Chapter 52
‘Tellme what you’re working on,’ Doyle said. ‘It’ll take my mind off things.’
‘You’ve heard of this Botanist?’ Poe said.
‘Just snippets. My fellow inmates preferGeordie Shoreto the news. They also seem to enjoy shouting “slag” at the women on the show for some reason, but that’s a discussion for a different day, I fear.’
Poe spent five minutes giving her a brief outline of where they were. Bradshaw chipped in with the Latin names of the poisons and some of the more technical stuff.
When they’d finished Doyle said, ‘What do you know about poisons, Poe?’
‘Probably not as much as I should.’
‘Tell me what youdoknow.’
‘It’s long-arm murder,’ he said.
‘I’m not familiar with the phrase.’
‘Murder from afar. The murderer doesn’t have to be present when the victim takes the poison.’
‘What else?’
‘You can drip-feed small amounts over a period of time or you can do what our guy must be doing – give them one big unsurvivable dose.’
‘A “guy”? I know it’s a myth that most poisoners are women, but you seem surer than you ought to about the killer’s gender.’
‘Poe’s spoken to him, Estelle Doyle,’ Bradshaw said.
‘You have?’
‘He’s a showboat,’ Poe said. ‘You should see it out there, Estelle. Loads of dickheads wearing T-shirts. Going on the news saying it’s the start of the revolution.’
‘Why?’
‘He chooses unsympathetic victims – Kane Hunt was an appalling misogynist and Harrison Cummings was a corrupt MP. We got to the last one in time, but arguably she’s the worst of the lot – she’s monetised racism.’
‘How did you get to her in time? I thought you said he gave them unsurvivable doses?’
‘Because, believe it or not, he warns them first. Sends them a poem and a pressed flower in the post. Both connected to the poison he’s planning to use.’
This didn’t elicit the surprise Poe had anticipated.
‘I assume the dead men were being protected at the time they died?’
‘The MP was,’ Poe said. ‘We didn’t know about Kane Hunt’s death threat until he collapsed on live television.’
‘He’s planting the poisonbeforehe warns them then. Gets them to take it themselves.’
‘Where?’
‘It’ll be something simple.’ Doyle looked thoughtful. ‘What do we do every day?’
‘Eat. Drink. Sleep. Brush our teeth. Shower.’
‘Charge our laptops, phones and tablets,’ Bradshaw said.
‘The usual stuff, in other words,’ Poe said. ‘But we’ve pretty much ruled that out. Anything the victims might have touched has been checked.’