Page 5 of The Final Vow (Washington Poe #7)

But eventually, with the help of a lucky swell, he’d managed to get close enough to tie up and board. Scoplett nodded. Job well done. He removed his hip flask, took a swig then offered it around. No one accepted.

The Aurora II ’s three-man crew, a father and his two sons, were sullen but cooperative. They were big men, bearded with scarred hands. Thick Cornish accents. Sounded like Worzel Gummidge. Work strong, not gym strong.

Clancy Bright asked to see their paperwork. He was smiling. Bright loved to order fishermen around. Loved to abuse the tiny bit of authority he had. Poe was surprised he hadn’t used a German accent. He thought Bright would have been an enthusiastic Nazi.

Everything seemed to be in order. The father provided an up-to-date fishing vessel licence, the boat had all the required safety equipment, and Poe didn’t need to weigh their catch to know it was under their quota.

But it was halibut and that was a problem.

‘Cuff them,’ he said.

‘You’re not in charge of me, Poe,’ Anwar said. ‘You fucking cuff them.’

‘Actually, this is now a live crime scene, so I am in charge. If you don’t cuff them, I’ll assume you’re part of whatever this is and, as I’m outnumbered, I’d be within the law if I belted you around the head with this fishing gaff.

’ He picked up a metal shaft. It had a wicked-looking hook on the end.

Anwar and Bright scrambled to get out their cuffs and it wasn’t long before the three fishermen were in custody. Poe read them their rights. They didn’t seem overly concerned.

‘You mind telling us what the hell’s just happened?’ Bright said. He picked up a halibut. Held it by its gill and rubbed off some of the ice. It was about a metre long, all fleshy and fat. Looked fresh. ‘Because these guys have a catch to land.’

‘This boat is fitted out for purse seining,’ Poe said.

He looked at their blank faces and sighed.

He hadn’t known anything about fishing when he’d started, but he’d learned what he needed to.

It was a shit job but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to do it properly.

‘Come on, guys, you can remember this.’ He waited.

Sighed again and said, ‘Purse seining works by drawing a vast net around a shoal of fish. The bottom is weighted, and the top is buoyed by floats. When the shoal is in the net, the bottom is closed – or pursed – like a drawstring bag and the fish are trapped.’

‘Yeah, we knew that,’ Anwar said. ‘So what?’

‘So, purse seining is used for midwater fish like mackerel and sardines. The halibut is a flatfish and that means they live on the bottom of the sea. They’re caught with trawler nets, not purse seines.

In any case, even if they had found a way to catch a bottom-dwelling fish with a midwater net, they have no way of getting their catch onboard.

That winch hasn’t been used in months by the look of it. ’

The father burst out laughing. ‘Is that it?’ he said. ‘You’ve arrested us because you think a fish that swims on the bottom of the sea stays on the bottom of the sea? Let me ask you something, Mr Policeman. What do halibut eat?’

‘They’re predators,’ Poe said.

‘Yes, they are. And they’re ravenous. And in the waters we fish, halibuts are at the top of the food chain. That means they can venture up to feed. So yes, purse seine nets are used to catch them.’

‘Your winch?’

‘Yes, the winch is knackered and I haven’t got the money to replace it. It’s why I have my boys with me, dickface.’

Behind him, Poe could hear Anwar and Bright sniggering.

‘Hey, Brighty,’ Anwar said. ‘Maybe they didn’t catch them. Maybe there’s a serial-killer conger eel down there. Maybe these guys aren’t fishermen. Maybe they’re crime scene cleaners.’

Bright laughed so hard, snot came out of his nose. When he’d cleaned himself up, he said, ‘Just as well we have the great Washington Poe on the case then.’

‘No, no, he doesn’t do that any more, remember?’ Anwar said, a nasty smirk on his face. ‘Because he’s sooooo depressed.’ He clutched some imaginary pearls and Bright brayed like a donkey. He said, ‘Now, can we let these poor men go? It’s getting dark and I want to go home.’

‘And he’ll want to get back to that woman he’s stringing along,’ Bright said.

‘Got his feet right under the table with Miss Snooty Britches, hasn’t he?’

‘Snooty bitch , more like.’

Poe didn’t answer. If the last couple of minutes had been the song ‘Coward of the County’, it would have got to the part where Tommy was about to lock himself in the bar with the Gatlin boys.

But it wasn’t a song.

Instead, Poe picked up a halibut, swung it around like an Olympic hammer thrower, and whacked Bright over the head with it. Bright dropped to the deck of the Aurora II like a bag of wet towels.

‘I don’t see my therapist for depression,’ Poe said. ‘I see her for anger management.’

Bright clambered to his feet and readied his fists. Anwar rolled his shoulders, then crouched.

This fight had been a long time coming.

Poe wondered which way it would go. The Border Force guys looked like they’d fight dirty but there were witnesses.

It would be fists and headbutts and kicks to the balls.

When Poe was still in uniform, he’d patrolled Botchergate, Carlisle’s yellow-headed pimple, and the scene of most of its alcohol-fuelled violence.

He knew how to scrap in the gutter. The trick was to keep going, even when you were getting hurt.

Make the other person regret it before you did.

But there were two of them. The numbers were in their favour. They had four fists to his two. They were twice as heavy and five times as stupid.

In the end it was moot.

The fight stopped before it could start when something fell out of the belly of the halibut Poe was holding.

Three hundred yards away on HMS Biter , a Royal Navy Archer- class fast inshore patrol boat, DCI Stephanie Flynn had her eyes glued to a pair of binoculars. ‘Ha-ha, look at that salty bastard,’ she said. ‘Poe looks like Captain Haddock.’

‘What’s happening?’

‘Nothing, they’re just . . .’

‘What is it?’

‘I’m not entirely sure,’ Flynn said, ‘but it looks like Poe’s just picked up a massive fish and whacked one of his colleagues with it.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Er . . . I don’t think I can say it any differently to be honest. Poe grabbed a fish, it might be a cod, and swung it round his head and knocked one of his colleagues off his feet.

And before you ask, this is Poe; if you want logic and reason, you’re in the wrong place.

’ She paused, tried to work out what was happening on the boat that HMS Lancaster had boarded.

‘Uh-oh, now it looks like they’re all going to start brawling. ’

‘Step on it,’ the skipper said to the helmsman.

He’d been told to take DCI Flynn to Poe and then get them both back to the mainland as fast as possible.

His orders hadn’t specified whether Poe had to be bloodied or unbloodied, but he was an officer in the Royal Navy; not everything had to be explicit.

HMS Biter surged forward as the helmsman gave it the beans.

The engines growled and began churning the water in their wake.

It wasn’t long before they’d reached their top speed, around 25 knots.

Despite Biter bouncing around like a roller-coaster, Flynn kept her eyes stuck on what was happening on the fishing trawler.

‘Now it seems they’re all looking at something on the deck,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘I have absolutely no idea, but it’s got them all excited. They certainly aren’t thinking of fighting any more.’

Back on the Aurora II , the fisherman father said, ‘That’s not mine.’ He glared at his sons.

‘It’s not ours either,’ the younger one protested. ‘We were told it was drugs.’

They bred smart criminals in Cornwall.

‘That isn’t drugs, son,’ Poe said. ‘That’s a Glock.

’ He gloved up and retrieved it from the deck.

The gun was shrink-wrapped with thick clear plastic.

‘A Glock 17, to be precise.’ He shouted over to HMS Lancaster ’s remaining crew member, ‘Mr Scoplett, can you call this in, please? The whole boat’s a crime scene now and I don’t want to lose evidence.

But we’ll take these three into our custody now.

’ There was no response. He risked a glance. ‘Are you asleep ?’

Whether HMS Lancaster ’s skipper was asleep or not was immaterial: the sound of the loudhailer would have woken the dead.

‘Ahoy-hoy, Captain Poe!’ Flynn said. ‘You mind telling me what’s going on?’

Poe turned. HMS Biter had come alongside. No one had noticed.

Scoplett woke with a start. ‘Ship ahoy,’ he said.

‘Well shiver me timbers,’ Poe said.