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‘They won’t.’

‘If Tilly can’t find it then it can’t be found,’ Poe said. ‘You’ll get used to her, ma’am, and then you’ll be glad you did.’

‘We’ll revisit this later,’ Nightingale said. ‘Poe, you’ve got to grips with this quicker than anyone else. You must have a theory?’

‘I can’t begin to connect these dots, ma’am. All I have are questions.’

‘Go on.’

‘Estelle Doyle thinks he used rib shears to remove one pair of fingers. Yet he chose to use a hacksaw and scissors on the others. Why?’

No one said anything.

‘And who the hell are the victims? It’s Christmas; someone must be missing them. Why haven’t they been reported AWOL?’

‘I’ve asked all police stations in the north-west, north-east and south of Scotland to inform me the moment someone rings up about a missing loved one,’ Nightingale said. ‘I don’t want anyone fobbed off with the “wait twenty-four hours” protocol. For now I think we need to focus on—’

The door to Conference Room A burst open and one of Nightingale’s detectives ran in. He was out of breath.

‘Ma’am,’ he said. ‘We’ve DNA-matched one of the victims.’

Chapter 11

The victim was called Howard Teasdale and he lived on the top floor of a townhouse in the higher part of Whitehaven. As they were already in town visiting Fiskin’s Food Hall, Poe and Flynn arrived at Teasdale’s address at the same time as the Whitehaven CID. Nightingale was being blue’d and two’d from Carleton Hall but she’d be another hour.

‘Can’t let you in yet,’ the cop on the outer cordon said. ‘It’s an active crime scene and we’

re still securing it.’

‘Were you first here?’ Poe asked.

‘Second.’

‘What can you tell us?’

‘Only that he’s inside and it isn’t pretty.’

Poe would have liked to question him further. The first officers at the scene often saw, smelled or sensed things that had disappeared by the time CSI and CID got there.

But the machine that is a large-scale murder investigation was beginning to be assembled. Pretty soon they were in the way. Poe and Flynn moved a few yards down the street and, after clearing it of snow, sat on a low garden wall. It had good views of the harbour below.

Sailing boats and fishing trawlers bobbed and creaked, tugging at their moorings. Some harbours are bitten from the land by men, deep channels dredged and cleared and deepened wherever they were needed. Not Whitehaven. Whitehaven harbour was naturally occurring. Until ports with larger shipping capacities, such as Liverpool and Bristol, began to take over its main trade, Whitehaven had been one of the most important ports in the country. It had been renovated as part of the millennium developments and was quite beautiful. Even in December people were sitting on benches sipping coffee and eating chips.

Seagulls the size of chickens wheeled overhead, flashes of white in the dark sky, occasionally swooping down to brazenly snatch food from the unwary. Although they could be a menace, Poe liked seagulls. Without their squawks and cries, the air above the harbour would be empty, the same way the fells had been when the 2001 foot-and-mouth crisis had decimated whole bloodlines of sheep.

‘Come on, let’s go and get a brew,’ Flynn said. ‘This wall’s playing havoc with my haemorrhoids.’

An hour later Nightingale called to say the video walkthrough of the scene and the crime scene manager’s evidence-recovery strategy were complete. She could allow them in.

‘What do we know?’ Flynn asked when they got there. They were both out of breath. The road from the harbour to the townhouse had been steep.

‘It’s a bit different in there,’ she said. ‘His name’s Howard Teasdale and he was a freelance website designer.’

‘Why was his DNA on the database?’ Poe said.

‘He was convicted of making and distributing indecent images of children earlier in the year. Got twenty-four months’ probation, a sex offenders’ course and a SOPO prohibiting him from accessing the internet for anything other than work.’

Poe nodded. Sex offender prevention orders were a commonly used tool to manage DBs, or dirty bastards to give them their full name. He didn’t know much about web design but he knew you couldn’t do it without the internet.