We Are The Hanged Man

by Douglas Lindsay

  'You'll stay up here for another night in case anyone off the investigation wants to take a statement. Tomorrow morning, assuming you've been given the all-clear, you're going back down to Wells. You're suspended from duty until further notice, so do not go to the station. Go home and stay there. Sit beside your phone. Do not fucking move an inch, unless it's to open the door to another officer bringing you in.'

  His eyes stayed steady on hers; she did not have such consistency of gaze.

  'Do we understand each other, Chief Inspector? Go to your room. I think you've done enough damage for one investigation.'

  Jericho turned and walked out.

  *

  He went straight to his room, packed his bag and walked to the lift. As the doors pinged and slid open, he was greeted by one of the officers with whom Dylan had travelled up from Wells.

  They looked at each other, Constable Drew standing in the entrance to the lift.

  'The Superintendent asked me to make sure you never left your room, Sir,' said Drew.

  'Tell her you never saw me,' said Jericho.

  Drew stared at him and then lifted his eyes to the CCTV camera on the wall, looking down upon them. Jericho glanced over his shoulder, then turned back to the constable.

  'Tell her you told me to stop and that I told you to fuck off.'

  Drew looked at Jericho, his actions becoming more and more tentative, despite his best intentions.

  'Now fuck off, Constable,' said Jericho.

  There was a short pause during which Drew realised that Jericho was being serious, and then he stepped forward out the lift, allowing Jericho to enter. Immediately Jericho pressed for the ground floor.

  'Give me forty-five seconds,' said Jericho as the doors started to close.

  The lift opened on the ground floor. Jericho stepped out and quickly walked through the hotel lobby and within a minute of leaving the constable had become part of London life on the street.

  50

  Sometimes Washington liked to imagine himself as Robert De Niro playing Al Capone in The Untouchables. He would look at something with the same sardonic eye, making the choice between rude acceptance or beating someone's head to a bloody pulp with a baseball bat.

  He hadn't yet had a baseball bat installed in his office, but he was thinking about it. He certainly would when he opened up his American office later in the summer – which was still dependant on whether or not he managed to sell the idea of America's Got Justice to the networks – and they would respect the presence and idea of the bat much more than a Brit would.

  He was looking at the viewing figures for the previous few nights. The numbers for Wednesday were pretty good, although naturally lower than they'd been for the weekend shows.

  He looked up; his eyes cast around the collected flange of television executives.

  'One mustn't be too harsh, but let's just say that purely from a viewing figures perspective, it's a good thing that Lol's dead. Now how are we going to make the most of it?'

  'We have to be careful what we do it with it,' said Morris. 'Now that it's a murder enquiry the police are going to want us not talking about it.'

  'You know what?' said Washington, cutting her off before she could say anything further. 'Fuck the police. Fuck them. What have they contributed to this show so far? Let's not forget, we paid them for their involvement, and we're not just paying for whatever legitimacy they think we're going to get from them. They're supposed to be contributing. So what do they send us? Some fucking deadbeat. They go out of their way to find the dreariest wanker on Planet Earth, a man with no feel for television and utter disdain for the great work we're trying to do here. Then he fucks his assistant, very possibly for all we know murders her and hides her body, and then fucks off. Anyone know where he is now?'

  Heads were shaken around the table.

  'I heard he'd been told to stay at the hotel and he jumped ship,' said one. 'No one knows where he's gone.'

  Washington held his hands open in a gesture of giving in to the inevitable.

  'See what I'm saying?' he said. 'Fucking police. I'll tell you what we're going to do. We're going to make whatever show we fucking want, we're going to say what we want, and we are going to get our own three special investigators onto the task of tracking down Lol's killer. And would any of us be surprised if oh… it turns out to be DCI Jericho all along?'

  There were a few blank expressions.

  'That doesn't seem very likely,' said one of the others. A small nameless executive, who was ever destined to stay that way.

  'At the very least,' said Washington, slightly taken aback that someone had picked up on the outrageousness of his previous suggestion, 'I suspect that it will emerge he knew far more about what was going on than he previously let on. Claudia?' he said sharply.

  Claudia looked up from her iPad.

  'Yes?'

  'What are they doing now?' said Washington. 'The Three?'

  'They're at the hotel with a film crew,' said Claudia. 'Looking for clues.'

  'Tasty,' said Washington. 'Who's in charge, or are they just running loose, like, I don't know, Scooby fucking Doo or something?'

  'Cher,' she said. 'She's the only one who's competent.'

  'So, we're just handing her the win?' said Washington.

  Claudia smiled and shrugged. She had in front of her an e-mail from Fox. A job offer. She was on her way to New York. Washington could go and suck his own cock.

  'She's favourite. She's walking away with it. But then, sometimes favourites fall at the last hurdle, and that makes for even better TV, doesn't it? Plenty of time yet for bad things to befall Cher.'

  She looked back at her iPad so that she could reread the enormous amount of money on offer. Washington, recognising a change in her demeanour, looked at her for a while, then once more embraced the rest of the meeting with his strange smile.

  51

  There was a movement in the corner. Sergeant Light's eyes shot open; her senses once again sprang to life. Muscles tensed, her arms, legs and midriff straining against the bonds which held her to the same table where Lol and Lewis had been brutalised. She was still naked, but did not feel cold.

  She had been dosing but had not properly slept since waking up twelve hours previously in the boot of the car.

  Almost as soon as Jericho had left her the previous evening, there was a knock at the door. She was still lying naked in her bed, and assumed that Jericho had forgotten something. She made the mistake – for which she was still kicking herself – of not looking through the peep hole, and had opened the door. She was flattened, knocked unconscious, by a single punch to the forehead.

  Slowly she'd come round in the car. Her forehead throbbed. Her legs and arms were stiff and cramped, but they were not bound. They were driving fast and in a straight line, so were clearly on either a dual carriageway or motorway. It lasted a long time. She tried counting at some point, to focus her mind, attempt to get some sort of time frame perspective, but it went on so long that she couldn't concentrate; the long list of numbers drifted away.

  She felt she had to be poised and ready for when the car stopped, and the boot was opened. Her attacker was formidably strong, but whatever the circumstances, she needed to get the upper hand.

  She would be no match for him in a straight fight. She would have to fake unconsciousness, and then when she had the opportunity, take him by surprise. Even then she would have no more than a second or two. Whatever blow she struck would have to be precise and disabling, at least giving her enough time to take a second strike. The windpipe or the testicles.

  At the very least, she would need to give herself time to talk.

  By the time the car stopped she was ready. She had been stretching her arms and legs and back as much as possible in the confines of the boot, so that she wouldn't be too stiff to move. The driver door opened and closed, footsteps crunched on gravel around the side of the car.

  She heard a key in a lock. He entered the house. The door did
not close. She tried to control her breathing. As long as she was going to pretend to be incapacitated, she would have to control her breathing.

  She could hear the sea. That would explain the long trip. She wondered which coast they had come to, but given that she had been unconscious for some of the journey, she had no way of telling how long they'd been travelling.

  The footsteps crunched back; the lock clicked in the boot. She rested her head at an awkward angle. She waited.

  In one swift movement, Durrant pulled back the tarpaulin and slammed his fist back into Light's forehead. He had no idea whether or not she was awake, but he wasn't going to give her the sporting opportunity to fight back.

  When she had awoken for a second time, she was immediately aware that this time she'd been bound. There was no gag around her mouth. She lay in silence for a long time, becoming accustomed to her surroundings. Nothing. Not a sound, not even the sea. She had either been moved again or, more likely, the house was very well sound insulated. There was little point in shouting, and at this stage all it was likely to do was bring her captor back into the room. She needed to speak to him, but she didn't understand what was going on. When he came back, if there was any way possible, it had to be on her terms.

  She needed time. She relaxed as much as possible and then began to probe her bonds, to see how much give there was in each of them. Not an inch, was her quick realisation. She was bound tight to a hard table, no comfort allowed. Any movement at all and she felt pain in her wrists, ankles and stomach. Her shoulders and buttocks also hurt from the way she was lying, but she wasn't able to adjust her position. She could move her toes and her fingers, and her neck was free, so she could turn her head to the side.

  Although she had been bound tight, she had not been brutalised in the way that Lol had during her incarceration.

  The room was in complete darkness. She realised that the overall effect was extremely sinister, a fertile ground for the imagination. But then didn't people immerse themselves in sensory depravation for pleasure? In any case, she couldn't allow her imagination to run free about her surroundings; she didn't have to fear an unseen menace in the dark. She had to fear the man who possibly kidnapped Lorraine Allison, who was incredibly strong and at whose mercy she lay.

  Then there was the slightest noise. A rustle. It seemed to echo through the room, an explosion of sound.

  She lay still, tensed. She wasn't alone. Was there another captive in the room? Or a rat? She hated rats. She presumed that it wasn't the man who had attacked her, for why would he be operating without the lights on? Yet he was the only frame of reference she had about this place. The man and the sea. And she couldn't hear the sea.

  The rustle came again. She remained tensed in her bondage, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end, trying to control her breathing, fear washing over her.

  The rustling increased; there was a gentle thump, then someone groaned.

  *

  Jericho hadn't seen his sister for nearly a year. They got on well, but their lives were so completely different that they drifted in and out of each other's. Her husband, a banking executive with Rothschild's, clearly had no idea how to take Jericho, had always been completely unable to talk to him, and as a result was usually quite happy when weekends and months went by and his wife hadn't made the arrangement she'd been intending to make with her brother.

  She was surprised when she found Jericho standing on the doorstep, although it went quickly. Unexpected arrivals were the least she had come to think her brother capable of.

  He walked in without a word, and five minutes later they were sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee in front of each of them.

  'You're never going to get over her, are you?'

  It was the first thing that either of them had said. They hadn't talked about Amanda in almost seven years, but they had both thought enough about her, and had thought many of the same things.

  Jericho knew that Mary wouldn't have been watching Britain's Got Justice, just as she wouldn't have been reading the newspaper reports. She would, however, have seen the front pages whether she wanted to or not. And she would have thought what he suspected she always thought, that in recent years he had continued to sleep around with as many women as possible in a pointless effort to escape the heartache and loneliness that had consumed him since he lost Amanda.

  He didn't answer. Shook his head. Like many, he was a different person when with his family, although in Jericho's case it did not really manifest itself in any outward way. He still didn't say much; the change was mostly internal. He felt he could not be so rude, and therefore was unable to hide behind his standard defence mechanism.

  'I saw the news this morning. Have you been removed from the case? Removed from that dreadful programme?'

  He took a long drink of coffee. By the time it emerged from her caffetiere it was never very hot.

  'I removed myself from the case before they could. That's officially removed from the case.' He raised his eyes, and she understood. Her brother would never stop working on any case on which he'd begun. 'Don't know about the show. I'm sure they'd happily put me in a cage so that people could throw shit at me.'

  She made a face at his use of the word shit, and he made a slight movement of his head in apology.

  'What can I do for you?' she said. 'A bed for the night and somewhere to hide?' she asked, smiling.

  He didn't return the smile.

  'There's been something weird going on…. doesn't matter.' He looked up at her again. 'This is… have you ever done a family tree, anything like that? Or has anyone?'

  She smiled curiously.

  'Robert, you're not desperate for some long lost relatives?'

  He smiled ruefully this time.

  'There's something been going on. I'm not going to tell you about it. I just need to know if there's any sort of extended family we know about. As many names as possible. I need you to get a piece of paper and write down every family member you can think of.'

  'You're serious?'

  He didn't reply.

  'Of course you're serious,' she said. 'You and jokes belong in different planes of existence.'

  'Thank you,' he said. 'I need it now. Get something to write on, and your address book and your phone, and let's start putting something together.'

  She sat back, slightly surprised. It was rare for her brother to slip into work mode in private. In fact, she wasn't sure she'd ever witnessed it before. A different man.

  'I'm not one of your spotty young constables, Robert, you know,' she said.

  He didn't reply, just answered with a look across the table. She got to her feet, walked over to a neat letter rack at the end of one of the kitchen worktops, beside the microwave oven. At the front of the pile was an A5 brown envelope, which she passed over to him.

  'I'll get some paper. In the meantime, you can read this. Came in yesterday. I was going to call you actually. I suppose… Yes, yes, I'll get the paper.'

  She knew how his mind worked. It would be no fluke that she was sitting in possession of that letter, while he came round the following day to enquire after a list of relatives. No fluke at all.

  Jericho took the short letter out of the envelope as his sister walked quickly from the room.

  *

  'Where is he, Sergeant?'

  Haynes turned. He wasn't surprised that the superintendent had come looking for him. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

  Haynes was sitting alone in a room in the local police station, trawling through CCTV footage. Checking the nearest cameras to the hotel, checking at the approximate times that Sergeant Light and Lorraine Allison had been taken – although in Allison's case it was much more difficult to be specific – and hoping that they'd been kidnapped using the same car and taken in the same direction. Any car that appeared in both time frames heading in the same direction need not automatically be the person they were looking for, but it would give him something to go on, which was better
than aimlessly trawling around London drinking coffee and thinking himself into a dead end.

  He had not turned automatically when the door had opened.

  He did not answer. Held his hands out in ignorance.

  She gritted her teeth.

  'Don't start pulling your boss's taciturn bullshit, Sergeant. When was the last time you saw him?'

  'In his room. We discussed the case. I said I was going to come and do this, he said he was going to see you. Did he not?'

  'Yes, he did. Told him to stay in his room. He didn't.'

  'Did you expect him to, Ma'am?'

  'What?'

  Haynes found himself in one of those situations where he decided, much as Jericho usually did, that it was better to keep the answer to a question in his head.

  'Have you had contact with him in the last hour?'

  'No, Ma'am, I haven't.'

  She seethed. Jericho, she was at least pleased to realise, was not going to survive the investigation. She didn't want him on her force, and now she had a good reason for getting rid of him, and it was a fair bet that no one else would want him either.

  'They want you at the television studio,' she said curtly, and put her hand to the door.

  'What?' he said. 'I'm doing…'

  'I know what you're doing. You're searching for a fucking needle, that's what you're doing. Now get over there, and you can deputise for your boss, wherever he is.'

  Haynes took a last look at the two screens, made a note of what time he'd reached, and then got to his feet.

  By the time he'd reached the television studio he knew how he would play it.

  *

  'It's dull as shitwater,' said Claudia. 'No. Just, no.'

  'You film it for two minutes…' began Haynes, but she wasn't listening.

  'No, Sergeant. If you want to suggest a car chase, then fine. Our people, our three brave and decent people who have done training that you would not believe over the last few weeks… they are, and I'm serious when I say this, more highly qualified in all sorts of shit now than most of the police service, and they're not spending the next three hours looking at fucking CCTV footage. What kind of fucking show do you think we're trying to make here?'