We Are the Hanged Man (42 page)

Released at the end of his sentence.

No parole. That did not tie in with how Jericho had described the situation. Even in this politically correct age, even in these times when old convictions were re-examined down to the smallest detail, even in these days when sentences were getting shorter as prison space needed to be made available for more and more convicted criminals, it didn't make sense that someone like Durrant would be released.

He trawled back through the old computer files until he found details on Durrant's conviction. They were early enough that they wouldn't have been on computer at the time, and had been added to a database retrospectively, so it was just the bare minimum of detail. If he wanted to read any more about him, then he'd need to go to Scotland Yard.

On May 17
^th
1982, having already been found guilty on five charges of kidnapping, torture and murder, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. The judge indicated that he should never be released. Subsequent to this and the introduction of new legislation the following year, the Home Secretary issued a whole life order for Durrant, confirming that he should spend the rest of his days in prison.

Haynes flicked open his notebook, searched for the dates that the cards had arrived. The first one had come to the station two days before Durrant had been released. That didn't make sense. But then, perhaps Jericho had been wrong, and Durrant really was working with someone. The conspiracy felt so involved, it would be impossible for one person to do it all.

There was no picture of Durrant on file, so he went on to the internet and searched for the name.

If one Googles any name in the world, there will be scores of people. Company registers, Facebook and Twitter, births, deaths, full-backs for Hartlepool United, a part-time runner finishing 12,314
^th
in a half-marathon in Rotterdam, a sophomore quarterback at Texas A&M.

There was the usual panoply of names for Gordon Durrant and, aware that the events he was looking for had happened long before the internet had been up and running, he went a long way back in his search. Ultimately he gave up, as he ran into repetition, the same Durrants repeated in similar documents over and over.

His Gordon Durrant wasn't there.

He tried to imagine him, the face of the beast. Another look at the clock, noted down the phone number of the prison from which he'd been released. He would call them in half an hour or so.

He thought that it was all too easy, too neat, even if Durrant had had an accomplice. If he'd been so full of rage at Jericho after thirty years, wouldn't his first act have been to turn up on the man's doorstep? The cards spoke of a more considered approach, something a long time in the planning.

He'd had thirty years to plan.

'I need to speak to the prison,' he said aloud, tapping his fingers on the desk.

Broadmoor. About a two-hour drive, and it would be fine for when he was heading back up to London.

The phone rang, the sharp noise cutting into the silence of the morning. He checked his watch again. He'd had twenty-seven minutes. It was an internal call, which more than likely meant that Loovens was putting through a call from outside.

He contemplated ignoring it, but knew that that was only going to get Loovens shouted at.

'Hello,' he said brusquely.

'Superintendent Dylan, for you, Sir,' said Loovens, and immediately hung up. No desire to get caught in the middle, and certainly not when he was eating his second breakfast.

Haynes waited. Time to pay attention to one of Jericho's favourite pieces of cod philosophy.
He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know.

'Sergeant?' barked Dylan.

Sounded annoyed already, he thought. It's not even eight in the morning, and I haven't even said anything.

'Yes, ma'am,' he said.

Would Jericho just have stared down the phone at that point?

'Where the fuck is he?' she asked.

Haynes, who had been thinking about Durrant, genuinely thought for a moment that that was about whom she was asking. He shook his head at himself.

'I don't know,' he said firmly.

'Fuck that!' she barked at him. Maybe it was a scream. 'You better tell me where he is, Sergeant, or you are finished. You're not just going to be kicked out of the police force, you'll be charged with obstruction. Career over. End of. Now tell me where the fuck I can find DCI Jericho.'

Did she just use
end of
as a complete sentence, thought Haynes. I don't believe that deserves much of a reply.

'I don't know where he is,' said Haynes again.

'Why did you leave the show last night? It was reported to me that you took a call or a text and you immediately left.'

'It was from my mum,' said Haynes, after a slight hesitation. Always easier to lie when there's at least an element of truth.

There was a pause.

'What? What?'

At the very least it had knocked her off her stride. She hadn't been expecting that.

'My mum,' he said.

'You went to see your mother?'

'I didn't go to see her,' said Haynes. A pause, while he contemplated an illness in the family, but that would have been a lie too far. 'She said that I was embarrassing myself, that the show was appalling and that I should be ashamed.'

A silence down the phone.

'So I left.'

'Where did you go?' said Dylan. Suddenly discombobulated.

They would have followed me, he thought. They know.

'I called a friend and went for dinner on Goodge Street. Then I went home.'

More silence.

'You're lying, Sergeant,' she said eventually. 'Get up here, now.'

*

Just before eight o'clock in the morning, the dawn having crept in over the North Sea. The sea was calm, the wind barely more than a breeze, although it was beginning to pick up. Outside the small sea-front cottage, the white Volkswagen Polo that had been identified by the police as having been in the vicinity of the Crowne Plaza on the two nights when abductions had taken place, sat silently in open view. The search, which the police felt would be hindered by the inevitability of the car being hidden away, was more hindered by the fact that the car was parked up at the end of a cul de sac, in plain view of dog walkers and joggers, people who did not stop to think that this might be the car they were talking about on the evening news.

In any case, the fact that the police were looking for the car, had been relegated far behind the list of tales to be told about DCI Jericho.

Durrant lay in bed, wide awake. The window was open and he could hear the sound of the stones tumbling in the waves. There had been no other sound from outside since he'd heard someone walking along the beach more than fifteen minutes previously.

Despite lying completely still, he was restless, his mind rattling around. He hadn't been still since he'd killed Lorraine Allison.

That had been the kind of murder of which he'd been accused in the past. They'd said he'd been brutal, when he knew he hadn't been. They'd said he couldn't be controlled and that he had no understanding of self-control, when in fact he'd been the most self-controlled person that any of them would ever have met. His crimes had all been calculating, scientific, business-like.

If the state had had any sense, they would not have locked him up. They would have given him a job with MI6. He would have been perfect. Perhaps in another era they would have done, but by the early 80s they'd already gone too soft.

So he had been accused of being a monster, out of control, and had been locked away. Now, at last, he had done exactly the kind of thing of which they'd said he was capable. Blind rage, brutal uncontrollable murder. There had been no thought process with the murder of Allison; it had all been impulsive, gut instinct. He hadn't been able to live with her lying there in that room, racked with pain and fear.

And now the certainty with which he had lived all of his adult life had gone.

There was a noise outside the room, from the small open-plan sitting room/kitchen, from which four doors led off. To his bedroom, to the bathroom, to a storage cupboard and to the other room. The torture room.

He didn't keep that room locked, even though it had been fitted with a deadbolt and two locks. There hardly seemed any need. The victims were so tightly strapped to the table that he was entirely confident they weren't going anywhere.

He sat up in bed and listened more intently. Held his breath. A moment's silence, and then another slight noise from the front room. He didn't understand it, but now that he'd heard something for a second time he did not hesitate.

He was out of bed, across the floor, door opened and in the sitting room in under three seconds.

The terrified face of Lewis looked up at him. Durrant stood in front of him. Tall and powerful and naked, his morning erection standing out in front of him.

Durrant looked curiously at him, then glanced into the room through the open door. Sergeant Light was still strapped to the table, her neck angled up so that she could see what was happening.

Lewis lay curled up on the floor, having automatically made himself smaller the second the door had opened and his terrors had been realised.

Durrant dismissed Lewis from his immediate thoughts – he wasn't going to be moving very quickly, given that he had so many broken bones in both of his feet – walked into the room, checked that Light was still securely fastened.

She looked up at him, her eyes pleading, curious, desperate, confused.

'Gordon, what are you doing?'

He ignored her. He took a quick look at the ripped black plastic bags that were supposed to have been Lewis' coffin, then walked back out into the sitting room closing the door behind him.

'Why?' she shouted at him as the door closed. He did not turn.

Durrant stood over Lewis, who lay on the ground, looking up at him, whimpering, swallowing, every inch of him crying out in pain and terror.

Durrant stared down, not seeming to care that he himself was naked. His erection had faded, and now his penis rested long and flaccid directly above Lewis's head.

Lewis caught Durrant's eye, then looked away, tears starting to choke from his throat. He caught a movement. He looked back up at Durrant as he lifted his bare foot. Lewis screamed, a plaintive desperate cry, a scream which Durrant quickly cut off by bringing his foot down onto Lewis' throat.

Lewis squirmed desperately, the pain of even the slightest movement in all his broken bones completely forgotten in the desperation to catch a breath.

His frantic movements did not last long. He squirmed, he gasped, and very quickly Durrant had crushed his windpipe and he breathed no more. Lewis was dead.

Having made the mistake once, something else to trouble Durrant in the darkness of his own thoughts, he was not going to repeat it. He thrust his foot harder and harder against Lewis' throat, even though he knew he was gone. For three minutes he stood, Lewis' neck squashed beneath his bare foot.

Finally Durrant allowed himself to stand back. With one victim he had lost control. With his next victim he had made a potentially crucial mistake.

Thirty years in prison had not been kind to him, he suddenly thought. With the weight of depression beginning to fall more heavily on his shoulders, he turned and walked back through to the bedroom, stopping only to throw the deadbolt across the door of Sergeant Light's prison cell. Then he lay down in bed and once more stared at the ceiling in his room, every sound from outside amplified by his own internal turmoil.