Page 88 of The Final Vow (Washington Poe #7)
Thirty-six hours later
Charing Cross Police Station, London
Poe stood in the interview room doorway and stared at Ezekiel Puck.
He was breathtakingly bland. He looked like the tax accountant that tax accountants used.
The kind of man who watched BBC Four documentaries.
But Poe guessed that was the point. Bland had been good for Ezekiel Puck. It had worked for him.
The interview room was hot and stuffy, and Puck was sweating like an otter in a greenhouse.
He was pale and his right arm was in plaster.
He had a bruised throat. Poe could still see his tread marks.
His hair was thinning. He had dark circles under puffy red eyes.
Looked like he’d been crying. Other than that, he seemed to be in good spirits.
After Poe had delivered Puck to Kendal Police Station, trussed up like an Easter brisket, he made some phone calls while Puck’s transport down to London was arranged.
Understandably, an irate Cumbrian chief constable wanted Puck out of her county as soon as Westmorland General Hospital had set his broken arm.
She wasn’t too keen on Poe staying either, but as she had no authority over him, she was limited in what she could do.
Poe avoided any awkwardness by volunteering to accompany Puck to London with the police convoy.
The journey took exactly five hours, a succession of police forces providing a blue light escort all the way into Central London.
‘I understand you’ll only talk to me?’ Poe said.
Puck smiled. ‘Take a seat.’
‘I’m fine here, thanks.’
‘Please sit down, Sergeant Poe. There are things I need to say.’
‘That may be true, Ezekiel,’ Poe said. ‘The thing is, I’m not in the mood to hear them. Not now, not ever. And the beauty of this is that I don’t have to. We have your gun. We have your ammunition. We even have the videos you made. We have everything we need to secure a whole-life sentence.’
‘Then why are you here?’
It was a good question. And the answer was that Commander Unsworth, the man who’d smirked when Poe had been suspended, had met Ezekiel Puck’s police convoy at the entrance to Charing Cross Police Station.
Poe was in the first car. Unsworth had flashed Poe a constipated smile then nodded for him to follow him into an office he’d annexed.
He’d tried to apologise, but Poe wasn’t having any of it.
Anger would have been Unsworth’s correct response; gloating, not so much.
And the way he’d gleefully withdrawn Poe’s police protection, the way he’d cruelly informed him his engagement to Doyle had been called off, smacked of someone Poe didn’t want or need an apology from.
But, although Poe could refuse to accept his apology, with his suspension withdrawn, he wasn’t able to refuse a direct order.
Unsworth had told him to stay while Puck was being interviewed.
He said he might be needed to clarify things that Puck told them.
Fat chance. Puck hadn’t said a word. Hadn’t gone ‘no comment’, hadn’t even asked for the duty solicitor.
It didn’t matter. Poe had no choice but to stay until Puck had been charged and remanded into custody.
He booked into a hotel and caught up on his sleep.
A day later he got the call to come into the police station.
That was why he was standing in the doorway of the interview room.
Poe wasn’t going to say all that, obviously.
Instead, he said, ‘I like the coffee here.’ He stepped into the room and slipped into the seat opposite Puck.
‘I would offer to get you one, but I fear the temptation to spit in it would be too much.’
‘I’m fine,’ Puck said. ‘Your colleagues are looking after me very well considering . . .’
‘Considering you killed their commander?’
Puck shrugged. ‘What choice did I have? Alastor Locke shouldn’t have released my picture. As he would say, that was bad form.’
Poe shook his head. ‘We didn’t find you through Alastor Locke, you moron.
We found you through your subscription to that idiotic table-top role-playing game you obsess over.
It was your neighbours and your now very rich ex-wife who supplied the E-FIT.
Alastor warned Commander Mathers against releasing it.
’ He made to stand up. ‘Now, unless you have something to tell me that we don’t already know, I suggest you go back to ignoring everyone, all the way to the seg wing of HMP Belmarsh. ’
‘I actually do have something to tell you, Sergeant Poe. Something you don’t know.’
Poe yawned. ‘And what might that be?’
‘I know when you’re going to die.’