We Are the Hanged Man (26 page)

He looked from contestant to contestant. Xavier and Ando both noticed that his eyes lingered longest on Cher. Cher bit her bottom lip.

He looked at Claudia. A significant look. Claudia looked significantly back, understanding the importance of the day.

The door opened. Jericho walked in on the frenzy of posturing and looked around the assembled company.

He nodded at those who were sitting down, then looked at Washington.

'Come to lend us your expertise?' said Washington glibly.

*

As far as Jericho knew, although he was not familiar with many nineteen-year-old girls, most of them were close to their mothers. It seemed reasonable to talk to Lol's mother, to gauge whether or not she knew that her daughter was safe and well somewhere, sitting with her feet up sipping cocktails, while the police ran around looking for her.

Shackleton had already spoken to her, of course, and discerned that she knew nothing, but it was one of those calls that Jericho knew he would have to make himself.

By himself, under these circumstances, of course, meant with an entourage of many. Lol's mother had, in any case, come to London, as that was the last place her daughter had been seen. This fact alone made Jericho assume that she was as in the dark as the rest of them, as surely she would have stayed at home if she'd known that her daughter was safe.

It seemed to him more the case that he had to delicately prise from her whether or not it was possible that Lol was the kind of girl who would happily let her mother think she'd been kidnapped, when she was absolutely fine.

For some reason Jericho had imagined Lol's mother to be a Daily Mail-reading woman in her fifties. She turned out to be thirty-seven years old, would have been unlikely to have read the Mail as she would have considered it too intellectual, what with it containing words, and she further surprised him by having a lawyer present.

'I'm suing the television company,' she said to Jericho by way of introduction. 'Mr Watson, my attorney…' She didn't read much, but she did watch American TV shows. '…recommends that he be present during all my dealings with them or their representatives.'

'I work for the police,' said Jericho.

She stared at him, and then let her eyes wander to the accompanying collective that now followed every one of Jericho's moves.

'You think?' she said.

Well, she may have been right about that, but it wasn't something Jericho was going to think about at that moment.

'Why are you suing them?' he asked.

She glanced at the lawyer who nodded.

'Stress,' she said, looking back at Jericho. 'You don't know what it's like missing someone, not knowing whether they're alive or dead.'

Jericho stared at the floor. Amanda came calling, loud and clear, her never-changing face as fresh and beautiful as it had been ten years previously.

'The stress I've been through the last few days. Even if she comes back, even if she's OK…' and she broke off to sob quietly. She wasn't doing it intentionally because the camera was running, it being more of a Pavlovian reaction to the television camera so prevalent among certain sections of society.

Jericho said nothing. She hadn't meant anything by the
you don't know what it's like
comment. There was no reason why she should know anything about him, especially since she never read any newspapers, but even so he felt instant burning resentment towards her for having made the glib assumption in the first place.

She pulled herself together, as her lawyer rubbed her shoulder.

'Mr Watson contacted me. He knows about this kind of stress, don't you?'

Watson nodded seriously.

'He said that even when Lol comes back, the effects on me are going to be long-lasting. I might never work again.'

'What do you do?' asked Jericho.

'Well, I'm on benefits at the moment…'

She was silenced by a shake of the head from Watson.

'When was the last time you spoke to your daughter?' asked Jericho, hoping to move things along. He was curious as to how this woman's daughter had ended up at Oxford, but had learned long ago not to bring judgements into his line of questioning.

She blew her nose, allowed Watson to continue to massage her shoulder.

'About three months ago,' she said.

Jericho was no longer surprised by anything she said.

'That seems like a while for a mother and daughter,' he said.

'We fell out over her getting through to the latter stages of the show,' she said.

Jericho nodded.

'You never wanted her to do it in the first place?'

'No,' she said vehemently, looking at the camera. 'I'd applied 'n' all, and when she got through and I didn't…God, you should have heard her. Bloody full of herself, the little gobshite.'

My time here is finished, thought Jericho. The worst part of being a detective, he had once mused to Haynes, was having to speak to the public.

'Any of you got any questions?' he said, glancing over his shoulder at his three associates.

'Yes,' said Cher straight away, but she was quickly beaten to it by Xavier who had a new determination after his recent encounters with senior management.

'How did Lol seem to you when you watched the show?' he asked. 'Did you notice anything different about her, anything peculiar about her mannerisms, was she acting funny?'

Cher leaned forward, grinding her teeth. He had stolen her question.

'Like,' said Ando, 'yeah. That was what I was going to ask.'

Lol's mum appeared slightly incredulous at the question which the three of them had been queuing up to deliver.

'You think I watched the show? You think I'd watch that shit when they wouldn't have me on it?'

None of them had a follow-up question to that.

'It's OK,' said Watson, rubbing her shoulder harder. 'Maybe you've asked enough,' he said, aiming his gaze at the assembled television presence.

He looked harshly at the camera and then turned to Jericho, annoyance appearing magically on his face.

'You think maybe now you can turn your camera off? You think perhaps you've intruded enough into her life?'

Lol's mum glanced up from behind a tissue.

'Look at what you've done. You're all the same, you people,' said Watson, 'so bloody quick to jump on the weak and take advantage. It's disgusting.'

The three contestants felt chastened, stared at the floor. The cameraman's hand moved to switch off, but he caught sight out the corner of his eye of Morris waving discreetly at him to leave it running. Jericho, without trying to intimidate or play any game, directed a look from the pits of Hell at Watson. The full weight of his sunken, dead eyes. As usual, however, he chose not to say all the things that came into his head.

He got to his feet and walked quickly from the room, not waiting to see if any of the others would immediately follow him.

'Thanks very much, Mrs Allison,' said Morris, 'it was kind of you to allow us to film that.'

'Well,' said Watson, and then he realised that he really didn't have anything to add, so instead he wagged a desultory finger with which he then waved them from the room.

*

They were sitting in the back of the van on the way back to the studio. None of the three contestants had picked up on any disingenuousness. The tears of Lol's mum. They were all upset; Xavier because he was genuinely upset, and Cher and Ando because they thought they'd better look upset for the camera.

Morris was scribbling in her notepad, writing voiceover copy for that night's show. Jericho was staring out of the window. Thinking about Amanda. About the last time he saw her. The look on her face. The clothes she'd been wearing, the cut of her hair.

They'd parted at Paddington; he'd gone for the Bakerloo, she to the District & Circle. The station had been warm, morning rush hour. A quick goodbye, a
see you later
. There'd been nothing special planned for the night. Usually they would eat dinner together and then sit on the same sofa working. Reading files. They would talk sporadically.

That evening should have been no different.

'What now?'

The back of a van is by necessity a confined space. Morris was leaning forward, her face no more than a few inches from Jericho. He snapped out of the morbid gloom, raised his eyes; she automatically backed off a little, then glanced at the other three who had all instantly taken the opportunity presented by some conversation to stop looking so upset and chastened by their previous traumatic experience.

'It's a long shot,' said Jericho.

'Great,' interjected Morris. 'Long shots are great.'

'Why?'

'That's, you know, that's what happens on the TV shows, in the movies. It's always the long shot that pans out. That'd be really cool.'

'Like, yeah,' said Ando, getting with the groove. 'Like some sort of
Lethal Weapon
type shit.'

'Is there any chance we'll get to use guns at some point?' threw in Cher.

Everyone looked at Jericho. The camera caressed his face.

'You have guns?' said Jericho.

'What's the long shot?' asked Morris.

Jericho stared at her, making her retreat another inch or two. They had guns. Did he want to know about them having guns?

Not for a second.

'It's a long shot,' he began again, 'but there's an awful lot of CCTV that we haven't looked at, and at which Shackleton never got around to.' He continued, but could tell his audience were losing excitement as he spoke. 'We could try the nearby train stations for that evening, maybe even give it a shot for Heathrow or Gatwick. She could have been disguised, travelling on a false passport.'

He looked around the sea of disinterested faces. Cher was looking downright annoyed. Morris was fishing around in the small leather folder which she carried around with her.

'This is it, people,' said Jericho. 'Police work. It's dull and repetitive. That's how it goes. They just don't show these bits on the TV.'

Morris thrust a piece of paper in front of him, a document folded back to one of its middle pages.

'Read it,' she said.

Jericho glanced at it and then looked up at her.

'No.'

'Read it!' she said with more furious force.

Another look from Jericho. He did not push the paper away, but just ignored it. He looked at the three.

'We'll get back, get the map out and make a list of the three most likely places from which she might have travelled. You take one each. When you've done that, you move onto the next three. And so on.'

'Until what? We've done every tube and train station and bus stop and taxi rank in fucking London?' said Cher, her voice rising in pitch. 'You fucking serious?'

'We'll see how it goes,' said Jericho.

'Read it!' exclaimed Morris one last time, now slightly hysterical. She was beginning to crack in the face of Jericho's constant deadpan obstinacy.

'No.'