He liked to leave them to stew. Always had in the past, and would be no different in this latest incarnation of his serial killing life. Removing her clothes had been an entirely functional act based on common sense. She would be left in there long enough that at some point she would urinate and defecate, and he didn't want to deal with soiled clothes. He was quite happy to clean; he did not ultimately want to work in the foul stench produced by one of his subjects.
He had thought that seeing her naked would have no effect on him, but ever since he had undressed her late the previous evening, he could not get the thought of her naked body out of his head. It had been a long time since he'd had a woman, and somewhere along the line he imagined that desire and lust had become alien to him.
And so, while he had ignored the initial suggestion put to him that he could rape any of his victims, male or female, should the desire take him, he found himself thinking about it that night when he went to bed. He read a few pages of Kagan's Peloponnesian War, a book he was tackling for the third time, but could not concentrate. Thinking about her. She was young. Forty years younger than him, maybe. Very pale, soft skin. He had forgotten skin could be that soft. Even lying back on the table her breasts had looked wonderful. Firm, but natural. Dark nipples. He thought about her in his sleep; the thought was still there when he awoke.
He tried to ignore it as long as possible, but he knew he would have her when the time came. Made himself breakfast, went out for a long walk along the beach. Returned around eleven. She would likely have been awake for a few hours, alone and sore in the dark. Normally he would have left it some time longer, but he couldn't wait.
He opened the door, turned on the light. A single bulb in the corner of the room, 40W. Didn't want to hurt her eyes.
She lifted her head to look at him, her eyes wide. He showed nothing. Was pleased to see that she had not, on waking again, managed to regain any of the cool or composure that she had so badly lost the previous evening when he had brought her into the house from the car. Her head jerked from side to side; she strained abjectly against her bonds. Her face was streaked with tears. She had, as Durrant had assumed she would, both urinated and defecated. He was prepared. The smell had, naturally, altered the feel of the room. The stagnant mustiness of thirty-year-old death had been replaced. The four hanging skeletons, stained and worn clothes dripping from the bones, watched with disinterest.
He was about to lean over her, when he had a sudden thought. He walked through to the other room, to the turntable. The old Hoagy Carmichael record was still there, the needle halfway across it where it had been left by the power cut. He lifted the disc, blew across the dust, and then turned it over and put on the other side. Switched on the turntable and it still worked. Put the needle to the start of the disc.
Georgia... Georgia... There was one speaker in the living room, another that fed through to the room at the back. She looked down at him in terror as he returned to the room and got to work. First of all he wiped all the faeces from the table and her buttocks and from around her anus using kitchen towel. He took that away and flushed it down the toilet. Was pleased to note on his return the immediate beneficial effect this had on the quality of the air. Then he washed her more carefully, around the thighs and the buttocks, her pubic hair, her vagina and anus. He wanted his first woman in over thirty years to be immaculately clean.
When he was finished, he dried her off, slowly, carefully. Enjoying his work. When that was done, he released her left leg from the straps, holding it down, expecting her to kick out when she had the chance. Her resistance was weak, however; there was nothing left to give. She even grimaced when he moved her leg, and he wondered if possibly he had broken a bone when shoving her into the suitcase. Ultimately, however, he decided that she was more than likely just being pathetic and feeling sorry for herself.
He strapped her left leg down at more of an angle, then did the same to her right, so that as she lay before him her legs were spread. Open and ready. He was already erect and damp, and now that he was so close to release, desperate. Determined, however, to take his time.
He slowly undressed in front of her, his giant erect penis springing out from his underpants. She had started to cry again; her eyes were wide. He would loved to have thrust his erection into her mouth, but he couldn't trust her not to scream or bite down hard. Instead he leaned forward and pressed his face against her public hair. She smelled of the shower crème he had used to clean her. Oat milk and coconut. He could feel her body tremble as he nuzzled into her pubes. It had been shaved into a Brazilian, although this was not something that Durrant would recognise.
He flicked his tongue across her clitoris. She moved her hips, as if there might be some possibility of escaping him. It made no difference, although the movement did make the experience even more intense for him. He took hold of her hips roughly and then licked long and luxuriously along the length of her lips, before penetrating her with his tongue.
He started nibbling tenderly at the soft skin, his lips pressed hard against her. Wondered if she'd start to enjoy it, if the sensation would overcome the fear. Not an experiment he had done in the past, but maybe a worthwhile one to think of for the future. Was there a level of stimulation that could overcome intense fear? Seemed more likely in men than in women; and he wasn't about to try this on any man.
She was soaking, but perhaps that was his saliva rather than her excitement. She was moaning, but perhaps that was terror rather than her excitement. The opposite end of the pain and pleasure scale were so similar, sometimes it was hard to tell.
He was getting carried away with the moment, his bites no longer so tender. Finally, ready to explode, he moved himself on top of her and slammed his damp and erect penis into her as hard as he could as he grabbed her breasts and hung his face above hers.
She cried out. She could smell his breath. Listerine. Minty, clean, fresh. With a hint of coconut.
19
The executives, so full of spunk and dripping with cool, retreated into their natural reserve when there was a genuine alpha male in the room. Steven Washington had risen from nothing in the television world to be the most recognised, feared and reviled man in the business. When he pronounced, people listened, when he gave instructions, they were acted upon immediately. 'I am not the kingmaker,' he had said when he'd reached the height of his powers, 'I am the king.'
He remained at the height of his powers, showing no signs of tailing off.
Jacobson, thinking himself so full of panache when detached from Washington, was slightly less confident, more coolly acerbic. Morris lifted her eyebrow at every opportunity. Felt that she knew Jericho inside out, and that no one else had yet seen the awfulness of the real man. As if she alone could see through his celebrity to realise the true horror of the non-personality beneath.
It's not an act! He really is this dull!
Light was professional enough to not keep looking at Jericho, although he was filling her head. She was annoyed by it. She had a job to do. She loved someone else, she was consumed by someone else, but now she'd allowed Jericho to intrude.
It was fortunate that she had been thrust into the middle of a piece of pointless light entertainment rather than a criminal investigation. The fact that she couldn't think straight did not seem to matter so much. There was the small matter of the missing Lol, but Light was of no doubt that Lol had either jumped ship for a few hours in order to get some more publicity for herself or had been ordered to do so by the show's producers.
Washington was so used to people being daunted by his presence, so used to their nervousness and obsequiousness, that he found himself surprisingly disarmed by Jericho's utter dismissiveness. He assumed that it was an act. No one had been that cool in Washington's presence since back when he was pitching reality TV shows in a variety of small regional offices to wryly smiling script editors in open-necked shirts.
'So your TV appearances have been limited to what?' asked Washington. 'Press confer
ences, news slots, that kind of thing?' He had a pen in his right hand, was turning it over in his fingers.
Jericho nodded.
'No game shows?'
'Do I look like I've been on a game show?'
'You'd be surprised at the percentage of people that have been on game shows,' said Washington. 'You know, actual percentage of the population.'
Jericho said nothing. The pen fell out of Washington's fingers, clacked on the desk. He picked it up, started turning it over again, seemed to be annoyed at it.
'So, that's it? You never cropped up on one of those police car chase shows back when you were a constable?'
'They didn't even have TV back when I was a constable,' said Jericho with no trace of humour. Light smiled, Washington grunted.
'Fine. Look, we're going to need you to contribute tonight. Really contribute.'
Jericho sat in silence, his eyes on Washington. Light glanced at Morris, who stared down at her shoes.
'This whole thing with Lol has blown everything out of the water. The media are all over us. It's bloody Hell, but we can't just sit there and pretend it's not happening. You're the show's resident police type guy, you're going to have to say something about it, and you're going to have to come in on the other contestants, try to get under their skin. I'm sure you're all thinking what I'm thinking.'
He looked around the room. The other TV people nodded seriously.
'What are you thinking?' Light found herself asking.
'There were a few people – not me – already talking about Lol being the favourite to win. What if one of the other contestants has had something to do with her disappearance?'
He held his hands up in the air in a defensive gesture.
'Just saying,' he said. 'It sounds incredible, but you know… Just saying.'
Jericho started tapping his finger gently on the desk. Washington gave him an eyebrow.
'If you seriously think,' said Jericho, 'that they might be involved in committing a crime, do you believe that live television is the place for them to be interviewed about a possible criminal investigation?'
Washington looked curiously at him, then shared his curiosity with Morris and Jacobson. Finally turned back to Jericho and gave him a look to suggest stupefaction.
'Yes.'
20
'You all right?'
Jericho looked up. He was sitting at the end of a long table, watching the general mayhem of the television studio, a few hours before kick-off. A quick glance, and he turned back to his cup of coffee, which had been empty for several minutes. He didn't want Light looking at him like that. Like she cared. It was easier to be solitary in his discomfort.
'Yes,' he said.
'You're all right to do the show tonight?' asked Light. Drew a breath as she said it, knowing he wouldn't appreciate the question. He wouldn't want her concern.
'Fine,' he said without looking up.
'Sgt Haynes is trying to get you,' she said quickly. 'Asked me to get you to turn your mobile on.'
Jericho grunted, reached into his pocket. Light hesitated, but knew there was little point in saying anything else. She turned away, then Jericho watched her as she went, feeling guilty.
He was still searching for Haynes' number in his phone when it rang.
'Boss,' said the voice at the other end.
'I hope you've got a rescue mission in place,' said Jericho glibly. 'If you have a plan to get me out of here, now's the time to implement it.'
'You've had another Tarot,' said Haynes. 'Hope you don't mind. Recognised the envelope, knew you wouldn't be back in until Monday morning.'
Jericho let the phone drop away from his ear for a moment. Had had an immediate thought that perhaps it was connected to the seemingly absurd business with Lorraine Allison; but then, he had received the first card even before he'd known that he'd been coming on this show. Perhaps whoever had sent the card had known.
He shook his head, lifted the phone back to his ear. Haynes was saying his name, asking if he was still there. He cut across him.
'Can you come up here? Today?'
Haynes had already run through the possibilities and the consequences of making the phone call. Jericho was obviously going to want to see the card, so he would either need to DHL it up to him that afternoon, or take it up. And he had known which of those Jericho was going to suggest. And so he had already made his excuses for later that afternoon, dropped everything, and accepted that he would be driving up to London.
'Yes,' he said.
'Good.'
Jericho hung up.
*
Durrant was eating fish and chips in a small pub in a small side street in Orford. He wasn't sure why he had come here, other than the fact that he'd needed to get out of the house. Away from the girl. His hands were still shaking, although at last, now that he was onto his second pint of Thatcher's, he was beginning to feel slightly more relaxed.
Where had his cold, bloody-minded malice gone? Where was the clinical efficiency of old that would have allowed him so efficiently to pick a person's body apart, tiny piece by tiny piece? He'd assumed it was still there, all the way through his years of imprisonment. He'd assumed it was still there when he'd walked free, and when he'd picked up the girl, and when he'd broken her fingers, and when he'd locked her in the room, and when he'd lain naked on top of her, plunging his erection inside her.
And then what? What had happened at the moment of penetration? The look in her eyes, the look of fear or hatred or determination which he had always faced in his past, and which had always encouraged him, now disconcerted him, had cut through him. Suddenly he had not wanted to hurt the girl, had not wanted to slam into her. He'd wanted to make love to her.
He had come quickly and he had left immediately, unable to look at her. He had showered, got into the car. Had not driven far, and now he was sitting in a pub drinking cider, eating fish and chips, wondering what he was going to do with the young woman back at his house.
He lifted his eyes from his lunch for the first time since it had been put in front of him. There were not too many people in the bar, and quite possibly Durrant was the youngest one there. There was a group of seven women with one of them doing most of the talking, a long, pointless and irritatingly loud story about an antique vase her husband had found in the loft. Durrant hadn't heard a word and still her shrill voice did not penetrate.
He noticed another old bloke, sitting on his own drinking Theakston's, reading the Sun. He was holding the paper so that the bottom half of it was resting on the table, the top half turned up and facing Durrant, allowing him to see the cover. The headline was hidden from him but he recognised the girl in the picture.
He dropped his knife and fork onto the plate and rose quickly from the table. The knife teetered on the edge for a second, then slipped off the plate, hit the edge of the table and fell onto the floor with a loud clatter. Durrant had already left the bar and did not hear it.
21
There was general chatter from the audience. The panel of four were waiting for the show to start, the large clock to the left counting down to kick-off. Jericho was sitting slightly detached from the others, an obvious gap between them in the desk behind which they all sat, indicating that he was not one of them. Washington, at the far end from Jericho, was leaning across the other two, talking in a low voice. Giving them all the benefit of his opinions, making them listen whether they wanted to or not. He was joined on the panel by a former member of the Sugababes, although not many people could really remember her ever having been in the band, and an actor who had played TV hard man coppers all his working life, and so was naturally in the best position to judge those who aspired to the job. It was not unlike getting Hugh Laurie to give you a triple heart bypass operation, but the actor did play one heck of a tough copper.
Jericho watched the large digital clock, the red number ticking down. Three minutes, twenty-four seconds until the start of the show. He had not been allowed to meet the five re
maining contestants. Washington wanted to keep them separate and curious; he wanted the five on edge at the thought of the real and genuine hard-nosed copper; he wanted Jericho wary and expecting the worst. What he hadn't wanted was any of the five realising that Jericho was bored, disinterested and extremely unlikely to get as involved in the proceedings as everyone else in the show.
Haynes had arrived fifteen minutes earlier, just in time to show Jericho the latest card. Again made from the same template, with a few differences. As with the difference between the first and the second, so between the second and the third. Although the picture was almost identical, once again the look on the skeleton's face was a little nastier, a little more mocking in its macabre sense of superiority. It knew something that Jericho didn't. It was laughing at him, and once again it was laughing just a little harder than it had been previously.
Jericho had wanted to still be looking at the card, but had not wanted to be caught doing so by any of the television people, and was fully aware of the risk of being caught by a roving camera. Haynes had been dispatched, all three cards in his pocket, to wait for Jericho back at his hotel. Sergeant Light had seen them talking, and Jericho was aware of the slight disappointment in her face when he had told her that he and Haynes had work to do after the show. She'd covered it, moved on quickly, back to business.
The clock ticked. The audience began to settle as the announcement came over of the imminent opening of proceedings, and members of the floor crew waved their hands for everyone to be quiet. Jericho glanced along the line to look at his fellow judges. Washington was straightening his shoulders, flexing his arms; the Sugababe was taking deep breaths to quell her fake panic, while waving her hands in her face; the tough TV copper was looking mean, staring silently into space.
We Are The Hanged Man Page 8