Page 47
Story: The Curator (Washington Poe)
‘He’s expecting your call,’ Carroll said. ‘But there was one more thing.’
‘Go on.’
‘The buyer didn’t include his home address with his payment.’
‘So how—’
‘How did he get hold of his logos?’
‘Yes.’
‘The designer was given the address of a courier firm in Carlisle. They have a collection service apparently.’
Poe breathed out in relief.
Carroll’s printer friend might not have recorded the name of the man who’d ordered the logos but he was damn sure the courier firm would have recorded who’d collected them …
Chapter 29
Poe had visited ANL Parcels before. It had cropped up during the Jared Keaton investigation. He’d found them helpful. Even so, he doubted they would simply hand over client details without a warrant.
He considered ringing Nightingale and asking her to get one of the murder team to apply for it but quickly dismissed this. The warrant would need to be creatively worded. They couldn’t say the man who’d purchased the silkscreen prints from Carroll’s printer friend was the kite’s owner, and because it was still up a tree in a wood, they weren’t even sure the logo was a pterodactyl. Nightingale wouldn’t be able to authorise that warrant.
Luckily Poe knew a man who could help …
Poe had met Owen Dent at a workshop on ethics. His speciality was the legal minefield of warrants, specifically how badly worded, or downright false, warrants could be cause for future appeals. They had shared a drink and had kept in sporadic touch ever since. He occasionally helped Poe with drafting warrants.
Poe wrote a five hundred-word summary of what they thought they knew, how they had come by the information and what they wanted.
He pressed send and sat back.
It was an hour before Owen Dent responded. He asked Poe to complete a 5 x 5 x 5 intelligence assessment. It was standard practice but Poe had deliberately avoided sending one with his summary.
5 x 5 x 5 was a three-stage intelligence evaluation system. The first stage, an evaluation of the source, Poe had to score as an E: Untested. He’d never met Carroll before, and he wasn’t registered as an informant. The second stage, an evaluation of the intelligence received, Poe couldn’t score high either – the information on the silkscreen printing was second-hand. They’d heard it from Carroll but Carroll had heard it from someone else. The third was information on how the intelligence could be disseminated. Poe didn’t care so ticked the middle box.
He asked Bradshaw to download a blank template from the NCA intranet.
He looked at the completed 5 x 5 x 5 despondently, thought of a way he could improve either of the first two ratings and decided he couldn’t. Bradshaw sent it back to Dent as an attachment with the word ‘sorry’ in the subject line.
‘Don’t worry, Poe,’ came the reply.
Before he could stop her, Bradshaw typed ‘Thank you’.
‘Here we go,’ Poe sighed.
‘What is it, Poe?’
‘You’ll see.’
Sure enough an email appeared in the inbox. ‘You’re welcome,’ it said.
‘Owen’s a nice man, but he always has to have the last word on any email exchange.’
Email etiquette aside, Owen Dent came through for them. Within fifteen minutes of receiving the 5 x 5 x 5, he’d sent them draft wording for a warrant that he assured them pushed what they had to the very edge without going into any grey legal areas.
Poe cut and pasted Owen’s words into a warrant and pressed print.
He checked his watch and said, ‘I’ll get this signed at Kendal Magistrates’ during the afternoon sitting. You stay here and carry on working. We won’t be doing anything with it until tomorrow anyway.’
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47 (Reading here)
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 138