Chapter 28
‘You lie very well, Poe,’ Bradshaw said when they were back out on the street.
‘The gumshoe business is very liberating, Tilly,’ Poe said, smiling. ‘I no longer have to worry about which HR policies I might be breaking.’
Bradshaw stopped and stared. ‘Poe, you never worried about which HR policies you were breaking. I remember the time you brought Edgar into work and pretended he was your emotional support spaniel. What did you say to the HR manager who told you to put him in kennels for the day?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘Fibber. You said that human resources were so useless they couldn’t get laid in a monkey brothel with a fistful of bananas. I didn’t understand that, but DCI Stephanie Flynn said it was funny. She said she agreed with you, but so we could all keep our jobs, she’d have to pretend to be cross.’
‘I remember. She shouted at me, then gave me a banana.’
‘Which you gave to me.’
‘I don’t eat exotic fruit, Tilly.’
Bradshaw’s eye-roll could have powered Romford for a month.
‘Anyway,’ Poe continued, ‘I think we can agree that lying to a scumbag like Toby Knight is fun and completely acceptable.’
‘Yes, I didn’t mind that at all. He was kinda gross, his breath smelled worse than Edgar’s and he is morally bankrupt.’
‘You gave him your virus, didn’t you?’
Bradshaw coloured. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘Because I’ve known you for a long time now, Tilly.’
‘You have, Poe.’
‘And you’ve been wanting to try that virus for ages.’
‘I have, Poe.’
‘So?’
‘In exactly forty-eight hours, Toby Knight will be locked out of all of his devices. Everything on them will be deleted. And for three years, each time he buys a new computer or a new phone, even a new PlayStation, after forty-eight hours they will turn into bricks.’
Poe considered that. It seemed brutal.
‘I didn’t ask you to do that, Tilly.’
‘You didn’t, Poe,’ Bradshaw said. ‘But as I’m the business’s managing director, I made a command decision.’
‘You did, huh?’
She nodded emphatically. ‘After all, it’s what Captain Kirk would have done,’ she said.