Page 25 of The Final Vow (Washington Poe #7)

‘Well, not just Dungeons & Dragons obviously,’ Bradshaw said.

‘I said that as it’s the game everyone seems to have heard of.

I prefer Warlocks & Witches – I’m a level twenty-four Avariel – but there are tens of thousands of TTRPGs out there with more being developed every day. It’s a multi-million-dollar business.’

Poe remembered Bradshaw once telling him about Warlocks & Witches . He’d walked in on her and her geeky friends. She was wearing a pair of wings. She’d said that she was a Sky Elf and that she had hollow bones. Poe had said, ‘OK,’ and backed away carefully.

‘He’s a dork then,’ Poe said. ‘Which seems unlikely. If he’s anything like Tilly’s Warlocks & Witches friends, he wouldn’t have the upper-body strength to hold a weapon, let alone carry one for miles and miles across rugged country.’

‘My friends are not dorks, Poe,’ Bradshaw said.

‘Jonathan is,’ Poe said. ‘He has asthma, hay fever and photo-sensitivity. His doctor says he’s not allowed to go outside during the day.’

‘Or during spring and summer,’ Bradshaw added. ‘But he’s the exception, not the rule. Most of my friends are very athletic. Ripley once played badminton.’

‘Crikey. Badminton?’

‘Yes, with his mum when he was on holiday in Devon. He had to stop when he got a nosebleed, but he still has the racquet.’

‘OK, before we follow the Poe and Tilly white rabbit any further,’ Mathers said, ‘can we take a step back? Tilly, you said most twenty-sided dice are used in role-playing games. That implies some are used outside of role-playing games.’

‘It says here the US Navy use dice in wargames,’ Flynn said, looking at her phone. ‘Maybe he’s a military strategist.’ She took a breath. ‘Which is obviously a worrying thought.’

‘That’s sort of correct, DCI Flynn,’ Bradshaw said.

‘Only sort of?’

‘In that it’s mainly in correct. The dice the US Navy use in their wargaming are pentagonal trapezohedrons, not icosahedrons.’

‘ Pente? ’ Poe said. ‘Isn’t that Greek for five?’

‘It is, Poe. Pentagonal trapezohedrons have five planes on each side, ten in total. The US Navy used them in pairs as percentile dice. You throw a pair, and you get a percentage.’

‘He’s not a military strategist then?’

Bradshaw shrugged. ‘I don’t know. RPGs aren’t all dragons and goblins and magic suits of armour. Some of them do deal with strategy. Spycraft is an obvious one. It deals with modern-age espionage.’

Mathers leaned back in her chair. She put her hands behind her head and looked at the command trailer’s ceiling.

‘OK, how do I develop this into an actionable line of enquiry? I can’t possibly investigate every person who’s played Dungeons & Dragons but, as it’s the only lead I have, neither can I ignore it. ’

Bradshaw put her hand up.

‘Yes, Tilly?’ Mathers said.

‘I have an idea, Commander Mathers,’ Bradshaw said. ‘Poe and I go to the UK Games Expo.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘It’s the largest tabletop games convention in the UK and it’s on this weekend.

And it’s not just for hobbyists, all aspects of the industry attend.

From Dungeons & Dragons to fledgling companies wanting start-up capital, every business involved in the TTRPG community will have a stall there.

It’s the only weekend of the year when they’ll all be under the same roof. ’

‘You think the sniper might attend?’

Bradshaw shrugged. ‘I really don’t know. He might, I suppose. But that’s not why we would go.’

‘Oh?’

‘No, we would go to get the mailing list of every TTRPG company that attends. I’ll bet you my dinner the killer is on one of those lists. I only play Warlocks & Witches yet I’m on forty-seven mailing lists.’

‘You are? Why?’

‘Because it’s not just the games manufacturers and organising bodies who attend, it’s the companies that make miniatures and costumes. The replica weapons and the souvenir T-shirts. Trust me, if he’s a TTRPG player, he’ll be on one of those mailing lists. Probably more than one.’

Mathers said, ‘How many names are we talking about, Tilly?’

‘Probably hundreds of thousands,’ she replied.

‘That’s far too many. If it were one or two thousand, I could allocate a team to it. But checking hundreds of thousands of names can’t be done.’

‘I’m not proposing we check the names, Commander Mathers,’ Bradshaw said. ‘I’m proposing we collate the list then you run them through the police national computer and the police national database.’

‘And what will you do?’

‘I’ll run the list through some of the watchlists I now have access to. If he’s come to the attention of either the police or the security services, we’ll get a match.’

‘There’ll be more than one match,’ Poe said. ‘One in three men in the UK has a criminal record. It’s still too many.’

Mathers stood. ‘Not if we restrict the offences to ones that are indicative of a propensity for violence. In other words, we remove minor road traffic offences and drunk and disorderly arrests from when they were students. Keep in things like arson and torturing animals. Tilly, can you help narrow down the list of offences?’

Bradshaw nodded. ‘I can, Commander Mathers.’

‘Just how big is this convention?’

‘There’ll be at least twenty thousand people there. It’s held at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham.’

‘And you think you and Poe can cover it all?’

‘If I can keep him away from the Star Wars stage, yes,’ Bradshaw said. ‘Poe loves Star Wars .’

‘I don’t love Star Wars , Tilly,’ Poe said. ‘I just said it was the least shit out of the films you forced me to watch.’

‘Will people be in fancy dress, Tilly?’ Flynn asked.

‘No, DCI Flynn,’ Bradshaw replied. ‘But they will be in costume.’

‘Then I think it’s a brilliant idea. What will you be going as, Tilly?’

‘I’ll dust off my wings and go as my Warlocks & Witches character.’

Flynn looked at Poe, a sly smile on her face. ‘And what will you go as, Poe?’

Poe looked at Mathers. He looked at Flynn. ‘I’ll be going as a policeman,’ he said.