Page 64 of The Final Vow (Washington Poe #7)

The something they needed to see was a Metropolitan Police press conference.

Flynn said Mathers wasn’t returning her calls.

Hadn’t for a while now. Flynn was giving her the benefit of the doubt.

She said Mathers was running the biggest, longest-running murder investigation the country had ever seen – bigger even than the Yorkshire Ripper – and there would be times when she simply wasn’t available.

Poe thought Flynn was being generous. Even in the heat of the Botanist case, Mathers was always available.

If she wasn’t returning Flynn’s calls it was because she didn’t want to return them.

Poe didn’t like that. He didn’t like that one bit.

Flynn called back. Bradshaw put her on speakerphone again.

‘What the hell is she doing, boss?’ Poe said. ‘We still have things in play and she’s going to out Ezekiel Puck to the whole country.’

‘It won’t have been her decision, Poe,’ Flynn said.

‘I know the commissioner and he’s the biggest arse-coverer I’ve ever met.

And you and I both know the family of the next victim are going to be screaming that their loved one would still be alive if the police hadn’t sat on the E-FIT.

He’ll already be rehearsing his answers for the public inquiry.

From his perspective, going public is the safe decision. ’

‘It’s also the wrong decision.’

‘It is, but Mathers also works in a command-and-control organisation. The decision will have been taken above her head.’

The clock on the top left of the screen flipped from 20:59 to 21:00.

Bang on time, three people trooped in – the arse-covering Metropolitan Police commissioner, Mathers and a woman Poe didn’t recognise – their expressions like tombstones.

The commissioner took a seat on the end and immediately swallowed a burp.

Mathers sat in the middle. The business seat , Poe thought.

The woman Poe didn’t recognise took the seat on the left of the screen.

She had the carefully cultivated look of a public relations expert.

The Met employed an army of them. Any organisation that gave the power of arrest to as many sex offenders, racists and ne’er-do-wells as the Metropolitan Police seemed to needed spin doctors on call 24/7.

The PR expert kicked things off by introducing the Metropolitan Police commissioner. She sat back, her inflated salary earned.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘In a minute I’ll hand the press conference over to Commander Mathers, who has a major breakthrough to announce. She’ll explain what it is, how we came about it, and the support we’d like from the press in getting the message out. But first I’d like to . . .’

Poe zoned out as the commissioner spouted a bunch of adverb-heavy, communication-friendly platitudes. ‘Working tirelessly around the clock’ featured. So did ‘incredibly demanding circumstances’.

After the commissioner had done his best to convey his command credentials, while simultaneously distancing himself from all operational decisions, he handed over the baton. Mathers picked it up.

‘Thank you, sir,’ she said.

Poe thought he detected a trace of sarcasm, but maybe that was wishful thinking on his part. Mathers nodded at the PR woman who pressed a clicker. The presentation screen changed from the Met logo to a series of faces.

‘On your screens are E-FITs of the man we believe to be the sniper,’ Mathers said.

Poe had seen the E-FITs a few days earlier. Mathers’s guys had got two from Ezekiel Puck’s neighbours in Yorkshire and one from his ex-wife in Gretna. They were remarkably similar, although, like all E-FITs, they looked like a cross between Herman Munster and the twins from the Proclaimers.

‘The name this man is currently using is Ezekiel Puck,’ Mathers continued.

She went on to say how the breakthrough had been made – which was heavy on Met investigative work, light on Bradshaw’s data-driven twenty-sided dice theory – and the actions they’d taken because of it.

She urged the public to remain vigilant before stressing the importance of not approaching Ezekiel Puck.

Poe didn’t think it was necessary to warn the public not to approach a man who’d killed nineteen people, but whatever.

The public could be as dumb as a box of doorknobs sometimes.

It was why bottles of bleach still had DO NOT DRINK warnings in big red letters and why hotel-room hairdryers all had DO NOT USE IN SHOWER labels.

The MAJOR brEAKTHROUGH IN SNIPER CASE rolling banner across the bottom of the screen was replaced by the hotline number.

They then went to questions. There were lots.

The commissioner didn’t answer a single one.

One hundred and eighty miles away from the press conference, in a bedsit in Merthyr Tydfil, Ezekiel Puck turned off his television.

He said one word: ‘Bastard.’