‘Is that thing secure, Tilly?’ Poe said, pointing at her MacBook.
‘It is, Poe.’
‘What about the café’s wi-fi?’
‘Not at the minute. If it’s important I can hijack it and make it secure. It will mean everyone else will lose their connection, though.’
Poe looked round. There were half a dozen people still in the café. Four of them were reading and another was on a tablet. The sixth was staring into space like a weirdo.
‘Do it,’ he said. ‘Give me a minute, sir … how long, Tilly?’
She held a finger in the air while she fiddled about on the Mac’s trackpad.
‘Done,’ she said.
‘We’re up and running, sir,’ Poe said.
After Bradshaw had given van Zyl her details he said, ‘Someone’s going to call you now.’
He then hung up.
Two minutes later the videoconference icon on Bradshaw’s laptop began flashing.
Chapter 57
‘Edward Atkinson is now called Ian Carruthers,’ Poe said to the small team he’d been authorised to brief. ‘And he wasn’t ghosted somewhere new, he’s still living in Cumbria.’
There was a burst of muttering. Atkinson being in their area wasn’t just surprising – it gave them a whole new set of problems, one of which was resourcing. Nightingale and the assistant chief exchanged a worried glance. They’d just won a hard-fought increase in their budget – now
they were going to need even more.
‘When I called, I was told this information was classified,’ Nightingale said. ‘Why were they happy to tell you, Poe?’
‘I explained how there would be certain … political advantages to the NCA being involved in this arrest,’ Poe said. ‘Ultimately, though, the only reason they released the information is that they aren’t actively involved any more. Atkinson accepted a new identity and then opted out of the scheme altogether. As you know, it’s voluntary.’
‘Why would he do that?’
Poe didn’t know for sure but he could guess.
‘I think it was because they wanted to move him out of Cumbria,’ he said. ‘Miles on the map is the best tool UKPPS have at their disposal, but he’s lived here all his life and you know what home birds Cumbrians are. And because of the compensation he received from the police and the civil action, he wasn’t short of money.’
‘So he decided to arrange his own protection?’ Nightingale said.
‘Sort of … He bought an island.’
The resulting silence wasn’t unexpected. Poe had had exactly the same reaction. The only people who owned islands were whacky billionaires and Bond villains.
‘An island?’ Flynn said eventually. ‘An actual island?’
‘Well, not all of it,’ Poe said. ‘But most of it. Montague Island. It’s one of the Islands of Furness.’
He hadn’t known much about the islands so Bradshaw had researched them on the way back to Carleton Hall. They were all situated off the Furness Peninsula and 20 per cent of the district of Barrow’s population lived on them, almost all on the largest island, Walney Island.
Walney was eleven miles long but less than a mile wide. It was crescent-shaped, like a quarter moon. Although it was officially the windiest lowland site in Britain, it pinched up against the mainland and formed the Walney Channel that protected the islands that sat within it from the ravaging Irish Sea. At low tide, most of them could be accessed on foot, carefully and under the guidance of someone who knew where the quicksand and deep channels were. Piel Island, with the popular Ship Inn whose landlord was officially the ‘King of Piel’, was a particular favourite with tourists.
Montague Island, the island that Atkinson owned most of, was outside the Walney Channel, although it was still accessible on foot. Just. It was farther out to sea and the tide didn’t stay low for as long as it did in the sheltered areas of the channel.
Poe had never heard of it. According to Bradshaw, like the nearby Sheep Island, an isolation hospital had been built on it in 1892. Unlike Sheep Island, Montague Island’s had been used. In 1894, a plague ship had attempted to berth at Devonshire Dock in Barrow. It was carrying Chinese labourers needed for the construction of Royal Navy warships. It had suffered an outbreak of typhus en-route. It was redirected to the isolation hospital on Montague Island where care was given. Twelve Chinese labourers died and their unmarked graves were still at the western end. Bradshaw said that it was rumoured that the island’s rats still carried the virus. It was all nonsense, of course, but that, and the exposed, isolated nature of the island, explained how Atkinson had been able to purchase so much of it.