Page 6 of The Final Vow (Washington Poe #7)
Cabinet Office Briefing Room C, Whitehall, London
Poe and Flynn walked into a full briefing room.
A man in a suit was talking over a PowerPoint presentation.
He had sandy hair, combed and wavy, the way King Charles had worn his in his forties.
It was a look only posh people could get away with.
He caught Poe’s eyes. The man in the suit’s flickered but he recovered beautifully.
He gestured towards a pair of empty seats.
‘I’ll be two minutes,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll do some introductions.’
Poe looked around the room. It was the first time he’d been to Whitehall.
The inside, or this bit at least, was less impressive than the outside.
The exterior looked like something out of Mary Poppins , the inside like the group activity room in a job centre.
The people watching the PowerPoint presentation were a mixed bag.
There were men and women in suits, men and women in jeans and T-shirts.
Some were taking notes, others were on their phone tapping away at texts or emails.
Two of them looked like they were taking notes for their boss.
There was a guy hiding behind a copy of The Times who seemed to be ignoring everyone, and a woman with a scattering of acne on her forehead who was chewing on a hangnail.
It looked like there was only one cop in the room.
Poe had met her a few years earlier on a serial poisoner case.
Mathers, he thought she was called. Good at her job.
He didn’t know all the Met ranks, but he thought she might be a commander by now, maybe a deputy assistant commissioner. He nodded at her. She ignored him.
The screen went blank.
‘You must be Detective Sergeant Poe,’ the man with the King-Charles-in-his-forties haircut said. ‘Glad to have you onboard.’
‘Onboard what?’ Poe said carefully.
‘Haven’t you been briefed?’
‘I haven’t even had time to shower.’
‘You can say that again,’ Flynn muttered. Then louder, ‘There were things to clear up before we could get away, sir, and Poe needed to be on the phone for the entire journey.’
‘What things?’ the man said. ‘This has the highest priority.’ An aide came in and whispered in his ear. She handed him a memo. ‘I’m not sure this is going to work,’ he said. ‘It says here that not two hours ago you assaulted one of your colleagues with a deadly weapon.’
‘It was a fish,’ Flynn said. ‘Hardly deadly.’
The man rechecked his memo. ‘It says Sergeant Poe hit a Border Force agent called Clancy Bright with a halberd.’
‘It was a halibut, sir.’
The man handed the memo back to the aide. ‘Who wrote this?’ he said.
The aide shrugged then fled. Someone was in line for a telling-off later, Poe thought.
‘Regardless, this is indicative of what we were told of the man—’
‘I’m out of here,’ Poe said, getting to his feet.
‘Sit down, Poe,’ Flynn said. ‘And, sir, perhaps we can start again. The reason we were late, and the reason Sergeant Poe hasn’t been briefed, is because not two hours ago he broke a major gun-running operation, one we didn’t even know existed.
That’s why he was on his phone all the way here.
He was arranging for the shipment of halibut to reach its intended destination, sans guns, of course.
That way we can pick up the buyers as well as the couriers. ’
The man with the King-Charles-in-his-forties haircut said, ‘Of course. Things are getting heated and I apologise. So yes, let’s start again. My name is Timothy Spiggens.’ Poe looked at him blankly. ‘I’m a minister with the Home Office,’ he added.
‘And what is the Home Office?’ Poe said.
‘Are you serious? It’s the biggest department in His Majesty’s Government, man!’
‘And what is a govern—’
‘Pack it in, Poe,’ Flynn cut in.
Mathers hid a smile behind her hand.
‘Fine,’ Poe said. ‘I take it this is something to do with that lunatic who’s shooting people?’
Spiggens nodded.
‘And you’re the group spearheading the strategic and political response?’
‘You’ve heard of a CObrA meeting?’
‘I have.’
‘Well, this is one.’
‘In that case I won’t waste your time,’ Poe said. ‘I’m not interested.’
‘You don’t know what I’m going to say yet!’
‘Don’t I?’ Poe said. ‘Six months ago, I asked the man who dismantled SCAS who he was going to call the next time a monster crawled out from under the bed, and do you know what he said?’
‘What who said?’
‘A lanky prick called Alastor Locke.’
Flynn put her head in her hands and said, ‘Oh, Lord.’
‘I have no idea what Mr Locke said,’ Spiggens said.
‘Maybe you can ask the lanky prick himself, Timothy,’ a voice said.
It was the guy who’d been hiding behind a copy of The Times .
‘Hello, Poe,’ Locke said, making a show of folding his newspaper and slipping it into his briefcase. ‘It’s been a while. And yes, I do remember what I said.’
‘What was it, Alastor?’ Spiggens asked.
‘I said, “I’m sure we’ll manage.”’ Locke spread his arms. ‘It seems I may have been a bit too nippy on the buzzer.’