Page 54
Story: The Curator (Washington Poe)
Poe knew what he had to do.
He stood. ‘Please excuse us, Mr Maxwell.’
Bradshaw looked at him quizzically but followed him out of the room.
When they were outside she said, ‘Whatever are we doing, Poe?’
‘We’re speeding things up, Tilly, that’s what we’re doing,’ he replied. ‘But first, we need to go and get some things from the CSI store.’
Chapter 35
‘She’s stuck in a loop, boss. Fixated on that kite. A literal case of not being able to see the wood because of the tree,’ Poe said.
It was early the following day and he was in his car, waiting. He had half an hour before he was supposed to be in position and he’d used that time to call Flynn and tell her what he was up to.
‘She doesn’t have your freedoms, Poe,’ Flynn said. ‘You can’t expect her to drop a perfectly valid line of enquiry because you want help staking out a suspect who our own profile says is unlikely to be the person we’re looking for.’
‘You’ve got a better idea?’ he asked.
‘I have. It’s called doing analysis and supporting the investigation like we were brought in for.’
After a short delay he said, ‘You give your ideas names?’
Flynn snorted. ‘Dickhead. What are you and Tilly doing today?’
‘Tilly’s at Carleton Hall. She’s taking Edgar to the dog section to play with the drugs spaniels there, and then she’s heading over to a room we’ve set up with CSI.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t have anyone to look after him and the dog section very kindly said they’d—’
‘Why is Tilly in a specially set up CSI room?’
‘Because,’ Poe said, ‘I’m going bin-dipping.’
The lone bin must have been percolating in the back of Poe’s mind for some time. He put down living at Herdwick Croft as the reason it had taken him so long to make the connection. He didn’t have a bin collection. Initially he hadn’t requested one, as he’d wanted to keep as low a profile as he could. And now the council had found him, providing a bin service would have undermined their position that Herdwick Croft wasn’t a legal dwelling. Poe could have used it in the civil case – an ‘if the council collect my bins then they must also recognise it as my home’ kind of thing. Like a smellier version of Miracle on 34th Street.
Instead, whatever rubbish he couldn’t burn he bagged up and took to the council tips.
But … when he’d lived in Hampshire he had had a bin service. And there were a few idiosyncrasies associated with British rubbish collections that he hadn’t forgotten. And even in the environmentally friendly age of recycling, where you were expected to root through your garbage like Great Uncle Bulgaria, separating one lot of shit from another lot of shit, there was one golden rule: the first person to put their bin out was a knob.
And there was always one. One household who ignored the never-enforced rule about what time you were allowed to put your rubbish by the kerb. Poe knew there were reasons to put your bin out the day before collection: you weren’t going to be home until after bin day; you didn’t like dragging them out in the dark; you liked annoying your neighbours …
A lone bin at night often meant that the rubbish had been collected but the bin’s owner hadn’t been home yet to put it away. But a lone bin in the morning meant that someone was going against bin etiquette, because if it had been bin day, all the houses would have had bins outside. In Poe’s experience, a lone bin in the morning meant that bin collection was the following day.
That meant that right about now, Robert Cowell’s bin was sitting on the edge of his drive, waiting to be collected. Where Poe could legally grab the contents without the need for a warrant. Or at least he thought he could. In the same way that the term ‘implied consent’ allows the police to enter gardens and driveways and postmen to deliver the mail, Poe believed that anything in a wheelie bin was classed as ‘disclaimed’. Admittedly, it was a grey area, and ultimately a judge would decide whether it had been gathered legally. Anything in a wheelie bin was the property of the council anyway – it was where the authority to issue fines came from when the wrong rubbish was put in the wrong bin.
Despite being sure he was acting within the law, Poe was being extra cautious. The bin men were collecting Cowell’s rubbish on his behalf. He and Bradshaw had visited CSI the day before and signed out three extra-large paper evidence bags. Three feet by one and a half, they were the same size as a standard bin liner. Poe had agreed to meet the crew that serviced Cowell’s road in the nearby hospital car park to make sure they understood what it was he was asking of them.
He had considered doing a shift with them but he’d been convinced otherwise. Notwithstanding the insurance issues, no one thought Poe would be able to hack it. And he was minded to believe them; living the life he did at Herdwick Croft had made him lean and wiry, but the men and women who dragged heavy wheelie bins for a living had muscles like cables.
There was another more important consideration: the killer could have been observing the investigation. If he had, then he’d almost certainly have seen Poe. If Cowell was their man, Poe dressing as a bin man would set off all sorts of alarms.
An accident at the Hardwicke Circus roundabout had brought rush hour to a standstill and the refuse vehicle was running late. It was why he’d had the time to call Flynn. He had thought of floating it past Nightingale as well but decided it would be better to seek forgiveness than ask for permission. Flynn would tell her anyway but he’d left it late enough so he couldn’t be stopped.
Poe needed to be proactive. He couldn’t just sit around and hope the killer made a mistake and collected his kite. His brain wasn’t wired that way. Would his life be eas
ier if it was? Undoubtedly. He didn’t enjoy feeling like he was under permanent attack but it was a price he’d learned to pay a long time ago.
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
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54 (Reading here)
- 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