Carrots was what cops in the cities called cops in the rural forces.
‘I’m from Cumbria, mate. Pitlochry’s an urban hellscape as far as I’m concerned. I’m the carrot, not you.’
Ma Goonie grunted something unintelligible. Poe doubted it was anything polite. ‘I’ll take ye tae to the briefing room,’ he said. ‘They’re waiting for you.’
The briefing room was full. Poe stood at the back with a couple of bored-looking armed cops. Armed cops always looked bored in Poe’s experience. He reckoned it was so they looked cool.
A uniformed chief superintendent stood up and nodded at Poe. She was a tall woman. An old scar ran from the corner of her lip to the middle of her cheek. Looked like she’d been glassed. Poe wondered if she was a local cop or if she’d been parachuted in from Glasgow or Edinburgh. Police Scotland was a national police force. It covered the whole country. The smaller regional forces had been merged for more than a decade. And with 23,000 personnel, it was the second biggest police force in the UK. Only the Met was bigger. Poe thought Police Scotland was still finding its feet, particularly when it came to balancing the expertise needed for complex operations with the need for local cops and their unrivalled local intelligence systems. It was possible, probable even, that the chief superintendent had never set foot in Pitlochry Police Station.
‘Now that London have bothered to show up, we’ll crack on,’ she said.
She brought up some slides and took them through what the gamekeeper had found.
Chapter 29
The chief superintendent was called Ailsa McCloud and, as Poe had thought, she wasn’t a local cop. She was based in Glasgow and was with the Specialist Crime Division, the unit that provided specialist investigative and intelligence functions.
‘Sorry about that crack before,’ she said. ‘It’s kind of expected. And it’ll help me integrate with the natives. Local intel will be key here, we want them onside.’
‘I used to work for a national unit, ma’am,’ Poe said. ‘I’m used to low-level resentment. Calling us in was seen as a sign of weakness by the troops on the ground.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think you’ve found him.’
The range the gamekeeper had found was crude, but semi-permanent. A square of laminated A4 paper was stapled to an old Scots pine. Bullet holes formed a smiley face. The gamekeeper had ripped it off. Underneath were many more bullet holes. The forensic guys who’d examined the tree counted over one hundred. They dug out seven. They were .50 BMGs, the same ammunition the sniper was using. The gamekeeper recognised a target when he saw one – although he hadn’t realised he’d found the needle in the haystack – and he worked backwards, looking for the firing position. He found nine. Each one had a marker and a sandbag. They started at 600 metres from the target and ended at 1,400, each one 100 metres from the next. Poe didn’t have the exact figures to hand, but he knew all the victims had been within those shooting distances.
With the sniper’s range confirmed, McCloud had done what Poe would have done. She put everything back as it had been,including the ripped target, and left it alone. But not before her tech people had hidden a series of live-feed, military-grade trail cameras. She now had eyes on the range and didn’t have to be anywhere near it. The plan was to wait for the sniper to zero his weapon ahead of the next murder, then mob him with armed cops. Maybe even hope he resisted.
It was a good plan and Poe couldn’t see any way to improve it.
Although it was a good plan, Police Scotland were now in a hurry-up-and-wait, circling-the-airport scenario. They had rushed to get everything in place, but now they were at the whim of the sniper. Poe was sure he would return to his makeshift range, but he’d be working to his own timetable, and they weren’t privy to it. He might turn up that night, it might be a month.
Poe explained the situation to Mathers. She only had one question: ‘Do they have it in hand?’
‘They do, ma’am,’ Poe replied. ‘I’ll hook you up with Chief Superintendent McCloud, but she’s an experienced cop. She knows what she’s doing. I don’t think I’d add any value if I stayed.’ He thought about her ‘Now that London have bothered to show up’ crack and added, ‘In fact, all I’d do is get on their pip.’
Chapter 30
Three days later
National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham
Even as a child, Poe had never taken an interest in nerd culture. He hadn’t queued to watchBack to the Future.Jurassic Parkpassed him by.Men in Blackhad sounded silly. He’d not seenStar Warsuntil Bradshaw had made him watch it on the Spring-heeled Jack stakeout. She’d made him watch all eleven films in the franchise.Eleven. Nine films and two spinoffs. It had taken two whole days. Poe didn’t even do things he liked for that long.
And when the people who’d had nosebleeds as kids inherited the earth, when weird became the new black, he still didn’t take an interest. That was because the people who obsessed over continuity errors in the Marvel Cinematic Universe tended not to be serial killers. He figured they vented their cruelty on elves and goblins and people Bradshaw referred to as non-player characters. Apparently, that meant any character controlled by the game, not the players. Poe had immediately tried to forget that.
Which was why he hadn’t known what to expect. If he’d thought about it at all, he’d have figured it would be a slightly bigger version of theWarlocks & Witchesgames that Bradshaw and her weird little pals played.
But stepping into the National Exhibition Centre was a shock to his system. Sensory overload. Like he’d been hit in the face by a nerdstick. He’d thought the sniper situation might have kept them away. It hadn’t. There were screens to protect the outside queue, and security checks were taking place inside theNEC rather than at the entrance, but the exhibition centre was rammed. Poe had never seen so many misfits, outsiders and flat-out wackadoodle crackpots in one place. And he’d once spent a week in Brighton.
Intense men and women, over-stimulated children. Pasty faces and serious expressions. People queuing to get merchandise signed by washed-up Z-list actors. Displays of movie props, of backdrops. Hundreds of stalls. Food stands. Face-in-the-hole boards, the kind usually seen at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. And everyone was dressed up. Overweight men in Spider-Man costumes, underweight men in Hulk costumes. Women dressed as Princess Leia (always theslaveLeia, Poe noticed), women dressed as Wonder Woman. A hundred other characters Poe didn’t recognise. Men drank from horns, like they’d pillaged Lindisfarne. It was louder than the bar at an airport departure lounge.
‘Blimey,’ he said to Bradshaw. ‘This is insane.’
‘Conventions like this are a complex network of interconnected and overlapping subcultures, Poe,’ she replied, adjusting her elf wings. ‘It’s a chance for fans, game makers, creators of comic books, movies, TTRPGs and a hundred other subsets to mingle without being mocked by people like . . .’
‘Like me?’
