We Are The Hanged Man

by Douglas Lindsay

  'What?'

  Light ignored her, stepped forward and spoke to Jericho.

  'I've been speaking to all of the contestants that were eliminated in the past few weeks. See if there's any connection with Lol. Relationships, jealousy, that kind of thing.'

  Thank God, thought Jericho. Someone's actually been doing some police work. He asked the question with his eyebrows.

  'She had sex with three of the guys. One of them's here already, if you want to speak to him, the other two are on their way, although we're having to bring one down from Edinburgh. And looking back through the old shows, there was obviously a thing between her and a contestant called Valerie Marsden. We're bringing her in as well.'

  'What?' asked Claudia. 'You think…'

  It was absurd to her that insignificant little Valerie would have given Lol a second thought after the show, and the producers had done their best to exaggerate the aggravation between them. Still, she cut that thought off in the process, recognising immediately that it could work beautifully.

  'Who are the three guys?' she asked.

  'Todd, Wayne and… eh, the Nigerian fellow…'

  'Toz?'

  'Toz,' said Light, nodding, feeling stupid for using the tabloid abbreviation.

  'Shit,' said Claudia. 'He shagged Lol? Holy fuck.'

  She looked at Jericho, as if he might share her astonishment.

  'Who's here?' said Jericho, ignoring her.

  'Wayne. Lives in Balham.'

  Jericho got to his feet.

  'Might as well get one out of the way. I presume we'll need to do it with the Three Stooges.'

  *

  Wayne cried on cue. Jericho, who didn't watch television and didn't realise that everyone cries on TV, even Jeremy Clarkson, wondered what was going on. He doubted that Wayne spoke the truth when he said that he loved Lol, but similarly he doubted that he was in any way connected with her disappearance.

  40

  Haynes had arrived at the television studio while Jericho was out on his mission to interview Lol's mum, so instead he called Professor Leighton to find out if she was available for a meeting rather than a telephone call. She'd sounded delighted.

  Today she'd offered him a cup of coffee and was keeping him waiting. He sat in the seat by the desk, looking around him at the shelves of books. Occasionally the title of one would grab him, but the room was warm and he didn't feel like moving now that he was sitting down. Tired after the drive.

  The door opened behind him and Leighton came in holding two cups on saucers. She placed one down in front of him and took her seat around the other side of the desk.

  'It's hot,' she said.

  'What have you got for me?' asked Haynes, laying the cup back down having started to lift it.

  She clapped her hands together.

  'A great miasma. I'm rather afraid that you have some work ahead of you, Sergeant. I can start you off, but I'm afraid I don't have the resources to devote much more time to this, fascinating though it is.'

  'That's all right,' said Haynes.

  'Well, I've found four definite, but another five possibles. There are all sorts of ancient institutions in Europe, all sorts of groups plying their business in the shadows. Many of them have changed names through the years. Re-inventing themselves for political advantage. Or through necessity, or for marketing purposes... Some of those changes were just as much in the shadows as the organisations themselves. And so…'

  She pushed a piece of paper across to him. It was written in her own neat hand, rather than typed on a PC and printed off.

  'You can read the writing all right?'

  'Yes, of course.'

  'Have you heard of any of them?' she asked. 'Well, I know you will have heard of the Masons and of the French Republic…'

  Haynes was looking at a list of unfamiliar French words, names that meant nothing to him. Charbonnnerie Démocratique Universelle. La Fraternité du Saint Graal. La Main Rouge. Société des Saisons. La Fraternité du Flamant Rose Noir.

  He found himself embarrassed by his ignorance, and did not want her to translate any of them. He could check them out easily enough himself, he presumed.

  'No,' he said, looking up. He smiled. 'You're right, I do have my work cut out for me.'

  He leaned forward and took a sip of coffee. She did the same, watching him.

  'You speak French?' he asked.

  'A little. Learned in school. It crops up in work just about often enough for me to keep my hand in. I have a couple of French colleagues, although of course they all speak English. They're very sweet, and try not to laugh at me when I try to speak their language.'

  He smiled, took another drink of coffee.

  'So what are these people?' he said. 'These various groups on this piece of paper. I know what the French government do, and I guess we all have some idea about the Masons. What about the others?'

  'A mix,' she said. 'Political, religious, business. The usual reasons that men gather in dark rooms. La Fraternité du Flamant Rose Noir...'

  'The Fraternity of the Pink Black?' he said, feeling foolish for even trying.

  She smiled. 'Brotherhood of the Black Flamingo. Started out as a group of artists in the late 14th century defying the Church. They would pass messages to each other in their paintings. After the reformation and things became a little easier for artists and scientists, they became a body of enlightenment. Eventually that enlightenment became darker and more secretive. It only takes one generation for that to happen.'

  He nodded. He did not intend going through each of them at this stage. They would become muddled together; he could easily make a mistake with some later piece of cross-referencing.

  'I foresee a long night ahead for you in front of a computer,' she said smiling.

  Haynes returned the smile.

  'Maybe I can come back to you after I've done some checking,' he said, and absurdly it sounded to him that it came from his lips like he were asking her out for a drink.

  'Of course.'

  'Oh,' he said, thinking of something to break what felt like an absurdly awkward moment. 'We got another card in this morning.'

  He lifted the envelopes which he'd lain on the floor beside him, took out the Tarot card and handed it across the table. She took it from him and immediately grimaced.

  'This arrived this morning?' she asked.

  He nodded, even though she wasn't looking at him.

  'That's rather unpleasant,' she said.

  Haynes didn't reply. He had studied the card long enough. Now he was studying her, intent on looking at the card as soon as she lifted her eyes.

  'It seems to foretell… or perhaps tell of, a much greater malicious intent.'

  'Yes,' said Haynes.

  'I wonder if that rules out some of the people on your list,' she said, and then immediately shook her head. 'How can we know? I'm basing the list on people and bodies from hundreds of years ago. Just because some of them back then used the Tarot in a more mischievous way, used it sometimes with a certain amount of panache… well, who knows what they'd do now? It means nothing. The house,' she said, as if just noticing.

  'Yes,' said Haynes.

  She nodded. 'Well, that at least ties in with where we're going.'

  'French?'

  'Yes. A chateau.'

  She sat back, she looked across the table. Haynes could see a difference in her. She had changed from the woman who was vaguely curious about the cards he'd brought the previous day. Now she was an academic with her tail up, the scent of an interesting story.

  'Can you give me ten minutes? Maybe fifteen.'

  Haynes nodded.

  'I'm terribly sorry, but I think I might be able to identify this house for you. You don't mind waiting?'

  'I've been trying to identify it for ten days now,' said Haynes, 'so another few minutes will be fine.'

  She smiled and rose quickly from the desk.

  'You don't just have to sit there,' she said, as she strode from the room.
'Look around. You might find something of interest.'

  41

  There was no doubt in Jericho's mind. Lorraine Allison had disappeared without a trace. It happens in life, although only usually with a degree of planning; either because the individual wants it to happen, or because someone else makes it happen.

  At this stage it seemed that this particular either/or was the only question to which it would be possible to find an answer. Do that, and then possibly it might lead him forwards. He dearly wanted to find that she had elected to disappear, and then there would have been no crime committed and he could go home.

  He suspected, however, that he was not going to find answers. Whoever had set this up had done it with the utmost professionalism. Every piece of technology they had consulted in an attempt to find answers had been neutralised before Allison had disappeared. Either someone had helped her vanish, which was what he was hoping for, or someone had made her disappear. If this were the case, the clinical proficiency with which it had been made to happen deeply worried him. This was clearly no casual ex-lover or jealous competitor at work.

  For all that he had spent the day interviewing previous contestants and other hangers-on to the show, he was sure that there were no answers to be found there. He was doing it because that was what was wanted of them, it was what the producers thought made good television; people who had already been on the show and were already known to the public, breaking down on camera.

  It was a world that Jericho did not inhabit, and which, predictably, he hated the very thought of.

  They were having a one-hour break from filming, a break that Jericho intended turning into at the very least double that amount. He had left the building and was sitting in a Pret a Manger eating lunch, Light for company.

  He had just been laying out his thoughts on the case to Light, and she had been letting him talk. It was such a rarity. Jericho did not recognise it in himself, but his conversation was a result of relief at being free, and of enjoyment at the company of a fellow officer who appeared to have the same disdain for the circumstances in which they found themselves.

  'So, we need to find out who disabled the CCTV cameras around the hotel,' said Light, when it was clear that Jericho had said everything that he needed to get off his chest.

  'Yes,' said Jericho. He was eating a cold bacon and egg sandwich, drinking orange juice.

  Light had already finished a light salad. Jericho had been talking so much he was barely half way through.

  'Shackleton didn't seem to have gone into that,' she said. She had read the same notes as Jericho.

  'No. The strands of every investigation are infinite, and eventually we were going to come to the point where he'd stopped. Rather sooner than I would have expected. For all his bluster and letting me shout my damn mouth off, the bastard probably thought she'd been ferreted away by the TV people just the same as the rest of us. Not so sure now.'

  She nodded. In laying out the various options, he had made it clear he thought it unlikely that the TV company would have followed the path that seemed to have been taken.

  'You think the TV producers, had they taken her, would have been blunter? Cruder?'

  'That certainly appears to be their style,' said Jericho, and he smiled when she did.

  'So what's next?' she asked.

  With a mouthful of food, Jericho made a small gesture with his hand. She nodded, looked around the café as she waited. Every table taken, fat people eating salads, talking too loudly, two people at the same table, both texting, and she wondered if they were texting each other.

  Britain in the 21st century, she thought. Mobile phones and the obese eating health food.

  'We go back to the hotel. If we can't find how she left, we at least need to try to discover how the cameras were disabled, and work back from there.'

  'How do you think that'll play with our paymasters?'

  He shrugged.

  'These people confound the fuck out of me, Sergeant. I haven't a clue. This is what needs to be done, and I do believe that it represents proper police work. If they think differently, and have some other wonderful plan for us… well, no doubt I'll get told what that is. If that happens, you can do what we need to do.'

  She nodded, then followed Jericho's eyes as he glanced at the entrance to the café. Sergeant Haynes was approaching. Light felt immediate annoyance that her lunch alone with Jericho was being interrupted.

  'Sergeant,' said Jericho. 'You knew where to find us. You are a detective.'

  'Sergeant Light left word at the studio where you were going,' said Haynes without tone.

  She turned back, looked like she was about to start explaining herself, but then decided that there was little point.

  Haynes stood beside the table for a moment, holding the two envelopes in front of him and carrying the book on the history of the Tarot in French society that Professor Leighton had agreed to lend him on his second visit. A slightly awkward silence fell.

  'Got a couple of things,' said Haynes, who suddenly got a sense of having walked in on something.

  'Of course,' said Jericho.

  'I'll just get a coffee,' said Haynes, and he left them and walked to the counter. He really didn't need another coffee. He stopped at the chiller cabinet and picked up a fruit salad. He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten a piece of fruit.

  Light glanced over her shoulder at him.

  'That'll be…' she began, and then shook her head and stood up. 'I should let you two talk. Sorry, I'll get back to the show and let them you know you'll be a little while. I'll keep them at bay as best I can, but don't be too long.'

  She turned and left without looking at him. Jericho watched her go, watched her wait at the lights and then walk briskly across the road.

  Haynes sat down opposite him and he turned back.

  'Something going on?' asked Haynes. There was a trace of a smile in his voice, which Jericho didn't pick up on.

  'It would appear that what makes sense for the investigation doesn't make good television,' said Jericho.

  'I meant between the two of you,' said Haynes, smiling.

  'What have you got?' asked Jericho, ignoring the question.

  Haynes first pulled out the latest Tarot card and passed it across the desk. The image of the grotesque skeletal Hanged Man looked up at Jericho. Jericho's face did not change.

  'I suppose this means things are coming to some sort of head,' he said, after a few seconds' consideration. 'Sucking us in, getting closer. I presume we still don't know what the fuck it is we're getting closer to?'

  He looked up at Haynes.

  'You see the chateau in the background is much more prominent?'

  'The chateau?' said Jericho. His tone was slightly mocking and Haynes briefly gritted his teeth.

  'It's a French chateau, somewhere in the Loire valley. Owned by a family named Larrousse. Wine producers, although that's a relatively recent development. Forty or fifty years or so.'

  'How d'you find it?'

  'Spoke to a woman at the British Library about the cards. She recognised it.'

  'You showed them to someone else?'

  'She doesn't know any of the context. The interesting thing is that even before she recognised the chateau, she was talking about the likelihood of there being some sort of French link with the cards. The thing you said about organisations using them. She said that the style of card we have here was used by people – groups – in France in, like, the 18th century. Similar type of thing. Warnings, calling cards.'

  'So something's been done or something's about to be done?'

  'Either one.'

  Jericho made a smacking noise with his lips. There was no obvious use in that.

  'Nevertheless, we have a very clear….' and Haynes hesitated before he spoke, then said, 'French connection.'

  Jericho grimaced at the reference.

  'So it would appear.'

  'Does that mean anything to you?' asked Haynes. 'You have any relationship
to France?'

  'Me?' said Jericho looking up sharply.

  'Well,' said Haynes, 'the cards have been getting sent to you.'

  Jericho exhaled a long breath. Allowed his eyes to linger on the card. The vicious scowl of the skeletal figure, knowing and sadistic.

  'No,' he said, 'not as far as I know. Don't speak French, don't know anyone who's French. Amanda and I went to Paris once, but then, doesn't everyone?'

  'You've never heard of the Larrousse family?'

  'No.'

  'Ever drunk the wine?' asked Haynes speculatively.

  Jericho looked up, a grimace on his face, then saw that Haynes was smiling.

  'Bugger off, Sergeant.'

  Haynes leaned forward and turned the card so that it was in the middle, side on to both of them.

  'Have you found out about the Larrousse family?' asked Jericho.

  'Next on my list,' said Haynes. 'The professor recognised the chateau, knew about the wine, but not too much about the family.'

  'OK. Well, let me know when you have.'

  'I might need to go to France,' said Haynes. 'Although probably not until the summer.'

  'Give me the other envelope,' said Jericho to cut off the flow of jokes. His sergeant seemed to be in rather more robust humour than usual.

  Haynes handed it over as his phone began to ring. He checked the number, and then put the phone back in his pocket, as Jericho took the lawyer's letter from the envelope.

  Haynes opened up the fruit salad, and took a piece of melon which he ate like it might have been poisonous.

  Fruit. His dad ate fruit. But then, his dad was sixty. That was the kind of age when you needed to eat fruit in order to go to the toilet. He was still too young to have to debase his body with anything particularly healthy.

  Jericho was scowling.

  'Bloody crap,' he said. 'What's that all about?'

  'No idea,' said Haynes. 'Take it you don't either?'

  Jericho shook his head.

  'The guy they're talking about,' said Haynes. 'The dead guy. He was one of the suspicious deaths I was looking into when this all started.'

  Jericho read the name again and this time recognised it. Chastised himself for the fact that his sergeant had realised it and he hadn't.