The Puppet Show

Book 1: Washington Poe

by M.W. Craven

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

'Dark, sharp and compelling' Peter James

'A thrilling curtain raiser for what looks set to be a great new series' Mick Herron

Welcome to the Puppet Show . . .

A serial killer is burning people alive in the Lake District's prehistoric stone circles. He leaves no clues and the police are helpless.

When his name is found carved into the charred remains of the third victim, disgraced detective Washington Poe is brought back from suspension and into an investigation he wants no part of.

Reluctantly partnered with the brilliant, but socially awkward, civilian analyst, Tilly Bradshaw, the mismatched pair uncover a trail that only he is meant to see. The elusive killer has a plan and for some reason Poe is part of it.

As the body count rises, Poe discovers he has far more invested in the case than he could have possibly imagined. And in a shocking finale that will shatter everything he's ever believed about himself, Poe will learn that there are things far worse than being burned alive ...

'A powerful thriller from an explosive new talent. Tightly plotted, and not for the faint hearted!'

David Mark

''Satisfyingly twisty and clever and the flashes of humour work well to offer the reader respite from the thrill of the read.' Michael J. Malone

Release date: December 13, 2022

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 95000

Sample

 

 

 

The stone circle is an ancient, tranquil place. Its stones are silent sentinels. Unmoving watchers. Their granite glistens with the morning dew. They have withstood a thousand and more winters, and although they are weathered and worn, they have never yielded to time, the seasons, or man.

Alone in the circle, surrounded by soft shadows, stands an old man. His face is heavily lined, and lank grey hair frames his bald and mottled scalp. He is cadaverously thin, and his gaunt frame is racked by tremors. His head is bowed and his shoulders are stooped.

He is naked and he is about to die.

Strong wire secures him to an iron girder. It bites into his skin. He doesn’t care: his tormentor has already tortured him.

He is in shock and thinks he has no more capacity for pain.

He is wrong.

‘Look at me.’ His tormentor’s voice is flat.

The old man has been smeared with a jelly-like substance that reeks of petrol. He raises his head and looks to the hooded figure in front of him.

His tormentor holds an American Zippo lighter.

And now the fear kicks in. The primal fear of fire. He knows what’s going to happen and he knows he can’t stop it. His breathing becomes shallow and erratic.

The Zippo is raised to his eyes. The old man sees the simple beauty of it. The perfect lines, the exact engineering. A design that hasn’t changed in a century. With a flick, the top flips open. A turn of the thumb and the wheel strikes the flint. A shower of sparks and the flame appears.

His tormentor lowers the Zippo, drags the flame down. The accelerant catches. The hungry flames flare, then crawl down his arm.

The pain is immediate, like his blood has turned to acid. His eyes widen in horror and every muscle goes rigid. His hands clench into a fist. He tries to scream but it dies when it reaches the obstacle in his throat. Becomes pitiful and muted as he gargles his own blood.

His flesh spits and sizzles like meat in a hot oven. Blood, fat and water roll down his arms and drip from his fingers.

Black fills his vision. The pain fades. His breathing is no longer rushed and urgent.

The old man dies. He doesn’t know that his own fat will fuel the fire long after the accelerant has burnt away. He doesn’t see how the flames burn and distort what has been carved into his chest.

But it happens anyway.

One week later.

Tilly Bradshaw had a problem. She didn’t like problems. Her low tolerance for uncertainty meant they made her anxious.

She looked around to see if there was anyone to share her findings with, but the Serious Crime Analysis Section office was empty. She checked her watch and saw it was coming up to midnight. She’d worked for sixteen hours straight again. She thumbed her mother a text, apologising for not calling her.

She turned back to her screen. Although she knew it wasn’t a glitch, with results like these there would be an expectation that she had triple checked. She ran her program again.

After making herself a fruit tea, she glanced at the progress bar to see how long she had to wait. Fifteen minutes. Bradshaw opened her personal laptop, plugged in her headphones and typed, ‘Back at keyboard’. Within seconds she was fully immersed in Dragonlore, a multiplayer, online role-playing game.

In the background her program processed the data she’d entered. Bradshaw didn’t check the SCAS computer once.

She didn’t make mistakes.

Fifteen minutes later, the National Crime Agency logo dissolved, and the same results appeared. She typed, ‘Away from Keyboard’, and logged out of her game.

There were two possibilities. Either the results were accurate, or a mathematically implausible coincidence had occurred. When she’d first seen the results, she’d calculated the odds of it happening by chance, and had come up with a number in the high millions. In case she was asked, she entered the maths problem into a program of her own design and ran it. The result popped up and showed it was within the margin of error she’d allowed. She didn’t smile when she realised that she’d worked it out faster than her own computer, using a program she’d written.

Bradshaw wasn’t sure what to do next. Her boss, Detective Inspector Stephanie Flynn, was usually nice to her, but it had only been the week before when they’d had their little chat about when it was appropriate to call her at home. She was only allowed to ring when it was important. But . . . as it was DI Flynn who decided if something was important, how was she supposed to know without asking her? It was all very confusing.

Bradshaw wished it were a maths problem. She understood maths. She didn’t understand Detective Inspector Flynn. She bit her lip, then came to a decision.

She reviewed her findings and practised what to say.

Her discovery related to SCAS’s latest target – a man the press were calling the ‘Immolation Man’. Whoever he was – and they’d made an early assumption he was male – he didn’t seem to like men in their sixties and seventies. In fact, he disliked them so much, he was setting them on fire.

It was the third and latest victim’s data that Bradshaw had been studying. SCAS had been brought in after the second. As well as identifying the emergence of serial killers and serial rapists, their role was also to provide analytical support to any police force undertaking complex or apparently motiveless murder investigations. The Immolation Man certainly ticked all the SCAS boxes.

Because the fire had destroyed the bodies to the point they didn’t even look like bodies, a post-mortem wasn’t the only approach the SIO, the senior investigating officer, up in Cumbria had taken. He’d sought advice from SCAS. After the post-mortem, SCAS had arranged for the body to go through a multi-slice computed tomography machine. The MSCT was a sophisticated medical investigative technique. It used X-ray beams and a liquid dye to form a 3D image of the body. It was meant for the living but was just as effective on the dead.

SCAS didn’t have the resources to have their own MSCT – no law enforcement agency did – but they had an agreement to purchase time on one when the situation merited it. As the Immolation Man left no trace evidence at the murder scenes or abduction sites, the SIO had been willing to try anything.

Bradshaw took a deep breath and dialled DI Flynn.

The phone answered on the fifth ring. A groggy voice answered. ‘Hello?’

She checked her watch to confirm it was after midnight, before saying, ‘Good morning, Detective Inspector Flynn. How are you?’ As well as talking to her about when it was appropriate to ring her after hours, DI Flynn had also urged her to be politer to her colleagues.

‘Tilly,’ Flynn grumbled, ‘what do you want?’

‘I want to talk to you about the case, Detective Inspector Flynn.’

Flynn sighed. ‘Can you just call me Stephanie, Tilly? Or Steph? Or boss? In fact, we’re not that far away from London, I’ll even accept guv.’

‘Of course, Detective Inspector Stephanie Flynn.’

‘No . . . I mean can you not just . . . Oh, it doesn’t matter.’

Bradshaw waited for Flynn to finish before saying, ‘May I please tell you what I’ve found?’

Flynn groaned. ‘What time is it?’

‘The time is thirteen minutes past midnight.’

‘Go on then. What’s so important it couldn’t wait until the morning?’

Flynn listened to her before asking a few questions and hanging up. Bradshaw sat back in her chair and smiled. She’d been right to call her. DI Flynn had said so.

Flynn was there within half an hour. Her blonde hair was tangled. She wore no makeup. Bradshaw wore no makeup either, although that was by choice. She thought it was silly.

Bradshaw pressed some keys and brought up a series of cross sections. ‘They’re all of the torso,’ she said.

She then went on to explain what the MSCT did. ‘It can identify wounds and fractures that the post-mortem might miss. It is particularly useful when the victim has been badly burned.’

Flynn knew all this but let her finish anyway. Bradshaw gave up information in her own time and wouldn’t be rushed.

‘The cross sections don’t really give us that much, DI Stephanie Flynn, but watch this.’ Bradshaw brought up a composite image, this time from above.

‘What on earth . . . ?’ Flynn asked, staring at the screen.

‘Wounds,’ Bradshaw replied. ‘Lots of them.’

‘So the post-mortem missed a load of random slashes?’

Bradshaw shook her head. ‘That is what I thought.’ She pressed a button and they studied the 3D image of the wounds on the victim’s chest. The program sorted through the seemingly random slashes. Eventually they all came together.

They stared at the final image. There was nothing random about it.

‘What do we do now, Detective Inspector Flynn?’

Flynn paused before answering. ‘Have you called your mum to explain why you aren’t home yet?’

‘I sent her a text.’

‘Well, send her another one. Tell her you won’t be back tonight.’

Bradshaw began tapping the screen of her mobile. ‘What reason shall I give?’

‘Tell her we’re getting the director out of bed.’

Washington Poe had enjoyed his day repairing the dry stone wall. It was one of several new skills he’d learned since moving back to Cumbria. It was backbreaking work but the reward of a pie and pint at the end of the day was all the sweeter for it. He loaded his tools and a few spare rocks into his quad’s trailer, whistled for Edgar, his springer spaniel, and then began the drive back to his croft. He’d been working on the outer boundary wall today so was over a mile from his home, a rough-stone building called Herdwick Croft. It would take him fifteen minutes or so to get back.

The spring sun was low and the evening dew made the grass and heather shine. Birds chirped territorial and mating songs and the air was fragrant with early flowers. Poe breathed in deeply as he drove.

He could get used to this.

He had been planning on a quick shower then a walk over to the hotel, but the closer to home he got, the thought of a long soak in the bath with a good book was far more appealing.

He crested the last peak and stopped. Someone was sitting at his outdoor table.

He opened the canvas bag he always carried with him and removed a pair of binoculars. He trained them on the lone figure. He couldn’t be sure, but the person looked female. He increased the magnification and smiled grimly when he recognised the figure with the long blonde hair.

So . . . they’d finally caught up with him.

He put the binoculars back in his bag and drove down to see his old sergeant.

‘Long time no see, Steph,’ Poe said. ‘What brings you this far north?’ Edgar, the furry traitor, was fussing round her like a long-lost friend.

‘Poe,’ she acknowledged. ‘Nice beard.’

He reached up and scratched his chin. He’d got out of the habit of daily shaves. ‘You know I’ve never been good at small talk, Steph.’

Flynn nodded. ‘This is a hard place to find.’ She was wearing a trouser suit; navy blue with pinstripes, and judging by how lean and supple she looked, she’d obviously kept up to date with her martial arts training. She exuded the confidence of someone in control. A pair of reading glasses lay folded beside a file on the table. It looked like she’d been working before he’d arrived.

‘Not hard enough apparently,’ he replied. He didn’t smile. ‘What can I do for you, Sergeant Flynn?’

‘It’s Detective Inspector now, although it couldn’t possibly make the slightest bit of difference.’

Poe raised his eyebrows. ‘My old job?’

She nodded.

‘I’m surprised Talbot allowed you to take it,’ Poe said. Talbot had been the director when Poe had been SCAS’s detective inspector. He was a petty man, and he’d have blamed Flynn for what happened just as much as he blamed Poe. More so perhaps – Poe hadn’t hung around; she had.

‘It’s Edward van Zyl now. Talbot didn’t survive the fallout.’

‘Good man, I like him,’ Poe grunted. When van Zyl was in North West Special Branch they’d worked closely together on a counter-terrorism case. The July 21st bombers had trained in the Lake District, and Cumbrian cops were vital in building up the intelligence profile. It had been van Zyl who asked Poe to apply for the SCAS position. ‘And Hanson?’

‘Still the deputy director.’

‘Pity,’ said Poe. Hanson was a politically savvy man and Poe wasn’t surprised to learn he’d somehow managed to wriggle out of it. Ordinarily, when a senior manager is forced out due to catastrophic errors in judgement, the next manager in line takes their job. That Hanson hadn’t been promoted meant he’d not got away with it completely.

Poe could still remember the smirk on Hanson’s face when he suspended him. He hadn’t had contact with anyone from the NCA since. He’d left no forwarding address, had cancelled his mobile-phone contract, and as far as he knew, he wasn’t on any database in Cumbria.

If Flynn had taken the trouble to track him down, it meant a decision on his employment had finally been made. As Hanson was still in post, Poe doubted it was good news. It didn’t matter; he’d moved on months ago. If Flynn was there to tell him he no longer worked for the NCA then that was fine. And if she were there to tell him that Hanson had finally found a way to charge him with a criminal offence, he would just have to deal with it.

There was no point shooting the messenger. He doubted Flynn wanted to be there. ‘You want a brew? I’m having one.’ He didn’t wait for a response and disappeared into the croft. He shut the door behind him.

Five minutes later he was back with a metal espresso maker and a separate pot of boiled water. He filled two mugs. ‘Still taking it black?’

She nodded and took a sip. She smiled and raised the mug in appreciation.

‘How’d you find me?’ His face was serious. His privacy had become increasingly important to him.

‘Van Zyl knew you’d come back to Cumbria and he knew roughly where you lived. Some quarry workers told me there was someone living in an old shepherd’s croft in the middle of nowhere. They’d been watching you do the place up.’ She looked round as if evidence of this was negligible.

Herdwick Croft looked as though it had grown out of the ground. The walls were made of unrendered stone – too big for any one man to lift and manoeuvre into place – and it merged seamlessly with the ancient moorland it inhabited. It was squat and ugly and looked like it had been frozen in time for two hundred years. Poe loved it.

Flynn said, ‘I’ve been here a couple of hours waiting—’

‘What do you want?’

Flynn reached into her briefcase and pulled out a thick file. She didn’t open it. ‘I assume you’ve heard of the Immolation Man?’

Poe jerked his head up. He hadn’t expected her to say that.

And of course he’d heard of the Immolation Man. Even in the middle of the Shap Fells, the Immolation Man was news. He’d been burning men to death in some of Cumbria’s many stone circles. Three victims so far, unless there was another he hadn’t heard about. Although the press had been speculating, the facts were there if you knew how to separate them from the sensationalism.

The county had its first-ever serial killer.

Even if SCAS had been called in to help Cumbria police, he was on suspension: subject to an internal investigation and an IPCC inquiry. Although Poe knew he was an asset to any investigation, he wasn’t irreplaceable. SCAS had moved on without him.

So what was Flynn really doing there?

‘Van Zyl’s lifted your suspension. He wants you working the case. You’ll be my DS.’

Although Poe’s face was a mask, his mind worked faster than a computer. It didn’t make sense. Flynn was a new DI, and the last thing she’d want would be the old DI working under her, undermining her authority just by being there. And she’d known him a long time and knew how he responded to authority. Why would she want to be a part of that?

She’d been ordered to.

Poe noticed she’d made no mention of the IPCC inquiry so presumably that was still ongoing. He stood and cleared away the mugs. ‘Not interested,’ he said.

She seemed surprised by his answer. He didn’t know why. The NCA had washed their hands of him.

‘Don’t you want to see what’s in my file?’ she asked.

‘I don’t care,’ he replied. He no longer missed SCAS. While it had taken him a long time to get used to the slower pace of life on the Cumbrian fells, he didn’t want to give it up. If Flynn wasn’t there to sack or arrest him, then he wasn’t interested in anything else she had to say. Catching serial killers was no longer a part of his life.

‘OK,’ she said. She stood up. She was tall and their eyes were on the same level. ‘I need you to sign two bits of paper for me then.’ She removed a thinner file from her briefcase and passed it over.

‘What’s this?’

‘You heard me say van Zyl’s lifted your suspension, right?’

Nodding, he read the document.

Ah.

‘And you realise that as you’re now officially a serving police officer again, if you refuse to come back to work it’s a sackable offence? But rather than go through all that, I’ve been told I can accept your resignation now. I’ve taken the liberty of getting HR to draw up this document.’

Poe studied the one-page sheet. If he signed at the bottom, he was no longer a police officer. Although he’d been expecting it for a while, he found it wasn’t as easy to say goodbye as he thought. If he did sign, it would draw a line under the last eighteen months. He could start living.

But he’d never carry a warrant card again.

He glanced at Edgar. The spaniel was soaking up the last of the sun. Most of the surrounding land was his. Was he ready to give all this up?

Poe took her pen and scrawled his name across the bottom. He handed it back so she could check he hadn’t simply written ‘piss off’ on the bottom. Now that her bluff had been called she seemed less sure of what to do next. It wasn’t going to plan. Poe took the mugs and coffee pot inside. A minute later he was back outside. Flynn hadn’t moved.

‘What’s up, Steph?’

‘What are you doing, Poe? You loved being a cop. What’s changed?’

He ignored her. With the decision made, he just wanted her to go. ‘Where’s the other document?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You said you had two things for me to sign. I’ve signed your resignation letter, so unless you’ve got two of them, there’s still something else.’

She was all business again. Opening the file, she removed the second document. It was a bit thicker than the first and had the official seal of the NCA across the top.

She launched into a rehearsed speech. It was one Poe had used himself. ‘Washington Poe, please read this document and then sign at the bottom to confirm you’ve been served.’ She handed over the thick sheaf of paper.

Poe glanced at the top sheet.

It was an Osman Warning.

Oh shit . . .

When the police have intelligence that someone is in significant and immediate danger, they have a duty of care to warn the victim. The Osman Warning is the official process for discharging that duty. Potential victims can consider the protective measures being proposed by the police, or, if they aren’t happy, they can make their own arrangements.

Poe scanned the first page but it was full of officious bullshit. It didn’t say who he was at risk from. ‘What’s this about, Steph?’

‘I can only tell you if you’re still a serving police officer, Poe.’ She handed him the resignation letter he’d just signed. He didn’t take it.

‘Poe, look at me.’

She held his gaze and he saw nothing but honesty in her eyes.

‘Trust me. You need to see what’s in this file. If you don’t like it, you can always email Hanson your notice later.’ She handed him back his resignation letter.

Poe nodded and tore up the letter.

‘Good,’ she said.

She passed across some glossy photographs. They were of a crime scene.

‘Do you recognise these?’

Poe studied them. They were of a dead body. Blackened, charred, almost unrecognisable as a human being. Shrunken, as anything primarily made of liquid is after exposure to extreme heat. The corpse looked as though it had the same texture and weight as the charcoal Poe removed from his wood-burning stove every morning. He could almost feel the residual heat through the image.

‘Do you know which one this was?’ Flynn asked.

Poe didn’t answer. He flicked through the sheaf of photos searching for a point of reference. The last one was a shot of the whole crime scene. He recognised the stone circle. ‘This is Long Meg and Her Daughters. This . . .’ he pointed at the first photograph, ‘. . . must be Michael James, the Tory councillor. He was the third victim.’

‘It is. Staked in the middle of the stone circle, covered in accelerant, then set on fire. His burns were over ninety per cent. What else do you know?’

‘Only what I’ve read. I expect the police were surprised at the location; it’s not as rural as the other two.’

‘Not half as surprised as they were at how he’d successfully managed to evade every bit of surveillance they’d put in place.’

Poe nodded. The Immolation Man had chosen a different stone circle each time he killed. It was how the press had come up with the name. Immolation meant sacrificing by burning and, with no other motive, the press jumped on it. Poe would have expected the police to be watching all the circles. Then again maybe not . . . there were a lot of stone circles in Cumbria. Add the barrows, henges and standing stones and you’d have nearly five hundred to watch. Even if they used minimal surveillance details, they’d need a team numbering close to two thousand cops. Cumbria barely had a thousand badged officers as it was. They’d have no choice but to pick and choose where they put their limited resources.

He passed the photographs back. As gruesome as it all was, it didn’t explain why Flynn had made the long journey north. ‘I still don’t understand what this has to do with me?’

She ignored the question. ‘SCAS were called in after the Immolation Man’s second victim. The SIO wanted a profile.’

It was to be expected. It was the unit’s speciality.

‘Which we did,’ she continued. ‘Came up with nothing useable, the usual stuff about age ranges and ethnicity, that type of thing.’

Poe knew that profiles could add value, but only when they were part of a multi-strand investigation. He doubted they were talking because of a profile.

‘Have you heard of multi-slice computed tomography?’

‘Yes,’ he lied.

‘It’s where a machine photographs the body in very thin slices rather than as a whole. It’s an expensive process but sometimes it identifies ante- and post-mortem injuries that the conventional forensic post-mortem has missed.’

Poe had been very much a ‘need to know what it can do’ rather than a ‘need to know how it works’ kind of guy. If Flynn said it was possible, then it was possible.

‘The post-mortem found nothing, but the MSCT found this.’ Retrieving another set of photographs, she placed them on the table in front of him. They were computerised images of what appeared to be random slashes.

‘These were on the third victim?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘On the torso. Everything he does is designed for maximum impact.’

The Immolation Man was a sadist. Poe didn’t need a fancy profile to tell him that. He studied each page as Flynn turned them over. There were nearly twenty but it was the last one that caused him to gasp.

It was the sum of all the parts. The computer image where all the random slashes came together to form the picture you were meant to see. Poe’s mouth turned to glue. ‘How?’ he croaked.

Flynn shrugged. ‘We were hoping you could tell us.’

They stared at the last photograph.

The Immolation Man had carved two words into the victim’s chest.

‘Washington Poe’.

Poe sat down heavily. Blood leached from his face. A vein in his temple began pounding.

He stared at the computerised mock-up of his name. And it wasn’t just his name – above it had been carved the number five.

That wasn’t good . . . That wasn’t good at all.

‘We’re interested in why he felt the need to carve your name into the victim’s chest.’

‘And it’s not something he’s done before? It’s not something that’s been held back from the press?’

‘Nope. We’ve retrospectively put victims one and two through the MSCT and they’re clear.’

‘And the number five?’ There was only one plausible explanation and he knew Flynn agreed. It was why she’d issued the Osman Warning.

‘We assume you’re earmarked as the fifth victim.’

He picked up the last photograph. After the crude attempt at the number five, the Immolation Man had given up on curves. All the letter strokes were straight.

Although they were only looking at a computer image, Poe could see the wounds were too crude for a scalpel. His money was on a Stanley knife or similar. The fact that the letters had been picked up by the MSCT meant two things: they were ante-mortem – if they hadn’t been, the post-mortem examination would have found them – and they were deep; the burning would have destroyed shallower wounds. The victim’s last few minutes must have been hell on earth.

‘Why me?’ Poe said. He’d spent a career making enemies but he hadn’t worked a case involving someone this nutty before.

Flynn shrugged. ‘As you can imagine, you’re not the first person to ask that question.’

‘I wasn’t lying when I said I only know what’s been reported in the papers.’

‘We know that when you were a Cumbria police officer, you had no official contact with any of the victims. I’m assuming you hadn’t had any unofficial contact with them?’

‘Not that I know of.’ He gestured to the croft and surrounding land. ‘This place takes up most of my time these days.’

‘That’s what we assumed. We don’t think the link is the victims; we think the link is with the killer.’

‘You think I know the Immolation Man?’

‘We think he knows you, or knows of you. We doubt you know him.’

Poe knew that this was the first of many discussions and meetings, and that whether he wanted to or not, he was involved. In what capacity was still up for debate.

‘First impressions?’ Flynn asked.

He studied the slash marks again. Not including the messy number five, he counted forty-two. Forty-two wounds to spell out ‘Washin. . .