Page 164

Chapter 91

Mathersanswered on the first ring.

‘Poe, what’s happening?’

‘Tilly and I have just passed Luton.’

‘You’re convinced your case is linked to mine?’

‘Absolutely. I don’t know why, I just know it is.’

‘And the fact DI Flynn has let Tilly go with you must mean she’s thinking that way as well?’

‘That’s exactly what happened.’

‘No, she—’ Bradshaw started to say.

‘What’s up, ma’am?’ Poe cut in. There was no point in advertising that sometimes they were an unmanageable rabble.

‘I have news,’ Mathers said. ‘I’ve just told DI Flynn that the Interpol blue notice has had a hit.’

‘It has? Where?’

‘Japan.’

‘Japan?’

‘Specifically, Iriomote Island.’

Poe glanced at Bradshaw.

‘It’s one of the Yaeyama Islands, Poe,’ she said. ‘It’s actually nineteen hundred kilometres from the main islands of Japan, but only three hundred from Taiwan. Ninety per cent of the island is covered by jungle and mangrove swamp.’

‘What was the hit?’ Poe asked, wondering not for the first time how on earth Bradshaw knew these things.

‘We got a call from the Japanese National Police Agency,’ Mathers said. ‘Local police were called to a long-abandoned ammunition dump that was built to defend against the American invasion. A Brit had been supervising a group of tourists on a jungle trek andhe took them to one. It was a thing he did, apparently; let them think they’d stumbled upon something no one had seen for years.’

‘It wasn’t abandoned any more?’

‘No. Instead of the empty underground bunker, they found a makeshift hospital ward. Ten beds, all covered with the remains of isolation tents. A DIY version of what Karen Royal-Cross was in.’

‘What else?’

‘Each bed had a dead body chained to it,’ she said quietly. ‘Looks like they were victims of medical experiments. Evidence suggests all ten were Han Chinese, rather than Japanese.’

‘So no one on the island would miss them,’ Poe said.

‘Exactly.’

‘Do we know what type of medical experiments?’

‘You have to understand that the doors had been deliberately left open so the jungle animals could get in. There wasn’t much left of the victims.’

‘But?’

‘A toxicological analysis of their hair – pretty much all that was left of the poor bastards – showed they had all been poisoned.’

Poe shuddered. ‘With?’