We Are the Hanged Man (24 page)

'Hardly,' she said. 'An obscure academic work, I'm afraid. Neither widely reviewed nor purchased.'

She made the same strange gesture with her hand as if dismissing the very notion that her book might have been anything other than widely ignored.

'Can I take this?' he asked.

'No, you cannot,' she responded sharply. 'You can read it sitting here now, although the relevant question covers something in the region of thirty pages if I remember correctly… or you can ask some questions as you have my attention for another ten minutes or so.'

He looked back at the pictures, then lifted the page to leaf through the accompanying chapter. The words were densely packed, like pine trees forced into a forest, size 10 typeset, an occasional illustration lightening every third page or so. He looked up.

'You wrote a lot about it,' he said.

'Yes.'

'Are you the leading expert, or are there more of your kind?'

'Do you mean, is there someone else you can talk to?'

She smiled ruefully.

'That wasn't what I meant.'

He contemplated asking her out for a drink. That's what Jericho would do. Or dinner. More questions over tuna steaks and a bottle of wine, and then to bed.

'Is there anything in all this that might connect it to the present day?'

She raised her eyebrow.

'Anyone….' he continued, 'any organisations who used this as a means of threat or warning… organisations that are still around today, that might in some way be recalling their past?'

This was a question that she had obviously not considered, and the surprise showed on her face. She obviously liked it too, as she sat back and ran a contemplative finger along her lower lip.

'I need to give that some thought,' she said. 'Take another look through my notes. I can certainly think of one or two off the top of my head, but I wouldn't like to give you an incomplete answer.'

'Really, anything will do at—'

'I'll get back to you tomorrow.'

She looked at her watch.

'I need to be somewhere quite soon, but I'll take this home and have a look over things later on tonight.'

She reached across and took the book away from him.

'Yes…' she said, looking at pictures of the mocking Hanged Men, the quality of her voice drifting, as if she had already forgotten that Haynes was in the room. Suddenly she looked up.

'Can you come and see me in the morning?'

'No,' said Haynes, 'sorry. Can I call?'

'Yes, of course.'

*

Durrant inadvertently killed Lewis at some time just after three in the afternoon. The final act was not particularly significant – gauging pain levels at various spots in the abdomen – but it was enough ultimately to finish him off. Lewis had passed out repeatedly during Durrant's testicle work, and so he had moved on to a less sensitive area in the hope that it might allow him to remain conscious. Alas, the cumulative effect of almost a day of torture had finally taken its toll and Lewis had given up.

Durrant sometimes wondered if one could force death on oneself. Could you make yourself die in those circumstances? Could you force the life out of your body because you couldn't stand it anymore? Or was the act one of letting go, rather than of force? Could you choose to give up?

Perhaps it was something which required more research.

He had bundled Lewis' body into the same kind of thick bags he'd used for Lol, and then dumped him in the same corner of the room. Nestled together in black plastic death. There was a hook to hang one more body beside the four ghouls at the rear of the room, but that hook wasn't for Lewis.

After that he had made himself a cup of tea and had sat in silence in the living room.

There was a cold wind blowing in off the sea and the old window frame shook slightly. He could feel a slight draft but did not close the curtains. It was getting dark as he made himself the tea, and night had fallen by the time he'd finished the drink, sitting in silence in a cold room.

He did not move. Having placed the mug on the small table, he then sat with his hands on his knees staring straight ahead. He sat like this, in the manner in which he had spent so much of the previous thirty years of his life, staring straight ahead, eyes wide open. He did not feel tired.

At 2016hrs the mobile phone that he had been given beeped once. He did not move for a couple of minutes as he gave himself time to attune to the idea of more instructions. He wondered if it would be another victim, or directions on what to do with the body of the first victim. He had no feelings either way.

The following day he would likely get himself another subject for experiment regardless of whether or not he was so instructed. It made no difference whether that person was of his or their choosing.

Eventually he rose slowly, walked over to the front door, where he had left the phone lying on a shelf, and looked at the message. He read it without feeling.

He needed to go to London the following day. Dump the body and pick up his latest target. This time he'd been given a name.

He stared at the name. Nothing registered on his face.

He walked through to the bathroom, urinated for a long time, washed his face, cleaned his teeth, went to bed and was asleep within ten minutes.

Jericho was in Lorraine Allison's room at the Crowne Plaza, his three new confederates for company. Ando, Xav and Cher.

Cher had been the most vocal throughout the day, the one keenest on drawing attention to herself. Naturally this made her Jericho's least favourite. Ando had said little. Indeed, had Jericho taken the time to consider it, he would have realised that Ando had in fact said nothing. He had entered the contest, much in the same spirit in which he entered every single television contest it was possible to enter
–
from the
X-Factor
to
Total Wipeout
–
in the total belief that he had absolutely no chance of getting anywhere. He had no desire whatsoever to be a police officer, even for ten minutes on television, and was therefore somewhat out of his comfort zone. Nevertheless, he was at least aware that in his world some television exposure was better than no television exposure, and so was intent on trying to get something from the experience, even if it wasn't a job in law enforcement.

For his part, Xavier just wanted to win the prize money, and was going all out for the female vote, reckoning that the female voting public would comprise much more than 50%, and that a lot of those women would be unimpressed with Cher, finding her too harsh and demanding.

'You sometimes have to wonder about the soft furnishings they put in these hotel rooms,' said Xavier picking up and dropping a pillow.

The room wasn't large, made smaller by the presence of the camera crew, the three contestants and Hattie Morris, who was back on the job, making sure that Jericho towed the line. Or rather, making sure that Jericho got as annoyed as possible, and therefore stupidly stumbled into as many awkward and embarrassing situations for himself as they could squeeze into a one hour reality TV show.

Jericho looked over from where he was checking the door for signs of forced entry, even though he knew there had been no forced entry, and he knew that Shackleton's people had already been all over this room. He'd read the report.

He'd wanted to look at the room himself, but normally that would mean that he would have come on his own and sat in silence with the door open, trying to get the picture of what had happened the last time Allison had left the room. Perhaps Haynes would have been with him, but he would have known not to say anything.

The television crew, producer, contestants and inane talk of soft furnishings did nothing for his thought processes. He knew there was no point in asking them to leave, just as there was little point in asking them to be quiet as he sat in silence. So, frustratingly, he looked at various things in the room because he knew that was what they expected him to be doing. He was acting, playing the part of a detective for the television cameras. He might as well have been reading from a script.

His earlier period of hopeless depression was being replaced by that other beast, the angry depression, the depression where his hatred of everyone else on the planet consumed him.

He stood up from looking at the door and glanced around the rest of the room, ignoring the remark on soft furnishings.

'Anything?' asked Cher. 'The report suggested she must have, like, totally let her abductors in. What d'you think? Can you see anything that the CIS folk might have like missed and shit?'

'These curtains are completely different from the ones in my room,' said Xav. 'You'd have thought there'd have been some uniformity in these big places, at the very least for cost purposes.'

Jericho looked right past Cher. He was, as it happened, staring straight at the curtains, but not out of any interest in what Xavier had said.

'You're looking at the fucking curtains?' said Cher. 'Seriously?'

Jericho glanced at her, and then turned away and walked into the centre of the room. He turned back and looked at the distance from the bed to the door, the shape of the small hallway into the room with the bathroom door only a few feet from the main door. Opposite it there was an open cupboard space, with Lol's clothes still hanging where she'd left them.

He studied the walls either side of the short passage, but he already knew that Shackleton's men had gone over them minutely and had established that she had not been pushed back against the wall.

Then he ran his eyes over the rest of the room. The ruffled sheets, the clothes draped over the two chairs, the shoes kicked off into a corner, the book on the bedside table.

'The curtains?' said Xavier hopefully, taking Cher's statement as gospel, and slightly disconcerted that Jericho seemed to have lost interest in them.

'What?' barked Jericho turning quickly.

He looked at Xavier, but from the corner of his eye caught sight of Morris scribbling hurriedly in a notebook.

'Curtains,' said Xavier, although any sign of assurance had completely deserted him. 'I thought you were looking at the curtains.'

Jericho was not one to say
of course I wasn't looking at the fucking curtains
. Wasted words, but from the look on his face, he didn't have to say them anyway.

He turned back, glanced at Morris and at the camera, drew a reluctant breath.

'You,' he said harshly to Ando. 'What d'you think happened here?'

It was the first time that Jericho had spoken directly to him, and Ando was shocked. He immediately looked at Cher for help, and caught the look of disdain on her face before she'd managed to wipe it off.

'Not her,' said Jericho. 'You? What d'you think happened? I presume you didn't get this far just by standing there like a lemon and looking pretty.'

Sadly, Jericho had pretty much just nailed Ando's recipe for success. He was gorgeous, and
Britain's Got Justice
had been the first show to not take the time to look past the good looks to discover the true nature of the inane, unthinking dullard beneath.

'What?' he said. 'I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not sure what you mean.'

'What do you think happened the night this girl disappeared? Can you see any signs of a struggle? Do you think she allowed her kidnapper to walk into her room, do you think she put up a fight?'