Bradshaw had worked her magic. She’d played about with SEO – an acronym that stood for Search Engine Optimisation, a fact that Poe immediately tried to forget – until PledgePower became the most viewed website in the UK. The media – who’d been leaned on by Alastor Locke – got stuck in. Dissenting voices were shut down. It kickstarted a national debate on toxic masculinity that ended up in the House of Commons. #SaveTheSmithysForge trended on the artist formerly known as Twitter.
And the money poured in. They passed the three-millionpound point, when all donations would have had to be returned, in a day. They reached fifteen million pounds within a week.
Fifteen million daggers in the heart of Ezekiel Puck.
Now he had a big fat red target on his back, Poe was restricted in what he could do. Every move he made was planned out in advance, agreed with the cops charged with his protection. Agents from the United States Secret Service’s Presidential Protection detail advised on how to secure perimeters against a determined sniper. He spent his days indoors. Edgar was with Uncle Bertie in a fishing lodge on the River Foss. The spaniel had jumped out of Doyle’s old Land Rover, excited to be somewhere new. His tail had wagged like a twanged ruler until he realised Poe wasn’t staying with him. No dog could sulk like Edgar.
His wedding to Doyle had been postponed, but that allowed her to take up a lecturing opportunity in Arizona. She’d beenputting it off but agreed to leave the country until Puck was caught.
Flynn and Bradshaw continued to work. Bradshaw managed the website and the donations, Flynn made sure the logistical arrangements were running smoothly. They were. Flynn told Poe that in all her dealings, she could detect the hand of Alastor Locke. If someone as much as paused before saying yes to her, she bobbed him a text. Within minutes the pauser would be on the phone, effusively promising to bend over backwards.
Ten days after Poe’s press briefing, Flynn finally called to say they were ready. If he was adamant that he wanted to do this, it was time to let Puck make his move.
‘Thank fuck,’ Poe said. He shucked his security detail, marched through Highwood’s double front doors, faced the hill, ripped off his T-shirt and screamed, ‘Come on then!’ He panted and thumped himself on the chest. ‘What are you waiting for?!’
And 2,000 yards away, Ezekiel Puck, safely hidden in his ghillie suit, smiled.
Chapter 82
Two weeks after the press conference
Southampton
Ezekiel Puck had cheered up. He’d had a setback with the PledgePower website, but that was all it was – a setback. He’d planned to drive his ex-wife to suicide, but she couldn’t hide forever, and a bullet to the head was a fine compromise. It might even be better. Right now, Joanne would be daring to hope. Over forty million pounds had been donated. Her ridiculous wedding venue was safe. The retarded staff she thought of as friends could keep their jobs. She could pay off her bank loans. She would no longer have a mortgage. She might even go big – buy the holiday home in Malta she’d always dreamed of. And she’d still have an eight-figure nest egg.
He couldn’t allow that. That was unacceptable.
But his ex-wife would have to wait. First, he wanted to deal with this Washington Poe character. The idiot was about to discover what happened when you got sucked into Ezekiel Puck’s gravity well. Poe had fucked around. Now it was time for him to find out. Poe had thought he could turn himself into an irresistible target. That he’d miss all that over-the-top security they’d put around the policeman. The British had occasionally loaned Puck out to the Americans. Sometimes they’d had a job that could only be carried out by someone with a plummy accent and a stiff upper lip. Someone with breeding. So he’d recognised the Secret Service-style security. The onion-ring perimeters. The counter-sniping teams. Their meticulous advance work.
It wouldn’t make any difference. He wasn’t going to kill Washington Poe. Not just yet. That wasn’t how he worked. No, sir. It wasn’t his way. First, Poe had tosuffer. And given how much he’d disrespected Puck, Poe had to suffera lot.
That’show Ezekiel Puck played the game.
He had sometimes wondered if he was insane. Of course he had. How could he not? He’d shot and killed twenty people in the last six months alone, ended their dreary lives with 45 grams of lead and copper. Even as a child, Puck had preferred despair to hope. Despite never having felt it, heunderstooddespair. He knew how to use it, how to bend it to his will. He understood how powerful it could be. It was the emotion that kept on taking. It gave nothing back.
It was beautiful.
Despair was why he was in Southampton instead of Northumberland. Poe had sent his woman away, far beyond Puck’s reach. It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d staked her to the lawn of that ostentatious house he lived in for most of the week, though. Puck wasn’t interested in Lady Estelle Doyle. Poe was only into her for her money. She was replaceable. He wasn’t interested in that ratty little dog of his either. The emotional attachment to pets was fleeting, in Puck’s opinion. He never killed pets. The risk versus reward wasn’t there. If he killed Poe’s dog he could go out and buy a new one the very same day.
No, Puck was interested in the one thing that Poecouldn’treplace. The one thing he seemed to care about more than himself. He’d filmed the shooting of Alice Mathers – he filmedallhis shootings – and when Poe had seen him on that window cleaning galley, his instinct wasn’t to dive for cover. It was to pull that weakling Matilda Bradshaw to safety first.
He’d spent a week researching Matilda Bradshaw. From her days as a child prodigy to her early acceptance into Oxford. From her award-winning exploits in the field of pure mathematics toher curious downwards move to the National Crime Agency. To her highly unlikely friendship with the curmudgeonly Poe. She’d saved his life, literally and figuratively. Literally when she dragged the fuckwit from a burning building. Figuratively, by reversing the spiral of depression he had no doubt been in. When Matilda met Poe, he’d been circling the drain. Eating and drinking himself to death. Now he was a well-adjusted man. He had friends. He lived in a massive house. He was about to get married to some inbred entitled bitch.
He had hope.
Mr Poe, Puck thought,it’s time you were introduced to hope’s adversary – despair.
Puck checked his watch and smiled. It was time. Matilda was a creature of habit. Probably why she was so good at maths. Or maybe she was one of those idiot savants. Like Rain Man. Needed her routines. Good in front of a computer, a proper dumb-dumb in real life. He knew it was she who’d set up that crowdfunding website. Poe had almost said her name during his press conference. Puck had many reasons to hate Matilda Bradshaw; that she’d saved the Smithy’s Forge was almost as bad as theotherreason. He had been the world’s top-rated player onDezinformatsiya.Now he was number two. TillyB1987 was number one. Matilda must have hacked the website. Altered her scores. Inflated hers and deflated his.
Bitch.
Matilda’s car rounded the corner. Exactly when it always did. It was raining but Puck could see her clearly through the driver’s window. She had a distinctive shape. Thin with stupid round glasses. Hair like candyfloss. She leaned forward in the seat, her weak eyes straining to see in the poor weather. He watched as she drove into the drive of her parents’ house, the remote-controlled garage door already open. As soon as she was in, thedoor shut behind her. She stayed in the car until it was fully closed. Careful.
Not careful enough.
Because Matilda’s routine never changed. She drove home. She waited until the garage door was shut before she exited the car. She walked into the house and went straight upstairs to her bedroom. She sat in front of her computer and she worked for an hour. She then went downstairs and made something to eat before heading back upstairs to work for the rest of the evening.
Puck knew this because he’d watched her do it on three consecutive nights.
