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Chapter 69
The‘something’ was another list. Bradshaw and the Mole People had contacted every supplier of acetone in the country and got the names of everyone who had made a bulk purchase in the last five years. It ran to almost ten thousand names.
‘And this is just the UK,’ Bradshaw explained. ‘If he brought it in from abroad he won’t be on here.’
‘Neither would he be if he borrowed it, stole it or just happened to have some in his shed from years ago.’
‘I don’t have confidence in the list either, Poe. It would be out of character for him to leave his name on a database somewhere.’
‘And even if he had, this is unmanageable. We can’t possibly check every name. Is there any way we can narrow it down?’
‘If you’re confident about his gender we can remove all women—’
‘He’s a man,’ Poe cut in, ‘but we can’t remove women in case someone bought it for him.’
‘You think he has an accomplice?’ Stahl asked.
‘Unlikely, but acetone isn’t something dodgy. Asking someone to get you some isn’t going to raise any alarms. Can you get hard copies for me, Tilly?’
‘That’s a lot of paper, Poe.’
‘I get seasick if I stare at a screen for too long.’
‘Also, you don’t know how to work computers. You’re the only person in SCAS who still has a filing cabinet.’
‘My filing cabinet never gets viruses.’
‘But you’re always losing your key. You’ve broken into it so many times it won’t lock any more. DI Flynn has someone check it every night to make sure there’s nothing confidential in it. She has them put everything back first thing in the morning.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, Poe.’
‘I’m putting mousetraps in it when I get back then. See how they like that.’
Stahl stared at them. ‘You guys are nuts,’ he said.
The hotel room phone rang. Bradshaw picked it up. ‘Good morning, this is Matilda Bradshaw speaking, not Detective Sergeant Washington Poe. I repeat, this is not Washington Poe.’
Poe gave her a double thumbs-up and a ‘way-to-go’ nod.
‘OK, I’ll tell him,’ Bradshaw said, putting the phone down.
‘Was that reception? I’d asked for an alarm call and I forgot to cancel it.’
‘It wasn’t reception, Poe. That was DI Flynn. The Botanist has called – he wants to meet Henning Stahl at eleven a.m. in Carlisle.’
‘Looks like you’re up, Henning,’ Poe said.
