Chapter 67
‘Have you seen this email?’ Poe said.
‘It’s not on your work account, Poe,’ Bradshaw replied. ‘It must have come through on your personal email. Who’s it from?’
‘The idiot whose balls I twisted in the Szechuan Palace. The one who told us not to mess with the Red Chamber. It appears he’s seen the error of his ways.’
‘Let me see.’ Bradshaw turned Poe’s laptop. She waited a beat, then said, ‘Gosh. What did you threaten him with, Poe? He’s given you everything. Video files, documents. He knows who murdered Mark Buckby. He even knows where Océane Blue is hiding.’
‘Holy shit!’ Esmerée said. She paused, then ad-libbed, ‘Maybe he liked having his nuts fondled, Poe. It’s a pity you didn’t stick your finger up his—’
‘We have to tell the police,’ Bradshaw said.
‘Why?’ Poe said, glad that Bradshaw hadn’t let Esmerée finish.
‘Because two people have been murdered.’
‘And they aren’t going to get any deader.’ He shook his head. ‘This is the kind of information people are killed for. I won’t put you at risk. I say we pretend we didn’t get it. Tilly, can you delete it? Make sure it can’t be recovered?’
‘I can, Poe. But it doesn’t mean I should.’
‘Do you want the Red Chamber turning up at Highwood? Because that’s what’ll happen if they find out we have this. They’ll kill everyone. Me, you, Estelle. Brunton. Esmerée. Probably Edgar, as he’s bound to try to protect us.’
‘I don’t want them to kill Edgar, Poe.’
‘Or me and Estelle?’
‘No.’
‘Good that you thought of my dog first, though, Tilly.’
Esmerée scowled. ‘Can you morons stick to the … you-know-what.’
Poe winked at her. She scowled some more. ‘How long to delete the email, Tilly?’ he said.
‘I can do it now,’ Bradshaw replied. ‘But to be ultra-cautious, I’ll backdoor into your email server. Delete it at source as well. Once I’ve done that, even I couldn’t recover it. It’ll take me forty minutes. Thirty if you get me a green smoothie.’
‘On it,’ Poe said. ‘Come on, Esmerée. I’ll buy you a milkshake.’
Poe left the office. Esmerée followed him. Instead of walking down the stairs, he grabbed the stepladder from the cleaner’s cupboard. He put it under the hatch, climbed up and was soon back in Cowie House’s loft.
He checked his watch. Five minutes since their little play had begun.
He figured that would be enough. Two for the people listening in to realise they had a problem, another three to scramble their resources.
He didn’t think there would be anyone left to listen, but he kept as quiet as possible anyway.
He disconnected the cables and picked up the G-LEM 5674 high-performance camera unit.
Leaving the cables in situ, he carried the unit to the hatch and lowered it down to Esmerée.
‘What now?’ she whispered after Poe had rejoined her on the third floor.
‘What you whispering for? I’ve disconnected everything.’
‘Oh yeah,’ she said. ‘What now, asshole?!’
‘We wait,’ Poe said. ‘Although I doubt it’ll be for long.’