The Curator (Washington Poe) Read online

  More praise for M. W. Craven

  ‘M. W. Craven is a forceful

  new voice in British crime fiction’

  Caro Ramsay

  ‘I cannot recall the last time I binge-read a novel in thirty-six hours …’

  A. A. Dhand

  ‘Satisfyingly twisty and clever’

  Michael J. Malone

  ‘In Bradshaw and Poe, M.W. Craven has created a stand-out duo who are two of the most compelling characters in crime fiction in recent years’

  Fiona Cummins

  ‘Washington Poe – a rising giant

  in detective fiction’

  Alison Bruce

  ‘Dark, thrilling and unputdownable, with sharply drawn characters

  that stride off the page’

  Victoria Selman

  ‘This book is dark and twisted

  and I loved it’

  Simon Toyne

  Also by M.W. Craven

  Washington Poe series

  The Puppet Show

  Black Summer

  Avison Fluke series

  Born in a Burial Gown

  Body Breaker

  Copyright

  Published by Constable

  ISBN: 978-1-47213-193-5

  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.

  Copyright © M.W. Craven, 2020

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  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.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Constable

  Little, Brown Book Group

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Praise for M.W. Craven

  Also by M.W. Craven

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  To my late mother, Susan Avison Craven.

  You weren’t with us when I finally realised my dream,

  but none of this would have been possible without

  your enthusiasm for reading.

  A Black Swan event is unprecedented,

  impossible to predict and has a huge impact.

  Afterwards, it is rationalised by hindsight as if

  it should have been anticipated.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  ‘The player who understands the role of the pawn, who really understands it, can master the game of chess,’ the man said. ‘They might be the weakest piece on the board but pawns dictate where and when your opponent can attack. They restrict the mobility of the so-called bigger pieces and they determine where the battle squares will be.’

  The woman stared at him in confusion. She’d just woken and was feeling groggy.

  And sore.

  She twisted her head and searched for the source of her pain. It didn’t take long.

  ‘What have you done?’ she mumbled.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it? It’s old-fashioned catgut so the sutures are a bit agricultural, but they’re supposed to be. It’s not used any more but I needed the “wick effect”. That’s when infection enters the wound through the suture. It will ensure the scar stays livid and crude. A permanent reminder of what has happened.’

  He picked up a pair of heavy-duty rib shears.

  ‘Although not for you, of course.’

  The woman thrashed and writhed but it was no use. She was bound tight.

  The man admired the exacting lines of the surgical instrument. Turned it so the precision steel caught the light. Saw his face reflected in the larger blade. He looked serious. This wasn’t something he particularly enjoyed.

  ‘Please,’ the woman begged, fully awake now, ‘let me go. I promise you, I won’t say anything.’

  The man walked round and held her left hand. He stroked it affectionately.

  ‘I’ve had to wait for the anaesthetic to wear off so this is going to hurt, I’m afraid. Believe me when I say I wish it didn’t have to.’

  He placed her ring finger between the blades of the rib shears and squeezed the handles together. There was a crunch as the razor-sharp edges sliced through bone and tendon as if they weren’t there.

  The woman screamed then passed out. The man stepped away from the spreading pool of blood.

  ‘Where was I?’ he said to himself. ‘Ah, yes, we were talking about pawns. Beginners think they’re worthless, there to be sacrificed – but that’s because they don’t know when to use them.’

  He removed a coil of wire from his pocket. It had toggles at each end. He placed them between the index and middle finger of each hand. In a practised movement he wrapped the wire around the woman’s neck.

  ‘Because knowing when to sacrifice your pawns is how the game is won.’

  He pulled the garrotte taut, grunting as the cruel wire bit into her skin, severing her trachea, crushing her jugular vein and carotid artery. She was dea
d in seconds.

  He waited an hour then took the other finger he needed.

  He carefully arranged it in a small plastic tub, keeping it separate from the others. He looked at his macabre collection with satisfaction.

  It could begin now.

  The other pawns were in position.

  They just didn’t know it yet …

  Chapter 1

  Christmas Eve

  It was the night before Christmas and all wasn’t well.

  It had started like it always did. Someone asking, ‘Are we doing Secret Santa this year?’ and someone else replying, ‘I hope not,’ both making a pact to avoid mentioning it to the office manager, both secretly planning to mention it as soon as possible.

  And before anyone could protest, the decision had been made and the office was doing it again. The fifteenth year in a row. Same rules as last year. Five-quid limit. Anonymous gifts. Nothing rude or offensive. Gifts that no one wanted. A total waste of everyone’s time.

  At least that’s what Craig Hodgkiss thought. He hated Secret Santa.

  He hated Christmas too. The yearly reminder that his life was shit. That, while the colleagues he outwardly sneered at were going home to spend Christmas with their families and loved ones, he’d be spending it on his own.

  But he really hated Secret Santa.

  Three years ago it had been the source of his greatest humiliation. Setting himself the not unreasonable Christmas target of shagging Hazel, a fellow logistics specialist at John Bull Haulage, he’d wangled it so he was the one who’d bought her Secret Santa gift. He reckoned buying her a pair of lace panties would be the perfect way to let her know he was up for some extracurricular activities while her husband long-hauled across mainland Europe.

  His plan worked.

  Almost.

  It had been the perfect way to let her know.

  Unfortunately she was happily married, and instead of rushing into his bed she’d rushed to her husband, who was between jobs and was having a brew in the depot. The six-foot-five lorry driver had walked into the admin office and broken Craig’s nose. He’d told him that if he ever so much as looked at his wife again he’d find himself hogtied in the back of a Russia-bound shipping container. Craig had believed him. So much so that, in front of the whole office, he’d lost control of his bladder.

  For two years everyone had called him ‘Swampy’. He couldn’t even complain to Human Resources as he was terrified of getting Hazel into trouble.

  For two years he hadn’t made a dent in the girls in the office.

  But eventually Hazel and her brute of a husband had moved on. He took a job driving for Eddie Stobart and she went with him. Craig told everyone that Hazel’s husband had left the company because he’d caught up with him and given him a hiding, but no one had believed him.

  Actually, one person seemed to.

  By Craig’s own standards, Barbara Willoughby was a plain girl. Her hair looked like it had been styled in a nursing home, her teeth were blunt and too widely spaced, and she could have done with dropping a couple of pounds. On a scale of one-to-ten Craig reckoned she was a hard six, maybe a seven in the right lighting, and he only ever shagged eights and above.

  But there was one thing he did like about her. She hadn’t been there when he’d pissed himself.

  So he’d asked her out. And to his surprise he found they got on really well. She was fun to be with and she was popular. He liked how she made him feel and she was adventurous in bed. He also liked how she only wanted to do things at the weekends. During the week she would stay in and study for some stupid exams she was taking.

  Which suited Craig just fine.

  Because, after a few weeks of dating Barbara, he’d got his swagger back. And with it he began carving notches again.

  To his amazement he discovered it was actually easier pulling the type of woman he went for when he told them he was in a long-term relationship. He reckoned it was the combination of his boyish good looks and the thought of doing over someone they didn’t know. Which gave Craig an idea: if those sort of women enjoyed the thrill of being with someone who cheated, they’d go crazy for someone who had affairs …

  So Craig Hodgkiss, at the age of twenty-nine, decided he would ask Barbara to marry him. She’d jump at the chance. She was in her early thirties, had some biological clock thing going on (but was unaware he’d had a vasectomy two years earlier) and would almost certainly be left on the shelf if she said no. And then he’d reap the rewards. A faithful doormat keeping his bed warm and a succession of women who’d happily shag a man wearing a wedding band.

  And because he wanted everyone in the office to know he was about to become illicit fruit, he’d decided to put past experiences behind him and propose during the office Secret Santa.

  Arranging it hadn’t been straightforward. He’d got Barbara’s ring size by stealing her dead grandmother’s eternity ring, the one she only wore on special occasions. While Barbara turned her flat upside down looking for it, he’d been asking a jeweller to make the engagement ring the same size and to recycle the diamonds and gold. The whole thing had only cost him two hundred quid.

  The next thing was to think of a cool way of proposing. Something that would get the office girls talking about how romantic Craig was. A rep like that could only help. He decided on a mug. It was the perfect Secret Santa gift as it met the five-quid limit set by the office manager and, although half the gifts under the cheap fibre optic Christmas tree looked like they were mugs, half the gifts under the tree didn’t have ‘Will You Marry Me?’ printed on the side.

  When Barbara read the message and then saw what was inside … well, he reckoned she’d burst into tears, shout yes and hug him for all she was worth.

  The office floor was strewn with cheap wrapping paper. All reindeer and snowmen and brightly wrapped presents tied with ribbons.

  Barbara was next. She picked up her parcel and looked at him strangely.

  Did she know?

  She couldn’t. No one did. Not even the girl he’d persuaded to swap with him so he was the one buying for Barbara.

  Tiffany, Barbara’s best friend, began recording it on her mobile phone for some reason. That was OK, though. Better than OK actually. He’d be able to post it on Twitter and Facebook and keep a copy on his phone. Ready to show girls at the drop of a hat. Look at me. Look how nice I am. Look how sensitive I am. You can have some of this … but only for one night.

  Craig caught Barbara’s eye. He winked. She didn’t return it. Didn’t even smile. Just held his gaze as she lifted the wrapped box from one of his old gift bags.

  Something wasn’t right. The wrapping paper was thick and white with black pictures; he thought his had been cheap and brightly coloured.

  Barbara ripped it off without looking at it. The mug was in a polystyrene box. He’d taped the two halves together to increase the suspense. Barbara ran a pair of scissors down the join before separating them.

  She pulled out the mug and Craig’s confusion intensified. It wasn’t his. He hadn’t seen this one before. Something was printed on the side but it wasn’t proposing marriage. In inch-high black letters it said:

  #BSC6

  Barbara didn’t know she’d opened the wrong parcel, though. Without looking inside the mug, she glared at him and upended the mug’s contents.

  ‘Cheating fucking bastard,’ she said.

  Craig didn’t protest his innocence. He couldn’t. He was unable to tear his eyes away from the things that had fallen on the floor. They were no engagement ring.

  He recoiled and gasped in revulsion.

  A familiar and unwelcome warmth began spreading from his groin.

  And then the screaming started.

  Chapter 2

  Boxing Day

  Someone else who hated Christmas was Detective Sergeant Washington Poe.

  As a committed grouch he was against all forms of enforced joviality and, up until today, he’d managed to shun all festivities, organised or ot
herwise. He usually worked through the enforced Christmas break, spent it alone or found a pub full of like-minded misanthropes and drank until it was over.

  But not this year. This year he’d been well and truly ‘Bradshawed’.

  Because, instead of being in the pub or hunkered down in his two-hundred-year-old shepherd’s croft, with beer in the fridge and leftover roast potatoes in the oven, he was in a penthouse flat in a village on the outskirts of Cambridge.

  His friend and colleague Matilda ‘Tilly’ Bradshaw had dragged him to a baby shower.

  Initially, he’d point blank refused.

  She’d looked upset, but that was OK, she’d have got over it. She might be his best friend but a baby shower at a rich person’s house was his special kind of hell.

  She’d stamped her foot.

  He’d ignored her.

  But then she’d used her most deadly weapon against him, one he was powerless against: incessant logic.

  He’d told her that baby showers were for women.

  She’d shouted at him in front of the whole office. Everyone in the Serious Crime Analysis Section, the National Crime Agency unit charged with investigating emerging serial killers and apparently motiveless murders, stopped to listen.

  And giggle.

  ‘Washington Poe, you might have a penis but that doesn’t mean you get to use the social privileges of the patriarchal society to get out of doing things you don’t like.’

  Poe had been about to ask her what the hell she was talking about when he’d heard someone snigger, ‘What does she mean, “might have a penis”?’

  He’d tried saying he couldn’t leave Edgar, his springer spaniel, on his own for that long.

  She’d replied that Edgar could stay with Victoria Hume, his neighbour. ‘You know, like he does all the time.’

  He tried the truth – that he didn’t want to go.

  ‘Well, gee golly, mister,’ she’d countered, ‘since when did Washington Poe always get what he wants? Our line manager, DI Stephanie Flynn, is having a baby and her sister has been kind enough to host a baby shower – we’re her friends, we’re invited, we’re going, it’s as simple as that.’

  So Poe was at a baby shower, sulking in a corner. Up until then he’d avoided catching anyone’s eye. He planned to do that until he’d been there long enough to leave. His glass of Champagne had gone warm forty minutes ago but it gave him something to do with his hands.