We Are the Hanged Man (31 page)

At the end of the conversation, Jericho surprised Light by asking if she'd like to have dinner that evening. She said yes, and they arranged to meet in the hotel restaurant at eight.

Eight o'clock was also the time the evening's show was due to air. It was billed as the day's highlights edited down into two hours. Naturally, the day's highlights were going to have to be extensively stretched, but it was all part of the process and those editors had plenty of practice.

*

Having bought his sandwich and cup of coffee, Durrant returned to his small room to eat. He sat on the edge of the bed and took his food with not a trace of pleasure or enjoyment. Thirty years in prison had determined that food was something you ate to survive, not something that would be particularly enjoyed.

When he finished, he placed the wrapping and the cup in the bin, went into the small bathroom and urinated, then retuned to the bed and lay down in exactly the same position as before, waiting for his phone to ring.

*

'You really think the TV people have engineered all this?' she asked.

Despite having extended the invitation, Jericho wasn't saying much, and Light was being forced to drag out one-sided conversations. They were now somewhat uncomfortably nearing the end of the main course.

Jericho shrugged, something that as ever he managed to do without really moving his shoulders.

'They…' he started and then made the same unmoving shrug. 'I have no idea the lengths these people would go to, the things they'd do. Really, would anything surprise us?'

'Just don't say it again in front of the cameras,' said Light, and she smiled. Jericho looked like he might have tried to smile in sympathy, but it never really showed. Not so that Sergeant Light noticed.

'Even that doesn't matter, does it, Sergeant?' he said. 'Shackleton lured me into saying it yesterday, pretty damned blatantly, they all get their pants in a fankle, but really? Does anyone care today? It's been…' and he looked at his watch, 'twelve to fifteen hours since people would have started seeing the headlines. How many headlines have they seen since then? How many people are still talking about it? No one cares, and if I said it again, no one would really care about that either, not after the first few minutes, hours, whatever.'

'Still,' she said, 'you don't want to give them anything. That Claudia woman sees every second with you as some sort of battle. You don't want to… you know, I know you probably don't care, but you don't want to give her any further triumphs at your expense.'

Finally Jericho smiled.

'I'll try to avoid that.'

'What did you do today before you went out? She was fizzing.'

Jericho nodded. The smile changed but did not completely leave his face.

'You'll have to watch the show.' He made a thing of glancing at his watch and then made a helpless gesture with his hand. 'Ah, you're missing it.'

*

The good beavers of the production company were behind the curve and frantic when it came to putting the show together. Despite all their previous experience and professionalism, it was, as Claudia had cause to remark, the most desperate they'd ever been in tying a show together at the last moment.

The final set piece, wherein Cher was interviewed on camera regarding the responsibility that Jericho had thrust upon her so unexpectedly – did she consider it selfish of him to do so, did she think she was up to the job, was it a poisoned chalice, would it help her in the final voting for
Britain's Got Justice
? – wherein Cher wept repeatedly for her dear friend Lol and for the weight of burden that had now been placed on her shoulders, a weight she promised in the name of the Lord to carry to the best of her abilities, was filmed after the show had already gone to air, and then slotted in neatly either side of the final set of adverts.

The ratings were never that great on the digital channels, but thanks to that morning's press and to some frantic Facebook and Twitter action late in the afternoon detailing Jericho's latest wacko move, the final half hour of the show brought in the channel's highest rating that month.

Everything was set up nicely for the final three nights.

*

At around about the same time that Cher was breaking down on television, taking an adoring and concerned audience with her, Jericho invited himself to Light's room. They both understood that by going to her room it gave him control over when the sleepover part of the sex would end.

They had been quiet; they had made no fuss; they had spoken softly throughout dinner – or not at all in the case of Jericho – yet ultimately their discretion went unrewarded when the photographer who had been waiting all evening in the corner of the bar got a shot from such a perfect angle that it looked like they'd been holding hands as they walked to the elevator. The fact that they were at least four feet apart at the time was of little consequence.

Light found the sex more intense, yet, somehow, Jericho more maudlin than when they'd made love previously.

She lay in his arms for a while afterwards, but at no time was he completely settled. She sensed his restlessness, so eventually she slightly released the pressure on him, and he took the opportunity to move.

Leaving her room with his shirt undone, and not tucked properly into his trousers, his jacket and tie held in his arms, he could not miss the photographer waiting at the end of the corridor. The snap was taken, and then the photographer turned and ran, his escape route well marked down the stairwell.

Jericho did not even think about going after him, and the photographer need not even have run. Jericho padded along to the lift, stood still while he was carried up one floor, and then walked slowly along to his own room. He was booked through until Sunday morning, but he was already sure that he would be heading home as soon as the show finished on Saturday evening, no matter how late he'd get home.

As he got back to his own room he had a sudden thought that perhaps he should warn Light that there was liable to be something disadvantageous to them both in the following morning's newspapers. He was more concerned about how it would look for her.

He considered walking back down, but instead lifted the phone and dialled her room.

He waited a few rings but there was no answer. Assuming she had run herself a bath and was already washing off the taste and the smell of him, he hung up, lay down on the bed and was fast asleep in less than a minute.

*

By 2230hrs UK time that evening, Gerard Larrousse was already back in his chateau in the Loire valley. Seven o'clock flight from Heathrow, getting him into Paris Charles De Gaulle a little after 2100hrs CET. A two-hour drive home.

He had telephoned ahead so that the staff knew of his return, but they had been told not to wait up for him. He would not feel like eating on his return, so no food need be prepared.

On entering the chateau, he immediately retired to the library at the front of the house, although not with the intention of reading any of the many books which lined the shelves. He poured himself a large shot of Laphroaig single malt, no ice required, no mixer, then sat in the seat by the window which looked south over the estate towards the river.

A cold clear still night. The computer in his car had repeatedly warned him of the risk of ice on the drive down from Paris. There was a bright half moon quite high in the sky, and the straight lines of the dormant winter vines were evident in the darkness.

He sat and watched over them for the last time. He had brought the vineyard up by sheer force of will. That's how he thought of it. He had made it happen through sheer determination. All his own work, no one to lean on, no one to help him through the endless rough patches when it seemed they might never break through.

That's what he had thought until that afternoon, until he had been summoned to London and the strange committee of men had gathered around him and told him things about Larrousse wine. They knew much about the history of the vineyard. They knew stories and events from decades previously that Larrousse himself had forgotten. They knew facts about the operation that Larrousse had thought no one else could possibly know. They knew exactly why the company had succeeded and had been dragged up from nothing. They showed Larrousse bank statements and minutes from meetings where the vineyard had been discussed. Meetings which Larrousse had not even known were taking place.

Larrousse saw his life laid out before him. The hard work, the diligence, the marketing, the design, the triumph. And the honour for none of it belonged to him. He had been a cipher. It could have been anyone in charge of the company, and the people who wanted it to succeed would still have made sure that it did. His flamboyant, energetic son, his drug-dependant daughter, any man or woman off the street... It wouldn't have mattered.

This company of men, men who had not even allowed him the honour of knowing who was behind the rise of the Larrousse estate, and who did not explain why it had been allowed to happen, had then sent him on his way.

It had been made clear to Larrousse what they expected of him once he arrived back in France.

At some time after midnight, he went outside to the closest of the several gardener's huts that surround the chateau. This hut was large and solid, kept completely dry inside and therefore fine for storing electrical equipment. He used a pair of sheers to cut flex from an extension cable, then took the cable back inside.

He walked upstairs in the dark to the top floor of the chateau, and then to one of the bedrooms at the front of the house. He opened the window and breathed in the crisp fresh midnight air. He was not wearing a coat, yet, as when he'd gone outside, he did not feel the cold.

He looked around for the most solid item in the vicinity and immediately settled on the radiator beneath the window. The heating was not turned on in this part of the chateau unless there were people staying. He firmly tied the cable around the base of the radiator, then took the other end and tied a rough knot around his neck. It was no hangman's noose, as his knot-tying ability did not stretch that far, but it was firm and tight enough that even standing at the window it felt uncomfortable.

If the knot did not hold, then he had over a hundred feet to fall, something which might well be enough in itself to do the job requested of him.

He climbed slowly up onto the ledge and took one last look out over the vineyard. He felt nothing. It wasn't his. None of it had ever been his. And now that he would die, there was no one with the Larrousse family name to carry it forward.

But what was there to carry forward in any case? A great lie.

He jumped. The flex snapped and held. His body jerked and slammed against the wall.

When Jericho awoke he found a small envelope had been pushed beneath the door of his room. His first thought, before he opened it, was that it would be a copy of the photograph taken as he'd left Light's room. However, as he ran his fingers along the edge, he realised that it was too small. Pictures being slipped into envelopes seemed very old-fashioned, but also something that would be done blown up, to emphasise the awfulness of the subject matter.

This was something else that seemed old-fashioned: a Tarot card.

The skeleton hung limply from the window of the chateau. The castle was now in the foreground, as much part of the picture as the Hanged Man. And now there was no dubiety about it; it no longer worked when turned the other way around. This Hanged Man was a man who had been hung by the neck, not suspended by his feet in order to see the world from a different angle, in order to let go of that which was holding him back.

When Jericho went out he slipped the card into his pocket. Downstairs, in the lobby of the hotel, there were several journalists waiting and cameras flashed as he passed through; questions were fired at him out of the air-conditioned comfort of the hotel. He walked on.

*

'You have a good night last night?'

Jericho hesitated as he passed the security guard. There was a smile on his face. Jericho had seen this particular guard numerous times on his way in and out of the television studio and they had not yet so much as acknowledged each other.