Page 124

Chapter 84

Poe had thought his X1 was a smooth ride but the Range Rover was something else. It ate up the two hundred and fifty miles to Cumbria silently and in no time at all.

He was soon turning into the car park at the back of Barrow police station. The Curator was still under armed guard in Furness General Hospital but would shortly be on his way.

Nightingale and Bradshaw met him as he got out of his car.

‘How’s Detective Inspector Stephanie Flynn, Poe?’ Bradshaw said immediately.

The stress of the last forty-eight hours had caused her to revert to using Flynn’s full, formal address. It was a habit she’d tried hard to break over the last year.

‘Out of surgery and she’ll make a full recovery.’

‘And the baby?’

‘Doing well. The nurses have named him “Scrapper”.’

Bradshaw silently mouthed the name.

‘I don’t like it, Poe.’

‘Zoe wants to call him Washington.’

‘Yes!’ she said. ‘That’s a marvellous idea!’

‘Nice wheels,’ Nightingale said. ‘The NCA must have a different pay scale to us country plodders.’

Poe smiled and patted the warm bonnet.

‘It’s a misguided present and I’m not keeping it. Where are we?’

Bradshaw passed him a folder.

‘Almost everything you need is in there, Poe,’ she said. ‘I’ve circumnavigated most of his security but, as he knew what he was doing, there are parts I need a password for. There are also things he’ll have done in live chatrooms that aren’t recoverable.’

‘Estelle Doyle’s completed the post-mortems on Rebecca Pridmore and Amanda Simpson, I take it?’

‘She asked me to tell you that you’re a reckless idiot, but yes, she worked through the night and finished this morning,’ Nightingale said.

She handed him a thin file. Probably just summary sheets. The full reports would follow. ‘You have a messed up mind, Poe. It’s exactly as you said. He had practised on them, right down to the crude stitching.’

A search of the island with ground-penetrating radar had found that there were more bodies in the old isolation hospital’s graveyard than there were headstones. The real Edward Atkinson had been interred on his own land, in the grave of a Chinese labourer. The bodies of Rebecca Pridmore and Amanda Simpson were in adjacent graves. Dave Coughlan had been found alive, but only just. He had bruising to his throat and had been zip-tied to a cast-iron radiator in one of the empty properties. Other than someone grabbing him from behind he had no recollection of what had happened. Nightingale said he’d make a full recovery. Poe didn’t doubt it – he was as tough as teak.

‘And the other thing?’ he asked.

‘Came through an hour ago.’

‘Good,’ he said. Now he didn’t have a compound fracture to threaten him with, he needed a different type of leverage.

He made to go inside, stopped and turned.

‘Do we have a name for him yet?’

Nightingale nodded.

‘The one he’s using at least. Tilly found it on his laptop and my team found a passport. It was in the same name.’

‘And?’