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As expected, his mobile rang. It was Nightingale. He was saved the decision of whether or not to answer by the rumbling and metal clanking of a lorry. Ten seconds later the refuse vehicle rounded the corner and parked beside him.

Poe jumped out to greet them.

The shift supervisor was a small, mean-looking man called Ben Stephenson. He was sucking on a cigarette like it was an exhaust pipe. Poe felt the power in the man’s grip when they shook hands.

The crew gathered round Poe as he talked them through what he needed.

‘I can’t tell if he’s at home,’ Poe said, ‘so we have to assume he is.’

He handed Stephenson the three evidence bags. He took them without looking.

‘I don’t know how you usually do things but if you park up short when you get to his house, he won’t be able to see the back when you transfer his rubbish into my evidence bags.’

The refuse truck was rear loading. The crew dragged the bins to the back then a mechanical arm hoisted them in the air and tipped the contents into the vehicle’s well. By parking up short Cowell shouldn’t be able to see what was happening.

‘And he’s definitely a tax dodger?’

‘That’s what we’re trying to find out.’

It was the only lie he’d told.

‘I need you to video it,’ Poe said, handing Stephenson a camera he’d bought the day before. ‘From the moment the bin is collected to the moment the evidence bags are sealed. We can’t have him claiming you lot planted evidence.’

One of the men, a brute with a face like an Easter Island head, grunted. Poe was under no illusion what would happen to Cowell if he made an accusation against this lot.

They agreed to meet back at the hospital in an hour. Poe wished them luck.

Chapter 36

Poe smiled in satisfaction as he watched the video Ben Stephenson had shot.

The refuse truck crew had done a sterling job. Robert Cowell was obsessively neat and his wheelie bin contained no loose rubbish. It was all tied up in kitchen bin bags. It had taken the crew seconds to lift them out and seal them in Poe’s evidence bags. They’d even gone through the motions of putting the bin on the truck’s mechanical arm to put it through the disposal cycle. Poe hadn’t identified a single thing he’d have done differently.

As a token of his appreciation, he handed each of them a crate of beer and a bottle of whisky.

‘Just nail the cheating bastard,’ one of them said.

‘We will,’ Poe replied.

Poe returned to Carleton Hall where Bradshaw and a CSI technician waited for him. With a video recording everything, the first evidence bag was emptied onto a forensic groundsheet on the floor. Before they had a chance to start rooting through the rubbish, Nightingale walked in. She was annoyed, but not angry, that he’d gone behind her back. She checked Ben Stephenson’s video and agreed they had an unimpeachable chain of custody.

‘I’ll come back in a couple of hours to see how you’re getting on,’ Nightingale said. ‘Call me if you find anything.’

Poe looked at Bradshaw when she’d shut the door.

‘You ready?’

She was poised with her laptop, ready to analyse or go deeper into anything they found.

‘I feel dirty, Poe,’ she replied.

He nodded. He did too. And not just because he was knee-deep in greasy takeaway boxes, stinking chicken carcasses and bloodied disposable razors. Reverse-engineering the lifestyle of a suspect by going through their discarded rubbish was a window into their most intimate secrets. Poe didn’t care what the law said; it was an invasion of privacy.

‘Can’t be helped,’ he said. ‘This is the other part of police work, Tilly. The part the public never get to see.’

‘It’s very smelly,’ she said.

Poe nodded. He’d been trying not to breathe through his nose since the bag had been emptied. Carlisle City Council operated a once-a-fortnight household rubbish collection so some of the stink was two weeks old.