Page 126 of The Killer’s Mark

Unless you had manuka honey – Bradshaw took time to smile when she thought about Esmerée calling it verruca honey – selling honey online wasn’t viable. The cost of postage made it prohibitive and the kind of people who bought organic honey were the kind of people who liked to meet the producer. That meant Océane would have to sell her honey in-person, at farmers’ markets and craft fairs and village fetes and agricultural shows. The occasional artisan deli. And she couldn’t be in any of the promotional photographs. Her honey could. So could her logo and website. But she couldn’t.

Which Bradshaw thought probably made her unique. The owner of a micro-entity who couldn’t show her face. And unique was good.

Unique was searchable.

She closed the dissertation and opened a program she had been working on. It was still in its beta phase, but that didn’t bother her – she knew it worked. It was a search engine she’d designed specifically to find things that wished to stay hidden. It had access – not all of it legal, but that didn’t matter; Esmerée was missing – to all the major and most of the minor social media platforms and, if she wished, all government websites including Parliament and the Ministry of Defence. She had told Alastor Locke all about her new search engine – which she’d called Peeper Potts (a very clever play on the Marvel character Pepper Potts) – after which he’d gone pale and said he needed to lie down. She’d asked Poe why that might be, and he’d laughed so hard Estelle had come rushing in with her doctor’s bag.

She typed in keywords to search for and keywords to exclude. She reviewed what she had, then applied it to what she thought she knew about Océane’s specific circumstances.

The South Downs was an expensive place to buy property, so she refined her parameters to include the surrounding areas. She didn’t exclude towns and cities, as according to one article, apiarists were getting interesting results with urban bees. Something to do with the wider variety of garden plants available.

When she was finished, she leaned back and read what she had.

INCLUDE//:HONEY/ORGANIC/BEES/SOUTH-DOWNS/HAMPSHIRE/EAST-SUSSEX/WEST-SUSSEX/ALL-TOWNS/HONEY-LOGO/37FHW8*HEG2FJQN7

EXCLUDE//:WEBSITE-WITH-OWNERS-FACE-MARKETING/SHCI2E^*HF2L

She added lines of code to both the include and exclude boxes. Made sure Peeper Potts would differentiate between a business owner’s photograph and one taken from stock images. She had assumed that would be how Océane put the much-needed human touch to her website. She would use someone else’s face.

She reviewed and refined her search parameters one last time, then hit the enter button. Sent her command out into the world. An egg timer appeared on the screen. It said her search would be back in thirty-nine seconds. Enough time to turn on the printer and make sure Poe hadn’t used all the paper printing off his emails. She loved him like mad, but boy was he a dinosaur when it came to reading things. She’d bought him a Kindle for Christmas last year and the next day she’d caught him using it as a bookmark. But the printer was full. The ink cartridges had plenty of ink.

Her computer pinged.

Her search result was in.

Bradshaw read it and smiled.

She went back to Poe’s office and told them what she’d found. Poe looked at his watch, then he looked at Estelle. He said, ‘Eight minutes, Tilly; you’re slacking.’

Part 5

The Woman With the Honey-Pot Tattoo

Chapter 102

Océane Blue’s business was called the Midnight Beekeeper. Bradshaw explained that this was the only business in the south of England that exclusively used stock images – photographs licensed for commercial use. The Midnight Beekeeper had a presence at all the farmers’ markets in Brighton and Hove, Eastbourne and a whole load of others, but not once was the owner’s face caught on camera. The top of her head had been caught on someone’s Facebook page when some hipster tosspot had posted a #livingmybestlife photograph taken at Eastbourne Borough Market. The Midnight Beekeeper’s stall had been in the background and Océane Blue had been caught bending down dealing with a customer.

Towler had asked how Poe and Bradshaw could be so sure it was her. Bradshaw had replied that the top of Océane Blue’s head had featured heavily in the movie she had shot with Chance Ryzcek. She then added, ‘I just hope she jolly well brushed her teeth afterwards, that’s all I have to say on the subject,’ which made even Towler blush.

Océane rented a smallholding on the outskirts of Tarring Neville, a village in East Sussex. That was almost four hundred miles from Carlisle.

‘If we leave now, we can get there before dawn,’ Poe said. ‘Catch her in bed. I don’t know much about bees, but I think they manage their own affairs. The beekeeper doesn’t need to be up at daft o’clock the way dairy farmers do.’

‘Why do we have to go and get her?’ Towler said. ‘That’s a thirteen-hour round trip. Why can’t we just call her? Explain the situation. We can halve the time; I could use it to refine Wednesday Addams’s extraction.’

‘Extraction?’ Estelle asked.

He gestured towards Susan. ‘That corrupt arsehole is right. They won’t let her live. That means that unless Poe thinks of something clever, we’ll have to take her by force. I don’t care how good these bastards think they are, my guys are better. But I will need time to plan it.’

‘Poe, what do you think?’ Estelle said.

‘I think we need to go down and get her. She abandoned Esmerée when she fled the States. As far as we can tell, she’s made no subsequent attempt to find her daughter. I’m not sensing much maternal instinct. I think if we call her, she’ll say she’s coming but then she’ll run. By the time Tilly finds her again, Esmerée will be dead.’

Estelle nodded. ‘OK, I’m in charge and I say Poe and Matt go and get her.’

‘What if she refuses?’ Bradshaw said.

‘Then we stuff her in a sack and put her in the boot,’ Towler said.