Chapter 36
The door to the interview room opened. Three people walked in.
Two men and, at the back, Susan Hawksworth.
The men were wearing identical suits. There’d either been a communications breakdown or they were recently separated conjoined twins.
One of them had a horseshoe moustache and thick mutton chops.
Made him look like a cop from the seventies.
The kind who wore flares and smoked in the office.
Drove a Ford Cortina. The other was clean-shaven.
He wore glasses and seemed like he might enjoy crossing things off a list.
There were only two seats on the recently vacated cops’ side of the table.
Susan Hawksworth dragged the spare one from Poe’s side, the one the solicitor usually used, and sat in the middle like a tennis umpire.
She caught his eye and shook her head. Almost imperceptible, but it was there.
She didn’t want her colleagues to know they already knew each other.
‘Why were you meeting with Mark Buckby, Mr Poe?’ Mutton Chops said.
‘I’ll tell you that if you tell me why the National Crime Agency is interested in a pornographer.’
The two men glanced at each other. Susan didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘We didn’t say we were NCA. Why would you say that? It seems like a strange assumption to make.’
‘I only left six months ago and I have an excellent memory for faces,’ Poe lied. He had a terrible memory for faces. ‘I remember you from a briefing.’
‘Why did you meet with Mark Buckby yesterday?’
‘A case.’
‘Can you elaborate?’
‘No. It’s confidential.’
Mutton Chops glared at him through thick eyebrows. ‘You do realise that everything you say sounds sarcastic, Poe.’
‘I’m told it’s very annoying.’
‘Might I remind you that we are triple-warranted officers in the NCA.’
‘You may,’ Poe said. ‘Although there’s really no need; I’ve just told you I have an excellent memory.’
‘I’m triple-warranted and you’re a private investigator,’ Mutton Chops said anyway. ‘You have no legal standing in this country. You don’t enjoy client-confidentiality protections. If you don’t tell me why you were meeting with Mark Buckby, I will charge you with wasting police time.’
‘No you won’t,’ Poe said. ‘That only applies if I give you false information. And so far, I’ve been nothing but truthful.’
‘The MIT seem to think you couldn’t have murdered Mark Buckby.
That you appear elsewhere on CCTV at the time he was killed.
I’m not convinced of that. You may not have wielded the meat tenderiser, but you wanted information from him yesterday, and today he was tortured, almost certainly for information.
I don’t think the two things are unrelated. Do you want to know what I think?’
‘No.’
‘I think he told you to piss off yesterday, that’s what I think. You went there for information and he blanked you. So you and your colleague arranged for someone to extract that information by force while you were safely on a train. That’s what I think.’
Poe sighed. Ignored the stupidity. Thought about what the NCA being here meant.
They weren’t interested in Mark Buckby, that was for sure.
He was a pornographer. Probably skirted around the edges, but he wasn’t a player.
That left two people – Océane Blue and Vincent du Buk.
Three if he included Esmerée. Susan had said that du Buk was clean but the FBI were heading up his murder as it fell under financial crime.
The NCA was the British equivalent of the FBI. Poe doubted that was a coincidence.
He needed more information. Which meant he had to give a little. See where their questions led. Stupid interviewers – and Mutton Chops was clearly a stupid interviewer – gave away too much with their questions. Told you where their interests lay.
‘I won’t tell you who hired me,’ he said. ‘And I won’t tell you what Mark Buckby told me yesterday.’
‘That’s not your decision to—’
‘But I will tell you that when I was an hour out of London today, Mark Buckby called me. Said he’d spoken to someone about the case I’m working on and asked if I could meet him at his house.
This person had agreed to talk to me. Buckby said he had new information.
I got off the train at the first stop and caught the next train back to London.
I got a cab from Euston and arrived at his just after four p.m. The door was unlocked so I let myself in.
I found him in his kitchen. I immediately called the police and waited for them outside.
And I agree, he had been tortured, and it was for information.
A punishment beating would have targeted more parts of the body.
This is all I can tell you, because this is all I know. ’
‘What was the new information?’
‘He didn’t tell me.’
‘Who was the new source?’
‘He didn’t tell me.’
Mutton Chops snorted. ‘Yeah, that happens to me all the time, that does. I’m on my way home when a cryptic call from a pornographer gets me to ditch my nice cosy first-class ticket so I can haul my sorry ass back to London.’
‘Then you know,’ Poe said.
Susan Hawksworth hid a smile.
‘I’m calling the boss,’ the second man said. ‘Telling her Poe is involved in a sadistic murder. See if she’ll authorise his detention for ninety-six hours.’
Poe smiled politely. ‘She won’t.’
‘You seem very sure of yourself, Mr Poe.’
‘I am.’
‘Do you want to explain why?’
‘Because I’ve done nothing wrong. And since you know I’ve done nothing wrong, if you want to get an extension you’ll have to lie to your boss.
And when I sue the NCA for wrongful arrest, it’ll be her I name, not you.
I know your boss. She’s ambitious but she plays with a straight bat.
I imagine she already knows you have me in custody. ’
‘I doubt that very much.’
‘Do you know who I informed of my arrest?’
‘No.’
‘Then you don’t know anything.’
‘We are not letting you go until you’ve answered our questions.’
‘Then you’re not letting me go,’ Poe said. ‘Which puts you in an awkward position. You’re not letting me go and you can’t detain me.’
A fourth person entered the interview room. A small man. Had a stoop, like he used to carry coal for a living. He handed Mutton Chops a file and left the room.
‘That’ll be the MIT report on the taxi driver,’ Poe said.
‘Probably CCTV footage from the train as well. It’ll confirm everything I’ve told you.
I wasn’t in London when Mark Buckby was killed, and unless you have evidence tying me to a contract killing, which doesn’t exist because that’s not what happened here, you have nothing to hold me on. ’
Mutton Chops glanced at the top document.
Poe caught a glimpse of it in the reflection on his colleague’s glasses.
Reading upside-down and back-to-front was an underappreciated skill in Poe’s opinion.
The document had an NCA header, so it wasn’t the MIT report on his movements.
He couldn’t read anything else, but they didn’t know that.
He decided to take a punt. Move things along.
‘Who’s Vincent du Buk?’ he asked. ‘And what’s Organised Crime Command’s interest in him?’
Mutton Chops looked up. Realised what had happened and glared at his colleague. He shut the file. ‘Idiot,’ he snapped. Then to Poe, ‘Vincent du Buk is not your concern.’
Poe gestured at the interview room. ‘I beg to differ. I believe you’ve made him my concern. So why don’t we pool our resources? See if we can fill in each other’s blanks?’
‘You’re a civilian, Poe. You give, we take.’
‘I’ve told you everything I can.’
‘But not everything you know. Who’s your client?’
Poe stared at him. ‘Do you know something?’ he said.
‘When Tilly and I had the idea to start a PI business, neither of us really knew what to expect. And I don’t mean the kind of cases we’d be working; I mean the way we would work.
What our ethos would be. We didn’t discuss it because it would only become apparent when we went live.
When we were faced with a situation like this. ’
‘What situation?’
‘When the state is putting their interests above the individual’s. You don’t care about my client. He or she is a means to an end. Nothing more. It seems I owe you a debt of gratitude. Because now I understand what my role is. It’s to stand up for the little person.’