‘He didn’t shoot Alastor Locke because he likes his victims to suffer. It’s their despair he gets off on. And if you think I’m exaggerating, this is a man who killed twenty people just to damage his ex-wife’s wedding business. It’s the same man Alastor Locke employed as a . . . what did you call them again?’
‘The mischief makers.’
‘That’s right. He was employed to cause mischief. Instead, he drove his targets to suicide. Remind me why Alastor Locke had to let him go?’
‘Because even after he’d achieved his goal, he kept torturing his targets. He did it for pleasure.’
‘Exactly. And he doesn’t always murder. He has a knack for identifying the one thing his target can’t live without. Then he takes it from them. Sometimes it’s a daughter, like the woman his ex-wife told you about, the one who pranged his car. He got to the mother by releasing her daughter’s sex tapes. The daughter takes her own life then the mother follows suit. And in Davy Newport’s case, the man who taught him to shoot and stalk deer, it was his honour. All he had to do to push him over the cliff was frame him for stealing.’
‘OK,’ Poe said. ‘You seem to have a grip on this man’s psyche that has so far eluded everyone else. And that includes Tilly, and she’s the best I’ve ever seen at this. But you wanted to know who I would save from a burning building. You said if I answered honestly, I’d have everything I need to catch this prick.’
‘I did. And you do. You’re locked in a battle with this man, Sergeant Poe. It might not feel like it, but it’s a game of chess. Of strategy and counterstrategy. Ezekiel Puck isn’t like the people you’ve hunted before. Believing Alastor Locke betrayed him was a mistake; he won’t make another. Not unless you force him into one.’
‘How do I do that?’
‘You play his game, of course.’
‘That seems . . . counterintuitive.’
‘You play his game, but you do it better, Sergeant Poe,’ Bethany said. ‘You make a move so bold he’ll have no choice but to react. You pick a fight with him. Do something so egregious, you become the only thing he can think about. You make yourself his nemesis. And while he isn’t thinking clearly, you set a trap.’
‘A trap? What trap?’
Bethany yawned. ‘Sleepy now,’ she said. Her eyes fluttered then shut. And when they opened again, Bethany was gone. Clara Lang stared back. She looked at her restraints and herbrow furrowed in confusion. Clara thought she was a doctor at the hospital. It was her unwavering belief.
‘Hello, Doctor Lang,’ Poe said.
‘Washington, what are you doing tethered like that? Have you had another episode?’
‘Something like that. Shall we get ourselves out of these restraints, Doctor Lang?’
‘Yes, let’s. Then we can have a nice cup of tea and chat about your nightmares. It feels like a long time since we spoke.’
Poe raised his hand. The signal to end the session.
‘Oh, before you go, Bethany tells me she wants a quick word,’ Clara said. ‘She has something for you.’
The something was a pen. She stabbed Poe with it. It bloody hurt. The pen broke in the flesh between his thumb and his index finger, so he had a new tattoo. It would look like a jail dot, the blotchy prison tattoo that meant you’d served time. Poe had served time, was still serving time, but only inside his own head. On the flipside, Bethany had given Poe the means to catch Ezekiel Puck.
All things considered, it was probably a fair exchange.
Chapter 92
Bethany might have given Poe the means, but she hadn’t given him the method. That was going to be down to him. So, instead of getting in his car and driving back to Northumberland, he walked to Bettys, ordered a pot of tea and a plate of fried food, and wrote down everything Bethany had told him.
Ezekiel Puck was a vindictive, vendetta-driven man. Spite personified. Bethany had said that made him predictable. That he’d be unable to let go of a grudge. That he would react to real or imagined slights. But Poe would have to be subtle. He couldn’t do something obvious. He couldn’t call an international press conference and tell the world Puck was a bed-wetting loser. He’d see through it. Shrug it off the same way he would.
Bethany had asked him what Puck did. Poe had said he killed people and she’d got angry. Told him the murders were a byproduct. That Puck was in the despair business, not the murder business. He pushed people to the brink then kept pushing. Stamped on their hands as they clung on to what made their lives worth living.
Poe was good at making people angry. He did it without thinking, Bradshaw said. A natural rudeness, she called it. But rudeness, deliberate or not, wouldn’t force Puck into making a mistake. Poe couldn’t bait a trap with an insult.
Poe thought back to the start of his session with Bethany. To her first question after they’d negotiated what Clara would get in return. She’d said that if he answered the question honestly, it would be somewhere to start. Who would he run into a burning building for? He’d eventually said Bradshaw. If he could only save one of the people he loved, it would be Bradshaw.
But how did that help? He was sure it did, he just couldn’t see it yet. He poured another cup of tea then got stuck into his food. He decided to ignore what Ezekiel Puck did and how he did it. Instead, he thought about what he wanted. What was his primary goal? That was an easy one to answer. He’d wanted to destroy his wife’s wedding business. To bankrupt it. Take her dreams away and make her homeless. Push her to the brink of suicide then give her a nudge.
You play his game, but you do it better . . .
That’s one of the things Bethany had said. It had sounded like a throwaway comment. A platitude. Like one of those motivational posters depressed office workers put on their cubicle wall. Posters like throw me to the wolves and i’ll return leading the pack and be you, not them. But neither Bethany nor Clara spoke like that. They weren’t wired that way.
