Claudia's throat was dry. Durrant took one step towards her and buried his knife in it, and suddenly her throat was wet with blood. He held it there for a second, her eyes wide, and then dragged it out, running it across her throat as it went. Claudia collapsed, dead, to the floor.
At some point, in the midst of it all, Hoagy had moved on to Ballad in Blue.
Durrant looked around the scene, already knowing who he had killed and who needed to be finished off. Nevertheless, he had to be sure.
He walked quickly round the room, stepping over bodies, slitting every throat that had not already been slit, and doing it again on those that had.
65
Jericho stood two hundred yards along the beach, no sense of what was taking place inside the house, the only sounds the wind and the sea and the tumbling stones. He checked his watch; he ground his shoes into the shingle.
It had been long enough. No one had come back out of the house, but it was time for him to put himself into the middle of what was going on. The thought of appearing out of nowhere, to be back in front of the cameras, squeezed horribly at his stomach, but then so did the thought of what might be happening, if it really was Durrant behind that old door. The house he'd walked passed so often when strolling along this beach. Durrant's house.
Head up, hat pulled low, he started walking along the stones towards the house, looking like any dog walker out on a bleak January late morning. A dog walker in a suit. Without a dog.
*
Durrant stepped into the shower, took the nozzle from the wall and directed a jet of cold water over his body for thirty seconds, washing off the blood. He grabbed a towel, barely dried himself, and then walked through the sitting room, picking his way through the blood, to the bedroom and quickly pulled on a t-shirt and a pair of jeans.
It was time to leave. He had no mind to clear up the mess he'd made, but neither did he want to live amongst it.
As he pulled the t-shirt over his head, he noticed the figure approaching the house from along the beach.
For the briefest moment he felt his throat dry, the most minor increase in heartbeat. Jericho.
Had he expected Jericho to arrive with the group that had just walked in on him? Of course not, as he had not even begun to think about them. Hadn't known they were coming, had dealt with them as soon as they had. Now that Jericho was approaching, however, it seemed odd that he should arrive now, a few minutes after his police confederates.
Durrant did not for a minute think of running away. Thirty years previously he had not had the chance. When Jericho had turned up to arrest him, Durrant's house had been surrounded by at least thirty armed officers. There had been no escape.
Once Durrant was taken into custody, the police had naturally enough found the basement. However, they had not found the hanging ground, the holiday home by the sea. He had been arrested not long before he was due to take a trip out there, to deliver his new set of corpses, where his experiments regarding rate of decomposition in traumatised bodies continued.
He had never been back, and so the house had lain dormant all that time. Thirty years he had been waiting for his cell door to open, thirty years expecting Jericho to be standing outside, a folder of photographs in his hand, along with a raft of new accusations and charges.
Jericho had never come. He'd wondered if the man had forgotten about him after all that time. He had certainly never forgotten about Jericho.
He had waited. He had researched. He had learned. He had kept his outside associations as quiet as possible. It had been some years earlier that he had had his plan in place. It evolved somewhat as time had gone on, but he had always been ready. Upon his release he'd intended dragging Jericho down to his level, as quickly as possible.
Durrant had never known that the plan wasn't his plan.
And now, here came Jericho, walking along the beach to the crime scene. Poor, miserable Jericho, wanted for murder. About to face him on level terms at last.
Durrant walked quickly through the sitting room, this time picking up blood on his bare feet as he went, and into the back room. He turned on the light and closed the door behind him.
The four old victims hung perfectly still, where they had always hung. There was another place. Had he intended that all along for Jericho? He wasn't sure, but he had other uses for it first.
He looked down at Light as he walked past her. Her eyes, wide and fearful and confused, followed him round the room.
'What are you doing?'
He grabbed some heavy tape from the small work bench, then pulled out a stretch and quickly and roughly strapped it around her mouth, gagging her, hurting her as he wound it securely around her head. Her eyes widened.
He lifted the small chair and placed it under the fifth hook. There was rope on the floor, and he lifted it and quickly tied it into the old knot. The noose. He hadn't forgotten how, even though it was the first time he'd made the knot in over thirty years.
Then he walked over beside Light and placed the knot around her neck. She looked at him searchingly, pleadingly.
Why are you doing this to me? she screamed. The words emerged as a formless, dull noise.
He made loose her bonds, and then as she began to struggle upwards he grabbed the rope and dragged her swiftly and harshly off the table, so that she fell backwards, thumping on to her buttocks, her neck strangled by the noose.
He pulled her quickly and, gasping for breath, her arms flailing, she struggled to get to her feet to keep up with him. Then, in one movement, he hoisted her up onto the chair, and hung the noose from the hook.
Her legs comfortably reached the chair, but as soon as she put weight on them they folded from the effort, having been strapped down for so long.
Her face was turning purple; her arms were dead and useless and thrashing helplessly; she stared desperately at Durrant, eyes pleading.
Durrant turned his back, walked around the table, and turned off the light.
66
Lazy River was playing. The song told him as much as the scene of carnage, as much as the absurd walls covered in Tarot cards. Blood on the cards on the walls, blood on the floor, blood on the furniture. And Hoagy was singing.
He looked around at the four closed doors. Glanced into the small kitchen area. Imagined the house from the outside, so that he could get a sense of the size of rooms behind each of the doors. One would be a bathroom. Three bedrooms? Closed his eyes again, pictured the house. Two at most. Another check around, not much storage space. The other door would be a cupboard, but it could be a walk-in cupboard, somewhere with plenty of space for a man to stand waiting.
A quick check of the house had shown there was no back door. Just a window that seemed to let in no light. Curtains drawn or boarded up, he couldn't be sure.
If they weren't boarded up, then Durrant would have been able to get out the back, run away. Jericho knew that wouldn't happen. He would be waiting, on the other side of one of these four doors.
He stood with his feet adjacent to Morris' head. He barely looked down at her. She had meant nothing to him, and now he felt nothing at her death. He wasn't interested. The same could be said for the rest of the eight bodies in the room, and the same could be said for the hundreds of Hanged Men, now scornfully smiling at him from the walls and the ceiling. He blanked it all out.
He studied the four doors, sure that he would pick the right one, then he looked around at the bodies, their positions where they'd fallen, and tried to imagine how it had played out. He did not wonder how Durrant had taken on nine people and triumphed.
He took the phone from his pocket. There were three missed calls. He thought about it for a second, then dialled 999. Waited no more than four seconds.
'I'm in Shingle Street… the town… nine murders. Yes. Nine. There are police vans parked outside, probably from Woodbridge.'
He hung up as she continued to ask him questions, the unprofessional incredulity in her voice at the report of nine murders.
&nbs
p; The phone rang within seconds of him putting it back into his pocket, and he reached in and clicked it off, then held his finger on the button long enough to turn the phone off.
What would he tell any other officer to do in this situation? Turn, walk out, keep an eye on the property from a distance, wait for backup.
Under the circumstances – the events that had preceded this atrocity – it was possible that the police were going to arrive and assume that Jericho was guilty of the crimes.
But that didn't matter. It was all about Durrant. Durrant was waiting for him. Durrant had been setting him up. Durrant had the opportunity to run away and he wouldn't have taken it. Neither would he at any stage.
Jericho didn't care what happened after this, didn't care what he was accused of. Durrant needed to be dealt with, and he had a moment of believing that he was the only one who truly understood him.
Had they asked, had they not been so dismissive of him, he certainly would not have led the television personalities so blindly to their deaths.
He selected the door into the back room and walked quickly forward, stepping between the bodies, picking up blood on his shoes.
He opened the door, made out the five hanging figures in the dim light, put his hand to the wall and turned on the light.
Sergeant Light whimpered, the gag still tight around her mouth, her feet clinging to a grudging table, her hands at her throat trying to keep the noose from her neck. Durrant stood not far in front of her, his arms folded, waiting.
The two men looked into each other's eyes for the first time in thirty years.
Neither of them had ever been much disposed to talk, and thirty years had not changed them.
Jericho looked behind Durrant at the four bodies hanging in a row beside Light. They had each been hung by a rope tied in a noose around the neck.
They were all fully clothed. Skeletal faces, the remnants of skin thirty years dead, hung dryly from the faces. The mouths were open, grey teeth smiled awkwardly down. The eye sockets stared back at Jericho.
The four victims for whom he had searched so long. The bodies that had haunted him, knowing they were out there somewhere in the world waiting to be discovered.
And now at last, he had found them, having been left to hang in the same place for all this time, in a house past which he had walked on many occasions, hand in hand with his wife or on his own, his head bowed in melancholy to the stones. All the while, behind the stone walls, four corpses had slowly rotted away.
'You're under arrest,' said Jericho. 'Sit down in the corner and don't move.'
Durrant at least obeyed the final command. He didn't move. Jericho wondered how long they could remain in a stand off. Long enough for the police to arrive?
Even coming from Woodbridge they were going to take ten minutes, and there were hardly going to be too many police officers to hand. More than likely they would be coming from Ipswich, and even in a desperate, frantic rush were a good twenty-five minutes away.
Light gasped again and Jericho realised suddenly that they'd been acting as if she wasn't there. It wasn't about Light, it was about Jericho and Durrant and a personal battle that had been suspended for thirty years. But Light was currently clinging on for her life, desperately clutching at the noose around her neck. The soon to be hanged woman.
Jericho walked round the table towards her, and finally Durrant moved. He had no weapon, but he did not for a second imagine that he would require one.
Jericho did not have words of comfort for Light. He felt nothing for her, even though the last time he had seen her she had been lying naked in a bed and he had been leaving her for the night.
He had a thought that he would never voice, and did not even like to admit to himself, but he was annoyed at her for allowing herself to be taken.
He walked forward in a manner that suggested he did not expect anything to get in his way, although he barely looked Light in the face.
Durrant took one step nearer and met Jericho with a brutal punch to the chin. Durrant had spent thirty years exercising and working out in prison. Jericho had spent the same time slowing down and gradually getting older.
He thudded back against the wall, blood immediately spurting from his lip, pain piercing through his fractured jaw.
Durrant did not move straight in, instead standing back and looking down on Jericho, who was leaning back heavily against the wall.
There was a movement to his left. Light's legs were struggling weakly on the chair, and the chair had begun to slide a few inches to the side. There was no time to lounge against the wall.
Jericho forced himself up, once again heading straight towards Light, ignoring the fact that there would be something in his way. This time he caught the incoming blow from Durrant in time, parrying it away with his right forearm.
As he reached Light, he felt Durrant's hands on his shoulders, so he ducked down and kicked back, then turned, lashing out an elbow at Durrant's head. The force of the blow sent each man away from the other, off-balance, and then they quickly regained their footing and squared up once more, Light in between them. Her squirming was becoming more frantic, her face a deeper hue, her gasps more desperate.
Durrant reached out with his leg and kicked the seat away from her. The rope stretched with a sound quite unfamiliar to Jericho, and Light was dangling, kicking at air.
It wasn't as if Jericho had been fighting with any compassion before, but now the cold-bloodedness that dwelled inside him, the innate lack of feeling for the well-being of others swept over him. He did not particularly care for Sergeant Light, dangling from a rope and about to die, but Durrant had annoyed him and hurt one of his colleagues, and he was not going to stand helplessly around in a room while it happened.
'Is this all we can do?' said Jericho. 'After thirty years of plotting revenge, is this it?'
Durrant was not drawn, although he had begun to work through the likely outcomes of where they were standing. He did not doubt that Jericho had called the police before he entered the room, and understood perfectly his need to address Durrant on his own before the rest of the force arrived. But the police would be on their way, and while he did not particularly care if he was sent back to prison, it still seemed worthwhile doing what he could to stay free for the time being.
He made a sudden movement that surprised Jericho, and while he flung his fists up in the air in defence, Durrant reached over to Sergeant Light, grabbed the end of the rope attached to the hook, lifted it off – which briefly made it bite even more into her neck, and would have killed her in a few seconds – then dumped her down on the floor, loosening the knot and quickly removing it as he did so.
In all the time he'd been distracted, Jericho had had a perfect chance to counterattack, but Durrant had surprised him and he instead watched dumbfounded.
Light slumped onto the floor, supporting herself with one hand, rubbing her neck with the other, gasping at air, panting. Durrant straightened up and looked at Jericho. Jericho stood three yards away, the four hanged bodies for company.
'What would you like to talk about?' said Durrant.
The words came strangely out of the blue at Jericho. He had not heard that voice in so long. The voice that had stone-walled him and mocked him and kept him at bay. The voice which had never revealed the whereabouts of his victims.
Jericho looked at Light, who was now on all fours, her head down, coughing harshly in the direction of the floor.
'Get out,' said Jericho.
Durrant looked at him, now seemingly completely disinterested in Light. Light did not hear, or did not realise she was being spoken to. For the first time in two days she was free, but this was not a circumstance for relief.
'Sergeant!' barked Jericho. He had been tender two nights previously. 'Sergeant! Get up, get out.'
He did not bend down to grab her, to physically urge her on her way. Did not doubt that Durrant would take advantage of the movement.
She looked up at him. She seemed hurt,
annoyed, angry almost. She was annoyed at him shouting at her. How absurd.
'Now, Sergeant!'
Her eyes still on him, not even looking at Durrant, she dragged herself to her feet and lurched towards the door.
'Don't hesitate, Sergeant. Don't look at them. Just get outside.'
She was looking through the door and sure enough had paused at the sight. The bloody slaughter. The walls of Hanged Men.
'Do I have to kick you up the arse, Sergeant?' said Jericho to her back, without looking at her.
Slowly, naked and alone, she walked into the sitting room and began to pick her way through the bodies. Neither Jericho nor Durrant had looked at her as she walked out.
The two men stood either side of the end of the table, the four hanged bodies to Jericho's left, looking down upon them. Neither man was breathing hard. Neither man seemed especially tense. They both stood still, their eyes locked on the other, waiting for the first move.
However, they both knew that it was beholden on Durrant to do something. In the situation where nothing happened, Jericho won. The police would arrive in force; Durrant would be apprehended. Although neither man was considering the real possibility that the police would arrive, their heads filled with the possibility that Jericho was a murderer because that was what they had read in the newspapers, and would take action against him rather than Durrant.
How many of them had heard of Durrant? How many of them would be looking for Durrant? Who among them knew that Durrant would kill nine people in two minutes without a second's thought?
'Shall we make war with words of intellectual merit?' asked Durrant. 'Shall we discuss the aesthetics of hanging? Shall we do battle over the course of history?'
Jericho did not answer. In this strange fight it seemed merely a victory in the fact that it was Durrant who was doing the talking.
With Durrant now standing before him, however, Jericho could not contain the question.
'How did you know about Larrousse?' he asked.
We Are The Hanged Man Page 31
