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‘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.’