Page 64

Barely …

Rhona Cowell had smirked. On its own it wouldn’t have meant much, but in the context of what had happened with her brother, it was everything. The timing of the church crime scene meant something to them both. Poe was sure of it.

He just didn’t know what.

‘Your sister reacted to the same thing you did, Robert, almost to the second,’ Poe said. ‘It’s only a smirk but it’s the only time she’s shown any emotion at all.’

That wasn’t entirely truthful. At the end of the interview Rhona Cowell had also spoken. It was little more than a mumble and even with the sound turned up full he hadn’t been able to make it out. He was waiting for the interview transcript, although the detective who’d been observing had told him it was ‘just some hippy-dippy bullshit about staring into her soul and seeing the truth’. Poe would wait and read the transcript but he couldn’t see how it would be relevant. The only reason the detective had mentioned it at all was because it was the one and only time she’d opened her mouth.

‘The Midnight Mass evidence isn’t the first time you’ve reacted to something, though, is it, Robert?’ Poe said.

Cowell looked up, confused.

‘You didn’t react when we showed you your kite and, other than revulsion, you didn’t really react when we showed you a picture of Rebecca Pridmore’s fingers on the carpet at John Bull Haulage. But you did re

act when you saw the mug the fingers came in. The mug with hashtag BSC6 written on it.’

Cowell slumped in his chair and began biting his lips.

‘You see, hashtag BSC6 has cropped up at every crime scene, Robert,’ Poe continued. ‘You’ve seen how it was written on the Secret Santa mug at John Bull Haulage and you’ve seen how it was inserted into the hymn board at the church and fixed like a price tag at the food hall.’

Cowell was watching him carefully.

‘We don’t know what hashtag BSC6 means.’ He met Cowell’s eyes and didn’t break contact. ‘But I think you do.’

For a moment the two men stared at each other.

‘Am I right, Robert?’ Poe said.

Cowell nodded slowly, his eyes glued to Poe’s.

‘And are you finally ready to tell me?’

Cowell nodded again.

Chapter 42

Despite the late hour the incident room was packed tighter than two coats of paint. Detectives and uniformed cops, civilian staff and press officers had squeezed themselves into a room meant for a quarter of their number. Even Shirley Becke, Cumbria’s chief constable, was there. It was hot and humid. A background of excited chatter filled the air. It faded when Nightingale stood up.

‘Robert Cowell has admitted to competing in something called the Black Swan Challenge,’ she said. ‘It’s an escalating contest where tasks are set by an as yet unknown administrator. I’m going to ask Tilly Bradshaw from the National Crime Agency to take you through the next bit. She’s the one who put it all together.’

A nervous Bradshaw made her way to the front. She looked down at Poe on the front row and waved. He gave her a thumbs up. This was the largest crowd she’d been asked to brief and she wanted to do well. She said she was representing SCAS. Poe knew she’d be fine if she stuck to the science. It was the audience participation he was worried about.

‘Hello, everyone,’ she said. ‘My name is Matilda Bradshaw and I’m a civilian analyst with the Serious Crime Analysis Section. We are part of the National Crime Agency.’

The room stayed silent.

She nervously adjusted her glasses then checked her PowerPoint presentation. She clicked her handheld remote and the screen changed into a black swan.

‘The Black Swan Challenge, or hashtag-BSC, isn’t, as Detective Superintendent Nightingale has just said, an online escalating challenge game, it’s actually a sophisticated control and manipulation scheme aimed at vulnerable people.’

Nightingale frowned and glanced at the chief constable.

‘It cannot be found except by those who have been told how to find it,’ Bradshaw continued. ‘And it’s not new.’

A click and the black swan disappeared. A blue whale replaced it.

‘The Blue Whale Challenge,’ Bradshaw said. ‘Believed to originate in Russia, it was a series of tests, one a day over fifty days, that ultimately groomed the victim into committing suicide. The full number is disputed but it is believed that over one hundred vulnerable people killed themselves in Russia alone.’