Page 13 of The Final Vow (Washington Poe #7)

‘I assume we’re starting with the Gretna Green victim because it’s close to where your wedding rehearsal is?’ Flynn said, breaking into his thoughts.

Poe leaned forward, stuck his head between the two front seats. ‘Actually, no,’ he said. ‘We’re starting in Scotland because the people in that CObrA meeting don’t understand guns.’

‘And you do?’

‘I’m ex-army.’

‘That was years ago, Poe,’ Flynn said. ‘They probably don’t use muskets any more.’ She indicated, overtook a mud-splattered Range Rover, then added, ‘But go on, I’m listening.’

‘The politicians and most of Mathers’s cops might think this guy’s Dead Eye Dick the crack shot, but that’s because they don’t understand how guns work.’

‘What’s to understand? You point them, you fire them. The rest is just bullshit so they can sell more copies of Sporting Gun .’

‘Spoken like a true knob,’ Poe said. ‘Guns, particularly long guns, need to be zeroed.’

‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘It’s where the weapon’s sight and the barrel are aligned to the individual. Means that the point of aim and the point of impact are the same.’

‘Aren’t they all set at the factory?’

‘They’re not iPhones,’ Poe said, shaking his head.

‘People hold weapons differently. They look through the sights differently. They fire them differently. Put it this way, if I handed you my perfectly zeroed weapon, you likely wouldn’t hit a thing.

A centimetre’s difference in the way we each hold the weapon could equate to two or three metres difference at the target end. It’s that delicate.’

‘Talk me through the process,’ Flynn said. ‘ How do you zero a weapon?’

‘It’s not difficult. You set up a target and you fire at it from the same distance you’ll be firing from in the field. You check where your bullets are landing then you adjust your sights until you’re hitting the middle of the target. Soon as they are, your weapon’s zeroed.’

‘His most common distance is twelve hundred metres,’ Flynn said.

‘Yards,’ Bradshaw said without looking up from her phone. ‘Yards, not metres. Twelve hundred yards is just over one thousand and ninety-seven metres.’

Flynn took her eyes off the road for a second and glared at Bradshaw. ‘You can pack that in right now , Tilly.’

‘Pack what in, DCI Flynn?’

‘That pedantic arseho—’

‘Boss,’ Poe said, drawing it out.

‘Sorry, Tilly,’ Flynn said. ‘I shouldn’t have snapped at you.’

‘That’s OK, DCI Flynn,’ Bradshaw said. ‘You’re probably perimenopausal.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I said, you’re—’

‘I am not perimenopausal.’

‘Anyway, that’s why we’re starting in Scotland, boss,’ Poe said, stifling a grin.

Flynn hadn’t worked with Bradshaw for a while.

She would need a period of adjustment. ‘Zeroing a weapon can’t be done in a lockup garage; it takes time, and it takes space.

Can you think of anywhere else where that would go unnoticed?

Eighty-five per cent of the UK’s population live in England.

Apart from the cities, Scotland’s virtually empty. ’

Flynn looked thoughtful. ‘There’s a lot of deer stalking in Scotland. Gunshots will be background noise up there.’

‘Exactly,’ Poe said. He paused, frowned. ‘And it’s not a one-off task. He’s shooting from different ranges so it’s an ongoing process. He’ll still be zeroing his weapon in Scotland.’

‘I’ll have Police Scotland meet us at Gretna Green,’ Flynn said.