Page 50 of The Final Vow (Washington Poe #7)

Poe cupped his hands and peered through Ezekiel Puck’s kitchen window. The old man wasn’t wrong. Puck clearly hadn’t been home for a long time. From the kitchen, Poe could see all the way through the house. Unopened mail was piled high under the letterbox.

It could be subterfuge, of course; anyone could put a stack of mail under their letterbox.

Leave the house through the back door, make it look like he hadn’t been home in a while.

But Poe didn’t think so. Puck’s neighbours all looked as though they had nothing better to do but notice things.

If he’d been leaving his house by the back door every day, the old man would have said something.

No, Ezekiel Puck hadn’t been home in a while.

It was time to call Commander Mathers. This was the strongest lead they’d had.

Poe took one final look then left the street. He got out his mobile and found Mathers’s number. He hit call. She answered immediately.

‘You at Northallerton yet, Poe?’ she said without preamble. ‘We’ll be there in twenty minutes.’ Poe bit the bullet and admitted he’d called at Ripon first. After getting his ear chewed, Mathers said, ‘And?’

‘I think it might be him, ma’am.’

He told her what the old man had said. That his mail was piled up. She seemed mollified.

‘Get to North Yorkshire HQ as soon as you can, Poe. We’ll start planning.’

Poe hung up. He rounded the corner to the street where he’d parked the Land Rover. For some reason he fancied a Werther’s Original. He hoped Uncle Bertie hadn’t troughed them all. He was about to call Bradshaw to tell her to go hard and heavy on Ezekiel Puck. Give him the full Bradshaw treatment.

Instead, he stopped. He blinked in surprise.

The Land Rover’s passenger seat was empty.

Uncle Bertie was missing.

Poe assumed Uncle Bertie had got bored waiting.

He’d been gone forty minutes, not the ten he had promised.

Uncle Bertie didn’t look like the kind of man who’d sit still unless there was a bottle of strong booze involved.

Which reminded Poe, they’d driven past a pub on the way to Ezekiel Puck’s estate.

He remembered seeing the sign swinging in the late afternoon breeze.

The White Hart, he thought it had been called. White something, anyway.

Mystery solved.

Poe checked his watch. He’d told Mathers he’d get to North Yorkshire’s headquarters as soon as he could.

He didn’t have time to shoehorn a whisky-soaked, horsewhipping lunatic out of a pub.

He considered leaving him where he was. Let the old fool make his own way to Highwood.

But then he thought about the conversation he’d have to have with Doyle; the one where he explained that he’d screwed up the one wedding job he’d been given.

He sighed and started walking to where he thought the pub was.

Which was when a van screeched to a halt beside him. The side panel opened and four men jumped out. Before Poe could work out what was happening, a hood had been pulled over his head and he was bundled into the van.

Fucking Yorkshire.