Page 70 of The Final Vow (Washington Poe #7)

If Ezekiel Puck was up to something, it didn’t seem to be in the heart of London’s financial district. The only thing of note that happened during the first six hours was that a bird shat on Flynn’s shoulder. A big green and white splat that splashed off her shoulder and into her hair.

‘Fucking seagulls!’ she snapped.

Bradshaw cleared her throat. ‘Seagull is a colloquialism, DCI Flynn,’ she said. ‘There are over fifty species in the Laridae family and they don’t all live exclusively by the sea.’

‘Shitehawks then! Is that acceptable terminology, Tilly?’

‘I would just say “gulls”, DCI Flynn.’

Poe guffawed. After a beat, Flynn did too. Mathers wandered over to see what they were laughing about. Anything to relieve the tension on a high-stakes operation, Poe thought.

‘The boss has just had some good luck, ma’am,’ he explained.

Mathers looked up. ‘They’re a nuisance, aren’t they?’

Poe had spent the last ten years living on Shap Fell. Any gull stupid enough to try its luck there would be gleefully met by goshawks, peregrine falcons, marsh harriers, even golden eagles. Gulls weren’t pests on Shap Fell. They were snacks.

‘They’re noisy,’ Mathers continued. ‘They’re aggressive. They damage roof tiles and they block drains and gas flues, even chimneys. They carry salmonella and tuberculosis, both of which can be fatal to humans. And, as DCI Flynn can now attest, they shit everywhere.’

Poe gave her a quizzical look. ‘You seem to know a lot about sea . . . about gulls, ma’am.’

‘I attended a lot of idiotic community panels when I was in uniform,’ she explained. ‘We’ve been given access to one of the executive bathrooms on the thirty-ninth floor, Steph; why don’t you go and get yourself cleaned up?’

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ Flynn said gratefully. ‘If I don’t get it out of my hair now, it’ll harden and be there until I get home.’

‘You should leave it on,’ Bradshaw said. ‘You bleach your hair anyway, and gull excrement contains uric acid.’

‘I do not dye my hair, Tilly,’ Flynn said.

Poe, who had noticed some darker roots on Flynn’s head even before he’d been assigned to the boat, said nothing.

‘She does dye her hair, Poe,’ Bradshaw said after Flynn had stomped off the roof to the executive bathroom. ‘She has an Amazon subscription for it.’

‘How the hell do you know what’s in the boss’s Amazon basket?’

‘Oh, pur-lease . Amazon’s network firewall is weaker than your one-one-one-one mobile phone password, and I like to make sure everyone I love is healthy. It’s why I think she might be perimenopausal. She put a book in her basket last month. It’s called So You Think You’re Perimenopausal? ’

‘Do you know what’s in my Amazon basket?’

‘You don’t have an Amazon account, Poe.’

‘Still sticking it to the man, Poe?’ Mathers said, smiling.

Poe shrugged. ‘I never saw the point. They wouldn’t deliver to Herdwick Croft, and Highwood has everything I need. It even has a game larder.’

‘Which makes me gag every time Poe goes in it to see what’s for his tea,’ Bradshaw said.

Another gull pinwheeled overhead. It shrieked like it had stood on some Lego. Poe looked up. Mathers wasn’t wrong; they were noisy bastards.

Poe said, ‘I guess in this part of London, which is basically a glass city, the landlords of buildings like this get particularly vociferous about the council keeping gulls under control.’

He pointed at a skyscraper a couple of hundred yards away and the window-cleaning platform inching its way down from the roof.

It was long and wide, big enough for workers and their equipment.

Two guys in white overalls were cleaning windows.

One of them was seated, his back pushed against the safety barrier.

The other guy was standing, operating the controls.

Poe wondered if they’d go all the way down then work their way up, or whether they had predetermined windows to clean.

Or maybe they just went to the ones the gulls had been using as faecal targets that day.

‘One man’s shite is another man’s treasure,’ he said. ‘Cleaning the windows on that monstrosity must be like painting the Golden Gate Bridge – a never-ending job. Big money, I bet.’

Mathers shielded her eyes. The skyscraper had so much glass it was worse than staring at the sun. Poe wondered if it was one of those buildings that acted like a giant refractor lens, melting cars and blinding cabbies.

‘That’s 22 Bishopsgate,’ Mathers said. ‘It’s the second tallest building in the UK.’

‘You say that like it’s a good thing,’ Poe said.

They watched as the platform stopped. Which answered Poe’s unasked question about whether or not they started at the bottom.

The guy holding the controls had stopped the platform only a few storeys from the roof.

He put the control pad in its holster and started unpacking his equipment.

The guy sitting down didn’t move. Poe frowned.

Not only did the guy not move, he also hadn’t moved.

Not since Poe had been watching. Not even an inch. It was almost like he wasn’t real.

Like he was a prop.

Oh shit.

Poe realised this at the same time he saw the glint of a telescopic sight.

‘Sniper!’ he screamed. He threw himself in front of Bradshaw, pulled her down just as he heard the crack of the supersonic round.

But Bradshaw wasn’t the target.

Commander Mathers was.

And Ezekiel Puck never missed.