We Are the Hanged Man (40 page)

Not long after 8pm, as that evening's sensational episode of
Britain's Got Justice
had just got underway, Jericho sat back, a list of five names in front of him.

He stood up and stretched his arms out to the sides. He needed to speak to Haynes.

*

Haynes was sitting on the set of
Britain's Got Justice
, live on television. Not something for which he'd been prepared.

The talk was sensational, or at least sensationalist. Everyone was shocked, horrified, devastated. People blamed themselves; albeit no one who did so actually meant it. People cried. They showed three pictures of Lol's broken and bloody corpse, apologising profusely each time for doing so.

Haynes, of course, was not there to provide expert police advice or opinion. He was there to be the brunt of the collective anger of the show.
Of the nation
, Washington said. The audience howled in indignation whenever Haynes tried to answer a question.

How could the police have let this happen? What kind of world was it when the police had no control? Why had Haynes just sat back and said nothing while Jericho had spent the night shagging?

Elroy, who had been brought down as a suspect to be bated and interrogated, now sat off-set detached, unlikely to be brought out of the wings. His presence on-stage would only have detracted from the growing clamour against Jericho.

Haynes sat and listened to it all with the kind of sullen detachment he'd learned from Jericho. He would have got up and walked at the start of the second commercial break, if not for the fact that he knew that was what they wanted him to do.

He had his phone in his pocket on silent, and three times between the first two intermissions did he feel the vibration in his pocket.

'Are you all right?' someone said to him, as he removed the phone from his pocket.

He looked up. Washington was leaning towards him.

'You're doing a good job, son,' he said, which contrasted significantly with what he'd just been saying to the cameras as he'd goaded the crowd. 'Would you like a drink? Coffee? Something a bit stronger maybe?'

Haynes shook his head. Washington smiled some more encouragement, then turned back to the Sugababe on his left. 'Think Cher's holding it together pretty well tonight,' he said. 'Her tits look great in that top.'

Haynes switched off, read the three texts. The first was from his mum.
Straighten your shoulders, and don't be so supine.
He smiled; unconsciously his shoulders straightened. The next, he was pleased to see, was from Professor Leighton. He smiled again, a different kind of smile.
U never said U were TV star?? Nice suit!
The third was from Jericho.
Call me now.

Haynes checked the time on the clock which counted down until they were back on air. Two minutes, seventeen seconds. He dialled the number. Jericho answered immediately.

'Get the Northern Line to Tottenham Court Road,' he said by way of hello. 'Walk down Oxford Street. I'll find you.'

'I've just started this show…'

'What?' barked Jericho.

Haynes could hear cars in the background, wondered which road Jericho was standing beside.

'I've taken your place in the panel on the show,' said Haynes.

'What?' barked Jericho again, although this time in surprise. 'Fuck. When will you be finished?'

Haynes looked at his watch, completely unnecessarily. He knew how much longer he would be. The show ran until 10pm, and immediately it switched to digital for a further two hours of
Britain's Got More Justice
, in which Haynes was expected to participate. It was going to be at least four and a half hours, maybe more, before he'd be able to get to Tottenham Court Road.

'Sergeant,' said Jericho, his voice low.

'I'm coming,' said Haynes quickly.

He clicked the phone off before Jericho could say anything else. It would, after all, be an enormous relief to get out of the studio, away from the crowd.

He stood up, looking at the clock. One minute, six seconds.

'Time, Sergeant!' barked Washington, tapping an invisible watch on his wrist.

'I'll just be a minute,' said Haynes, holding up his hand and heading off in the direction of the toilet.

'Wanker!' he heard someone from the audience call after him as he left the studio floor.

*

Dylan had wanted Haynes followed on the basis that at some point he would be summoned by Jericho, and Haynes would dutifully trot off to see his master.
When she realised that Haynes had left the building without Constable Drew on his tail she was spewing rage.

Drew had been feeling slightly discomfited at having to follow a fellow officer who, as far as he could tell, had been guilty of nothing other than doing his job. Assuming that Haynes was happily tied up for a couple of hours on the show, he had taken himself off to the studio canteen, to eat dinner slowly, while keeping an eye on the television. As the show returned to the screen they did not display Haynes' empty chair, instead spending the entire segment on a camera angle that excluded Haynes' end of the desk.

The constable was just beginning to feel a little concerned when his phone rang to tell him that Haynes had left the building. With Haynes' phone bugged, there were currently fifteen officers on their way to discreetly hang around Tottenham Court Road Tube station.

Unfortunately for the pursuing officers, before splitting up that afternoon Jericho had informed Haynes that if he mentioned a tube station over the phone, he would automatically mean the one further along the line, moving away from Trafalgar Square.

Haynes duly alighted at Goodge Street, and Jericho duly made himself known to Haynes who then followed him back to the hotel.

Jericho had picked up two coffees just before he'd picked up Haynes, and now they were back in his hotel room, Jericho sitting in the seat by the desk, Haynes standing by the window.

'Did you watch any of the show?' asked Haynes, indicating the small television on the wall.

Jericho shook his head. 'Were you raped?' he asked sourly.

'Something like that,' said Haynes.

'I need you to get into the office, wherever. If you can do it up here, fine, if you need to get back to Wells… Just get onto the system and check up on a few people for me.'

'Sure,' said Haynes. 'I might just go home, get away from here. Especially since Dylan is up here now.'

'She's staying?'

'As far as I know.'

'Two lists,' said Jericho handing over two pieces of paper. 'Trying to think of anyone who's going to hold a grudge.'

He had scrawled and scribbled as he'd reduced his long list of former clients. He had then tidied it up and made two shorter lists to give to Haynes, with concise information on each to steer him in the right direction. There were five names on the first list, ten on the second.

'These are people that I've helped put away. Right from the very start.'

'What's this list?' asked Haynes, indicating the second. 'Blokes whose wives you've slept with?'

The smile died on Haynes' face as he said it, replaced by a look of apology. There was nothing on Jericho's face.

'The short list is the people I think most likely. Don't start chasing any of the others until you've done everything you can to track down the first five.'

Haynes nodded.

'The list of five are the four men and one woman I helped put away for life.'

'Any of them likely still to be inside?'

Jericho shrugged.

'They're all from the London days, most of them long enough ago that they might have been released by now. Except Merkins. He was in '99. Murder, aggravated assault. Might still be in. And one other.'

He indicated the bottom of the list.

'Durrant. He's…. he's a bad man. He'll never get out. There won't be enough years left in the history of civilisation for him to serve the length of sentence he deserves.'

'Never heard of him,' said Haynes shrugging.

Jericho nodded.

'Must have been thirty years ago. Very dangerous. Intelligent, sullen… The story was mostly buried. Got in the papers that he'd been convicted of murder, but the CPS, or whatever the fuck it was called back then, blocked the details. They could do that shit in those days.'

'What did he do?' asked Haynes, with a certain amount of awe. It was unusual for Jericho to sound impressed by anyone's criminal activity.

'Torture. He called it scientific experimentation. He wrote papers on pain threshold, using humans as his subjects.'

'Fuck. How many?'

'Nine, I think. He'd written up notes on nine, but we only found five bodies. So…. never found out what happened to the others. Or who they were.'

Haynes looked back at the list, read the short note that Jericho had written beside Durrant's name.

'Were you the arresting officer?'

Jericho nodded.

'It should just be a quick call to make sure he's still inside, then you can concentrate on the others.'

'Could he have someone working for him on the outside?'

'Durrant?'

Jericho had a sudden vision of him, the man at work. Durrant had videoed some of his experiments. Early 1980's, primitive home recording equipment by modern standards, but every second of it was still ingrained into the heads of those officers who had been forced to sit through it.

There had been several hours of tape, and Jericho and two others had been tasked with watching every minute. They'd been about to send a man away for the rest of his life; they had been detailed not to skip anything. Of course they'd had to watch it all, but what had his bosses thought they might have missed? The moment when Durrant showed some compassion? The moment when the victims looked at the camera and winked?

He remembered that none of the senior officers involved in the case had looked at more than ten or fifteen minutes of film. The jury had been shown only a few edited highlights. After Jericho had done the editing.

It hadn't plagued him all these years, long ago managing to put it out of his head. Now it was back. The screaming, the horror, the desperate agony on the faces. The look of business-like, cold calculation of Durrant.

'No,' said Jericho, 'not Durrant. He never worked with anyone.'

'A lone wolf?'

Jericho grunted.

'Let's call him a lone fucking psychopathic freak. Make sure he's still banged up, then move on to the rest.'

Haynes checked his watch.

'Almost ten. Missed the rest of the show. Wonder how they coped without me.'

'They probably took it off the air,' said Jericho dryly.

He sat forward, elbows on his knees, hands rubbing his face. The stress of a long day catching up with him, suddenly feeling incredibly tired.

'You should get some sleep before you head back down the road,' said Jericho. 'You can check that stuff in the morning.'

'If I get down the road tonight, catch a few hours, I can be at the station by seven.'