More praise for M. W. Craven
‘M. W. Craven is a forceful
new voice in British crime fiction’
Caro Ramsay
‘I cannot recall the last time I binge-read a novel in thirty-six hours …’
A. A. Dhand
‘Satisfyingly twisty and clever’
Michael J. Malone
‘In Bradshaw and Poe, M.W. Craven has created a stand-out duo who are two of the most compelling characters in crime fiction in recent years’
Fiona Cummins
‘Washington Poe – a rising giant
in detective fiction’
Alison Bruce
‘Dark, thrilling and unputdownable, with sharply drawn characters
that stride off the page’
Victoria Selman
‘This book is dark and twisted
and I loved it’
Simon Toyne
Also by M.W. Craven
Washington Poe series
The Puppet Show
Black Summer
Avison Fluke series
Born in a Burial Gown
Body Breaker
Copyright
Published by Constable
ISBN: 978-1-47213-193-5
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © M.W. Craven, 2020
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Constable
Little, Brown Book Group
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
www.littlebrown.co.uk
www.hachette.co.uk
Contents
Praise for M.W. Craven
Also by M.W. Craven
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
To my late mother, Susan Avison Craven.
You weren’t with us when I finally realised my dream,
but none of this would have been possible without
your enthusiasm for reading.
A Black Swan event is unprecedented,
impossible to predict and has a huge impact.
Afterwards, it is rationalised by hindsight as if
it should have been anticipated.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
‘The player who understands the role of the pawn, who really understands it, can master the game of chess,’ the man said. ‘They might be the weakest piece on the board but pawns dictate where and when your opponent can attack. They restrict the mobility of the so-called bigger pieces and they determine where the battle squares will be.’
The woman stared at him in confusion. She’d just woken and was feeling groggy.
And sore.
She twisted her head and searched for the source of her pain. It didn’t take long.
‘What have you done?’ she mumbled.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it? It’s old-fashioned catgut so the sutures are a bit agricultural, but they’re supposed to be. It’s not used any more but I needed the “wick effect”. That’s when infection enters the wound through the suture. It will ensure the scar stays livid and crude. A permanent reminder of what has happened.’
He picked up a pair of heavy-duty rib shears.
‘Although not for you, of course.’
The woman thrashed and writhed but it was no use. She was bound tight.
The man admired the exacting lines of the surgical instrument. Turned it so the precision steel caught the light. Saw his face reflected in the larger blade. He looked serious. This wasn’t something he particularly enjoyed.
‘Please,’ the woman begged, fully awake now, ‘let me go. I promise you, I won’t say anything.’
The man walked round and held her left hand. He stroked it affectionately.
‘I’ve had to wait for the anaesthetic to wear off so this is going to hurt, I’m afraid. Believe me when I say I wish it didn’t have to.’
He placed her ring finger between the blades of the rib shears and squeezed the handles together. There was a crunch as the razor-sharp edges sliced through bone and tendon as if they weren’t there.
The woman screamed then passed out. The man stepped away from the spreading pool of blood.
‘Where was I?’ he said to himself. ‘Ah, yes, we were talking about pawns. Beginners think they’re worthless, there to be sacrificed – but that’s because they don’t know when to use them.’
He removed a coil of wire from his pocket. It had toggles at each end. He placed them between the index and middle finger of each hand. In a practised movement he wrapped the wire around the woman’s neck.
‘Because knowing when to sacrifice your pawns is how the game is won.’
He pulled the garrotte taut, grunting as the cruel wire bit into her skin, severing her trachea, crushing her jugular vein and carotid artery. She was dea
d in seconds.
He waited an hour then took the other finger he needed.
He carefully arranged it in a small plastic tub, keeping it separate from the others. He looked at his macabre collection with satisfaction.
It could begin now.
The other pawns were in position.
They just didn’t know it yet …
Chapter 1
Christmas Eve
It was the night before Christmas and all wasn’t well.
It had started like it always did. Someone asking, ‘Are we doing Secret Santa this year?’ and someone else replying, ‘I hope not,’ both making a pact to avoid mentioning it to the office manager, both secretly planning to mention it as soon as possible.
And before anyone could protest, the decision had been made and the office was doing it again. The fifteenth year in a row. Same rules as last year. Five-quid limit. Anonymous gifts. Nothing rude or offensive. Gifts that no one wanted. A total waste of everyone’s time.
At least that’s what Craig Hodgkiss thought. He hated Secret Santa.
He hated Christmas too. The yearly reminder that his life was shit. That, while the colleagues he outwardly sneered at were going home to spend Christmas with their families and loved ones, he’d be spending it on his own.
But he really hated Secret Santa.
His plan worked.
Almost.
It had been the perfect way to let her know.
Unfortunately she was happily married, and instead of rushing into his bed she’d rushed to her husband, who was between jobs and was having a brew in the depot. The six-foot-five lorry driver had walked into the admin office and broken Craig’s nose. He’d told him that if he ever so much as looked at his wife again he’d find himself hogtied in the back of a Russia-bound shipping container. Craig had believed him. So much so that, in front of the whole office, he’d lost control of his bladder.
For two years everyone had called him ‘Swampy’. He couldn’t even complain to Human Resources as he was terrified of getting Hazel into trouble.
For two years he hadn’t made a dent in the girls in the office.
But eventually Hazel and her brute of a husband had moved on. He took a job driving for Eddie Stobart and she went with him. Craig told everyone that Hazel’s husband had left the company because he’d caught up with him and given him a hiding, but no one had believed him.
Actually, one person seemed to.
By Craig’s own standards, Barbara Willoughby was a plain girl. Her hair looked like it had been styled in a nursing home, her teeth were blunt and too widely spaced, and she could have done with dropping a couple of pounds. On a scale of one-to-ten Craig reckoned she was a hard six, maybe a seven in the right lighting, and he only ever shagged eights and above.
But there was one thing he did like about her. She hadn’t been there when he’d pissed himself.
So he’d asked her out. And to his surprise he found they got on really well. She was fun to be with and she was popular. He liked how she made him feel and she was adventurous in bed. He also liked how she only wanted to do things at the weekends. During the week she would stay in and study for some stupid exams she was taking.
Which suited Craig just fine.
Because, after a few weeks of dating Barbara, he’d got his swagger back. And with it he began carving notches again.
To his amazement he discovered it was actually easier pulling the type of woman he went for when he told them he was in a long-term relationship. He reckoned it was the combination of his boyish good looks and the thought of doing over someone they didn’t know. Which gave Craig an idea: if those sort of women enjoyed the thrill of being with someone who cheated, they’d go crazy for someone who had affairs …
So Craig Hodgkiss, at the age of twenty-nine, decided he would ask Barbara to marry him. She’d jump at the chance. She was in her early thirties, had some biological clock thing going on (but was unaware he’d had a vasectomy two years earlier) and would almost certainly be left on the shelf if she said no. And then he’d reap the rewards. A faithful doormat keeping his bed warm and a succession of women who’d happily shag a man wearing a wedding band.
And because he wanted everyone in the office to know he was about to become illicit fruit, he’d decided to put past experiences behind him and propose during the office Secret Santa.
Arranging it hadn’t been straightforward. He’d got Barbara’s ring size by stealing her dead grandmother’s eternity ring, the one she only wore on special occasions. While Barbara turned her flat upside down looking for it, he’d been asking a jeweller to make the engagement ring the same size and to recycle the diamonds and gold. The whole thing had only cost him two hundred quid.
The next thing was to think of a cool way of proposing. Something that would get the office girls talking about how romantic Craig was. A rep like that could only help. He decided on a mug. It was the perfect Secret Santa gift as it met the five-quid limit set by the office manager and, although half the gifts under the cheap fibre optic Christmas tree looked like they were mugs, half the gifts under the tree didn’t have ‘Will You Marry Me?’ printed on the side.
When Barbara read the message and then saw what was inside … well, he reckoned she’d burst into tears, shout yes and hug him for all she was worth.
The office floor was strewn with cheap wrapping paper. All reindeer and snowmen and brightly wrapped presents tied with ribbons.
Barbara was next. She picked up her parcel and looked at him strangely.
Did she know?
She couldn’t. No one did. Not even the girl he’d persuaded to swap with him so he was the one buying for Barbara.
Tiffany, Barbara’s best friend, began recording it on her mobile phone for some reason. That was OK, though. Better than OK actually. He’d be able to post it on Twitter and Facebook and keep a copy on his phone. Ready to show girls at the drop of a hat. Look at me. Look how nice I am. Look how sensitive I am. You can have some of this … but only for one night.
Craig caught Barbara’s eye. He winked. She didn’t return it. Didn’t even smile. Just held his gaze as she lifted the wrapped box from one of his old gift bags.
Something wasn’t right. The wrapping paper was thick and white with black pictures; he thought his had been cheap and brightly coloured.
Barbara ripped it off without looking at it. The mug was in a polystyrene box. He’d taped the two halves together to increase the suspense. Barbara ran a pair of scissors down the join before separating them.
She pulled out the mug and Craig’s confusion intensified. It wasn’t his. He hadn’t seen this one before. Something was printed on the side but it wasn’t proposing marriage. In inch-high black letters it said:
#BSC6
Barbara didn’t know she’d opened the wrong parcel, though. Without looking inside the mug, she glared at him and upended the mug’s contents.
‘Cheating fucking bastard,’ she said.
Craig didn’t protest his innocence. He couldn’t. He was unable to tear his eyes away from the things that had fallen on the floor. They were no engagement ring.
He recoiled and gasped in revulsion.
A familiar and unwelcome warmth began spreading from his groin.
And then the screaming started.
Chapter 2
Boxing Day
Someone else who hated Christmas was Detective Sergeant Washington Poe.
As a committed grouch he was against all forms of enforced joviality and, up until today, he’d managed to shun all festivities, organised or ot
herwise. He usually worked through the enforced Christmas break, spent it alone or found a pub full of like-minded misanthropes and drank until it was over.
But not this year. This year he’d been well and truly ‘Bradshawed’.
Because, instead of being in the pub or hunkered down in his two-hundred-year-old shepherd’s croft, with beer in the fridge and leftover roast potatoes in the oven, he was in a penthouse flat in a village on the outskirts of Cambridge.
His friend and colleague Matilda ‘Tilly’ Bradshaw had dragged him to a baby shower.
Initially, he’d point blank refused.
She’d looked upset, but that was OK, she’d have got over it. She might be his best friend but a baby shower at a rich person’s house was his special kind of hell.
She’d stamped her foot.
He’d ignored her.
But then she’d used her most deadly weapon against him, one he was powerless against: incessant logic.
He’d told her that baby showers were for women.
She’d shouted at him in front of the whole office. Everyone in the Serious Crime Analysis Section, the National Crime Agency unit charged with investigating emerging serial killers and apparently motiveless murders, stopped to listen.
And giggle.
‘Washington Poe, you might have a penis but that doesn’t mean you get to use the social privileges of the patriarchal society to get out of doing things you don’t like.’
Poe had been about to ask her what the hell she was talking about when he’d heard someone snigger, ‘What does she mean, “might have a penis”?’
He’d tried saying he couldn’t leave Edgar, his springer spaniel, on his own for that long.
She’d replied that Edgar could stay with Victoria Hume, his neighbour. ‘You know, like he does all the time.’
He tried the truth – that he didn’t want to go.
‘Well, gee golly, mister,’ she’d countered, ‘since when did Washington Poe always get what he wants? Our line manager, DI Stephanie Flynn, is having a baby and her sister has been kind enough to host a baby shower – we’re her friends, we’re invited, we’re going, it’s as simple as that.’
So Poe was at a baby shower, sulking in a corner. Up until then he’d avoided catching anyone’s eye. He planned to do that until he’d been there long enough to leave. His glass of Champagne had gone warm forty minutes ago but it gave him something to do with his hands.