‘Who?’
Locke told him.
‘Get her on the phone then.’
Locke removed an ornate notebook from his pocket and found a number. He pressed the speakerphone icon and dialled. His call was answered immediately.
‘Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking Unit, please,’ he said.
There were a couple of clicks while his call was redirected.
‘MSHTU, Detective Chief Inspector Stephanie Flynn speaking.’
‘Good morning, Chief Inspector, this is Alastor Locke. Have I caught you at a bad time? And before you answer, I’m in Whitehall and you’re on speakerphone.’
‘What do you want, dickhead?’
Locke chuckled. ‘I’m thinking of putting the band back together.’
Flynn paused. Then she said, ‘It’s about fucking time.’
Chapter 4
HMSLancaster , the smallest, leakiest tug in the Royal Navy, somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean
Washington Poe smelled of fish.
Not just his clothes.Him. It was a hard thing to admit, but he did. He smelled of fish. One of the stinkiest things you could smell of. Even fresh fish honked. If he were to compile a list – and he frequently did – of the worst things to smell of, fish would be number two. Only anactualnumber two was worse.
Cruellest of all, there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it. And he’d tried, God how he’d tried. The second he got home his clothes were off and in the washing machine. He would then scrub himself in the bath for an hour. He’d use the harshest soap he could buy, and the hottest water he could stand. And within five minutes of stepping out, he smelled like he’d used fish stock as bathwater.
His fiancée – soon-to-be wife – Estelle Doyle, didn’t help. The second he was out of the bath she would say something hilarious like, ‘I don’t know why, but I fancy kippers for tea,’ or ‘We had a double-glazing salesman round earlier. He said he could do the whole house for a thousand pounds. I told him to go away . . . it seemed fishy.’ And Poe would laugh because it was Doyle who’d said it and he loved her. She also had the kind of voice that would make a bowel cancer diagnosis sound sexy.
But still, he wished he didn’t smell of fish.
And the reason he smelled, nostank, of fish was because he was being punished. His last case with the National Crime Agency’s Serious Crime Analysis Section, the UK’s onlydedicated serial killer unit, had involved people who had been stoned to death. It had almost killed him.Literally.It had left him scarred and battered and with PTSD. He was still seeing his trauma therapist, and although he was getting better, the little things were still making him angry. Shops without cashiers. People who said ‘holibobs’. The chip shop closing early. Flies. Adults who wished their dead relatives a ‘happy heavenly birthday’. People who put LOL on text messages. People whosaidLOL. His line manager wanting regular updates on the criminal activity of drug smugglers. Raisins masquerading as chocolate chips in biscuits. Adults who said ‘forever homes’ and ‘fur babies’. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act. The phrase ‘wild swimming’. The usual shit.
He’d been temporarily reassigned to the training wing until he was assessed as being fit for fieldwork. In hindsight, or maybe it was foresight – you never knew who was pulling whose strings when these things were arranged – it was a role for which he was singularly unsuited. He’d been there for less than a month when he’d had a fistfight with another instructor, an over-educated fast-tracked idiot called Jake Burnham. Poe couldn’t remember what the fight was about, but he thought an unattended Pot Noodle might have been involved. However, Burnham had also been at fault, and because he was the son of an assistant chief constable in Police Scotland they couldn’t sack him. Which meant they couldn’t sack Poe either. Instead, they did the next best thing: they reassigned him – again – to the stupidest inter-agency task-force ever dreamed up. His boss at the training unit had assumed he’d hand in his notice there and then, but he hadn’t understood how contrary Poe could be.
So now he and three other misfits spent their working days on the smallest, leakiest tug in the Royal Naval fleet on an intelligence-led stop-and-search programme of fishing trawlers.The half-baked idea was that the combined might ofthe Royal Navy, Border Force and National Crime Agency would prove a formidable weapon in the fight against drugs. Poe knew it was a half-baked idea because he was on the taskforce. Poe didn’t know anything about fish. He didn’t even like fish. He would tolerate cod if it was wrapped in crispy batter. Even then he’d give most of it to Edgar, his gluttonous springer spaniel. Not the batter, though. That was all his.
But lack of knowledge of the UK fishing industry aside, he wasn’t the biggest buffoon on HMSLancaster. The ship, which had started life as an inshore survey vessel, was skippered by the boatswain Isaac Scoplett, surely the drunkest man in the Royal Navy. He reminded Poe of a less sober Uncle Albert fromOnly Fools and Horses. Poe had no idea what Scoplett had done to get the same punishment posting as him, but he suspected gross incompetence was a big part of it. He was the only sailor Poe had met who said left and right instead of port and starboard.
If anything, the two chuckleheads from the Border Force were worse. At least Scoplett tried – not to fall overboard, mainly – whereas Amer Anwar and Clancy Bright seemed to rejoice in their stupidity. As well as that, they were mean, lazy and misogynistic. Poe had received an email from an old contact in customs. It was just their names in the subject line and ten rows of laughing emojis.
Their new line of attack was that Poe had a therapist. They thought that was funny. They didn’t knowwhyhe had a therapist, but that didn’t seem to matter. They’d been making snide comments for days, trying to get a rise, but Poe wasn’t playing. He barely listened to them. It would come to a head at some point, but he wasn’t ready yet.
Because, as stubborn as he was, Poewasgetting tired of it all. He was tired of smelling of fish, and he was tired of the commute. Of the nights at sea. He missed his fiancée, and he missed his friend, Tilly Bradshaw. Hisbestfriend. When thelast case had concluded, the dream team was split up. He had been sent to the training wing, SCAS’s boss, DI Stephanie Flynn, had been promoted to DCI and gone to a Modern Slavery unit, and Bradshaw had been seconded to the security services; doing what, she wouldn’t say. He knew she was as miserable as him, though.
So, in secret they’d been making a plan . . . It was a great plan and he was tempted to put it into action soon.
But not before he’d kicked the shit out of the Border Force guys.
Chapter 5
The boat they’d just boarded was called theAurora II. It was a 14-metre trawler and it had been chugging its way back to Cornwall when they’d boarded it. It had taken Scoplett four attempts to bring HMSLancasteralongside. Everyone had found somewhere else to look as he kept messing up what was a basic naval task.He was less Captain Cook, more Captain Pugwash.
But eventually, with the help of a lucky swell, he’d managed to get close enough to tie up and board. Scoplett nodded. Job well done. He removed his hip flask, took a swig then offered it around. No one accepted.
