We Are the Hanged Man (21 page)

Lewis slept uneasily, on and off through the night, and in his waking moments he felt nothing but pain and panic. He knew that there was something hanging behind him, but could not quite turn his head to look. He felt them though, as much as he felt Durrant's presence when he walked into the room. He felt their dead eyes looking at them, and he waited for their touch in the night.

*

Jericho was woken by a soft voice at some time after three in the morning. He woke up slowly, unaware of his surroundings. He felt a hand resting upon him and looked to his left. There wasn't much light, but he could make out the face of Newton.

The evening came back to him. Unusually for him he must have been asleep not much later than eleven. Newton was fast asleep, and in an instant Jericho was wide awake.

He stared at the ceiling. He heard the voice again. Singing softly. What was it singing?

Two Sleepy People
. The song was
Two Sleepy People
. A woman's voice. Sounded like Amanda. Amanda didn't come to him in his dreams when he slept with other women. But Amanda did used to sing sometimes.

He stepped out of bed and through into the sitting room. The small table lamp was still on, the wine glasses were where they'd left them.

Amanda was sitting in the same chair that Newton had sat in earlier. She was wearing Newton's kimono.

She stopped singing. She did not smile, but her look was not judgemental.

'I'm sorry,' said Jericho. 'I didn't expect to see you.'

'That's all right,' she said.

'If I'd known you were here.'

Now she smiled, although her lips looked sad.

'I'm not,' she said.

Jericho nodded.

'It's coming,' she said.

Jericho wondered what she meant, but he didn't ask. Perhaps he already knew but didn't want to think about it. He didn't have to ask her. He just had to concentrate.

'How long can you stay?' he asked.

She was gone.

He stood in silence in the living room for a while and then turned back to the bedroom. He thought it would take him a long time to get back to sleep, but when he laid his head on the pillow he drifted off within seconds.

*

'You are a piece of fucking work.'

Claudia was waiting in Jericho's office, which was of no great surprise to him. If she had taken herself back to London, he would have been surprised. Sitting once again behind his desk was pretty much where he had expected to find her.

'We were here and set up before eight.'

Jericho stood looking at her, holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a croissant in the other. As it happened, he hadn't had time to question his witness over breakfast; although he had had time to go home to shower and change.

It was well after nine o'clock.

'Get away from my desk,' he said bluntly. 'I'm going to sit and have a cup of coffee and something to eat,' and held them both up for her to see, 'and then I'll put a call down to you when I'm ready.'

She held his gaze for a moment, a look that was impossibly smug flirted with her mouth, and then she rose and walked past him. As she walked out the door she left it open and almost immediately a constable tentatively stuck his head into Jericho's office.

'Superintendent Dylan wishes to see you, Sir,' he said to Jericho's back. Jericho didn't turn. 'As soon as you got in,' he added.

Jericho didn't move. He had woken feeling all right for once, if a little discombobulated; a strange bed, the feeling that something had happened in the night. Yet he had arrived at the station feeling unusually sanguine.

Hadn't taken long for that to change.

'Now,' said the constable, although there was a hint of nervousness to his voice. 'She asked me to stay with you until you came to her office.'

Another short hesitation, then Jericho turned. He contemplated leaving his breakfast on the table so that he could enjoy it when he got back, but he was fairly certain that he wouldn't be coming straight back and that if by some chance he was, he'd be in no mood to be enjoying breakfast.

He was eating the croissant when he walked into Dylan's office, the constable finally leaving him to it once he was sure that Dylan had made visual contact with Jericho and knew that the constable had done his job.

Jericho closed the door, then stood in front of her, putting the last of the croissant into his mouth and taking a sip of coffee. Still too hot, burned his lips.

'What?' he said.

'I think I'm fed up shouting at you,' she said.

'Can't think what you're going to do about that,' said Jericho.

'Well, fortunately, as it happens, I don't have to do anything. You're being dispatched.'

He didn't ask the question. Put the coffee to his lips, although he didn't actually drink any of it.

'I don't think any of us need be surprised by the fact that the television people have had their way. You managed to dig a big enough hole that even I couldn't get you out of it.'

Even you
, thought Jericho. He kept the cup at his face, tentatively took a sip.

'So you're going to London. In a van, with a television crew, and three expert trainee assistants. I do think the bloody girl who suggested it probably imagined she'd get to do it on her own, but you've been landed with all three of them.'

'What about Shackleton?' asked Jericho, immediately wary of stepping onto someone else's patch.

Dylan shrugged. 'He'll hand over to you. On the one hand the minute you walked onto the television set on Saturday he was probably expecting it, and on the other, given that it's an absurd piece of fucking theatre, he'll also be delighted.'

'How did you know he was at the set when I got there?' asked Jericho, finally lowering the cup.

Dylan smirked.

'You'll likely be there until the weekend, so you may as well go home and pack a bag. Don't be too long about it. They'll pick you up on the way. Get going.'

'I'd like Haynes,' said Jericho.

'You're not getting him. It was bad enough what you said yesterday, but if we go implying that we can afford to have every one of our fucking officers swan off to London on the whim of a television crew, what the fuck is that going to look like?'

Jericho turned and walked out the room.

He found Haynes in reception, talking to Constable Loovens. He caught his eye and indicated that he follow him to his office. Haynes left Loovens behind with a shrug, and walked after the boss.

A minute later they were behind a closed door, Jericho at his desk looking absent-mindedly in drawers.

'Take it you heard already?'

'Yep,' said Haynes.

'If I need you, you're going to find a way to come up.'

Haynes nodded, even though Jericho wasn't looking at him. He knew what it meant. He either worked at the weekend, and if it was prior to that, he worked his day in Wells and then got in his car and drove to London to work for a few hours in the evening, before being back in Wells for eight the following morning. Had already made a mental note to keep a bag packed.

'Did you get anywhere with the house on the card?'

'Nope,' said Haynes. He was going to further justify his lack of success, but decided there was no point.

Jericho pushed the drawer closed and looked up.

'All right. Keep looking. And here's another thing. Find out… look, this is going to sound, I don't know, fucking stupid, but, look, I know these things could have been sent by some freak in a gorilla suit… anyone could have sent them… but here's what I want to know. On the off-chance that they've been sent by some organisation or something, some sort of…'

'Organisation? What sort of…'

'I don't know,' said Jericho, uncomfortable with his instructions. 'Who knows anything about this kind of shit? Try and find out. Apparently… some people say… apparently there are organisations that use these things. Tarot cards. People use them.'

'What kind of organisations?'

Jericho walked round from behind his desk, determined to put his discomfiture to an end.

'I don't…fucking…know,' he said. 'So I want you to find out and tell me.'

He stopped, looking into Haynes' face from a couple of feet away.

'All right,' said Haynes.

'Thank you.'

He walked out, leaving Haynes alone in the office.

'So who have you been talking to?' said Haynes to the empty room.

Then he rolled his eyes at the thought of who it was likely to have been and followed Jericho out of the room.

There were four executives sitting in the room, three of them as usual in thrall to the fourth. It was a medium-sized conference room, capable of hosting about twenty people. The four of them were at one end of the table beside a television, which was showing a live feed from the van bringing the stars of their show up the A303 to London. The sound was turned off, the television remote lying at Washington's right hand. He had had the volume on and off a couple of times, but had finally acknowledged that there was nothing worth listening to, and had pressed the mute button.

One of Claudia's assistants, also travelling in the van, was sending constant messages to Washington, with updates on any interesting developments, something she was alternating with updating the show's Twitter account.

Washington had a Macbook in front of him with several pages open, squeezed in beside each other on the screen. He held up his hand to stop Jacobson talking, while he concentrated on the latest Tweet from his Researcher in the Field.

Hot in car. Wish they'd turn down heating. No 1 saying much. Hungry. Feel like chocolate.

He nodded sagely to himself, as if reading something of great importance.

'Sounds like it's pretty fucking tense in the van,' he said, then he looked up. Smiled at the fact that he had regained the conversation.

'So, we need a strategy for this Lol thing. Correction, we need two strategies. One for if she comes back, one for if she doesn't.'

'What if she turns up dead?' said one of the others, his hand defensively scratching the back of his head as he did so.

'You know something I don't?' asked Washington.

Chipperman shook his head.

'Doesn't matter,' said Washington. 'I truly do no think she's going to turn up dead. I think we'll find she either legged it because the stress was getting too much for her, and she'll turn up on some Caribbean island getting knobbed by Rod fucking Stewart, or she's done a deal with someone like Maxi Clifford, and she's going to play it for all she can get. Either way, we need to be ready.'

'But what if she is dead? It's a possibility,' said Jacobson.

Washington clapped his hands together.

'Well, fucking brilliant for us,' he said. 'A dead contestant. Jesus, it'd be fantastic. Could you buy better publicity for the show?'

Jacobson partially nodded, although the thought of Lol being dead made him a little nervous.