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Poe arrived at Carleton Hall with ten minutes to spare. The road to the M6 had been slow going but the gritters had been out overnight and the motorway had been clear.

Before he could get out of his car someone rapped on his window.

It was Dave Coughlan. Poe opened the door. If there was going to be trouble he wanted to be standing.

‘What’s up, DC Coughlan? I’m sorry about Tilly’s deep-thinker remark. It shouldn’t have be

en made public.’

Coughlan shrugged. ‘You’re going to the meeting with me today. Might as well go in my car – you have a parking space, I don’t.’

Poe grabbed his bag.

‘Lead the way.’

Coughlan, like most low-ranking cops at Carleton Hall, had more abandoned his car than parked it. It was half under a tree, half on the road, and nearer Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service’s headquarters complex than his own. He drove an aging, mud-spattered Volvo with new and faded Guide Dogs for the Blind stickers on the bumper and on the rear window.

‘Your friend Matilda seems to speak without thinking,’ Coughlan said when they were on the M6 and heading for Carlisle. ‘I’m surprised she got a job with the National Crime Agency, given how corporate they are.’

‘I wasn’t at SCAS when she applied but as I understand it she corrected seven questions on the entrance exam,’ Poe said. ‘The NCA might have an image to protect but it also recognises a once-in-a-generation mind when it sees one. If they’d knocked her back the intelligence services would have snapped her up in a heartbeat.’

‘She’s that good?’

‘Best I’ve ever seen.’

‘Where were you when she joined?’

Poe checked to see if he was taking the piss. He wasn’t.

‘I was suspended for eighteen months. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it – I was a cause célèbre up here for a while.’

‘I haven’t been in Cumbria long.’

That was right. Nightingale had said as much.

‘Which force were you with before?’

Coughlan glanced at him. He seemed irritated by the question.

‘I wasn’t. I’m a late entrant officer.’

There was no longer an upper age limit in the police recruitment process so Coughlan could have joined any time. Poe put him to be in his early forties. Although it was the right age for a mid-life crisis career change, Poe wondered if there was a story behind the decision to join at the age most cops had one eye on retirement.

‘What did you do before?’

‘Bit of this and that.’

Poe was spared asking an awkward follow up when his phone beeped. It was a text from Bradshaw. She wanted to know if he’d be back for lunch. By the time he’d replied, Coughlan had found one of Carlisle’s rare on-street parking places. It was close to where their meeting was: the Citadel, the immense oval towers that in the 1800s had been used as assize courts and a prison, and until recently had been used as county council offices. They were impressive and it was a shame their purpose was now so mundane.

Poe had been to many boring meetings and the one concerning the Black Swan Challenge easily made his top twenty. It was clear that no one understood what it was, didn’t understand why kids would want to play and didn’t have a clue what to do.

The last ten minutes had been a back and forth between someone from Public Health and a squat woman with a pudding-bowl haircut from probation. Poe suspected they were rehashing a long-running power play.

He was saved from further silliness by his phone vibrating. He looked at the screen. It was a withheld number, probably the same one from that morning. He excused himself and left the room.

‘Hello,’ he said, when he was in a quiet corner.

‘Sergeant Poe? This is Special Agent Melody Lee. I’m with the FBI.’