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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.