We Are the Hanged Man (15 page)

Lorraine Allison, her pliable broken body bound with tape into a foetal ball and stuffed inside three layers of black bin liners, dumped in a corner. He would have hung her with the rest, but could not abide the thought of her looking down on him every time he went in there. She would stay wrapped in black behind a locked door, while Durrant drove himself insane with indecision and uncertainty.

*

Jericho spent his day much like Durrant. Sitting outside with the wind in his face, watching the water. Except Jericho did not have the pleasure of the sea. All he had was the boating lake in Regent's Park.

He sat for nearly four hours, more warmly dressed, eating more food and drinking more coffee, but essentially in the same position as Durrant. A lone figure, seemingly scowling at the world, yet really scowling within. And since Jericho was in London, rather than on the Suffolk coast, no one spoke to him or looked at him, or even saw him. An old man in an old coat, huddled against the cold. Lonely and sad.

There was one kid, eating ice cream on a cold day, who recognised him and pointed. Jericho caught the boy's eye, but the mother quickly scolded him, grabbed his hand and dragged him away. No time for lonely old men.

Jericho was expected at the studio at four o'clock – Jacobson had actually called it sixteen hundred hours Zulu – so at some time around three-thirty he wearily rose from the park bench, and began to walk slowly down towards Marylebone Road. He was going to be late, and at least the thought of that cheered him slightly.

*

The brick flew through the window, dully thudded off the books on the shelf on the other side of the small room and dropped to the floor. A new brick, full size, no pieces broken from it. It had also survived the trip through the window intact.

The old man in the sitting room shuddered and cried out, ducking down behind a chair as he looked out of the window.

There were three of them outside, hoods pulled up as usual, drink in their hands as usual.

'Fuckin' granddad, you old cunt!'

He knew they could see him looking at him, and he ducked his head down much lower. He was shaking, his arms drawn into his sides, his teeth chattering. He forced himself further in against the meagre protection of the seat, waiting for the next missile.

They had been coming more and more often. At first it was irritating, and he hadn't wanted to call the police. However, after the third broken window he'd made the call, the police had eventually come round to speak to him, and nothing had been done. The frequency of the attacks – or mild harassment as the police had termed it – had been increasing for several weeks. The more he called the police, the more he could sense their disinterest, the more he knew they assumed his exaggeration.

He was an old man complaining about youths. That wasn't news, wasn't even crime. They didn't have the manpower to deal with an old man complaining about youths. How many spare police officers did he think they had?

Not that they had ever said it to his face, but it was what they were thinking, and everyone knew it. He knew, they knew that he knew and that he was right; and more than that, the guys on the street, the youths, the ones in hoodies who threw rocks and who drank warm beer from cans at eleven in the morning just as much as at eleven at night, they knew too.

The decline in his health could be mapped perfectly against the start of the attacks and their increasing frequency and intensity. Windows broken. The doorbell rung at three in the morning. And again at four. And five. And when he'd deactivated the bell, the door had been knocked, or stones thrown against his bedroom window. Or through his bedroom window. Dog shit through his letterbox. Assumed it was dog shit. It was shit, what did it matter where it had come from? Air let out of the tyres in his car. Shouldn't be driving anyway, one of the policemen had said to him. Phone calls, constant phone calls. It had made no difference when he'd gone to the trouble to change the number. They seemed to know it straight away. Straight away. A call within the first ten minutes, the harsh breath and no words on the other end of the phone, and then they hung up. Happened on all three occasions he'd had the number changed.

He heard footfalls on the front steps, and then the sound of the letterbox, something falling to the floor in the hall. A sharp intake of breath, and he screwed up his eyes, buried his head in between his crossed arms, and wished that it would all go away. He hated the shit through the letterbox, absolutely hated it.

But it wasn't shit, not this time.

This time it was fire.

They were going to be singing tonight, so that the British people could assess their all-round talents before deciding for whom they would cast their vote.

Singing is a much-underestimated life skill, the host told the audience at the start, so it was perfectly legitimate that the contestants should need to display some evidence in the art before progressing to the next stage.

In keeping with the format of the show and the very low expectations of the viewing audience, each of the contestants had been given a song to sing that had some connection with law enforcement, even if it was just a song that had originally been sung by The Police.

Xav:
I Fought the Law
; Ando:
I Shot The Sheriff
; Cher:
Don't Stand So Close To Me
; Muzza:
Jailhouse Rock
; and Gazza: the Arctic Monkeys'
Riot Van
.

It was excruciating from start to finish. History does not suggest that auditioning would have weeded out those who couldn't sing a note, yet none of these five had sung for their supper in the past, and it showed. Nevertheless they had all been game, and had all viewed singing as the most enjoyable part of the process so far.

This was real life, as far as they were concerned. Law enforcement was one thing, but whatever kind of thing it was, it wasn't cool. Singing live on TV was cool.

The studio audience were, as ever, wearing their excruciating filters. No one seemed to notice how bad they all were. The panel were exuberant, finally getting to comment on some sort of popular culture, other than the contestants' ability to take a fall without breaking a bone. Washington and the ex-Sugababe were particularly comfortable with the new direction, the hard-nosed ex-copper slightly less so.

Even Jericho was slightly cheered by it. It was so dreadful, the audience reaction so absurd, that he had one of those rare moments when he felt genuinely superior to everyone else in the room, and did not feel at all pompous in the thought.

Washington was already wondering whether he should reschedule the course of the following week. Certainly they would continue with the plan to have each of the three suffer the Dementor at first hand, but perhaps they could introduce a further singing element into the competition. He had been foolish to think he could break away completely from that form of pure entertainment. It was what the British People wanted, and it wasn't like he hadn't known that all along.

Eventually the singing stopped and the judges pronounced. Washington lured Jericho into a false sense of security by not even inviting him to speak. Hoped that he might be offending him, which he wasn't, but was saving him for later, when he intended hauling the beast up onto the front line.

And once the judges had had their say, and the presenter had run through a quick summation of the weekend's events, so that the watching audience at home could be reminded of things that they'd watched five minutes previously, that same watching audience was sent away for forty-five minutes to phone in and vote for which two of the contestants should be ejected from the show.

And despite all the phone-fixing scandals of the past, there was never any doubt in Washington's mind who the three survivors were going to be; and neither had there been from the very beginning.

*

Jericho sat alone with a cup of coffee during the short break. He hadn't wanted to say anything when the show had been on air, yet he felt equally uncomfortable sitting in complete silence, ignored and shunned. Unsure why he was there. Obviously he had been sullen enough the previous evening that they didn't want him to say anything, but why even have him on the show? Other than the obvious, something that he recognised; that they were mocking him, keeping him pointlessly dangling.

A small figure stopped beside the table where he sat.

'Chief Inspector?'

He lifted his head and looked at Cherie Mansfield. Every time he saw her she was wearing different clothes, different make-up, and had her hair done in a new and exciting fashion, so it took a moment for it to register to whom he was talking.

'Miss Mansfield,' he said. He wondered if they all thought he was sulking, sitting in sullen silence as he was. He imagined them talking about him, saying that he was in a huff because he hadn't been allowed to contribute to the earlier part of the show.

'I just wanted to say, you know, I think it's terrible the things they're saying about you.'

Jericho gave her an eyebrow.

'Who?' he asked.

'Well, everyone.'

He nodded. Almost laughed. As long as everyone was talking about him, that was all right.

'What are they saying?' he asked, although he genuinely didn't care.

She looked at her feet as though she was embarrassed, and shook her head.

'I hope we get the chance to work together,' she said. 'It'll be, like, totally awesome and that.'

She caught his eye again then turned and ghosted back in the direction from which she'd come. Jericho noticed the member of the floor crew motioning for her to hurry up, and she broke into a skip.

*

In what some thought was a rather sad pre-meditated piece of live television violence, on discovering that he'd been ejected from
Britain's Got Justice
, Gary Templeton – Gaz to the tabloids, a thrice-married ex-murder suspect with a heart of gold – went mental and punched the host on the chin, then turned on Xav, Muzza and Ando, even though Muzza had also found himself ejected from the show.

Xav and Ando, newly selected by the British People to go forward and spend a week with the police in an attempt to become a fully paid-up celebrity law enforcement officer, were also completely useless in the face of an angry attack. Xav received a beefy punch to the chest, which sent him reeling and out of the fray, and Ando was quickly downed by a blow to the stomach, a boot in the knee cap and then a knee brought up into his face as he doubled over. A quick job, nicely done. The audience loved it.

Although the studio security were moving in quickly, no one was sure how it would have ended had not Cher taken matters into her hands and rapped Gaz in the testicles, following which he crashed to the ground like he'd been hit by a wrecking ball.

The brief incident was over. The crowd exploded even more at Cher's intervention, and she turned and faced them, her arms aloft accepting their adulation. Many of them, while cheering heartily, assumed that the whole thing was a put-on, yet Gaz's rage had been real, as had Cher's glorious strike to his gentleman's region.

Gaz was led away, to the jeers and angry remonstrations of the crowd, by the studio security. The host, Ando and Xav pulled themselves together and stood with Cher, the heroine and instant owner of the following day's front pages, as she continued to bask in her fifteen seconds.

Muzza, the wretch, beaten up, knocked over and knocked out of the competition, retreated sadly to the rear of the stage, his brief moment of TV celebrity already finished, his marketability instantly crushed.

'What we have here,' said Washington, when eventually order had been regained, 'is a perfect illustration from Cher of what we're looking for with this show.'

The audience erupted again. Washington feigned annoyance at being interrupted and signalled for them to calm down. Eventually the last whoop was silenced, and a low rumble of agitation settled over them, the crowd desperate for the opportunity to once more make itself the centre of attention.