We Are Death

by Douglas Lindsay

  Haynes had already had that thought, but he’d largely ignored it. He knew Jericho was right, however.

  ‘Yes, you’re right, sir. Bit of a buzzkill, but I’ll do my best. She does seem–’

  ‘You just used the word buzzkill, if that’s even a word.’

  ‘It has been for some years now...’

  There was a knock, the door opened and Badstuber stood in the doorway, not crossing the threshold into the office. She looked at Jericho for a few moments, barely seemed to notice that Haynes was present.

  ‘I’m sorry I upset you in the car, Chief Inspector.’

  Jericho was surprised enough that he wasn’t sure what to say. That he said nothing was not as unusual.

  ‘I am going back to my hotel,’ said Badstuber. ‘In ninety minutes I will be taking a taxi to the airport, would you like to join me?’

  ‘You’re at the Swan?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A taxi’ll cost you more than the plane ticket. I’ll pick you up.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Jericho answered with a nod.

  ‘Sergeant,’ said Badstuber, then she turned, closed the door, and was gone.

  The two men looked at the closed door for a few moments, then Haynes turned back to Jericho.

  ‘She’s warm, I’ll give her that. You two should get along well. There’s something of the... I mean, I’m not saying she looks like a thirty-five-year-old Diana Rigg, but if there was a movie, a thirty-five-year-old Diana Rigg would be perfect for her.’

  ‘Thanks, Sergeant, I’ll keep that in mind for central casting. Right, on you go, speak to your professor and work out what you’re going to do. And keep in touch.’

  Haynes got to his feet, started to walk from the office, then turned back.

  ‘Seems a bit weird to be working without you, sir. I mean, on something that’s your case.’

  ‘You’ll have to get used to it.’

  ‘I know. Just feels like, I don’t know, like the bit at the end of Fellowship Of The Ring where they all split up.’

  Jericho looked deadpan across the desk.

  ‘Try and keep it together, Stuart.’

  20

  The two cards were placed together, side by side, on the desk. For the moment they had dispensed with the blown-up images. Taking a closer look had allowed them to see the faces of the dead, or the very possibly soon to be dead, but little else.

  The first card, skeletal Death riding on a horse, the reins in one hand, carrying a standard in the other. Around him, scores of dead, beyond counting. On the other, what seemed to be exactly the same image of Death, this time riding past a wood, and on the edge of the wood the five men hanging by the neck, three of them still alive.

  They were focused on the standard, as Leighton had been since she’d first seen the card. The emblem it showed was something she could not immediately place. Everything about it was familiar, and yet the combination was not.

  They’d been studying them for a few minutes in silence. Haynes was giving Leighton space to think. He himself had quickly realised that he could look at them all day and likely come up empty, and had started to flick through a series of e-mails. As usual, there wasn’t a lot doing down in the West Country, the murder of the previous day notwithstanding. The Wells Journal, at least, would have something to put on its front page that week, rather than charity fundraisers and someone else’s outrage over the Bishop’s Palace or the latest fracking enquiry.

  Adams approached and placed a report in Haynes’s tray.

  ‘Just need you to sign that off, sir. As and when.’

  ‘I’ll look at it before I leave.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Adams stopped as he was about to turn away, standing next to Leighton, and looked at the cards. Haynes looked up, studied Adams’s face as he looked down, trying to work out what he was looking at.

  Leighton glanced up at him, then looked back at the cards.

  ‘We’re trying to work out the emblem on the standard,’ she said.

  ‘What’s that? A hedgehog?’ asked Adams.

  ‘Two-headed eagle,’ said Leighton.

  ‘Oh.’

  The flag was white and fully extended, so the emblem was clearly visible. It showed an elaborate gold cross, with an animal in each corner.

  ‘A lion?’

  ‘Goat.’

  ‘Rhinoceros?’

  ‘Unicorn.’

  Adams paused, squinting his head slightly to the side.

  ‘Can’t make out the last one,’ he said.

  ‘You haven’t been able to make out any of them,’ said Haynes with irritation.

  Adams smiled.

  ‘It’s a griffin,’ said Leighton.

  ‘Like a dragon?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Adams nodded.

  ‘So you’ve got the obvious Christian symbol of the cross, surrounded by a two-headed eagle, a goat, a unicorn and a griffin,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They all probably mean something.’

  She looked up at him.

  ‘You think?’

  Adams continued to stare down at the cards for a few moments, then said, ‘That’s all I’ve got.’

  ‘Well, thanks for pointing out that the cross is a Christian symbol, Constable,’ said Haynes. ‘We’d been looking at it, thinking, what is that thing?’

  Adams walked away, shaking his head and smiling.

  Haynes watched him go, then looked at Leighton as she raised her head. She had a slightly resigned look on her face and smiled ruefully. Glanced back down at the cards as she spoke.

  ‘We need to get on here, Sergeant, so I’m just going to be honest with you.’

  ‘OK,’ said Haynes, warily.

  She looked up again.

  ‘You know, I thought you might call after that whole business in January, and then you didn’t, and I thought... well, you know what I thought.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I should–’

  She stopped him with a quickly raised hand.

  ‘Then you turn up this morning, and it was lovely to see you, and I completely get the vibe. There’s a thing. I mean, now, I really don’t know why you didn’t call. And you ask me out to dinner, and of course I said yes, and then I came down here because it seemed like a fun thing to do. But really, I wasn’t thinking logically. These cards... we’re into the world of heraldic symbolism and meaning. I’m out of my depth. You’re going to need another expert. Or, if you want, I can take them back to London and see if I can make any headway.’

  ‘Now?’ he said, and immediately felt rather desperate.

  She smiled.

  ‘Don’t worry. Not now. We’ll have our dinner tonight, I’ll spend the night at your place, then we need to get up early and you can drop me down at the station. Earliest train.’

  ‘That’s at, like, five thirty.’

  ‘Then that’s how early we need to get up.’

  ‘OK,’ said Haynes.

  ‘Sound like a plan?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Good. Where are we having dinner?’

  *

  Jericho packed a small case. He didn’t travel often. This was the first time he’d used the case since he’d been up to London that January, and he hadn’t used it in several years prior to that.

  It was grey and had a wonderful old, battered look to it, as though it had spent many years on boats and trains travelling the world. Amanda had bought it for him, second-hand, for his fortieth birthday. He’d never taken the time to think about it, but the manner of his departure from his hotel in London, coupled with the fact that he’d ended up in hospital, could have meant that his suitcase was lost along the way, perhaps secured into Metropolitan Police evidence, never to be recovered. However, when it came time for him to get out of his hospital bed and go home, he found that Haynes had recovered all his things, and the suitcase had been waiting for him.

  It was packed, toilet bag and all, and he was standing at
his bedroom window looking out on the day, the warm afternoon sun bright on the trees and the fields, when he realised he was here again. Back in the kitchen.

  There had been no noise. He obviously couldn’t see anything. But he could feel it. He could feel him. He was back, just as he had been the previous evening, before Haynes had arrived.

  Jericho leant forward on the window ledge. He could feel the hairs standing on the back of his neck.

  Was he scared? He shouldn’t be scared. He thought he was past being scared.

  What he was feeling now, and what he knew was waiting for him in the kitchen, didn’t make sense. But that didn’t mean he had to be frightened of it. He didn’t have to fear the unknown, he just had to question it.

  Amanda came to him, didn’t she, and Amanda was dead. At least he assumed she was dead. Perhaps she wasn’t, but that made even less sense. If she’d just run off somewhere and was living another life, it made no sense that she would turn up in the middle of the night, while he was sleeping, a strange apparition.

  He was sure she was dead, and presumably her occasional appearance was all the work of his subconscious. Now, however, it was the middle of a warm, sunny, summer’s afternoon. The window was open slightly. He could hear the cars on the distant road, he could hear birds singing and the sound of an insect just outside the window. He could smell summer, from the leaves and the grass and the warmth in the air. Yet there was a cold, dead chill coming from the kitchen, which he could sense rather than feel on his skin.

  He turned, half-expecting him to be standing right behind him, in best horror movie tradition, but the bedroom looked back at him, bed unmade, dust particles hanging in the air.

  He lifted the suitcase and walked quickly downstairs. Paused in the hallway. Set the suitcase down by the front door, then walked towards the kitchen. Another hesitation. Did it feel colder down here?

  ‘For God’s sake,’ he muttered, then he pushed the door open and entered the kitchen.

  Durrant was there, sitting where he had been the night before. Durrant. Who had died beneath the knife of Haynes, whose body had been cremated, and whose ashes had been swept up and put in a bin. Where they’d belonged.

  He was sitting, again, with his head bowed, his strong forearms resting on the kitchen table.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Jericho.

  For a moment Durrant didn’t move, then slowly he lifted his head, and finally his eyes were on Jericho’s. Eyes that were empty and unfeeling. Miserable. Dead.

  Jericho swallowed. Muscles tensed, stomach churning, the feeling of insects crawling over his skin. Hair standing on end. Yes, fear. This was fear. Durrant was dead. He shouldn’t be here. He couldn’t be here.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Durrant finally.

  The words sounded scrambled.

  ‘You’re dead,’ said Jericho. ‘You’re dead. Why are you here?’

  Durrant held Jericho’s gaze, seemed to be imploring him. What on earth could the dead Durrant want him to do?

  ‘I’m not dead,’ said Durrant. ‘Do I look dead? Would I be sitting here if I was dead?’

  ‘You’re just in my head, right?’ said Jericho.

  ‘What?’ snapped Durrant. ‘Look at me. Look at me! How can I be just in your head, when we’re in your kitchen having a conversation?’

  Jesus. Time for some backbone.

  ‘Is it possible then,’ said Jericho, ‘that you could just get up and get the fuck out of my kitchen?’

  The fear was beginning to go, which was no more rational than the fear he’d had in the first place. Durrant seemed tetchy and distracted, rather than here for revenge, which didn’t necessarily make any more sense but was at least bizarre and unlikely as opposed to terrifying.

  ‘Where do you want me to go?’ asked Durrant angrily, which surprised Jericho.

  He found himself looking at the clock, then at his watch. He needed to leave. Badstuber would be standing outside the Swan waiting for him, bang on time, and he didn’t want to be late.

  ‘I don’t understand why you’re here,’ said Jericho.

  ‘Hello! I don’t fucking know. I don’t know. I’m fucking here, and I don’t understand it. Are you happy?’

  ‘Of course I’m not happy.’

  ‘Hey, we have something else in common.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘We both know, Detective. You and I...

  Maybe Durrant was smiling now. There was a slight movement of his hands.

  ‘Brothers. We’re brothers. We like the same shit. Music and words, feelings, misanthropy, the same melancholic sea... We know things, we view the world through the same discoloured lens... We both fucked Sergeant Light.’

  He definitely smiled after the last one, but his heart wasn’t in the smile. Jericho, too, was disorientated.

  ‘You and me, Detective. We’re the same.’

  Jericho leant forward on the kitchen table, his face only a few feet from Durrant.

  ‘No, we’re fucking not,’ he said harshly.

  Durrant smiled.

  ‘Whatever you say, boss, whatever you say.’

  Jericho straightened up. He looked at the clock again. His fear had completely evaporated. It was always the unknown, wasn’t it? Fear of the unknown. Now that he knew, even if he didn’t remotely understand, all he felt was anger.

  ‘I need to leave,’ he said.

  Jesus! Did I really just say that?

  He was talking to Durrant. Talking to him, like he was a visitor in his home. Like he was someone who had to be updated on what was happening.

  Jericho closed his eyes, expected Durrant to be gone when he opened them again, but it wasn’t that easy. Durrant was still there, head bowed, shaking slightly from side to side.

  ‘Fuck,’ muttered Jericho. ‘Will you still be here when I get back?’

  There I go again!

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Durrant.

  ‘You’re not Durrant.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re not Durrant. Durrant never spoke, or if he did, it was one line every three hours, something calculated and cold. And he never answered any question I asked him, not even to say that he didn’t know. Not once. Who the fuck are you?’

  Durant almost laughed, which was something else he’d never seen before, but the look on his face was doleful. His shoulders were slightly hunched.

  ‘Who?’ he said. ‘I don’t think that was ever a question for me. I was never someone. There was never any ego. There was never a me. An I.’

  Jericho held his gaze, but now he was the only one who was angry.

  ‘Jesus,’ he muttered again.

  He turned, stopped at the door. Was he really just going to walk out of his house and leave this guy here? Durrant was dead, so it literally couldn’t be Durrant, and true enough, he wasn’t talking like Durrant. It made complete sense that somehow this was someone else who looked like Durrant, and sounded like Durrant. And he couldn’t just walk out his house and leave a complete stranger sitting in the kitchen.

  Yet he knew. Every sense in his body – every sense that didn’t actually make sense and couldn’t be explained – told him this was Durrant. From the hairs on the back of his neck to the crawling feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  ‘If you’re Durrant, tell me who you were working for?’

  He turned back.

  And now, sure enough, Durrant was gone. The kitchen was empty. There was a door from the kitchen that led into a small porch area and into the back garden, but there had been no sound, Durrant had not exited the room in any sort of conventional manner. He was gone, that was all.

  And every one of those senses that didn’t make sense told Jericho he was gone.

  He looked at the empty kitchen table, standing in the sudden regular, familiar, warm silence of the kitchen, and was suddenly embraced by a rush of melancholy, a great well of sadness rising within him. He swallowed it back, as through the physical response might be enough to get ri
d of the feeling, and then turned away, closed the door and headed on out the house.

  21

  Fifteen hours later, Jericho was standing at an office window, looking down on a large lake, made dreary by low cloud and early morning rain. The warmth of an English August heatwave had been left behind, and now they were in the mountains, the day grim and grey, suggesting a premature end to summer and hinting at an autumn that had still seemed a long way away in Somerset.

  In fact, it had seemed a long way away two days earlier in Grindelwald, the morning Ian Connolly had been shot in the head, but this was the mountains, the weather ever-changing.

  Jericho hadn’t spoken much since he’d left his house the previous afternoon. Badstuber had already been checked in on the flight, so they did not need to observe the formality of sitting next to each other on the plane. She had stated in the most matter-of-fact fashion, on arriving in Zurich, that he would come with her in the car that was picking her up. And then she had sat in the front and talked throughout the journey to the driver in German. Jericho had switched off, watching Switzerland roll by as the darkness of night deepened.

  He’d checked into his hotel and lain awake for at least two hours, hoping that sleep would come. What had his overactive brain been waiting for? Durrant’s arrival? Or was it afraid to go to sleep, in case Durrant should return in his dreams?

  Now he was with Badstuber, waiting in her superintendent’s office for a nine o’clock meeting. Jericho had his back turned to her, hands in his pockets.

  He couldn’t get Durrant out of his head. That was just wrong. He needed to be concentrating on this. Taking away the fact that someone somewhere had dragged him personally into all of this, and was now potentially dragging Haynes into it as well, the case itself was the most interesting he’d had in years. And not just because the Kangchenjunga aspect had made it even more personal than it already had been.

  If it was to be his last case – his final bow – then it was a damned good one to go out on. Intriguing, and completely different from anything he’d been involved with in the past.

  And yet, Durrant was still there. Still in his head, after all these years. His career had begun, really begun, with cracking the Durrant case. The man had got under his skin, there was no question. Somewhere along the way, when he’d had Amanda, and then when he’d been consumed by Amanda’s disappearance, Durrant had faded out of his memory and obsession, but now he was back. Back in his head.