Puck looked at Bradshaw in astonishment.
‘But . . . but I shot you,’ he said.
‘You’re a very silly man, Ezekiel Puck,’ Bradshaw said.
‘It was on the news! In the papers!’
‘Haven’t you been paying attention to the autocrats, Ezekiel?’ Poe said. ‘The mainstream media can’t be trusted.’
‘Buthow?’
Poe held his eye. Saw nothing but self-pity. Poe yawned. Bored of the man. Tired of thinking about him. ‘You’ll have plenty of time to wonder how, Ezekiel. But I will say this; you’re a psychopath and you’re a narcissist. As soon as we got our heads around that, you weren’t particularly difficult to catch. You’ve never formed an emotional attachment to anyone so it’s unsurprising you don’t understand how you were caught. But let me be clear – there are no circumstances in which I would knowingly put anyone in danger. Tilly was never in your sights.’
‘It was a trick.’
‘No trick. We knew how you would react to your wife becoming an overnight millionaire. We knew it wouldconsumeyou.’
Puck slumped in his seat. Beaten. Then he smiled.
‘If you do know me, Poe, you’ll know I’m part of your life now. I’llalwaysbe part of it. We might not meet again but know this – I will never stop thinking about you.Never.And manipulating people is what I do best. I’ve done it to sophisticated, wary people – what chance do you think His Majesty’s incarceratedpopulation have against me? At some point, one of them will seek you out. Seek out this bitch here, that bitch of a fiancée. Maybe I’ll let you live with the pain for a bit. Maybe I won’t. Deciding what to do and when will keep me warm at night, Poe. This isn’t fucking over!’ He screamed the last bit. Got a bit foam-flecked and ranty.
Poe sighed. ‘You’ve got bigger things to worry about than silly revenge fantasies, Ezekiel. You killed Jools Arreghini. And her father is a man with . . . let’s say, some very dubious business partners.’
‘You’re lying,’ Puck smirked. ‘Nice try, though.’
‘I really don’t care if you believe me or not,’ Poe said. ‘But just so you know, when I get home a bottle of Macallan M will be waiting for me, a gift from Archie Arreghini. It’s a very expensive whisky. What did Archie say to me, Tilly?’
‘He said if you caught the man who killed his daughter, he would send you the bottle, Poe.’
‘Anything else?’
Bradshaw nodded. ‘He told you he would take care of everything else.’
‘What do you think Archie meant by that, Ezekiel?’ Poe said.
Puck gulped. ‘I demand protection.’
Poe shrugged. ‘And you’ll get it. I don’t think there’s a segregation cell safe enough, though. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe the father of the daughter you killed will be in a forgiving mood. You’re the expert in despair, Ezekiel. What do you think?’
Puck put his head in his hands. He started to weep.
‘I’ll get you for this, Poe. I don’t know how, but I will. I’ll get you.’
‘Jolly good,’ Poe said. ‘But can it wait a couple of days?’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m getting married tomorrow.’
Chapter 106
Billy Idol’s ‘White Wedding’ blasted out of Poe’s powerful car speakers. He hadn’t planned it. He hadn’t selected artist, then album, then song, the way Bradshaw had showed him. He’d just got in his car and pressed shuffle. He and Edgar had left Shap listening to The Raven Age, hit the M6 with Spear of Destiny and turned on to the A69 with the title track of Glen Matlock’sConsequences Coming. It wasn’t until he was a mile from Highwood that Idol began sneering about how it was a nice day for said white wedding. And although Poe disagreed with the song’s sentiment – it was starklyanti-marriage – he had to admit that Idol was bang on about it being a nice day for it.
The sky was denim-blue, and last night’s wind had blown itself out. It was warm, not hot. Summer was hanging on, but its colours were changing. Green leaves now tinged with yellow. A solitary kestrel hovered over a field of golden wheat. Death from above. A trio of buzzards worked the thermals, riding the invisible columns of rising air. Poe had once said to Bradshaw that an empty sky was a rare and beautiful thing. She’d replied that an ounce of air contained one thousand billion trillion atoms. Poe had asked if she’d personally counted them, and she’d delivered a tedious lecture on how scientists counted things that couldn’t be counted. He smiled at the memory. It was one of his favourites.
He wondered if she’d still speak to him.
Bradshaw was at Highwood now. She had decided to spend the night with Doyle rather than take a room at Shap Wells. She’d said that he should enjoy his last night of freedom, ha ha ha. So, Poe had spent the night with Edgar. Alone and brooding.He’d tried to take his mind off everything by forcing the spaniel to have a bath. Edgar hated baths. Absolutely hated them. But, as he’d decided the night before Poe’s wedding was the night he would roll in a dead fox for the first time, he’d left Poe no choice. Poe had lathered on the dog-friendly shampoo, avoided Edgar’s snapping jaws and ignored his howls of indignance, washed it off and rubbed him dry with a towel. Edgar had sulked for five whole minutes.