We Are Death

by Douglas Lindsay

  He’d been waiting for something to happen all that time, some other unexpected event in his life. He hadn’t anticipated anything in particular. How could he? The previous events, the strange occurrences around Britain’s Got Justice, had been so random, so out of the ordinary, there had been no way to see them coming. He presumed it would be the same the next time. If there was to be a next time.

  He’d wondered whether he should just let it go or whether to include Haynes. Now that he had a sense of things coming to an end, he had decided to pass it on. Maybe, when they came back for more – whoever they were – it would be the station they would come for. Not just him. Not just the formerly famous detective.

  He opened the drawer to his right, took out the small white envelope, hesitated for a moment and then tossed it across the desk to Haynes.

  Haynes glanced down at the envelope for a moment before picking it up. He didn’t have to look inside to know what it contained. It had been seven months since the last warning card had arrived, but he’d known as well as Jericho that it wasn’t over. They’d never really got an answer to who had been sending the cards, and although they had written in their report that it had been the work of Durrant and his confederate, Sergeant Light, they’d known that the hand of something much bigger had been at work.

  Haynes reached down, opened the envelope and took out the small tarot card. He’d been expecting another hanged man, like the ones that had dominated their previous investigation. This, however, was a death card. Death himself sitting on a black horse, bearing a white standard in his right hand, a curious emblem on the standard, riding through fields of the dead, bodies strewn far and wide, too great in number to be counted.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said, as he looked up at Jericho. ‘When did this come?’

  ‘Someone left it beside my hospital bed.’

  ‘When?’

  Jericho looked slightly annoyed at the question. He was destined to be defensive during the discussion, knowing that he was at fault for not having told Haynes about it already.

  ‘When I was in hospital, obviously.’

  ‘In January?’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant.’

  ‘You’ve had this for seven months?’

  ‘Seven and a half, if you’re being pedantic.’

  ‘Seriously, sir, why didn’t you say?’

  Jericho held his gaze across the table, before slowly letting his eyes drop.

  He was tired. Tired after a long afternoon looking at trivia on his computer. Tired after the police had told him he was welcome to leave. They didn’t want him anymore. Hadn’t he been waiting for that for the last seven and a half months?

  ‘We knew... we knew that there was someone else behind this. That there was some big thing, some, I don’t know, some bigger conspiracy. I made the call. This card, I didn’t think it was another warning of what was to come. I took it as a victory note. I took is as someone saying, look at all the dead. And look at us, still sitting on our high horse, riding through the bodies of everyone who tries to cross us. In fact, does it even matter if they crossed us? They’re dead anyway. We have dominion. We’ve won. We always win.’

  He wasn’t looking at Haynes as he spoke. His words were soft, swathed in defeat in a way Haynes did not recognise from him.

  ‘I thought they were just letting me know who was in charge. And so...’

  He lifted his eyes, flicked a desultory hand as though waving away the whole business.

  ‘And there’ve been no more?’ asked Haynes. ‘No more cards?’

  He shook his head.

  Haynes looked back at the card. The detail of the dead bodies was incredible, and yet the image of Death, skeletal head the only thing visible from beneath the black cloak, dominated the image.

  ‘So, why are you showing it to me now?’

  Jericho held his gaze for a moment, then looked away to his left, out of the window to the warm August evening. The warmest evening of the year so far, destined to be warmer still the following day.

  ‘I thought about showing you the card every day. Today I decided it was time.’

  ‘You want me to check it out?’ asked Haynes. Expecting the same old answer.

  Jericho turned back and shrugged.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Just be discreet.’

  Haynes was surprised again, and immediately he was wary. The Chief Inspector was clearing out his inbox, he’d given him something that had been in his possession for over seven months, and he was happy with Haynes investigating it.

  ‘Everything all right, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure,’ said Jericho.

  He glanced at the clock beside the door.

  ‘You should go home.’

  ‘I’ll maybe look into this first,’ said Haynes, putting the card back inside the envelope and tapping it.

  ‘Do it tomorrow.’

  Haynes nodded. Jericho said goodbye with a slight movement of his eyebrows, and turned back to his monitor. Haynes watched him briefly, took a moment to look out at the dying of the day, and then left the office, a new sense of unease resting on his shoulders.

  6

  There had been five westerners who had completed the climb of all five summits of Kangchenjunga the previous April. Connolly, Carter, Harrow, Geyerson and Emerick.

  One down, four to go.

  The money for the expedition had come from Geyerson. He had made that money on Wall Street, employing a legendary skill to buy and sell at the right time. That was it, that was all he had. And it had worked.

  Thirty years of that had left him a billionaire. The billionaire who no one knew. He was charitable to an extent, but never in his own name. He didn’t want people knowing him. He didn’t want to be on television giving people advice. He didn’t want to run for office. All he wanted to do was climb mountains, so when he took a break that August, he took even that walking in the High Atlas.

  Emerick, his assistant, went everywhere with him. No one was entirely sure where Harrow was, but he called in every now and again to speak to the boss. Connolly was dead, which just left Carter.

  There are coincidences in life that turn out to be no coincidence at all, and then there are strange events which unexpectedly slip perfectly into a narrative, as though they had been intended all along. Carter was one such coincidence, in that he had a home in the smallest city in England. There was no reason why he should. It had not been arranged that DCI Jericho would necessarily be dragged into the events that would unfold as a result of the Kangchenjunga expedition, but Carter had come home to Wells at the right time for just that to happen.

  He rarely spent any time at the house, but he had never considered renting it out. It was his refuge from the mountains and the weather and the summits and the stresses of always seeking the new and the unconquered and the undiscovered. He could come to Wells, he could see Charl if she was around, and he could chill out away from the glare of snow-capped mountains and the pressure to be daring.

  Prior to his arrival the previous evening, he hadn’t been back for eight months. The team had split up after Kangchenjunga, with a view to getting back together later in the year to sort through the ramifications of the expedition. Harrow was taking the lead. He wasn’t sure why they all trusted him, but they did.

  There was something capricious about Connolly, and none of the others had really known him that well; Geyerson he wouldn’t trust any further than he could throw him uphill; and Emerick didn’t really count, as Emerick taking control was the same as giving the lead to Geyerson. As for Carter himself, he had no intention of trying to move in the kind of circles that Harrow would have to surround himself with to make the most of what they had.

  As soon as the expedition ended, Carter had left Sikkim and headed east. Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, south to Australia and a couple of weeks in New Zealand. Getting away from all of it. Hadn’t so much as looked at a mountain, the Southern Alps from a distance notwithstanding, or touched a pinion or an ice pick or a rope
or a crampon in all that time.

  Now he was looking for a few weeks at home, settling back into life just above the Levels, before heading back south for the autumn and winter season.

  He’d arrived at his house at just after ten the previous evening. The cleaning service had been in, so at least the place was tidy and dust free, the bedding clean. He’d taken a shower, gone to bed and been asleep within minutes. And then, as so often happens when travelling from one side of the world to the next, he’d woken with the arrival of dawn, the day already warm after a short, hot night.

  By five am he had been wide awake, by five fifteen he was out on his bike, riding slowly down through town, then speeding up as he hit the Levels and riding on out beyond Godney to the Avalon Marshes.

  He was wearing a T-shirt, shorts and sandals. It was going to be another hot day, and as he rode he thought about Charl, glad that she’d agreed to come over and looking forward to what was to come. Sex on a deliciously warm, lazy afternoon.

  There was a spot near the entry to the old sawmill – a place that reminded him of an episode of Scooby Doo – where he always stopped. The first of the small lakes, this one covered in the slender trunks of dead silver birches. There was something bleakly apocalyptic about it. He always wondered what had killed them, what had caused all these trees to shed their leaves and fade away to nothing but bare branches. The trees in the next lake were fine. In this one, though, there was death, all the more hauntingly beautiful as a result.

  He heard the car someway in the distance – sound travelled far across the flat earth out here at this time in the morning – although it barely registered at first. He took the phone from his back pocket and took a couple of shots of the trees. The hedgerow in front stopped him getting a good picture, but he’d crept into it previously to get the decent shot he wanted, and he always took one or two more anyway when he was out here. Sometimes he compared them with ones he’d taken before, if he could find them.

  He turned and looked along the road at the small silver car coming his way. He didn’t know much about cars and didn’t even think about the make. It was a small, bland car that could have been any of about a hundred. A farmworker on his way to start the day, he presumed.

  He turned back to look at the trees, pulling the wheels of his bike another inch or two away from the road. He was aware of the sound of the car slowing down as it approached him, which he presumed was the guy being polite, so he pulled the bike slightly further away again, even though he was already completely off the road.

  The car stopped beside him. Someone else looking at the view, or asking for directions. The roads around this part of the Levels were labyrinthine, although generally there were signposts at every junction.

  Carter turned, saying ‘Morning,’ as he did so. The word was out his mouth before he saw the gun. He probably wouldn’t have been so polite if he’d known about the gun.

  The bullet entered through his forehead and exploded in his brain. Carter fell, dead, in the same instant. His killer looked down at him for a few moments, then placed the gun in the pocket of the driver’s door and slowly drove on in the direction of the old sawmill.

  *

  Hoagy Carmichael was still playing. Somewhere. Why was Hoagy still playing? Hadn’t he turned him off? Wasn’t Hoagy gone from his life?

  Maybe he was there himself, sitting in the front room, playing the piano, singing, a shirt and tie, grey trousers, and a cigarette dangling from his lips. But that didn’t make sense, as Jericho didn’t have a piano in his front room. Jericho had never owned a piano.

  What was that tune? Judy maybe. Was it Judy? The words sounded unfamiliar. And the phone was ringing. That didn’t make sense either, because the phone didn’t usually ring during Judy.

  Finally, on perhaps the thirteenth ring, Jericho lifted his head off the pillow, his eyes open, sweat on his brow. There was no music. There was no Hoagy. His mobile, set to ring until he answered it or the caller cut off, was still going.

  He looked at the phone, breathing heavily. It was the station, of course. 06:27. Something had happened, which seemed unusual for Wells. Maybe the fight outside the King’s Head in the middle of the night had taken a slightly less pleasant turn than usual.

  He lifted the phone, still feeling discombobulated, but didn’t speak. Constable Loovens at the other end did not expect Jericho to say anything, so he didn’t wait, quickly rattling off details of what had just been reported from out on the Marshes.

  Jericho listened and then hung up. He hadn’t said a word. He left his head on the pillow for a few moments, then sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed, took a moment to curse that it seemed no cooler this morning than it had the night before, and headed through the house to the shower.

  7

  The road end had been closed off about half a mile from where the body lay. Jericho sat idling in his car, as Constable Drew waved him through, then decided to park at the junction and walk along. He got out of the car, left the windows open and stood for a moment, taking in the surroundings.

  It had been a while since he’d been down this way. Hills on either side, and in the middle the large plain of land that had been recovered by Dutch engineers in the sixteenth century.

  He nodded at Drew, who looked too hot already in his stab-proof vest, long sleeves, and long trousers. He wouldn’t want to be standing here for too long, even this early in the morning.

  ‘Who have we got along there?’ asked Jericho.

  ‘Sergeant Haynes, Constables McGuire and Pettigrew, sir,’ Drew said. ‘And Dr Trueblood, sir.’

  Jericho, his hands in his pockets, glanced harshly at him, shaking his head.

  ‘How’d she get here already?’

  ‘Staying in Wells last night, I believe.’

  He grunted a reply, took another look around, and then started walking along the road. Glad to take the few minutes to get a feel for the place. He liked Trueblood, aware that his defensiveness about her presence was at the thought of her getting here from Taunton before he had, when he only lived ten minutes away.

  There was no freshness about the morning, just stale heat. He hadn’t looked at a weather forecast, but the break couldn’t come quickly enough for him. He walked slowly, looking out over the low fields and marshes to the left. There were a couple of homes in the distance but too far away for anyone to have seen anything useful. To the right, trees and hedgerows. There were homes over there too, closer by far, but all he could see were a couple of rooftops. Chances were no one would have seen anything from there either.

  He arrived at the scene, which had not yet been cordoned off. There was no need, with the road blocked at either end. Haynes was standing with one hand in his pocket, the other holding a small evidence bag, having watched Jericho slowly approach. Trueblood was leaning over the body. McGuire was standing to the side, keeping a watchful eye on the surrounding undergrowth. At some point word was going to get out, and then the gawkers would come. Then they would have to cover up the scene far more than they already had done. But until then, they were taking advantage of the light and space, the freedom of not yet having to close themselves in.

  Jericho glanced at his watch, then looked down at the body, the bike lying a couple of feet to the side. Bullet to the head, a lot of blood. He looked away.

  ‘The trouble with Britain,’ said Haynes, after engaging Jericho with a small nod, ‘is that we’re not designed for the extremes. And we never will be. We need air conditioning five days a year. We need decent snow-clearing equipment five days every five years. When are we ever going to spend money on that stuff? Like, never. There’s no point. So we just have to put up with it when it happens.’

  Jericho had watched him throughout, then finally looked away and back at the body.

  ‘Can we talk about him now?’ he asked.

  Trueblood turned at the sound of Jericho’s voice and smiled.

  ‘Robert,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Too h
ot, but otherwise delighted to be here. What have we got?’

  She smiled and turned back to her work as she spoke.

  ‘Bullet to the forehead from, I’d say, three to four feet. No sign, so far, that the victim tried to run. Probably didn’t have time to do anything.’

  ‘Any sign whether the killer was on foot, on a bike, was he–’

  ‘Impossible to tell at this stage. Actually, I’m not sure there’s a stage when it won’t be impossible to tell. You might need to find a witness for that. Maybe we’ll know more once we’ve worked out the entry angle.’

  ‘And the bullet?’

  She turned and smiled again.

  ‘Oh, there’s definitely a bullet, but I’m not going to extract it here. Anyway, I’m not the person to tell you anything about it. I’m sure you’ll get your report soon enough.’

  ‘First impressions?’

  She paused, her hands on the head of the corpse, then slowly stood up. When she spoke she did so with the accompaniment of a slow shrug.

  ‘Looks like the body was pole-axed. This close, the guy obviously didn’t see it coming. His phone fell by his side...’

  Haynes raised the evidence bag which Jericho had already noticed.

  ‘Passcode,’ said Haynes. ‘We’ll need to take it back.’

  Jericho indicated for Trueblood to keep talking.

  ‘So, maybe the killer walked up behind him. Maybe he drove.’

  ‘He’d hear the car.’

  ‘Yes, he would, but you know, a car’s a car. It’s not like, oh my god, there’s a steel beast driving up the road... Who’s going to turn and look at a car? Either way, he’s not going to expect the driver to have a gun.’

  ‘Or passenger.’

  ‘So, like I said, I’ll get the angle of bullet entry and that should give us a little more to go on. If it came from lower down, presumably we’re talking about the shooter sitting in the car.’