Page 65 of The Final Vow (Washington Poe #7)

Doyle switched off the television. For a moment the only sound was Edgar panting. Poe reached down and fondled his ears. Edgar whined in pleasure. His tail drummed the stone floor in Highwood’s master kitchen.

‘This is a whole new ball game,’ Poe said eventually. ‘I really don’t know how Puck will react.’

‘He won’t stop, Poe,’ Bradshaw said. ‘My profile, as rudimentary as it is given there is no comparable data, suggests he will keep going until he’s achieved his goal.’

‘He will react, though,’ Poe said.

‘Just a minute, Tilly, I have Commander Mathers on the other line,’ Flynn said over the speakerphone, her voice tinny and distant.

Poe rolled his eyes. ‘ Now she’s contactable,’ he said.

‘I’ll see if I can change it to a conference call,’ Flynn said.

‘Let me know if you need a hand,’ Poe said.

Flynn cut the call.

Bradshaw snorted. ‘As if you could arrange a conference call, Poe. I asked you to mute your phone last week and you ended up sending a voicemail to my dad. It was just a load of tommyrot about why things had to be so eff-word complicated and how your eff-word pager didn’t need an eff-word mute button.

Even I don’t know how you managed to do that. ’

‘Maybe you can Ask Jeeves.’

Bradshaw gave him a look. She shook her head and said, ‘“Ask Jeeves”? Wowsers trousers, Poe. Do you still use puddles as mirrors? Ask Jeeves had the worst search engine technology in the history of the world. No wonder Google destroyed it.’

Poe grinned and winked at Doyle. ‘And what is—’

Flynn called again. Bradshaw pressed accept. Mathers’s voice filled the room, just as tinny and distant as Flynn’s had been, but hers had an edge. Poe recognised it as the pressures of being forced into a mistake.

‘First of all, I’m not apologising,’ she said. ‘While sitting on Ezekiel Puck’s name and his E-FIT might have been the smart tactical move, it was not a defensible move. The public had a right to know.’

‘Was this your decision or the commissioner’s, ma’am?’

‘It was mine.’

‘You’re a fibber, Commander Mathers,’ Bradshaw said. ‘There was a micro-pause before you answered. Poe might not have noticed, but I—’

‘I noticed,’ Poe said. ‘It was almost long enough for you to cross your fingers.’

‘Fuck you, Poe!’ Mathers snapped. ‘And fuck you too, Tilly! I brought in SCAS to advise. Consider me advised.’

The phone went dead.

Flynn called back immediately. ‘That went well,’ she said. ‘And don’t worry about Commander Mathers shouting, Tilly. She’s under an incredible amount of stress.’

‘I wasn’t going to. I only worry when you and Poe shout at me.’

‘We never shout at you, Tilly.’

‘You shouted at me yesterday, DCI Flynn.’

‘That was because you asked me if I was perimenopausal again.’

‘And I still think you—’

‘Is that us off the case?’ Poe cut in, anxious to avoid yet another Bradshaw/Flynn stand-off. ‘Because I’ve only just stopped smelling of fish.’

No one replied. Doyle sniggered.

‘Piss off,’ Poe said. ‘I do not still smell of fish.’

‘You do a little bit, Poe,’ Bradshaw said.

‘I can smell you over the phone, mate,’ Flynn said.

Poe scowled. ‘Regardless, are we going to keep working this or not?’

‘We work for the NCA, not the Met,’ Flynn said. ‘Until our director orders us off the case, we’ll keep working it. We’ll just keep it to ourselves for now.’

Poe thought it through.

‘Poe?’

‘Why did Mathers call?’ he asked.

‘Because she wanted to explain why she went public with the E-FIT.’

‘Bullshit,’ Poe said. ‘Mathers is a commander in the biggest police force in the country. She doesn’t owe us an explanation and we have no right to expect one. As she said, we’re there in an advisory role only.’

‘Then why did she call?’

‘Five quid gets you six it was to wind us up. Make sure we stayed on task. She’s committed to a play she doesn’t like, probably been told to cut us loose. But she’s not an idiot. She knows how stubborn we are—’

‘Speak for yourself.’

‘She wants us working Ezekiel Puck, but she doesn’t want us reporting back to her. That was why she was so rude. Someone must be monitoring her emails and phone calls. Making sure she toes the party line.’

And once more Poe thought, Tilly and I have a plan . . . And it didn’t involve toeing the party line, that was for sure.

Flynn didn’t immediately respond. ‘I think you’re right, Poe,’ she said eventually. ‘She was unusually rude.’ She paused again. ‘OK, we’ve understood the subtext – now what do we do?’

‘What we always do.’

‘Fuck around and find out?’

‘It’s worked so far.’

‘OK, so we know what we’re going to do. Tilly hits the data. We hit the witnesses no one has thought of hitting. The usual stuff. The big question is, what will Ezekiel Puck do?’

‘I think he’ll do two things, boss.’

‘Which are?’

‘First, he’ll change his appearance. Tinted lenses, cheek implants, that kind of thing.

You can make yourself taller, heavier or older, but not the other way round.

So, while the description and the E-FITs said to be on the lookout for a tall, thin man in his fifties, I think we need to be looking for someone two-stone heavier and twenty years older.

He’s already standout tall but he might walk with a stoop now. ’

‘OK, Tilly, can you work up some alternative E-FITs?’

‘I’ve already started, DCI Flynn.’

‘What’s the second thing he’ll do, Poe?’

‘He’ll react to Mathers releasing the E-FITs,’ Poe said.

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m certain. His ego won’t allow him to do anything else.’

Which was strange, because for seven days Puck didn’t react.

But then he did.

And everything changed.