The Hanged Man

by Simon Kernick

  ‘We’ll look into her background, her connections to these people. We’ll talk to people who know her. And if there’s anything dodgy there, we’ll find it. But it’ll take time. And I don’t know if you’re going to be around to see it, because I’m betting that Mrs Delbarto’s on the phone to HQ right now complaining about you. Jesus Ray, you’re hanging by a thin enough thread as it is.’

  Dan took a deep breath and pushed his foot down on the accelerator. I didn’t know what to say. He was right. I was letting my instincts get the better of me. I hadn’t always been like this. For a long time I’d been good at sealing myself off from the stresses of the job. It had never been easy, but I’d managed it. But not now. Because right from the moment I’d told Dana Brennan’s parents I’d find her killers, I’d become emotionally involved in this case. And it was ruining my whole perspective.

  My phone vibrated in my jacket pocket. It had vibrated during our meeting with Anthea Delbarto as well. I fished it out now and checked the screen. I’d had a missed call, a voicemail, and now a text message.

  I read the text and frowned.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Dan, seeing my expression.

  I looked at him carefully and wondered how well I really knew him.

  ‘Can I trust you, Dan?’

  ‘I might be pissed off with you,’ he replied, ‘but that doesn’t mean you can’t trust me.’

  ‘And do you trust me to do the right thing?’

  ‘Where’s this going, Ray?’

  ‘I need you to trust me on something, otherwise I can’t tell you about it.’

  He stared at me for a long moment. ‘OK, I do.’

  ‘It’s Tina,’ I said, deciding I did know him well enough. ‘She’s heard from Hugh Manning.’

  Forty

  It was when Tina was stuck on the M1 round Luton on the way back from her meeting with Barbara Howard that, more out of boredom than anything else, she’d checked the emails on the website she used to promote her private detective work, and seen the message.

  The title of the email said URGENT, and as soon as she’d seen who it was from, and the level of detail in it, Tina had been certain of who the sender was.

  Her phone rang. It was Ray, no doubt responding to the text she’d just sent him.

  ‘I got your text,’ he said. ‘I’ve told Dan but no one else. So, what does Manning want?’

  ‘He wants to give himself up. But he’s scared that if he just walks into any old police station then the Kalamans will get wind of it and he won’t survive more than a few days. He wants to put himself under the protection of someone he trusts, and who he’s certain hasn’t been bought by the Kalamans. In other words, you.’

  ‘How certain are you that it’s him?’

  ‘You’ll have to check the actual email yourself but the sender knows you’re not after him for the murders of his wife and neighbour. He knows that you’re interested in his Bone Field links and, incidentally, he says he’s entirely innocent of anything do with the killings there.’

  ‘It could be a trap,’ said Ray. ‘The Kalamans have all those details. And I know they want me out of the way.’

  ‘That’s true, but this person wants to speak to you before any meeting. Do you want me to send him your number?’

  There was a pause for a couple of seconds before he spoke again. ‘Yes. Please. But tell him he’s only got until tomorrow morning to make contact. I don’t want him dictating things.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Tina. ‘I’ll send you his email now. I’ve got more to tell you too, about the Sheridans. But it can wait until tonight.’

  ‘I’ll see you then,’ he said, and rang off.

  Tina stared at the phone for a moment. It wasn’t like Ray to be so brusque, and she was almost surprised to realize it upset her.

  Falling in love, it seemed, was hard work.

  Forty-one

  I re-read the email purporting to be from Hugh Manning, and Tina was right, it seemed genuine enough. It provided plenty of detail and could only have come either from Manning himself or someone from the Kalamans looking to set me up. Apparently, the sender had approached Tina because he’d read a newspaper article about her, which also mentioned that she was in a relationship with me. I remembered that article. It had pissed me off. Both of us could have done without the publicity.

  The sender also said that he was no longer in Scotland, which stretched credulity a little. I knew the Scottish police had had the area where Manning had last been seen in lockdown, which would make it very hard for him to get out. Unless he’d had some kind of help.

  Still, it had to be worth pursuing.

  We stopped at traffic lights in the village centre and I showed the email to Dan.

  ‘If this is genuine, then we need to tell Sheryl,’ he said when he’d finished reading it, ‘and use it to track down Manning’s location.’

  I shook my head. ‘No way. You’ve seen how careful he’s been. I bet you he’ll have encrypted that message so we won’t be able to use it to get his location. And if he’s telling the truth and he’s got out of Scotland, if we spook him now it might be the last we ever hear from him.’

  Dan sighed in exasperation. ‘Shit, Ray. Do you know what you’re asking me to do? Get involved in another of your shortcuts to justice? I’ve got a wife and family to support. I’ve got to start doing things by the book.’

  ‘Look, I’ll be the one to meet Manning and I’ll take full responsibility. It’ll be nothing to do with you. But I can’t risk other people getting involved and it all going wrong.’

  Dan tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. He looked torn, and I felt bad for putting him in this position.

  ‘OK,’ he said at last as the lights turned green and we pulled away, ‘we’ll do it your way. I won’t say anything to Sheryl. But you’ve got twenty-four hours to get hold of him, and if it doesn’t work, then we go by the book. I need to call Sheryl and tell her how it went with Anthea Delbarto. She’s taking a personal interest in Tracey Burn’s disappearance. I’ll skip the bit where you got us chucked out of the house.’

  ‘That’s probably a good idea,’ I said.

  Ten seconds later Sheryl came on the line. ‘Are you on hands-free, Mr Watts?’ she demanded.

  ‘I am, ma’am.’

  ‘And is Mr Mason with you?’

  ‘He is, ma’am.’

  I didn’t like the underlying tone of her voice. She sounded angry.

  And it turned out she was.

  ‘I want you both back here right away. Do not go anywhere else first. And when you do, come straight to my office.’

  Dan and I exchanged puzzled glances.

  ‘Can we ask what it’s about, ma’am?’ he said.

  ‘No. Just get back here.’

  ‘We’re down in Hampshire at the moment so it’s going to take us a while.’

  ‘Get back as fast as you can. And don’t break any more laws in the process.’

  Ninety minutes later, at just short of four p.m., we walked into Sheryl Trinder’s office.

  ‘Don’t bother sitting down,’ she said, which meant it was going to be bad news. ‘I’ve been reliably informed that someone impersonating a doctor at Ealing hospital last night spent ten minutes alone with Ugo Amelu. Under questioning, Amelu simply answered with “no comment” when pressed about it. I’m also told that there is CCTV footage available from cameras in the hospital that will help to identify the person involved. But before I request it, I’m going to ask you both straight up: was it either of you two?’

  I was surprised that the incident had been reported, and wondered by whom. But there was no point in denying it. It was, I suppose, the story of so much of my work in the last couple of years. Dan was right. I just couldn’t stop cutting corners. I should have known I’d be found out – and maybe deep down I did – but I’d gone ahead with it anyway.

  ‘It was me,’ I said. ‘I got Dan to drop me off at the hospital for treatment, but rather than getting it I blagged my
way in to speak to Ugo Amelu off the record. Dan knew nothing about it.’

  Sheryl sighed wearily. ‘I’ve been asking myself why you would risk talking to Mr Amelu off the record when your colleagues could easily have questioned him at Ealing. And the only reason I could come up with was that you wanted to do a deal with him which was that in exchange for information, you and Mr Watts wouldn’t press the attempted murder charges against him. Which means that the two of you would both have had to collude on it.’

  ‘It didn’t happen like that,’ I said. ‘I didn’t make any deal. I put pressure on him.’

  She eyed me carefully. ‘What kind of pressure?’

  There was no point sugar-coating things any longer. I already knew I was finished but I had to protect Dan. ‘I suggested that the Kalamans might hear that he was an informant.’

  ‘You threatened him?’

  I paused. ‘Yes. In a roundabout way. But I also found out something about Hugh Manning. Something I didn’t mention this morning.’ I told her about how Amelu suspected that one of his escort girls had been murdered at Alastair Sheridan’s house, and that Hugh Manning had allegedly been present.

  She looked dubious. ‘It sounds like a fairly outlandish claim.’

  ‘Ugo Amelu had no reason to lie.’

  ‘He did if you were putting pressure on him. It seems very coincidental, with Manning’s photo all over the news.’

  ‘It’s why he remembered.’

  ‘But will he testify to that on the record?’ Sheryl’s look told me she didn’t think he would.

  ‘We might be able to persuade him to.’

  She shook her head. ‘Bullshit. He’s not cooperating on any level at the moment, and no one sees that changing.’ She turned to Dan. ‘Did you have anything to do with this?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Good.’ She turned back to me. ‘Mr Mason, your actions are incompetent as well as being completely unprofessional. If any future defence lawyer gets hold of what you’ve been up to – and it’s not going to be that hard to do – the whole case against Ugo Amelu could collapse.’ She was no longer looking at me angrily. It was disappointment I could see in her expression now, which somehow seemed a lot worse. ‘One of the truly upsetting things about all this is that you’re actually a good detective, but I can’t have you on the team. You don’t follow rules. You might think you’re the Lone Ranger, but I can’t have a team full of Lone Rangers. The whole enterprise would go under. You’re a liability.’

  Her words cut right through me. I could feel the rejection in them, and for a couple of seconds I was back on my first day at the new school I’d had to attend after the death of my family. The boy from the burning house. Seven years old and all alone.

  Then Sheryl told me I was suspended and that she’d be recommending my dismissal from the force.

  I could have told her about Hugh Manning contacting me. But I didn’t. If necessary, I’d bring him in as a civilian. They weren’t going to get rid of my influence that easily.

  Instead I removed my ID and placed it on the desk in front of her. ‘I’ll save you the trouble,’ I said. ‘I resign.’

  And with that, I turned and walked out of there, with just the briefest nod to Dan, who stood staring at me like he’d been punched.

  Forty-two

  The man who only a handful of people knew as Mr Bone had been born sixty-five years earlier in Turkey, and given the birth name Mergim Nushi.

  As a child growing up in a small town on the south-west coast, his mother had taken against him, singling him out for far worse treatment than his four siblings, as if she was ashamed of the child to whom she’d given birth. His brothers and sisters had followed suit. He’d never known exactly why, nor had he asked, but as he’d grown up he’d become angry and withdrawn, a friendless loner who’d learned to hate those around him. He dreamed of death and destruction, of creating a virus that wiped out all of humanity except him, where he alone walked the world, proud and victorious.

  It had always seemed like fate to Mergim Nushi that he would become a killer, and so indeed he did. At the age of twelve.

  There was a boy in the town called Taavi who sometimes worked alone in his father’s hardware shop. He was the same age as Mergim and they were known to each other. It was interesting because Taavi was one of the few people who’d never knowingly upset him, yet one cold winter’s evening when the streets were quiet, and night had fallen, Mergim had visited the shop pretending to need some water. Taavi was just closing up and Mergim had seen his father a few minutes earlier in a nearby coffee shop, so he knew that he was alone in the shop.

  Taavi had been reluctant to pour him water and had asked him why he didn’t just wait until he got home, barely a ten-minute walk away. But Mergim had begged, explaining that his mother was refusing to let him back in the house until dinnertime, which wasn’t for another hour, and eventually Taavi had relented.

  Mergim had always been proud of how he’d carried out that first kill. No one had seen him go into the shop. In fact, no one had even noticed him on the way over there. He’d always been like that. Someone who blended into his surroundings. And if anyone had come in while he and Taavi were talking then he would have just taken the drink and that would have been it. Unfortunately for Taavi, no one had come in, so when he’d gone into the back of the shop to get the water, Mergim had followed him round the counter, and then, as Taavi stood at the water barrel with his back to him, he’d produced a pocket knife he’d sharpened especially and, as quick as a flash, stabbed him in the neck with it, jumping back to avoid the squirting blood.

  Taavi had managed to turn round and stagger towards him, a look of total shock on his face, and for a few seconds Mergim thought he was going to have to stab him again and risk getting covered in blood, which he knew would be a problem and might lead to him getting caught for what he’d done. But then Taavi had collapsed to the floor and Mergim had watched, with the kind of excitement he still found hard to put into words, as the boy’s life ebbed steadily away in front of him. The power he’d felt had been incredible, and for several minutes he’d simply stood there, looking down at the unmoving Taavi, surrounded by a pool of his own blood, knowing that he, the child they all hated, had taken a life. And he’d known that he would never experience anything as pure and joyful as murder.

  And then, forcing himself back to reality, he’d wiped the blade of the knife on Taavi’s shirt, slipped it back into his pocket, and exited the shop through the back door, disappearing into the shadows as he made his way home, warmed and comforted by his dark secret.

  Since then he’d become Mr Bone and had killed many times, both as part of his job within the Kalaman organization but also, alongside Cem and the others, for the pleasure it still brought to end a life. Young women had always been their victims – trophies, as Mr Bone liked to think of them – but he would have happily killed anyone, young, old, male, female. It was the snuffing out of a life he found so fulfilling. But since the discovery of their killing ground, the place the media called the Bone Field, three months earlier, they’d avoided taking any more trophies. It had been too risky. Now, just as they were thinking the time was right, and a new trophy was being groomed, more complications had arisen. The hunt for them was getting too close. Mistakes had been made, both by himself and by others. And they were running out of opportunities to rectify them.

  Mr Bone put down the secure phone he’d been talking on and booted up the laptop in front of him. He was sitting in a strongroom in his apartment, the only place where he could talk and work freely. Protected by state-of-the-art locks, the room was like a cell, with bare, soundproofed walls made of reinforced concrete. There were no electricity sockets, and nowhere to hide a listening device, making it as secure a space as a private citizen could create.

  When the laptop was fully booted, he logged into an anonymous, password-protected hotmail account and wrote a simple message, which he saved to the otherwise empty Drafts section. The me
ssage read ‘Contact now. Line Red. Urgency Red.’ Then he logged out, having not sent the message across the web, thereby making it impossible for the security services to pick up. Only one other person had access to the email address, and at the moment he was checking it frequently for the updates left in the Drafts section.

  Now it was just a matter of waiting – something Mr Bone was well used to, having so little else in his life to keep him occupied.

  An hour later he got the call he was expecting.

  ‘What is it?’ said Cem Kalaman.

  ‘We have a problem. The police have been asking questions close to home. They’ve found out about the sanctuary.’

  ‘How much do they know?’

  ‘One of the officers asking questions is Mason. He suspects something but he has no proof. The problem is he’s going to keep digging until he finds something.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Cem. ‘I’ll leave that to you. How are things moving on your plan to secure an insider in the NCA? We need that even more than we need Mason gone.’

  ‘We’re almost there, but it takes time.’

  ‘We haven’t got time, my friend. Manning will be caught soon. Accelerate your plans. I need someone now.’

  The line went dead and Mr Bone put the phone down on the desk and sat back in his chair, thinking. Cem Kalaman was a good businessman but he wanted everything done immediately, and didn’t understand the importance of planning and patience. A spider has to spin a whole web in order to set its trap, and that was what he’d been doing these past weeks. Spinning his web.

  Now all he had to do was tempt his victim in.

  Forty-three

  I got to Tina’s at just after seven on one of those beautiful summer evenings that should have made me glad to be alive, but tonight just didn’t.

  It was the first time I’d seen her all week but I wasn’t feeling much like celebrating. I’d been escorted out of the building without even a goodbye to Dan, and told in no uncertain terms not to contact anyone from the NCA in either an official or an unofficial capacity. I was definitely off the case this time.