Page 16 of The Final Vow (Washington Poe #7)

The detectives from Police Scotland didn’t care that they’d already spoken to Smythe.

They seemed focused and professional. DS Ian Ferguson was rail-thin with a shock of caricaturist ginger hair; DS Fiona Stephenson was tall and rangy.

They both wore jeans and jumpers. Their practical shoes were flecked with mud.

These were outdoor cops. Poe immediately liked them.

‘He ask about his crime number?’ Stephenson asked. Her accent was soft. Edinburgh maybe.

‘Seven times,’ Bradshaw replied.

‘I’ve seen Ofsted inspectors with more compassion,’ Flynn said.

Stephenson smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. ‘You here to check up on us?’

‘We’ve just joined the investigation so we’re playing catch up,’ Poe explained. ‘I have stuff to do in Cumbria tonight, so it made sense to start up here.’

‘What do you need?’

‘I want to see the shooting platform.’

Stephenson pointed at a building in the distance. ‘He shot from a farm over there,’ she said. ‘Climbed on to the roof of the cowshed and waited.’

‘For wedding four?’ Poe asked.

‘That’s the working theory. A couple of my colleagues think he climbed up there at lunchtime, but Ian and I aren’t buying that for a second.’

‘Why not?’

‘He isn’t built that way. Snipers are meticulous.

They take their time. And target selection is just as important as shooting ability.

He waited for wedding number four either because he knew the victim or he was waiting for the perfect conditions.

Unless there are criteria we haven’t yet figured out. ’

‘There aren’t,’ Poe said. ‘Tilly would have spotted them.’

‘Who’s Tilly?’

‘I am,’ Bradshaw said, giving the Scottish cops a thumbs-up. ‘My geographical profile analysis came up negative, the victims have nothing in common and there is no pattern regarding dates and times.’

‘Commander Mathers isn’t dismissing seventeen victims as being just smoke and mirrors,’ Flynn said. ‘That he’s hiding the intended victim in among collateral damage.’

‘But?’

‘But it’s not the main line of enquiry. She thinks he’s choosing them at random.’

Stephenson nodded. ‘We think he was waiting for the perfect shooting conditions. No wind, no rain. The right light.’

‘You know a lot about snipers,’ Flynn said.

‘We’ve all had to become experts,’ she replied, checking out their footwear and nodding approvingly. ‘Come on, I’ll take you to his shooting platform.’

They jumped in Stephenson’s car – Police Scotland in the front, the NCA jammed in the back like battery hens – and drove to the farm the sniper had used. It was a dairy farm. Friesians, fat off the lush lowland grass. Stephenson parked in the farmyard.

The sniper had ignored the milking shed in favour of the shed the cows bedded down in at night. It had tin sides and an asbestos roof and was the same height as a two-storey house.

‘He used the farmer’s own ladder to get up to the roof, then crawl boards to get into position,’ Ferguson explained.

‘He left everything in situ, and other than some fibres, left no usable trace evidence. We can take you up for a gander if you wish, but I can tell you that once he was in position, he had a great view of the Mill Forge. He could have picked her off any time he wanted.’

‘And once he’d fired, he was only two minutes from several escape routes,’ Stephenson added. ‘He could have taken the A74 or any one of the minor roads. None of them are covered by CCTV or ANPR.’

‘The farmer?’

‘Sleeping. He rises early, naps in the afternoon. He heard the shot but didn’t think anything of it. It’s not an uncommon noise around here.’

‘His wife? Farmhands?’

‘No other witnesses.’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘All of which has been properly recorded and shared with the team Commander Mathers is leading.’

‘Which makes us wonder why you’re really here,’ Ferguson said. ‘You say you’re not here to check our work, OK, we believe you. But you’re definitely up here for something.’

Poe and Flynn exchanged a glance. The plan had been for Flynn to drive up to Tulliallan Castle in Fife, Police Scotland’s headquarters, and speak to a senior officer there, while Poe and Bradshaw went to the wedding rehearsal.

‘We have a theory,’ Flynn said. ‘And as far as we can tell, it’s not a line of enquiry anyone is pursuing.’

Poe explained about zeroing. And how he thought the sniper was getting his weapon ready somewhere, and that Scotland ticked all the boxes. When he’d finished, the Police Scotland detectives looked thoughtful.

‘And it’s definitely an ongoing process?’ Stephenson asked. ‘It isn’t something that’s only done the once?’

Poe shook his head. ‘Even if he weren’t firing from vastly different distances, the sights on those rifles are incredibly sensitive.

A couple of knocks, even driving over a sleeping policeman, would be enough to alter the sight/barrel alignment.

And this guy’s driving huge distances. Trust me, he’s continually zeroing his weapon. If he wasn’t, he’d miss.’

They asked questions that Poe answered as best he could.

Eventually they had a plan. Police Scotland was responsible for a vast area of land.

Thirty thousand square miles. Six thousand miles of coastline.

Almost eight hundred islands. They had good air support.

They had a modern helicopter with multisensor cameras.

They had drones and night-vision goggles.

Their searchlights could light up half a football pitch.

And more importantly, they had people who knew what they were doing.

They’d talk to the gamekeepers, the men and women who walked the moors looking after the grouse.

Ask them to look for unusual activity. Searching Scotland for a sniper zeroing his rifle would be like looking for an Arctic fox in a snowstorm, but at least they’d now have eyes in the sky. Boots on the ground.

Stephenson drove them back to the Mill Forge where they exchanged personal phone numbers and said their goodbyes.

‘You coming to the wedding rehearsal now?’ Poe said to Flynn. ‘I know you were using Fife as an excuse not to.’

‘Why would I want to go to that?’ Flynn said. ‘You don’t even want to go and the whole thing’s for your benefit. A chance to get all your sarcastic comments out of your system.’

‘I didn’t ask if you wanted to come, boss. It’s a wedding rehearsal. Nobody wants to come.’

‘I do,’ Bradshaw said.

‘Except for Tilly, obviously.’

‘I’ve never been to a wedding before. I imagine it will be glorious.’

Poe and Flynn took a moment. Glorious wasn’t the word that sprang to mind. Ordeal did. Stuffy did. Archaic did.

‘If you don’t come, Estelle’ll know you’ve snubbed her,’ Poe said.

Flynn sighed. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘But only because I want to hear Tilly’s best man speech.’