We Are The Hanged Man

by Douglas Lindsay

  'Who was that on the phone?' he asked, while his mind ran through the possibilities surrounding Oliver Davis.

  'The office. I'll think of something.'

  Jericho leant back and rubbed his chin. Checked his watch. He was already twenty minutes late back for his television appointment. If he left it too long, the bloody camera crew and contestants would probably turn up at the café.

  'Dylan'll know where you are. She might be vicious, stupid and power-crazed, but she's not stupid.'

  'You just said she was stupid.'

  'Not that kind of stupid.'

  'Maybe we should show her the cards,' said Haynes. 'It makes sense. We agree that we've moved on from thinking that it's some kind of joke. There's something going on here, it's coming to a head. We need to tell her.'

  'Did you cross-reference the date of death with any of the cards?' asked Jericho, ignoring him.

  'Yes,' said Haynes. 'It was the first. He died at two in the morning, you got the card in the mail the same day.' He paused, waited for Jericho, but he wasn't talking yet. 'It doesn't necessarily tie them together, as this one could have been referencing something that had happened the previous day, but…'

  'They are no coincidences.'

  Haynes nodded, then continued speaking while Jericho thought it all through. 'It would have been sent before he was killed, so that you received it afterwards. Unless it was held up in the post… So we have a link between you and one of the suspicious deaths, we have the connection with the cards, we have the French thing…'

  'Didn't like the way you said there was a link between me and one of the suspicious deaths,' said Jericho grimly.

  Haynes shook his head. Jericho let out a long sigh, and then got to his feet.

  'Better go. Do me a favour. Call this lawyer, get me an appointment. Today. Don't care how late. Any time will do. Give me a call and I'll get out of whatever shit they've got me doing in there. And if the shit hits the fan back at the station, just let me know and I'll handle it.'

  He rubbed his chin, then left the card and the letter sitting on the table.

  'You'd better keep them. What's the book?'

  'History of the Tarot in French Society.'

  Jericho nodded. Haynes was doing better work than he was. Of course, Haynes was being given the opportunity to work.

  'Get to it, Sergeant,' he said, then he indicated the fruit salad. 'There's no need to be eating that shit.'

  He turned. As he did so he nearly bumped into a tall man walking into the café. Jericho didn't look at his face, but grunted an apology.

  The man, who generally could only focus on one thing at a time, had barely even noticed that they'd nearly bumped into each other. He said nothing and walked to the counter.

  Haynes glanced up briefly, and then refocused on the table in front of him. Speared another piece of fruit and opened up the Tarot book.

  Jericho, head bowed and already descending back into his usual depressive state at the thought of returning to the grip of television, had not paid attention to the man who had brushed past him and headed straight for the counter.

  It had been thirty years since he'd last seen him, but had he taken the time to look at his face he would have instantly recognised him and wondered how it was that he was no longer in prison.

  Durrant, driven out of his hotel room by hunger and, unusually for him, a restless boredom, asked for a coffee and a sandwich, and was directed to the chiller cabinet.

  42

  There was a slight movement in one of the two black plastic bags that had been dumped in the corner. Not from Lorraine Allison, of course. She had been killed a hundred times over.

  It was Lewis. Not quite dead. Not as dead as Durrant had thought him. Not completely dead.

  As his body began to move, Lewis was barely conscious. He saw and felt only suffocating darkness, the slow pushing of his arms and legs against the black plastic liner, the memory of movement. Unthinking, unknowing. Woken by his body's last gasping for breath, as slowly the confines of the bag drew the life from him. Cheap bags, left lying in the room for thirty years. Slightly ripped in the hurried act of packaging up the body, letting in just enough air for Lewis to cling on.

  Turgid fingers pushed against the plastic and slowly poked through. Another hand joined them but the effort of ripping even the thin plastic was too much.

  Lewis had succeeded in bringing air to his tortured lungs, blessed relief, but it was as much as he could do. His body screamed in pain; he did not open his eyes and he once again lapsed into unconsciousness.

  *

  Jericho stared across the table at the committee of five. Ando, Xav, Cher, Claudia and Morris. Morris was slightly put out by the fact that Claudia was now sitting in on everything. Saw it as a rebuke for her own performance, which indeed it was.

  Washington was delighted by the way the media side of the show was falling into place; the story with Lol had fallen into his lap like a gift from the gods; and poor old Jericho was utterly hapless and consequently perfect television. However, the shows still lacked something. People were watching them because that was what they did, or they thought they should, or they were afraid they'd miss something, or because everyone else at work was watching and they didn't want to be left out of the following day's discussion. They weren't watching because it was actually any good. Yet. They had four nights to make amends.

  Washington understood it was too late in the process to make it worthwhile replacing Morris. Her replacement, no matter who it was, would never get up to speed in time. He needed someone that had been there from the start, and at least for that Claudia was perfect. She hadn't wanted to get her hands dirty quite so much in this way – she had genuinely squealed when he'd sent her to Wells – but there was no question that it was necessary.

  At five minutes past ten on Saturday evening, Morris was going to be looking for a new job. In fact, Washington was contemplating getting rid of her just before the show started, as her work would be more or less done by then.

  'No,' said Jericho eventually. 'Really. No. We can't do that.'

  'Can't you?' asked Claudia, her voice dripping with supercilious disdain. 'Look, Chief Inspector, we don't have a lot of time before we need to start putting tonight's show together, so let's everyone just get real for a second. We have continually asked things of you, you have continually said no, and you know what? We get them anyway. So why don't we just cut out all the fucking shit, cut out the boring stage where you pretend that what we want isn't going to happen, and just fucking do it?'

  Jericho, who had allowed himself to edge forwards towards the desk, once more slouched back into his seat. His phone beeped. He held Claudia's gaze for a moment and then took his phone out to check. It was something that he found incredibly rude when others did it, and he only did it this time because of the company he was keeping.

  Claudia seethed, knew exactly what Jericho was thinking.

  It was Haynes. The lawyer was free in the next half hour, would be travelling later. Effectively, now or never. Thank God for that, thought Jericho.

  'I need to go,' he said, standing up.

  'Sit down!' barked Claudia.

  Xav and Ando looked a little uncomfortable, Xav indeed so uncomfortable that he didn't even think about making the awkward turtle sign.

  Jericho paused to give her a look. It would have been wrong to say that he hesitated, as he had no intention of not going. The thought of saying something flitted through his head and then, as usual, he didn't say it. He moved towards the door.

  'Stop him!' barked Claudia at the three amigos. 'You're, you know, you're in training. Don't just let him walk out. He's a fugitive.'

  She was looking at Xav and Ando, what with them being the only other two men in the room. Xav, barely nine stone and remarkably timid, was never an option. It fell on Ando. He glanced up at Jericho, who had stopped and was looking curiously at Claudia and her happy band of TV desperados. Jericho's eyes blankly stared back at Ando and
, as if possessed of some remarkable superpower, kept him rooted to his seat.

  Cher rose quickly and walked to the door. Morris sat with expressionless face, wishing that she'd been the one to act first.

  Even better, thought Claudia, sitting in triumph. The camera was running, now let's see Jericho try to force Cher out of the way. He either backed down, in which case from now on they would absolutely own him; or he would try to manhandle her, and they would have the sensational bit of television for which Washington was searching. The perfect result would be Jericho starting a fight and Cher taking him out. Then they would have their TV shot and they would own him.

  'Excuse me,' said Jericho, and he smiled politely at Cher.

  Behind him Claudia scowled.

  'We need to do what Claudia wants,' said Cher. 'It's not about the TV show,' she added confidently, 'it's about finding Lol. It's been five days.'

  'Miss Mansfield,' said Jericho. It was the first time that any of those in the room had heard him use someone's name; it was genuinely the first time in her life that anyone had ever called her Miss Mansfield, and straight away there was a tone to his voice that Claudia, skilled in the arts of sophistry and manipulation, recognised. 'You know this is wrong. We cannot randomly arrest one of Cher's ex-boyfriends just so we can interrogate him for television purposes. And you know that the ex-boyfriend Claudia has chosen, isn't because there's any evidence against him whatsoever, it's because he's the most volatile, the one who will react the most when confronted and arrested. We just cannot do it. I will not do it.'

  His tone was level. Firm, sensible, mature; all the things that Cher deep down knew the show was not.

  'I've only been around this circus for a week now, but it's pretty obvious that you're the only proficient person here. You are more than capable of being a police officer and I'm quite happy to say here and now that you ought to win this contest hands down.'

  She was trying to stop herself smiling. Behind them, Claudia stood up, but she was wary of the camera, wary of making herself the centre of a filmed confrontation.

  'And so, given that you appear to have a natural talent for police work, it must be obvious to you that we cannot, under any circumstances, actually arrest someone just for the sake of a decent bit of television.'

  'No,' said Cher, nodding, 'you're right.'

  Claudia spat with rage.

  'So, I'm sorry to leave you, but there really is something to which I need to attend. I'll be about an hour and a half. In my absence I'm putting you in charge of the investigation.' He indicated the boards on the walls which were covered with everything that they had so far learned in the strange case of the missing Lol. 'I'd be grateful if you could lead a brainstorming session. You've got everything we've learned, or haven't learned, up there. Spread your mind, Miss Mansfield. Are there avenues we've ignored? Is there anything to which we're being wilfully blind just because we don't want to contemplate it? This is the time when you have to open your mind to all the possibilities.'

  He put his hand on her shoulder.

  'Can you do that for me?' he asked.

  Cher, who had in the space of a little over a minute, become totally besotted with the middle-aged, curmudgeonly Detective Chief Inspector, nodded.

  'Thank you,' said Jericho.

  And ultimately he did not even have to ask her to step out of the way. She did so voluntarily, keen to get on with her new task.

  Jericho closed the door behind him and stood still for a second. Deep breath. Wasn't waiting to hear the explosion that would inevitably come from inside. Rather he just needed to recover from the effort of speaking softly and compassionately, from the effort of the lie, from the effort of being someone he wasn't.

  Then like a superhero who takes time to recover his powers having moved the Earth out of the way of the meteor, he cricked his neck to the side, breathed a regular breath and walked along the corridor, just as Claudia's screech reached breaking point.

  43

  Edgar Matthews of Cullen, Harvey and Daniels, was a small man in his mid-fifties. He wore a grey suit, white shirt and a pink and grey tie, all of which had come from Marks & Spencer. He frequently licked his lips, which Jericho noticed was because they were so dry. He might have suggested lip balm if he'd ever used lip balm himself.

  Matthews' fingers were thin and he played with them constantly as he talked. Entwined them and tapped them, occasionally clicked the nails. Nevertheless he spoke confidently with no hint of nerves about him.

  Frustrated artist or musician, thought Jericho.

  The office was plain, simply and elegantly furnished, appeared chic and expensive without drawing attention to itself.

  'We like to act on these things as quickly as possible,' said Matthews. He was reading studiously through the notes that had been compiled by one of his research assistants and did not look up.

  Jericho felt his usual awkwardness at sitting in the presence of someone unfamiliar when he himself wasn't in charge. He was naturally comfortable with the position of investigating officer. However, being in a strange office when he wasn't entirely sure of the reason was guaranteed to have most of his words trapped in that uncomfortable black ball in the pit of his stomach.

  'Oliver Davis of 145 Pitt Street, St Paul's, Bristol?' He raised his eyes. 'Are you familiar with that name?'

  Jericho shook his head. Then he remembered he was talking to a lawyer, and that it would be better for him not to open the conversation with a lie. 'We were aware of his death, and that the circumstances were unusual. So I was aware of his name in a professional capacity.'

  'But you didn't know him on any personal level?'

  'No,' said Jericho.

  Matthews nodded.

  'Yes,' he said. 'I didn't think you would. There does seem to be some degree of separation.'

  He was nodding and continued to do so. Jericho sat in silence. Glanced at the windows. They were only on the fourth floor above New Oxford Street, but he could hear nothing from the street below, despite the fact that he knew it was clogged with traffic. The usual angry car-horn traffic of London on a slow Wednesday afternoon. Just as he could hear nothing of the busy office outside Matthews' door.

  Matthews was hermetically sealed in, no part of the outside world allowed to intrude.

  'Why am I here?' asked Jericho. He wasn't desperate to get back to the absurdity of the prime time search for Lol, but at least that was doing what he was used to doing.

  Matthews looked up. Bright blue eyes, very striking. Jericho had noticed it when he'd initially entered, something which already seemed a long time ago. He looked at his watch.

  'Mr Davis' estate is not, as you might imagine, a large one, but we do need to find his closest surviving relative.'

  'Not usually a police matter,' said Jericho.

  'No, and neither is it. Albeit it is rather peculiar,' he added.

  Jericho, still searching for a straight answer, asked the question with his eyebrows.

  'In searching for his closest relative, we discovered that the next in line had also died in rather sad circumstances in recent months.' He looked down, although he well knew the name by now. 'Morten Anderson?'

  Jericho shook his head at the enquiring glance.

  'Died in a car accident in the Netherlands just before Christmas. He appears to have been an itinerant chap, but he was travelling on a British passport. His closest relative was a…' another check of the paperwork, and this time he did actually appear to need to look, 'Miranda Miller.'

  Again the querying look across the desk.

  Jericho shook his head, although his curiosity was beginning to overtake his general annoyance at being part of a conversation where he wasn't the one who knew what was going on.

  'Died in a surfing accident at Woolacombe beach. Banged her head on some rocks.' He glanced at the notes and said, 'Only twenty-seven.'

  Jericho looked blankly across the desk.

  'This is the curious one,' said Matthews. 'In relation
to you, I mean. We started coming at this from the point of view of Oliver James, as that was how the case was first brought to us. Ultimately though, we have got as far as Miss Miller. The name means nothing to you?'

  'When did she die?' asked Jericho. 'Recently?'

  'No, last summer. July.'

  Jericho nodded, let his thoughts kick in.

  'All right,' he said. 'I remember.'

  'It was brought to your attention at the time?'

  'Saw it on BBC South West. Don't think I ever saw a file or anything. Not our patch. And not really a police matter in any case.'

  'No,' said Matthews. 'That wasn't what I meant, not from the point of view of it being a police matter. It seems odd. You weren't contacted?'

  'Contacted? What?' said Jericho. The annoyance was once again beginning to trump his curiosity.

  'You appear to be Miss Miller's only surviving relative. Which, naturally, also makes you the same for Morten Anderson, and then of course the late Mr Davis.'

  44

  Jericho got hold of Haynes before he left London. Met him back in the same café as previously, having caught Haynes a couple of miles short of the M25.

  Jericho had twenty minutes to think before Haynes arrived, but mostly he didn't. There were too many directions in which his brain could go. He did wonder, however, whether Haynes ought to have discovered some of this in his investigations of the previous two weeks. Was that an acceptable expectation? By the time Haynes arrived, he'd decided that it wasn't. There was no reason for him to have been looking for any of this information, and no particular reason he would stumble across it.

  'If we suppose that one of the Hanged Men applies to the death of Oliver Davis, and that this is related to you because he's related to you, then why didn't you get a card for the other two?'

  'That's a good question, Sergeant. But is that the question, or is this a negative proof of the fact that the card is not related to the death of Davis?'