Chapter 28
‘Whothe hell is Henning Stahl?’ Poe asked.
‘He’s a disgraced journalist,’ Bradshaw replied. She was reading from her tablet. ‘He was implicated in the 2005 phone-hacking scandal. Became the public face of it. He was the nasty pasty who disclosed the actor Dominic Denly’s son had leukaemia.’
‘That was him?’ Poe said.
‘Yes, Poe. He’d been listening to their voicemail messages.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘According to this article, he disappeared.’
‘Abroad?’
‘His passport isn’t recorded as going through a UK border.’
‘He’s hiding then.’
‘I think it’s more likely he’s keeping a low profile.’
‘Any idea where we can start looking?’
‘You can’t live off the grid in this country – he’ll be on a database somewhere. I’ll find him, Poe.’
‘Why does this Botanist idiot want to speak to him specifically?’ Flynn said. ‘You say he was the public face of the hacking scandal, but I’d never heard of him. He certainly doesn’t have the profile of Kane Hunt or Harrison Cummings.’
‘He might just want to talk to someone.’
‘Why?’
‘Guess we’ll have to wait and see,’ Poe said.
Poe wanted to be the one who picked him up. Stahl was such a random person to choose, there had to be a connection somewhere. They needed to know what that was.
‘He was an investigative journalist, Tilly?’ he asked.
‘He was, Poe,’ Bradshaw replied. ‘A good one, until he went bad.’
‘Can you draw up a list of the stories he reported on? Maybe the answer’s in there somewhere.’
‘I’ve already asked the Mole People to do this, Poe,’ Bradshaw said. ‘They’ll have something for us tomorrow.’
‘Good. Any idea on who the next victim is?’
‘No one has come forward,’ Flynn said. ‘Chief Superintendent Mathers is thinking about holding a press conference. She wants to warn the public.’
Poe grunted.
‘You don’t think that’s the right call?’ she said.
‘Cummings was under the protection of the best trained guards in the world and he’s still dead.’
‘Yeah, but he can only do the poisoned-tap trick once. It isn’t something he can replicate.’
‘When do we get the results back on that?’
‘It was rushed through, so any time now I imagine.’