‘Sorry, ma’am,’ Poe said. ‘Tilly’s quite hard to keep on task sometimes.’
Bradshaw rolled her eyes. Tutted.
McCloud reached under the desk. Lifted out a rigid plastic box.HANDLE WITH CARE – HUMAN ORGAN IN TRANSITwas printed on the side. Big red letters. It was plugged into the mains. Poe could see a green light on the top. McCloud opened the lid and took a step back.
‘It was when we opened this that I called you in,’ McCloud said. ‘It’s temperature controlled and I didn’t want to unplug it until you’d taken a look.’
Poe peered inside. It was full of plastic boxes, the same shape and size as jewellery trays. Poe gloved up and lifted one out. It was a microscope slide box. Poe opened it. Each slot held a glass slide – a thin flat piece of glass with an even thinner sheet of cover glass. Each slide had a white square for labelling.
And they were all labelled.
Poe lifted out one of the slides and held it up to the light. Trapped between the two sheets of glass was a hair.
‘Is that a . . . ?’
‘Pubic hair?’ McCloud finished for him. ‘That’s certainly what it looks like, Sergeant Poe. Every single slide has one. They’re all neatly labelled with initials and dates. We assume the initials are the person’s name and the date is when it was collected.’
Poe put it down and lifted out another. Another pubic hair. A different initial and date.
‘You can see why I thought this was a job for the Serious Crime Analysis Section.’
Poe didn’t say anything. He put the slide back in the box and cast his eyes around the shed. He saw what he’d expected to see in the corner. ‘You can let him go, ma’am,’ he said.
‘These aren’t a serial killer’s trophies?’ McCloud said. She looked disappointed. As if catching a serial killer would make up fornotcatching the sniper.
‘He’s not a serial killer, ma’am,’ Poe said.
‘What is he then?’
‘He’s a fly fisherman,’ he said. ‘Lots of them believe that the pheromones in women’s pubic hair help attract fish. They tie their flies with them. If you go online there are whole forums discussing which is the most effective ethnicity, what time of the month is the best time to harvest.’
Poe gestured to the slide boxes. The top one held sixty slides and there were eight boxes. Assuming every slide held a pubic hair, that was four hundred and eighty. He shook his head in amazement. The things people did . . .
‘As Gilbert works at the hospital, he’ll have had ready access to . . . material. A large part of his job is taking patients to surgery, to X-ray, to a whole host of hospital departments, and a lot of them will be wearing those stupid gowns. The dignity strippers that don’t cover the arse. When the patient gets out of the wheelchair or the bed, nine times out of ten, they’ll leave one of these little dudes behind. He’ll have slipped it into an envelope and brought it home. It’s creepy but I doubt it’s illegal.’
‘This is a new low for me,’ McCloud said, shaking her head. ‘It’s hard enough being a woman in this job. It doesn’t matter what I achieve now – I’ll be forever known as the fucking pubethief catcher.’
Poe didn’t know what to say. He thought McCloud was being hard on herself. It was a mistake anyone could have made. Butshe was right: cops were merciless when it came to things like this. They had to be. Laughing at the silly stuff helped get them through the dark.
So he kept his own counsel. Thought about how the sniper was still out there, and how they were no closer to catching him.
Chapter 43
Poe waited for Flynn and Mathers to arrive. He briefed them, then drove back to Highwood. Bradshaw went with him. She normally stayed in a hotel in the area they were working – they both did – but they were all shut.Everythingin Gretna was shut. He wondered how many businesses would survive. At least there had been government assistance during the pandemic. With the sniper, they were on their own.
Mathers and Flynn were heading up to Glasgow with Chief Superintendent McCloud. The Gretna connection had refocused the investigation away from London on to Scotland. They needed to discuss resource allocation. Mathers would have to send some of her detectives north. It was where the investigation was active. Nothing was happening down south.
Poe didn’t bother going into Highwood. He could hear laughing and he could hear Edgar. Doyle and Emma were back in the marquee.
‘They can’t still be feeding flies to the dick plants,’ Poe muttered.
‘I beg your pardon, Poe?’ Bradshaw said.
‘You’ll see.’
‘Bloody hell, it’s the Time Lord,’ Emma said the second they stepped into the marquee.
More laughter. Looked like they’d been drinking again. Poe walked to the fridge and grabbed a Spun Gold. He opened a sparkling water for Bradshaw and poured it into a glass. No ice. That was very important. Bradshaw didn’t do ice. Something to do with faecal bacteria.
