We Are The Hanged Man

by Douglas Lindsay

  The audience had gone quiet; an expectant hush fell over the large studio. Seventeen seconds to go. The host bounded happily onto stage, waving to the crowd, and immediately they burst into huge and thunderous applause. He smiled, the floor manager shook his head and looked away.

  Seven seconds.

  'Chief Inspector?'

  Having turned away, Jericho looked back round at Washington, who gave him a thumbs up. Jericho nodded back with disinterest.

  'Don't mind if we bring up the subject of your wife?' said Washington. 'It'll make great TV.'

  The show began.

  *

  Durrant turned the car into the small driveway. He hadn't liked seeing the girl's face on the front of a newspaper; was glad that he hadn't seen her name. It had reminded him of how he was being used, which was something he didn't want to think about.

  He walked quickly into the house, locked the front door behind him. Crossed the small living room in five paces, into the back room.

  She hadn't heard the car but had been aware of the vibrations. She had been surprised that he'd left when he had, but had been in no state to understand why, her mind unable to analyse nuance in the brutal acts of her kidnapper. Now, however, her body tightened at the thought of him coming back. She presumed she was being held for ransom and so, although she was terrified of what he might do to her, her mind was on rape and brutality, not on the possibility that he would murder her.

  She caught sight of his face as he closed the door behind him. A cry caught in her throat. Durrant strode quickly to her side and did not hesitate. He did not like having someone in his house who was going to be messing with his head. And he knew it was not yet time to get her out of the house. There was only one option, and if it precluded his original plan of torture and pain, then that was how it would have to be.

  He smacked her across the side of the head with a blow she did not see coming. Although he did not entirely knock her out with the first hit she felt nothing as Durrant laid into her, venting fury and madness, as his hatred of mankind came exploding to the surface.

  She was dead in under thirty seconds. Durrant kept hitting the corpse for another fifteen minutes.

  *

  The audience were in their usual state of ferment, goading and cajoling and cheering and hissing, the pantomime of Saturday evening TV. The three judges played their part, played to the audience; the TV copper talking about police work as if he'd ever actually done any of it, and as if every day was like standing on the front line at Paschendale clutching a broomstick and a note from your mum asking the Germans if they wouldn't mind going home; the ex-Sugababe, sympathetic and concerned, occasionally moved to tears; Washington, sneering and harsh, the pantomime villain, ridiculing at every turn.

  Jericho sat detached. The TV copper was unimpressed with Jericho's very presence, feeling that it undermined his own special place as the hard man of the piece. Even so, every now and again he felt the need to reach out to Jericho as if the pair were partners in crime prevention, by saying, 'That's the kind of thing we need to deal with,' or 'This is what a lot of our officers don't understand.'

  Jericho could feel the darkness approaching. His brain was shutting down. He didn't suppose that he'd ever been happy, but before he'd lost Amanda there was a time when he wasn't always miserable. Now he was always miserable, and when he was in an uncomfortable situation, he curled up inside himself; his brain shrivelled into a tiny black ball of grief and anguish.

  The five contestants were each fighting a judo expert in hand-to-hand combat on the stage. One at a time. They had all, naturally, been put on their back. Even Gaz. The judo expert had been instructed not to kill any of them, but that a decent amount of pain and suffering would be advantageous to the production. Each of the five had been thrown to the floor with some brutality. Now they were being judged on their hand-to-hand combat skills by three people who couldn't be counted upon to open a new tube of toothpaste without getting into a spot of bother requiring outside assistance.

  Xav was in tears. Cher had her arm round his shoulders.

  'Is this what you'll be like if you come across two drunk guys fighting on a Saturday night?' asked Washington, dismissively. 'You'll burst into tears and hope they stop?'

  'Stop it!' barked Cher. The audience cheered at her audacity in confronting the King. Washington shook his head scornfully. Security were constantly on the look-out for someone throwing something at the back of his head from the audience. There was a man standing not far from Washington who was paid to take the bullet.

  'Chief Inspector?' said Washington suddenly. The camera panned onto Jericho; the audience quickly calmed down. The five contestants turned and looked nervously in his direction. 'Now I'm not going to lead you, or anything, I'm not putting thoughts in your head, words in your mouth. But this, this is a sorry story if this is what the British people are dependant upon for security and protection from thugs.'

  Everyone looked at Jericho. Perhaps he was the only one to have the thought that no one was dependant on the five for security and protection, as they weren't actually joining the police and this was just a television show.

  Jericho had barely spoken so far. This was the moment to bring his wisdom and experience to the front line of Britain's Got Justice.

  'It's preposterous,' he said, his voice low, and he turned away from Washington and looked at the studio floor a few feet in front of him.

  Washington clapped his hands once, then held them open.

  'Exactly. These people are preposterous.'

  The audience howled. Given due direction by Washington, the audience generally accepted that that was what Jericho had intended.

  'I meant the whole show,' he muttered quietly, but the words travelled no further than his own chin and even the microphone attached to his jacket did not appear to pick it up.

  *

  'What the fuck do you call that?'

  Washington was flying. The post-show wrap-up. Everyone was supposed to be in attendance, but Jericho had said that he was just nipping to the bathroom and had not returned. Washington had arrived, moral indignation vomiting forth. He might have been more measured had Jericho actually been in the room, although Washington bowed to no man. However, in his absence, Morris was having to take the full brunt of the tirade on the chin. Not that she immediately answered the question.

  'What the fuck do you call that?' he asked again, this time the words spoken more slowly, more emphasis given to the expletive in the middle. 'We're trying to create drama here, and you bring in a fucking dementor. That's what that guy is. He just sat there, fucking sucking the life out of the show. He's a black hole, some sort of fucking anti-charisma vacuum cleaner. Fuck me.'

  Spit had looped out of his mouth and settled on the carpet, some on the edge of the desk. Everyone else was sitting, Washington was on the prowl, moving around the room. Wouldn't be too long before the words caged leopard started occurring to people.

  'Holy fuck,' he spat out. 'Seriously, what is wrong with that guy? Who doesn't want to be on this show? He's a fucking freak.' Of the eight people being forced to listen to him, seven of them had the thought that Washington was the one who had insisted on getting Jericho. None of them spoke up. He snapped his fingers. 'We have to turn this to our advantage. I hit on something there. Dementor. The guy's a fucking dementor. We need to get that out there, we need the press to start using it. That's so fucking freaky, people'll love that. This fucking miserable twat.'

  He started to smile. He looked round his captive audience. He nodded, smiled more broadly, encouraging the rest of the room to smile with him. 'Actually, that is fucking genius. Fucking genius. Seriously, they are going to fall for this schtick, you know, the British people, they are going to love this. A dementor.'

  He laughed.

  'A dementor at my table,' said someone anonymous from the far end of the long desk.

  'What?' barked Washington.

  'You know…' and she hesitated.

&
nbsp; 'What?' he barked again, looking at her strangely.

  'You know that New Zealand film, An Angel At My Table. We could have kind of a play on that.' She couldn't look him in the eye. 'A dementor at my table. That's all,' she added.

  Washington glanced around the room, looking for someone to share in his confusion.

  'Sounds too art house,' he said eventually, and then he shook his head as if to get rid of the previous fifteen seconds of his life, fifteen seconds that he would never get back, then he clapped.

  'Right, fuck yes, dementor. Hattie, get on it, get out to the usual people. Quite happy for it to become the story of the show for the next coupla days. It should work for us. We can use him.'

  Morris nodded and started scribbling in her notebook. Washington laughed.

  'Fucker,' he said.

  22

  Light and Jericho were staying in the same hotel. The same hotel, in fact, as the Britain's Got Justice collective, although on a different level.

  She'd been thinking about him all day, and not because they were working together. He was not especially good looking, neither would he have been thirty years previously. Hair was thinning. Unlike Light he had never felt the urge to get his teeth whitened. Middle age was beginning to show around his waist and his belly and in the flab around the top of his back and shoulders. The lovemaking, however, had been beautiful and intense. She hadn't been sure what to expect, but it wasn't what had happened. A man who was more interested in giving, who spoke to her throughout, tenderly at first, then harshly and excitingly as desire flamed and orgasms neared.

  She'd had five of them in the end. Five orgasms. That had never happened before. How many women did that happen to? She could ask at the station, but then she'd likely have to divulge the identity of the bringer of such joy.

  And so she had spent the day hoping for a repeat of the night before; and yet she had watched his mood deteriorate throughout and she'd recognised the arrival of his depression; which, taken in conjunction with the arrival of Haynes, meant that she would be going to bed alone.

  Which was probably just as well. She could not count the ways that it was wrong for her to fall for Jericho.

  Nevertheless, as she sat in her room watching the aftermath of that night's Britain's Got Justice, she waited for the knock at the door, the feeling of sexual tension resting heavily and nervously upon her.

  *

  Jericho was in the bar of the hotel, sitting at a small table in the corner with Haynes. The three cards were laid out in front of them, in a line. The two drinks had been pushed back to ensure there was no contamination of the cards. Haynes had his fingers resting on the large country house drawn into the background of the third card.

  'You notice anything different?' he asked, then lifted his finger out of the way.

  Jericho leant forward, studying the three cards closely. It wasn't a game, so he wasn't playing.

  'Tell me,' he said.

  'Now, I'm not sure about this and it could just be some slight fault in the card, but it occurred to me that the house in the background is slightly bigger in the third card than the first, and when I checked closely – that is, measured – there's a distinct, if slight, increase in its size between one and two, and two and three.'

  Jericho looked at it again. Now it seemed obvious, and he wondered if it was really bigger or if he was only seeing it because Haynes was pointing it out to him.

  'You think the next one will be bigger again,' said Jericho, letting the thought formulate, rather than asking a question. Haynes nodded, then sat back looking at Jericho, watching the thought process play out.

  Now it wasn't just about the change in the skeleton's expression, the sense that whatever it knew and that Jericho didn't was increasingly dangerous; somehow it might be that there was a building, a large country house involved.

  Jericho's eyes didn't leave the cards. Haynes let his gaze drift down towards them too, although he had been studying them most of the evening, with little else to do.

  'Looking for a pattern,' said Haynes.

  'Yes. Have you seen one?'

  'Just the obvious. Building increasing in size, the look on the face increasing in…'

  He waved his hand at the card. Didn't say fucking smugness.

  'Laughing at us,' said Jericho.

  He rubbed his eyes and when he took his hand away he looked up at the ceiling.

  'This house, if it really is a thing, growing in importance with each card… What's the significance?'

  'So, we're giving this some credence?' asked Haynes.

  'Let's not go charging into anything, blindly making an arse of ourselves… but at the same time, we need to treat it as real. And the more I see it and think about it, I believe it is.'

  Haynes nodded, having already come to the same conclusion.

  'We need to find out where this house is,' said Jericho.

  'I've been trying, no luck so far.'

  'Find some luck,' said Jericho.

  *

  Haynes had intended driving back down the road at the end of the day, but by the time he had finished analysing – or over-analysing as he saw it – the three cards with Jericho, it was almost midnight, so he booked himself into a room at the hotel.

  Jericho hesitated as he passed the door to Light's room. Yet the hesitation was merely paying some sort of lip service to the possibility of them spending another night together. He was in no mood for it, the black mass still festering in his gut.

  23

  Light and Haynes were at breakfast together. Light had been instructed to spend the day with the producers, working further on details for the following few days when the show would decamp to the West Country. There was an advance team already heading to Wells. She was intending heading home that night, after the big Sunday evening vote show, when the contestants on Britain's Got Justice would be reduced to three. Haynes was intending to eat and dash, although he had no particular agenda to be gone before Jericho arrived.

  They were sitting like an old married couple, each of them with a newspaper. There was silence between them born of knowing that when Jericho arrived he would immediately be plunged into a foul mood. If he wasn't already in one.

  Light was reading the Observer, headline a simple but engaging: Government In Crisis. Haynes had the Sunday Mirror and the Sunday Express. The Mirror led with: The Dementor In The Room, over a picture of Jericho at his most sullen in the midst of the TV pandemonium. The Express had a picture of Haynes and Jericho drinking in the hotel bar, with the words: Coppers' Booze Shame As Lol's Mum Weeps. Haynes had read it and smiled, then turned to the sports pages.

  They'd had one drink each; they'd been working; and they weren't the investigating officers in the Lol case anyway. The whole story was absurd, but the Express didn't care, and the readers didn't care, so why should Haynes? He didn't care either, but he did want to read the football reports from the previous day.

  He did know that it would have an effect on Jericho, and there was no point in hiding it from him. It was out there and he'd want to know about it.

  They looked up as Jericho walked across the restaurant floor towards them. Some peculiar part of Jericho was pleased that they were ignoring each other, their heads buried in the news. Haynes was younger and infinitely better looking; why wouldn't Light be more attracted to him than Jericho? If they'd been laughing, seemingly intimate, would Jericho have wondered if Haynes had gone to her room the previous night when he himself hadn't?

  A mind of stupid, petty jealousy. He could get rid of it by sinking further into his depression. He was never jealous when he was depressed.

  He glanced at the Observer, but took no notice of the tabloids.

  'Self-service?' he asked, then looked round at the breakfast bar.

  'Yep,' said Haynes. 'You need to look at these.'

  He pushed forward the Mirror and folded the Express over so that he could see the headline. Jericho looked down, his face impassive. They could tell from the m
ovement of his eyes that he was quickly scanning the first couple of paragraphs of each story. Then, without a word or a glance, he turned away and headed slowly towards breakfast.

  Haynes and Light shared a glance, then Light turned and watched Jericho stand for a while in front of the food. Either considering his options, or mind encased in concern and despondency.

  'Didn't get my best side,' said Haynes, indicating the photograph on the front of the Express.

  *

  Light had taken the Express and the Mirror so that she could throw them angrily down on the desk in front of Morris when she arrived at the studio.

  Morris looked concerned and shook her head, holding her hands out to her side in a gesture of hopelessness.

  'I know, these people are just…. they're just rude. Rude. I don't know where they get this stuff from.'

  'You mean you don't know whether it's you who gives it to them, or someone higher up your food chain?'

  Morris continued to look perplexed and understanding of Light's anguish.

  'I don't suppose there is anyone lower down the food chain than you, is there, Executive in Charge of Production?' added Light as a barbed aside. Not subtle, but she enjoyed it nevertheless. The look on Morris' face hardened.

  'When do we start?' asked Light, confrontation still in her voice, as she sat down.

  24

  Durrant spent the day sitting outside his house, watching the sea. Sat down with a cup of coffee at 9:03, and did not move again until some time after four o'clock in the afternoon. It was a cold day, but he sat outside without a coat. Shorts, a t-shirt and a jumper that he'd been wearing for nearly ten years. Did not feel the cold, ignored the looks of dog walkers and ramblers, did not respond to those who spoke to him.

  He was troubled by the day before. It was to have been his first scientific experimentation in thirty years; instead it had ended up simply his first sex, followed by his first kill. That he had felt empathy for her, and something bordering on genuine attraction, was bad enough; but that he had then completely lost his composure, continuing to pound her flaccid body long, long after she had died was also inexcusable.