We Are the Hanged Man (22 page)

'You'd have to cancel the show,' said Chipperman.

'No we fucking wouldn't,' said Washington. 'That's not what Lol would want. No one would want that. The show would go on; and I'll tell you what, it'd be a lot fucking bigger. We've got a bigger purpose here. We're trying to tackle the crime which is endemic to British society. What better illustration of that than one of our contestants getting her throat slit? It's fucking perfect.'

'You sound like you hope she might be dead,' said Chipperman.

'Of course not,' said Washington. 'Lovely girl, if a little too full of herself because of her supposed intelligence.
University Challenge
my arse. Bubbly personality, great tits, nice smile. She'll turn up and it will be to the advantage of us all. But what we need to be working on here is this; what if she doesn't turn up?'

He looked around the room with his eyebrows raised.

'Anyone thinking, or do we need to get some new executives in here?'

'We could do a Lol memorial episode,' said one of them quickly.

*

Jericho went straight to the local police station to find Shackleton and sort everything out. There was a delay of around ten minutes while Claudia argued that the conversation between the two men really ought to be recorded on camera, the two men said no, she put a call through to the chief constable, and he informed Shackleton that he would be obliged to have the cameras in the room.

So now Jericho was taking over the running of a case from someone who did not want to give it to him, and the whole situation was being made inevitably more uncomfortable by the presence of two television cameras and a soundman.

'I've e-mailed you most of the things you'll need to see. The people we've talked to, witnesses, family.'

'What was it that the witnesses witnessed?' asked Jericho.

Shackleton glanced at the camera, then looked at his desk.

'They witnessed Lorraine Allison leaving the building… the television studio that is. We have witnesses to her arriving at the hotel, the Crowne Plaza, but none of her leaving.'

He looked awkwardly at the camera again, then forced himself to look at Jericho.

It was preposterous that they had felt the need to get a washed-up loser like Jericho. What did they think Jericho was going to do that he couldn't?

Bloody television, he thought, but really he didn't think it was bloody television. He thought it must have been Jericho making a nuisance of himself, demanding to be the star in front of the cameras.

'And she never left the Crowne Plaza?'

'Well, not that anyone saw. They've been over the building, top to bottom, and found nothing. So, I think we can say that she definitely left. Checked all the footage of other people leaving, there's no one that fits the bill. Turns out the CCTV was disabled. We're looking into that.'

'Disabled?'

Shackleton looked blank.

'You're looking into it? Is that it? It seems… curious. Suggestive.'

Shackleton shrugged.

'Yeah, sure. Of course. More than likely she went out wearing some fabulous bit of make up so no one noticed.'

He shrugged when he'd finished talking.

'You have any actual paperwork?' asked Jericho. 'I prefer paperwork.'

Shackleton sighed and looked around, his eye finally settling on his right hand desk drawer. He opened it and removed a thin black folder.

'Such as it is,' he said, pushing it across the desk. 'I'm afraid you're going to have to look at the computer files too. It's how we do things around here.'

The last line was said with an intended edge. Jericho took the folder without comment. Watching the uncomfortable meeting on video, Claudia perked up in the next room, now that a little edginess had been introduced.

Jericho turned and glanced at the cameraman, looked back at Shackleton. Shackleton, for his part, had no intention of helping Jericho out of any moment of unease.

Jericho turned back to the cameraman.

'Can you turn that bloody thing off?'

'Ha!' barked Claudia in the next room. 'Got the wanker.'

The cameraman poked his head round from the side of the camera, shook it briefly, then hid himself back behind the eyepiece. Jericho looked into the lens, the annoyance written all over him, then looked back at Shackleton. Typically he then let his annoyance get the better of his good judgement.

'So, Chief Inspector,' he said, 'what's your feel for the case?'

Shackleton was in no mood to make anything easier for Jericho. He looked blankly back. If either of them were going to say something stupid or indiscreet in front of a camera, it wouldn't be him.

'We have a young girl who's disappeared and we're using all means available to us to locate her and bring her safely back to her friends and family,' said Shackleton, as if he was sitting in a press conference.

Jericho bristled. This was why you couldn't have the television camera with you everywhere you went. No one could be honest. Or, at the very least, some people refused to be honest.

'Go on,' said Claudia in the next room, 'say it, you spineless wanker.'

Shackleton raised his eyebrows questioningly at Jericho.

'Why do you think she went missing?' asked Jericho.

Shackleton answered with a shrug, and then, 'Really, it's impossible to say at this stage until we're in possession of more evidence.'

'You think that, at least, it makes sense to draw the conclusion that it's related to the show?' asked Jericho.

Claudia was leaning forward, her hands squeezed tightly together.

'Come on, you prick,' she said, 'almost there.'

'I don't think we can draw that conclusion,' said Shackleton, determined to step away from the edge. Jericho, on the other hand, just wanted to get on with it and seemed quite happy to plummet over the cliff.

'You don't think you can draw a conclusion between a young woman being on television most nights for two months and the fact that she disappears at the height of her popularity?'

Shackleton eased himself back in his seat and spread his hands out. Nothing else to say. Jericho could hang himself if he wanted, but he wasn't going to tie himself to the train tracks with the oncoming train heading straight for them.

Jericho steeled himself, mentally dismissed the camera.

'Look, Chief Inspector, just cut the shit. I know you don't want me here, and maybe you think I engineered it, but really, it's not my doing, and I would genuinely prefer to be at home in Wells investigating small time fraud.'

Jericho left it a moment to see if he was making any headway. Shackleton's face was expressionless. At the station in Wells they would have said that he was doing a Jericho. Or that Jericho was being out-Jerichoed.

'Did you get any feeling that this was a set-up of any sort?' asked Jericho.

Shackleton looked surprised at the question.

'By who?' he asked.

'By whom,' retorted Jericho, and Shackleton sneered and felt pleased that Jericho was in the process of shooting himself in the foot.

'Whomsoever could you mean?' said Shackleton, because he thought it was funny, although he immediately recognised that it wasn't and regretted having said it. If he wanted to look like the cool one, then the less said the better.

Jericho leant forward, stared at the floor. The room was completely silent, bar the low hum of the cameras, one on either side, no more than three feet from his head. He was filled with contempt for the cameramen, for intruding into his life this much. He didn't care if they were only doing their job. They didn't have to do it. They could be out doing a proper job, like filming people falling into swimming pools or cute cats or cute dogs or cute kids, then sticking it on YouTube and getting a million hits a day. So damned fuck if that wasn't even a fucking proper job.

'Have you investigated the possibility that no crime has been committed, and that the whole thing is a set-up by either the producers, or by Lorraine Allison herself, in order to get maximum publicity for this low-life, execrable piece of television shit?'

There, thought Jericho. Said it. At least he'd taken care of the elephant in the room, even if it did guarantee him several more bollockings at the hands of a variety of women.

'You think the producers kidnapped her?' said Shackleton, with so much badly feigned shock in his voice he could have been paid by the producers to say it.

'I'm not saying they kidnapped her, I'm saying they're putting her up in a five star hotel somewhere in the middle of London, while we waste our time looking for her.'

'I really don't think we have anything to support that allegation,' said Shackleton.

'I wasn't making an allegation,' said Jericho, 'I was just asking if you'd considered it and investigated the possibility.'

'You just said something along the lines that they were putting her up in a five star hotel in the middle of London,' said Shackleton. 'That sounds like an allegation to me.'

Jericho stood up, leaning in towards Shackleton.

'Listen, you fuck…' he began, then from somewhere the metaphorical cautionary hand tapped him on the shoulder. He leant on the desk for a moment, composed himself, then lifted up the file which Shackleton had pushed across to him, and walked quickly out of the room.

Shackleton stared straight into the camera and said nothing.

In the other room, Claudia stood upright, her arms stretched high out to her sides, her blouse pulled tight across her chest, her mouth open in a silent yell of triumph. She stood like that for nearly thirty seconds, as if England had just won the World Cup and she was standing in the crowd cheering. With the mute button on.

Eventually she relaxed, smiling, running her fingers across her face, feeling the dryness of her skin.

'Got you, you arrogant bag of fuck!' she shouted, then she pumped her fists a few times in triumph.

There was a knock at the door. Jericho didn't turn, didn't speak. Another knock, and eventually the door was tentatively opened. Sergeant Light poked her head round, saw that Jericho was standing with his back to her, looking down on a grey January day in London. She walked in, closed the door behind her.

She waited, looking around the room. As usual the walls were lined with pictures of famous TV talent: Morcambe & Wise, Des O'Connor, Bob Monkhouse, Dermot O'Leary, Benny Hill, Ant & Dec.

She looked at the desk, where various pieces of paper had been strewn around, as Jericho had rifled through the case notes bequeathed to him by DCI Shackleton.

'Waiting for me again, are they?' he asked.

His voice was dull and grey; she recognised that he'd descended into the pits of his regular depression. If there was anything good to come of that, at least he wouldn't care when the shit hit the fan over what he'd said to Shackleton on camera.

'Yes.'

She was going to add to it, but there was nothing else to say. No point in rubbing it in, no point in hurrying him along. At least up here he wasn't about to have Dylan come descending upon him, screaming her head off for not co-operating, for not being where she thought he ought to have been.

He turned slowly. She had spent the last few days trying to wean herself off thoughts of him, or at least, the inappropriate thoughts. The thoughts she shouldn't have been having. The thoughts that led to trouble, that had led to her spending the night in bed with him.