Page 13 of The Killer’s Mark

‘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 agreed.

Bradshaw nodded. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Don’t hurt him too much.’

Chapter 7

Although Poe still had his old shepherd’s cottage on Shap Fell, he now lived just outside Corbridge in Northumberland. He’d got married the year before, and Herdwick Croft simply wasn’t big enough for him, Estelle Doyle-Poe – she’d insisted on taking his name – and Edgar the spaniel. So he’d moved into Highwood, Estelle’s ancestral home. They still had the occasional weekend in Cumbria, and whenever Estelle was lecturing abroad or down south, Poe took the opportunity to spend time on the most desolate, inhospitable fell in northern Europe. It cheered him up.

When he and Bradshaw had taken the plunge and left their respective jobs to set up as private investigators, Carlisle was the most obvious location. Newcastle was nearer to Corbridge, but it was a metropolitan city with several established PIs. Cumbria didn’t have any. There were local adverts, but all they did was direct you to big firms in Manchester, Birmingham, even London. And Bradshaw’s work for Alastor Locke could be done anywhere she could plug in her computer.

It meant a longer commute home, but Poe didn’t mind. There was barely any traffic, and the A69 was a pleasant enough road. The forty-minute drive flew by. Bradshaw usually came back to Highwood with him. She had her own rooms in the house now. When Brunton, Highwood’s long-serving butler, eventually retired and moved to Malta with his wife, Estelle was going to sell Bradshaw his cottage in the village. But tonight she was staying in Carlisle. She had work she wanted to finish.

Poe drove up Highwood’s long and winding drive, startled some roe deer and attracted the attention of some bullocks. Edgar heard the car and came bounding out to greet him. Estelle met him at the door.

‘You been home long?’ he asked, kissing her cheek.

‘Just got back from the hospital now.’

‘Kill anyone good?’

‘No one who didn’t deserve it.’

Estelle was a forensic pathologist. All her patients were dead.

‘Tilly tells me you have a case.’

Poe nodded. ‘Weird one,’ he said. ‘She has this thing with her hand. Can’t control it.’

‘Alien hand syndrome?’

‘Yeah. She threw a load of pop around my office. Made my table all sticky.’

‘Well, this is a pre-dinner tale,’ she said, linking arms. ‘Brunton’s got corned-beef hash bubbling away on the Aga. You can tell me about it while the potatoes soften.’

They poured themselves drinks – Spun Gold for Poe, red wine for Estelle – and drank them while Poe told her about his day, from his scrap with the idiot in Indica’s tattoo studio to Esmerée’s independent hand making itself known. When he finished, she just had one question.