that sometimes you had to do the things that others couldn’t.

  He heard a noise behind him.

  ‘Is DI Flynn alive, Poe?’

  Bradshaw had followed him into the room.

  ‘She is, Tilly.’ He used his body to shield her view of Flynn. ‘Can I have my jacket back, please?’

  Bradshaw slipped out of it and handed it to him. He laid it over Flynn’s upper torso.

  ‘Don’t look, Tilly.’

  He didn’t wait to see if she was averting her eyes. She’d either take his advice or she wouldn’t. He lifted the blue hygiene paper and saw what he’d dreaded seeing.

  Bradshaw gasped.

  He turned. She was ashen, her hands clamped to her cheeks. Poe pulled Bradshaw close and hugged her.

  ‘Poe,’ she sobbed. ‘Where’s DI Flynn’s baby?’

  Chapter 81

  Instead of the maternal bump they’d grown used to, there was an eighteen-inch vertical slash. The deep wound stretched from Flynn’s navel to her groin. It was seeping but encrusted with dry blood. It had been crudely stitched together with what looked like catgut, all thick and black and awful.