Page 54 of The Final Vow

‘She’s committed now, Tilly,’ he said. ‘I think we need to let her see this through. I don’t want to confuse things. There’ll be a lot of nervous energy around right now. I don’t want anyone getting hurt.’

They watched as McCloud climbed into the back of an armed response Mitsubishi Shogun. It drove off. No blues and twos. There was no need. They were the only cars on the road. Poe stared after them. Bradshaw went back to her computer.

There was nothing to do but wait.

Chapter 42

Poe’s mobile rang fifteen minutes later. It was McCloud. He didn’t mince his words. ‘Did you get him, ma’am?’

‘We did.’

‘Anyone hurt?’

‘No. Textbook. We smashed in his front door and caught him unawares. He was heating up some soup.’

‘And?’

McCloud didn’t immediately answer.

‘He’ssomething, Poe,’ she said eventually. ‘But he isn’t our sniper.’ She sighed then added, ‘I think you’d better come and see.’

Gilbert lived in a pebble-dashed terraced house. It was new, not one of the munitions factory houses. It was neat and tidy. The doorstep was black. Looked to have been freshly painted.

McCloud met them at the front door. ‘I think this is more your area of expertise than mine,’ she said.

She led them inside. Gilbert was perched on the edge of a blood-red sofa. He was in cuffs and leg restraints. Even sitting down, Poe could tell he wasn’t tall enough to be their sniper. And even if he had been, Gilbert was squinting like he was Mr Magoo. A pair of thick spectacles were on his coffee table, out of reach. No way did someone with dodgy eyesight consistently hit targets over 1,000 metres away.

Two cops stood behind him, one stood facing him. They weren’t taking any chances.

‘What have you got?’ Poe said to McCloud.

‘Follow me,’ she said.

She walked out of the house and into the back garden. Gilbert had a shed. A new one. It was green and large, about the size of a single-car garage. Poe wondered if he’d had to get permission to put it up or whether it had been there when he moved in. If he’d bought the house because it had a shed. It had sturdy doors and an even sturdier padlock. McCloud gloved up and took a key from an evidence bag. She unlocked the padlock then put the key into a fresh evidence bag.

She reached for the light switch. Turned it on.

Poe’s first reaction was, ‘Blimey.’ Bradshaw’s was, ‘Gosh.’

The shed was neat and clean and organised. It was also a church to role-playing games. Poe took it all in. Noticed that it wasn’t just role-playing games Gilbert collected. There were boxes and boxes of games he had played as a kid.Monopoly,Risk,Battleships,Buckaroo!A hundred other games he hadn’t seen before.

‘Weird, huh?’ McCloud said.

Poe took his time answering. Thought about where he’d just come from. ‘It’s weird, but it’s notdangerousweird, ma’am,’ he said. ‘He’s a collector rather than a compulsive accumulator. Everything will have been carefully curated. If you search his house, there’ll be an inventory or a catalogue somewhere. It’ll probably detail where each piece was acquired.’

McCloud nodded. ‘There is,’ she said. ‘We found a pile of them in one of the boxes underneath the workbench.’

Poe studied the bench. It was thick, wooden and clean. It looked as though Gilbert had been repairing an oldConnect 4grid. There was a tube of superglue and some small tools beside it. Poe picked up a yellow token and dropped it into the grid.

‘I used to love playing this with my dad,’ he said. He added a red. ‘He always beat me, though.’ He added another yellow. ‘What about you, Tilly? I bet you never got beaten at this.’

‘I didn’t likeConnect 4, Poe,’ Bradshaw said. ‘It’s a solved game.’

‘A what?’

‘A solved game. It means if both players play perfectly, the game’s outcome can be accurately predicted. InConnect 4, the player who goes first should always win.’

McCloud cleared her throat.