The Killer's Mark

Book 8: Washington Poe

by M.W. Craven

Genres: Crime Fiction

Synopsis

Every mark tells a story. This one ends in blood.

The next darkly funny thrill-ride of a book in the Sunday Times bestselling Washington Poe series.

'Dark, funny and twisty' - Lisa Howells, Crime Monthly

'One of the greatest duos in crime fiction' - Mark Sanderson, The Times

'Craven's trademark mix of dark humour and drama is so addictive it should come with a health warning' - Matt Nixson, Daily Express

A MONSTER. A MOTHER. A MURDER?

When Vice Admiral Boyer, RN (retd) died without leaving a will, his estranged daughter inherited his - not inconsiderable - estate. Called home to sort through his belongings, she found an AegisBox - a tamper proof safe within a safe designed to self-destruct if anyone without the code attempts to open it. Unable to walk away without the truth, she uncovered something so horrifying it launched the biggest investigation in the National Crime Agency's history. Five years later, Washington Poe is unwittingly, and unwillingly, sucked into its gravity...

Finally able to escape the authority they railed against, Washington Poe and Tilly Bradshaw are enjoying their new jobs as private detectives or - as the sign on their door says - 'Gumshoes for Hire'. When a teenage girl walks into their office, looking for the mother she long believed to be dead, they agree to take the case. As Poe and Tilly investigate the girl's claims, they find themselves drawn into a murky world of trafficking, pornography and prostitution. Will they be able to help the girl find her mother, or will the dark forces at work, who will stop at nothing to protect themselves, get there first...

PRAISE FOR M. W. CRAVEN:

'A brutal and thrilling page-turner' - The Sun

'It's got everything. Everything' - Chris Whitaker

'Intelligent. Sophisticated. Intriguing.' - Mari Hannah

'One of the most memorable police officers we've encountered in a long time' - The Independent

'One of the best crime writers working today' - Stuart Turton

'Two of the most compelling characters in crime fiction' - Fiona Cummins

'A high-octane thriller that won't disappoint' - Guardian

'One of the best new detective duos in decades' - Abir Mukherjee

'So dark and twisty' - Elly Griffiths

'Twists and turns like a country lane' - Peter Robinson

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 100000

Sample

Washington Poe nudged open the door to the outer office with his hip and smiled at the sign stencilled on the reeded glass. He always smiled at the sign. It made him happy. Only Tilly Bradshaw could have commissioned a sign like that. He’d thought it, she’d done it. He wondered if the sign was why they didn’t have any clients.

If it was, they were keeping it.

‘I have your smoothie, Tilly,’ he shouted at her closed door. ‘Where do you want it?’

‘I’ll come through, Poe,’ Bradshaw yelled back. A pause. ‘You didn’t spill any this time, did you?’

Poe looked at the thick gloopy sludge in the plastic cup. It looked like someone had liquefied the mouldy gunk that got stuck to the bottom of the garden waste bin. ‘I don’t think you can spill this, Tilly.’

‘You spilled the last one,’ Bradshaw said, walking into his office. She was holding a file.

‘I dropped it. That’s different. Even then, most of it stayed in the cup.’

‘Some of it went on your shoe, though, Poe. You moaned about it for three days and six hours. You said it looked as though you’d been kicking Kermit the Frog up the … bottom.’

Poe grinned and handed her the smoothie. She held it up to the dusty light and nodded in satisfaction. He removed the lid from his own cup and took in the smell of fresh coffee. They had tea- and coffee-making facilities in the outer office – just in case a client wandered in by mistake – but sometimes you needed the real deal. Fresh beans, freshly ground. He poured it into his Stiff Little Fingers mug. It held three quarters of a pint so was big enough for the large coffee he’d bought himself. By the looks of things, he was going to need it. Bradshaw wore a determined expression.

‘We need to have a meeting, Poe,’ she said.

‘Another one?’ he moaned.

‘Yes, another one.’

‘But we had one last week.’

‘We had one three weeks ago.’

‘I’ve got to be honest, Tilly, when I left the National Crime Agency, I thought there’d be fewer meetings, not more.’

‘Tough luck, buster. You made me managing director, and I say we’re having a meeting.’

‘And what’s this one about?’ he said. ‘Has Nigel threatened to read your palm again?’

‘No, you said I should just ignore him, so I do.’

‘Yes. Yes, you do. I meant don’t let him get to you, rather than blank him like he doesn’t exist, but hey-ho, it seems to have worked. He hasn’t been cadging our milk lately.’

‘He’s doing paranormal investigations as well now. He actually believes in ghosts.’

‘He thinks he can predict the future by studying the palm of your hand. Of course he believes in ghosts.’ Poe started to laugh. Cowie House was the weirdest building he’d ever worked in. It was a four-storey townhouse on the cobbled part of Fisher Street in Carlisle’s historic quarter, equidistant between the Kings Head – which Poe liked – and the Quaker Meeting House, which he wasn’t yet sure about (they seemed nice enough, but they got really upset if you used their car park without permission). It was a rickety old building, hotter than a jalapeño’s armpit in summer, colder than a polar bear’s toilet seat in winter. An eddy-like wind whistled through it at a whim, hurling into the air any paper that wasn’t weighted down. The floors were so uneven you got weird muscles in your lower legs keeping your chair still, and the staircase was so wonky it could only have been designed by a drunk.

Poe loved it.

He didn’t love the other tenants, though. Not all of them. It was as though the landlady had deliberately hunted out the biggest bunch of whack-a-doodle crackpots in Cumbria then leased them rooms at an insanely affordable price. Nigel, the palmist-cum-ghost-hunter who they shared the top floor with, was the quintessential Cowie House resident. The living example of what happened when an entire generation was raised to believe that everything they thought, said and did was newsworthy, and any challenge to that belief must be against their human rights. Poe didn’t like Nigel. Neither did Bradshaw.

He liked the tenants on the floor below theirs. They were his kind of people. William, the antiquarian book dealer, whose crippling shyness was so severe it rendered him mute; and Indica, the twenty-five-year-old tattooist, whose own tattoos didn’t quite hide the self-harm scars running up and down her arms.

And he was ambivalent about the tenants on the first floor. There was Miserable Les, the talent(less) agent, whose auditions for a cruise-ship production of Annie had resulted in a noise complaint being upheld; and Stephen Dunn, the pet portrait artist, who wore a striped jersey and a beret. All that was missing was a baguette and a string of garlic around his neck. Bradshaw had bought Poe’s wife a pet portrait session for her birthday. Estelle wanted a painting of him and his English springer spaniel, Edgar. It hadn’t gone well. Poe had been hungover, and before he could stop him, Edgar had eaten someone’s gerbil then voided his bowels all over Dunn’s studio. They hadn’t been invited back and Bradshaw didn’t get a refund.

The ground floor was the landlady’s domain. She was called Monica Costelloe, and she owned the building. She was in her fifties, as bald as a bubble, and the gap between her front teeth was so big she could eat a chip without opening her mouth.

Sometimes Poe thought he and Bradshaw were the only normal people in the building. Probably just there as curiosities. Then he remembered that Bradshaw still did freelance work for MI5, he still had PTSD, and there was an absurd sign on their office front door. Perhaps they were where they were meant to be.

He took a drink of his coffee. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘What is this meeting about?’

‘Why we don’t have any clients, Poe,’ Bradshaw said softly.

‘That’s not fair, Tilly,’ Poe said. ‘We’ve had clients.’

‘Uh-uh,’ Bradshaw said. ‘I’m not talking about the kind of clients where you don’t have to leave the office. Where you just call up one of your chums in Cumbria Police and find out who’s been having an affair with who. I mean real clients with real problems. Ones where you have to get off your lazy butt.’

Poe let ‘chums’ go. He let ‘get off your lazy butt’ go too.

‘We’re still establishing ourselves,’ he said. ‘It takes time to build up a successful private investigation business in the UK. It’s because we’re unregulated. Any idiot can call themselves a PI. The only way to get a decent reputation is by being selective with cases.’

‘Oh pur-lease, that’s such a load of baloney,’ Bradshaw said. ‘That man who came in two weeks ago had an interesting case. He worked for BAE Systems, so if we’d solved it, it could have led to a contract with the largest defence contractor in Europe. But no, you turned him down without even listening to what he had to say. Do you remember why?’

Poe did, but he didn’t want to say it out loud. It seemed silly now.

‘It was because you thought he looked like Ken Dodd,’ Bradshaw said.

‘He did look like Ken Dodd! He’d probably lost his Diddy Men.’

‘We need cases, Poe. You need cases.’

‘Is this about money? Is the business struggling?’

Bradshaw shook her head. ‘Our MI5 freelance work more than covers our rent and salaries.’

Poe appreciated the ‘our’ part of that. He had nothing to do with the MI5 stuff. He wasn’t even allowed in her office when she was working. And the security in her sectioned-off computer suite made Fort Knox look as secure as kid’s piggy bank. When Alastor Locke, the guy at MI5 she’d briefly worked for, had found out she was leaving to become a private investigator, he’d begged her to reconsider. Said that the country needed her. Taking on the occasional bit of freelance work had been their compromise. Locke had sent a team of specialist engineers to the top floor of Cowie House and made her office soundproof, bugproof, even windproof. They’d installed lightning-fast secure broadband and a phone system that Poe had no idea how to operate. He’d tried to call his wife the week before and had somehow got through to GCHQ. The woman at the other end had said, ‘This isn’t a toy, Poe,’ and hung up on him.

The thing was, Poe knew Bradshaw was right. Knew that his reasons for putting off work were becoming increasingly desperate. He also knew that she knew why.

‘I’m scared, Tilly,’ he said. ‘Our last case saw someone making threats against us.’

‘He’s dead, Poe. He can’t hurt you, me or Estelle. He can’t hurt anyone.’

‘And the case before that gave me a decade’s worth of PTSD.’

‘Estelle tells me you’re sleeping better now.’

Poe nodded. He was. ‘But what harm is there in just having a bit of peace and quiet for a while?’

‘I’m not suggesting we start looking for serial killers or axe murderers, but you need to exercise your brain. If you don’t, it’ll rot.’

Poe threw up his hands. ‘Fine, I’ll take the next case that walks through the door. Happy?’

‘The very next case? Even if he looks like Ken Dodd?’

To be fair, Poe only hesitated for a fraction of a second. ‘Yes,’ he said.

Which was when the office door burst open and William Bickerstaff, the painfully shy antiquarian book dealer, ran in. His face was red. His eyes were wider than Bambi’s. He was wearing his usual attire of cardigan, corduroy trousers and flat-footed tan brogues. Hair all over the place. Despite looking like Tolkien’s absent-minded brother, he was only twenty-seven.

‘What is it, William?’ Poe said. William had never been in his office before. He’d never been on their floor before. Something was wrong. He looked terrified.

William tried to reply, but all that came out was a big old stutter. Poe had never heard him speak, so didn’t know he had a stutter. He wondered if that was the reason he was so shy. Or whether his shyness caused it. William gave up, started beckoning behind him. Pointing to the floor.

‘I think William wants you to go with him, Poe,’ Bradshaw said. ‘Something must be happening downstairs.’

‘Lead the way,’ Poe said. He resisted adding ‘Lassie’.

Bradshaw was right: something was happening downstairs. Trouble. Small t.

Poe didn’t need William to tell him where to go. As soon as he left his office, he knew where he was needed. William shared a floor with Indica, the tattooist. Poe had long suspected that William had a crush on her. Not that it would have mattered. William was a sweet and gentle man, and crush or not, Indica was in trouble. He would have tried to help her regardless of any unrequited feelings. He would have tried to help anyone.

Indica’s trouble was a man the size and build of a 1970s English wrestler. He was glassy-eyed and shirtless. Strong but flabby. Angry. He had cornered Indica in her studio and was trying to climb over the tattooist’s table that separated them. She was holding him at bay with a bunch of needles, which she kept stabbing into the palms of his outstretched hands.

Poe didn’t hesitate. He ran into the studio, jabbed the idiot in the right kidney. Watched a ripple go all the way up his back fat. He then grabbed his ear and twisted until something tore. The man screamed. Dropped to his knees. Swung a meaty fist behind him, tried to swipe away Poe’s legs. Poe sidestepped and said, ‘Calm down, big fella.’

‘Stay out of this,’ grunted the man.

Poe twisted his ear harder. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked Indica.

She was a slender woman. Probably only eight stone wet. Heavily tattooed, as all tattooists seemed to be. Crew cut, sleeveless top and low-slung jeans. Pair of sneakers. Same thing she wore every day.

‘Idiot came in three weeks ago for his wife’s portrait.’

Poe looked at the man’s back. Indica had tattooed his wife in blacks and greys. Good tattoo, he thought. JANIS was inked underneath in a beautiful Gothic script.

‘What’s the problem?’

‘The problem is he misspelled her name. I checked with him a dozen times, but he insisted that was how it was spelled.’

‘Let me guess, it’s not Janis, it’s Janice. J-A-N-I-C-E?’

Indica nodded.

‘You,’ Poe said to the man on his knees. ‘How is this her fault?’

‘Fucking bit—’

‘No, start again, please.’ Poe twisted his ear a bit more.

‘She should have checked.’

‘She says she did check. Is she lying?’

It was clear from the man’s expression that she wasn’t.

‘But what am I going to do?’ he whined.

Poe sighed. The man was obviously scared what Janice would do when she realised her husband didn’t know how to spell her name. And scared men lashed out.

‘Can it be fixed?’ he asked Indica.

‘Not really. I could turn the S into a C and add an E at the end, but the problem is that would make the text lopsided. I won’t do that as I have a reputation.’

Someone was tugging at Poe’s sleeve. It was William.

‘What is it, William?’ Poe asked.

‘J-J-Janis J-J-Joplin,’ William stammered, pointing at the man’s back.

Poe stared at the tattoo, then smiled.

‘That’ll work, William,’ he said. Then to the man, ‘OK, here’s what you’re going to do: you’ll beg my friend Indica for forgiveness then ask if she’s willing to tattoo “Joplin” underneath the “Janis”. That portrait kind of looks like Janis Joplin anyway, and I’m sure Indica can tweak it enough to make it look exactly like her. Then you go home, and before your wife sees this, you learn all Janis Joplin’s songs and become a fan. Then and only then do you show your wife your tattoo. And you should probably get her name somewhere to balance it all out.’

The man grunted that that was a good idea. Poe let him get to his feet. ‘But first you apologise.’

The man was as Carlisle as it was possible to be. Probably born in a Botchergate pub toilet. He wasn’t used to apologising, but he gave it a good go. It wouldn’t have appeased most people, but Indica dealt with men like him all day. They shook hands and it was as if nothing had ever happened. He made an appointment to get his tattoo changed and walked out happy.

Poe jogged after him. ‘Oh, one more thing,’ he said. ‘I’ll be here next time. If you so much as raise your voice to Indica, I’m going to take her gun and tattoo “NONCE” on your stupid sloped forehead. Do we understand each other?’

The man gulped. He nodded.

As Poe was twisting the ear of a man who didn’t know how to spell his own wife’s name, a young girl called Esmerée Blue was staring in dismay at the exterior of Cowie House. This was where she’d been told to come? This was where the guy with the dumbass name worked? She glanced up and down Fisher Street. It had cobbles. Actual cobbles. Like something out of Mary goddam Poppins. Or Harry goddam Potter. She’d never seen anything as stupid in her life. And as for the building, it looked as though a strong fart would bring it crashing to the ground. Why would a guy with such a solid rep work in this dump? Maybe she’d been punked. It wouldn’t be the first time the douchebag locals had told her to go left when she should have headed right. They didn’t seem to like Americans much. They didn’t seem to like anyone.

Fucking assholes.

Even for Carlisle, Esmerée Blue stood out. She was fifteen years old and she had a nose ring, an eyebrow ring and a lip ring. Her ear had so many holes she could have used it as a sieve. Her make-up was French-clown white; her hair was black and purple and styled like she was in a Japanese cartoon. She wore scuffed DMs, ripped jeans and a Green Day hoodie. She looked like a cross between Siouxsie Sioux and Lisbeth Salander. And she didn’t give a rat’s ass.

There was only one thing that mattered. She had rematerialised. And Esmerée needed to find her. It was why she ignored her instinct to walk away from the butt-ugly building. Why she gritted her teeth and hardened her jaw and walked up the steps. Why she pushed open the front door and stepped into the lobby.

A formidable-looking woman was seated behind an ancient reception desk. She was eating an apple and reading a novel. Sardan by Indie D. Looked like a fantasy book. She glanced up. Raised her eyebrows.

‘What the hell are you looking at, you bald asshole?’ Esmerée said.

The woman smiled politely, as if she heard smart-ass kids all day, every day. She tilted her head and said, ‘Poe and Tilly are on the top floor, dear.’

‘How did you know?’

‘You seem … troubled,’ the woman replied.

Esmerée grunted something unintelligible and stormed past her.

Monica Costelloe shook her head and chuckled. If the American kid did have a problem, she’d come to the right place. Poe hadn’t worked much since he and Tilly had taken the office on the top floor, but if anyone could help her, it would be them.

Esmerée walked up the stairs. She passed a door with Lesley Sykes, Talent Agent stencilled on the glass. It opened, and a sweaty man peered out. He was overweight and underdressed. His face was beet red; his nose was fat and round.

‘Are you here for The Wizard of Oz audition?’ he said hopefully.

‘Do I look like a fucking Munchkin?’

She stomped up the next flight of stairs. There was a commotion going on in the tattooist’s. Some asshole was twisting another asshole’s ear while a scared-looking geek hopped up and down biting his lip. Esmerée ignored them and carried on up to the top floor.

There were two offices. Left and right. She walked to the office on the right. Read the sign. Nigel Flowers. Palmist. He must have seen her shadow outside, as he opened the door immediately. What was it with this place? Didn’t anyone have anything better to do than hassle her? Nigel the palmist was as thin as Lesley the talent agent was fat. He had a sparse moustache and a patchy beard. He looked like an anaemic Mr Miyagi.

‘Are you here for a—’

‘Go back to the commune, you basket-weaving asshole.’

Esmerée spun on her heel, leaving Nigel open-mouthed, and marched up to the door on the left. She stopped when she saw the stencilled sign.

Washington Poe & Tilly Bradshaw

Gumshoes For Hire

‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ she muttered. ‘Gumshoes? What a pair of jerks.’

She stared at the sign for almost a minute. This is a bad idea, she thought. Then she took a deep breath and knocked.

And became the very next case that walked through Poe and Bradshaw’s door.

Poe was in a slightly better mood as he jogged back up the stairs. William had offered him a free book and Indica had offered him a free tattoo. He’d declined both. For now. He was always looking for his next read, and William had some decent hard-boiled American crime fiction on his website, and Estelle had mentioned getting matching tattoos a few weeks ago. Maybe he could surprise her.

‘We’re in here, Poe,’ Bradshaw called out as soon as he stepped into the office.

We?

He pushed open his office door. Bradshaw and a weird goth girl were sitting at his meeting table. Bradshaw was sipping a fruit tea. She wasn’t supposed to drink fruit tea in his office, just as he wasn’t supposed to eat pies in hers. The girl had a can of Coke. Full fat.

‘Hello, Poe,’ Bradshaw said. ‘Is everything OK?’

‘Indica had another idiot customer. Nothing to worry about.’

‘Good. This is Esmerée Blue.’ She held his eye. ‘She’s our new client.’

‘She is?’

‘Yes, Poe. She is.’

The girl rolled her eyes. Said, ‘Is this asshole the other gumshoe?’

‘She says the bottom thing a lot,’ Bradshaw explained.

Other than that it was American, Poe didn’t recognise her accent. It wasn’t one of the obvious ones like Boston or the Deep South. It might have been New York, but if it was, it was refined. Wall Street not Skid Row.

‘How old are you, Esmerée?’ he asked, taking a seat.

‘What’s it got to do with you?’

‘Because if you’re under eighteen, which you clearly are, you can’t legally sign a contract. And if you can’t sign a contract, you can’t hire a PI.’

‘I’m twenty-one.’

‘Of course you are.’

Esmerée produced an award-winning pout. ‘I have money,’ she said. She pulled a leather wallet from the pocket of her hoodie. Showed Poe a bunch of tens and twenties. ‘How much do you charge? I need you to find my mom.’

‘A thousand pounds a day plus expenses,’ Poe said.

She fanned the money and counted it. ‘I have ninety pounds.’

‘Then you don’t have enough.’

‘I have a credit card.’

‘Of course you do; you’re twenty-one.’

Esmerée nodded. ‘Right,’ she said. She flipped the wallet and rooted through the cards. Didn’t seem to know what she was looking for. Eventually she found a Barclaycard. She shielded it from view. ‘Do you have a machine? I’ll just read out the number.’

‘Yeah, that’s not going to happen,’ Poe said. He looked over Esmerée’s shoulder. ‘What the …?’

She turned in her seat. Poe pinched the wallet.

‘Hey! Give that back.’

He rooted through until he found a driving licence. ‘Adam no-middle-name Malloy. This is you, is it?’

Even under her harsh make-up, Esmerée blanched.

‘So you’re a liar and a thief?’ Poe said. ‘You’re not twenty-one and you’re not a middle-aged man.’

‘I’m not a fucking thief,’ she snarled.

‘We don’t swear in front of Tilly,’ Poe said automatically, returning the wallet to Esmerée.

Bradshaw tutted.

‘What?’

‘You swear in front of me all the time, Poe. Only last night you said that the F-word chippy had better still be F-word open.’

Poe took a moment. ‘We try not to swear in front of Tilly,’ he said eventually. He softened, remembered he was talking to a child. ‘Look, if you and your mum have had an argument, or if she’s kicked you out, there are people who can help.’

‘I don’t need their help. I need your help.’

‘To find your mum?’

Esmerée nodded.

‘Where is she?’

‘If I knew where she was, I wouldn’t be talking to you.’

Poe said, ‘Fair enough.’

He got up and walked to his desk. Tried to remember how to work the secure phone system. Bradshaw rattled off a list of instructions. Poe followed them without remembering them. He dialled a number. ‘Children and Families, please,’ he said.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Esmerée demanded, alarmed.

‘What Tilly should have done the moment you stepped into our office. I’m calling Children’s Services. We aren’t equipped to deal with this; they are.’

Esmerée began to weep. Didn’t look like she was working an angle. ‘You’re an asshole,’ she sniffed.

‘Yes, I’ll hold,’ Poe said into the phone. Then, ‘Look, you’re a mixed-up kid. You don’t need a private investigator; you need a social worker. They’ll either contact your mum or they’ll—’

‘They can’t contact my mom!’ she yelled.

‘Social workers have almost as much power as police officers,’ Poe said. ‘They can certainly track down an errant mother. Whether she likes it or not, she has obligations. She can’t just abandon you, Esmerée.’

‘She can if she’s dead.’

Which wasn’t what Poe had been expecting her to say. ‘What do you mean, she’s dead? Why would you want me to look for a dead woman?’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘Yet you don’t have time. You have from now until the duty social worker gets on the phone.’

‘My mom isn’t dead,’ Esmerée said. ‘What I meant was, I thought she was dead.’

‘Why did you think she was dead?’

She squirmed in her seat. It made her look like she had worms. She didn’t answer.

‘OK, let’s try an easier one: why do you think she’s alive?’

‘Because I’ve seen her.’

‘If you’ve seen her, why didn’t you speak to her?’

‘I couldn’t.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she was in a goddamn porn movie!’ she yelled. ‘Are you happy now, asshole?’

Something else Poe wasn’t expecting her to say. Without thinking, he said, ‘Why were you watching your mother in a porn film?’

She flung the wallet at him. It hit him on the shoulder. A load of wallet tinsel fell out. A couple more credit cards. Some loyalty cards. The usual stuff.

‘Because that goddamn pervert Adam Malloy made me watch it with him.’

‘Kyle Samson, duty social worker,’ said someone, Kyle Samson presumably, at the other end of the phone. ‘How can I help you?’

Poe gently placed the phone back in its cradle. ‘How old are you?’ he said through gritted teeth, his voice low and flat.

‘I’m twenty-one,’ Esmerée replied sullenly.

‘How old are you?’

‘I’m twenty-one!’

‘Esmerée,’ Poe said gently. ‘It’s important I know. How old are you?’

‘You can trust Poe,’ Bradshaw said.

‘I’m sixteen,’ she mumbled.

Poe waited.

‘OK, I’m nearly sixteen.’

Poe took the bundle of cash she was still holding. He passed it to Bradshaw. ‘Give Esmerée a receipt for ninety pounds, Tilly.’

Esmerée looked up. ‘Do you mean …?’

Poe nodded. ‘Consider us hired.’

She let out a huge sigh of relief. ‘Thank you,’ she said. She wiped away a tear, then picked up her can of Coke and started beating the shit out of the table.

Poe stared, astonished.

‘Oh, one other thing, Poe,’ Bradshaw said. ‘Esmerée has alien hand syndrome.’

‘Poor sod,’ Poe said for the second time in an hour. ‘No wonder she’s so angry.’

Esmerée had told her story and Poe had said he’d call her the following day with news, even if the news was that there was no news. She didn’t have a phone, so she’d agreed to pop in instead. She’d then left the office and almost skipped down the stairs.

‘It is a sad case,’ Bradshaw agreed.

‘Let me get this straight,’ he said. ‘Esmerée’s mother, Océane Blue, was shacked up with some rich arsehole in the States.’

‘Vincent du Buk,’ Bradshaw confirmed. ‘He had a house in New York State and an apartment in Manhattan.’

‘Esmerée’s a bit fuzzy on their arrangement, but it seems he was something like her mother’s sugar daddy. Océane was basically at his beck and call.’

Bradshaw nodded.

‘On the surface, Vincent du Buk was a respectable businessman. He worked for a private equity firm on Wall Street. He had no criminal record and he wasn’t on anyone’s radar. According to your preliminary research, he was worth upwards of fifty million dollars.’

‘He was a very rich man, Poe. And no one in law enforcement was investigating him or his businesses.’

‘But according to Esmerée, if we scratched the surface we would discover that Vincent mixed with some unsavoury characters. Esmerée had lived with Vincent since she was born. She said he had only ever been nice to her. To her mother too. But then, about a year ago, something happened. Océane snaps and sticks a knife in Vincent du Buk’s neck. He bleeds out and dies before anyone can call an ambulance. Océane runs, leaving Esmerée to fend for herself. Esmerée grabs some of Vincent’s loose change and flees too. She hears nothing from her mother for six months so assumes Vincent’s friends caught up with her and had her dissolved in acid or something. She uses the last of her money to cross the border into Canada. She sneaks onto a campsite in Alberta and steals the passport of an eighteen-year-old girl who looks vaguely like her. She gets a flight to Gatwick, then moves up north, where she gets a job as a cash-in-hand chambermaid at Musgrave Hall, a country hotel on the outskirts of Carlisle.’

Poe took his time with the next bit. Controlled his breathing.

‘She works there for six months, fending off the sexual advances of the manager, Adam Malloy. Eventually he threatens her with a good old sacking if she won’t at least watch a film with him. He tells her he’s downloaded the new Mission: Impossible. When they get settled, it turns out to be a porn film. She tries to get away, but he restrains her. As he’s doing that, she glances at the screen and sees her own, supposedly dead mother front and centre in the bloody porn film Adam Malloy is forcing her to watch. She’s got her back to the camera, but Esmerée recognises the tattoo on the sole of her foot. And as it’s a recently made film, judging by the Taylor Swift Eras Tour poster on the wall, she concludes that far from being dead, her mother is alive and well and making porn.

‘Esmerée freaks out. She scares Adam Malloy, who thinks she’s having a fit. In the confusion, she makes her escape. On her way out, she steals his wallet. Have I missed anything?’

‘Other than Esmerée hiring us, I don’t think so.’

‘And the facts check out. Vincent du Buk was murdered, he did have a knife stuck in his neck, and six months ago, a girl called Elizabeth Robbins, the name on the passport Esmerée claims to have stolen, did fly into Gatwick from Calgary.’

Bradshaw yawned. ‘I’ll have in-depth profiles by tomorrow,’ she said. ‘But I have work I need to finish for Alastor Locke first.’

‘Some national security nonsense?’

She nodded.

‘More interesting than this afternoon’s shenanigans?’

‘Gosh, no,’ she said. She picked up their mugs and made her way to the sink in the waiting area that divided their two offices. She ran the hot tap and put the mugs in to soak; she said she had to, as Poe took his coffee so strong it stained everything. ‘You’ll start with Adam Malloy, I assume.’

‘I’ll go and see him first thing tomorrow morning,’ Poe a