The Puppet Show Read online

  CONSTABLE

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Constable

  Copyright © M. W. Craven, 2018

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-47212-742-6

  Constable

  An imprint of

  Little, Brown Book Group

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK Company

  www.hachette.co.uk

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  This book is dedicated to my wife, Joanne,

  and my late mum, Susan Avison Craven.

  Without either of them this book wouldn’t exist.

  Immolation

  [im-uh-ley-shuh-n]

  1. To kill as a religious sacrifice.

  2. To kill, especially by fire.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Acknowledgements

  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.

  CHAPTER ONE

  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.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  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 Po
e. 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.