Page 39 of The Final Vow (Washington Poe #7)

‘He’s showed us his arse,’ Poe said.

‘What a delightful expression, Poe,’ Flynn said. ‘Please don’t ever use it again.’

‘All this time we’ve been dismissing the possibility of him hiding one murder among a bunch of other murders.’

‘We have,’ Mathers said. ‘Were we wrong to? Did it have something to do with Archie Arreghini after all?’

Poe glanced at Bradshaw. ‘No, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I’m confident that the murder of Jools Arreghini is unrelated to her father’s business empire.’

Bradshaw nodded. What did she know about Matt Towler?

‘But you think he’s hidden a murder in among, how many now, nineteen?’

‘I don’t think that either, ma’am.’

‘This isn’t twenty fucking questions, Poe,’ Flynn snapped. ‘Tell us what you think.’

‘He was hiding a location , ma’am,’ Poe said. ‘All the other murders were just to give him cover.’

‘You mean Gretna Green?’

‘I do, ma’am. The other locations were randomly selected with twenty-sided dice, but Gretna Green was selected using cognitive functioning. In other words, he chose it. For reasons unknown, the town is important to him.’

Mathers took a moment. She didn’t dive in with unanswerable questions like ‘Why?’ Instead, she asked the only question that mattered: ‘How long to collate the mailing lists you gathered today?’

Poe nodded in approval. A location and a bunch of names to cross-reference against that location was progress.

Bradshaw checked her laptop. ‘It’ll be finished in approximately seventeen minutes, Commander Mathers.’ She clocked the WELCOME TO CUMbrIA sign. ‘Make that twenty-three minutes, we’ve just entered District Twelve.’

‘District . . . ?’

‘It’s what Tilly calls Cumbria, ma’am,’ Poe explained. ‘I don’t know what it means.’

‘I have daughters, Poe,’ Mathers said. ‘It’s a reference to The Hunger Games . It’s considered the least advanced of the thirteen districts of Panem.’

‘They don’t even have fresh jackfruit here, Commander Mathers,’ Bradshaw said.

‘You say that like it’s a bad thing,’ Poe said testily.

Cumbria was never going to have lightning-quick broadband or saturation mobile phone coverage.

There were too many mountains, too many valleys.

And the county did appear to revel in its failure to embrace certain twenty-first-century civilities.

Modern farming techniques were not only shunned; in the National Park area of Cumbria, they were actively legislated against. Stepping into Cumbria could, superficially at least, feel like you were stepping back in time.

It appeared old-fashioned. Backward even.

Poe wasn’t surprised to hear you couldn’t get fresh jackfruit.

Cumbria was a pastoral county. It farmed livestock, not crops.

Which meant the county that until recently thought strawberry yoghurt was a ‘fancy London pudding’ was unlikely to embrace the idea of substituting lamb with a stringy yellow fruit.

‘How many names on the list, Tilly?’ Mathers asked.

‘Over a million, Commander Mathers.’

‘And how long to get information about the population of Gretna and Gretna Green so we can start cross-referencing it with the mailing lists?’

‘I already have the online records, but the physical records will need to be collected in person. Some of them won’t be online.’

‘Like?’

‘Hotel guestbooks for people who paid cash. Wedding venue records. Museum and visitor attraction comments books. That kind of thing.’

‘Marriage records are digitised now, Tilly,’ Mathers said. ‘But we’ll get the rest.’

‘Weddings aren’t the only thing they do in Gretna Green, ma’am,’ Poe said.

‘They also do anvil handfasting blessings. Anvil baby blessings. Anything they can fleece the tourists for. They do vow renewals on special anniversaries or after one of them has fu— messed up. There’s no legal obligation to record any of that bollocks. ’

‘Are you sure you’re about to get married, Poe?’ Mathers said. ‘But fair enough. I’ll liaise with Police Scotland. They can do the door-to-doors. What do you want us to do with the names, Tilly?’

‘If you scan them into the investigation portal, I’ll access them from there,’ Bradshaw replied.

‘Are there any online records you haven’t been able to get, Tilly?’ Flynn asked. ‘If you give us a list, we can start drawing up warrants.’

Flynn hadn’t worked with Bradshaw for a while.

She’d forgotten not to publicly ask questions like that.

Bradshaw didn’t answer. She looked out of the window as if she hadn’t heard her.

The back of her neck flushed pink. A clear sign she’d been ignoring the Computer Misuse Act again.

Despite the District 12 wisecrack, he decided to help her out.

‘Would you like some mango, boss?’ he said.