‘Excuse me.’
‘Pick a letter. A to Z.’
‘A.’
‘For fu … Pick adifferentletter. And if you say Z I’m going to punch you.’
‘H, then.’
‘Tilly, find a security business beginning with the letter H and put an order in for their best stuff. Tell them we want modern, physical locks on every potential entrance point. It’s coming out of Detective Chief Superintendent Mathers’s budget, so pay any same-day surcharges. I want it done before it gets dark. And you’d better explain that whoever they send will be watched the entire time they are here.’
‘I’ll do it now, Poe.’
‘I’ll make us some hot drinks,’ Salt said. ‘Is Japanese green tea acceptable?’
Poe grabbed Salt’s arm. ‘Mr Salt, from now on you don’t put anything in your mouth that hasn’t been handed to you personally by me or my team.’
‘This isn’t good for my blood pressure, you know.’ He reached into his pocket and removed a blister pack. ‘I assume it’s OK to take my Norvasc?’
‘No, of course it isn’t OK,’ Poe said. ‘Tell me what it is and I’ll get you a new prescription. One of my guys will get it filled.’
He took the medication from Salt and sealed it in an evidence bag.
‘This is all a bit over the top, isn’t it?’ Salt said.
‘How familiar are you with the Botanist?’ Poe asked.
Salt shrugged. ‘I’m a busy man.’
‘Let me tell you what’s happened so far. He killed his first victim before anyone knew who he was, so we get a pass on that as far as I’m concerned. We don’t for the next two, though. Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection were camped outside Harrison Cummings’s flat and he still managed to kill him. And Karen Royal-Cross was in a high-level isolation unit under twenty-four-hour observation. I’ve reviewed the tapes and I have no idea how he got to her.’
‘Poe says he’s one bad mood away from declaring it black magic,’ Bradshaw called out. She was setting up monitors and computers and a whole bunch of stuff Poe didn’t recognise.
‘I want you to sit here while I go downstairs with a bin bag. Anything disposable is getting chucked. We’ll bring in shampoo, soap, food, toilet roll—’
‘Youarejoking? Toilet roll?’
‘He’s getting to his victims somehow, Mr Salt, and I’m told it’s most likely that they poison themselves. And wouldn’t toilet paper be a perfect delivery system? You use it, you infect yourself, you flush away the evidence.’
‘No one has been tampering with my toilet paper, Sergeant Poe.’
‘Mr Salt, I don’t think I’m getting through to you. If you losethis vote, and Tilly assures me you will, we put your chances of survival at six per cent.’
Salt opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
‘So, yes, I’m changing your fucking bog roll,’ Poe added.
There was a knock on the door. Poe looked at one of the monitors Bradshaw had set up. He smiled.
The cavalry had arrived.