We Are the Hanged Man (44 page)

Washington recognised the general feeling of apathy while he stood at the window looking down on the street below. They had summoned Sergeant Haynes back to work, and had been told that he'd be there early afternoon (albeit Haynes had not yet been informed.) Even so, Washington wasn't bothered about Haynes. He recognised that Haynes had the same disdain for the show that Jericho had displayed, but Haynes just wasn't in Jericho's class. It was like having Ed Miliband annoyed at you, rather than Nelson Mandela. Haynes was pointless, brought virtually nothing to the show, and he considered it a bonus that he'd walked out on them the previous evening. What they really needed was to find Jericho.

Cher, Ando and Xav were sitting idly by, flicking through the gossip columns, waiting for some direction. Since they were being filmed going about this mundane task, Cher occasionally burst into tears.

Morris was also in the room, aware that her days at the company were numbered, and desperately throwing out ideas to try to inject some enthusiasm into the morning.

Washington wasn't too worried, and consequently happy to ignore everything that she said. There were over ten hours until they went to broadcast that night. Something would happen in that time. Ten hours was a long time in television. As was ten minutes.

The door burst open and Claudia came gushing into the room. The moment she saw her face, Morris wished that she was the only one who knew what it was that Claudia knew.

Claudia waved a piece of paper.

'Fucking A,' she said.

'Jericho?' said Washington. At that moment, Jericho was all that mattered.

'No,' said Claudia, trying to keep her enthusiasm up as she saw it drain away from Washington. 'Better than that,' she said determinedly. 'We've got a sighting of the third car.'

'The third car?' said Washington dismissively, although he knew which car she was talking about.

'The unregistered car that was spotted near the hotel on the two evenings when Lol and the police woman were kidnapped.'

Washington nodded, looked unimpressed. Cher gasped, put a hand to her mouth. Xav leant forward excitedly, Ando stood up as if he was ready to fight someone.

'It's parked by a small seafront cottage in Suffolk. Near Shingle Street. A woman out walking her dog this morning thought she heard a scream in the cottage. Turned and walked away, but she noticed the car. She'd read about it in the paper. Made a note of the number, checked it out at home, called the police a short time ago.'

She looked at her watch.

'Took her a couple of hours,' she said and shrugged. 'The great British public, eh?'

Washington breathed heavily through his nose and rubbed his hands over his face.

'Not bad,' he said. 'I presume we're more hopeful with this since the number's not registered. And the scream sounds promising.'

Claudia nodded excitedly.

'Sounds a bit creepy,' said Ando. 'Where's Suffolk?'

Washington ignored him, checked his watch.

'The police haven't gone out there yet, have they?'

'They're waiting for us. I made sure.'

'Good. But fuck, it'll take two hours to get out there.'

'I've got the helicopter set up. They'll be ready for us in ten minutes. Space for us two, the musketeers, camera and sound.'

Hattie Morris felt the rage and jealousy rise within her.

'Good fucking job,' said Washington. 'Good fucking job. Go on then, you lot, get the fuck going. The show doesn't make itself.'

A little of the light died from Claudia's face. She may have been about to leave 1
^st
May Television, but she wanted to take her relationship with Washington with her. He was not a man to lose, once you had him in your inner circle.

'Aren't you coming?' she asked.

'You're fucking kidding, love,' he said. 'It's field work. On you go. Take Hattie.'

Claudia looked at Hattie like Hattie was the shit left behind by something that had crawled out of the sewer. She turned back to Washington.

'This could be huge,' she said. 'You'll want to be there.'

It was unlikely that he would have gone in any case, but he was scared of helicopters. Two bad experiences inside a week in LA three years previously, and he hadn't been in one since.

No one needed to know that he was scared of anything. He waved a dismissive hand. 'If it's huge, bring it back to the studio.'

'On you go,' he added, ushering them out with his hand, when Claudia didn't move.

She gave another glance at Morris, then turned and walked quickly from the room. Washington cast a hand around the others and then swept it in the direction of the door.

'Go…go…'

He smiled, like some kind of benign father figure.

Morris walked out first, her head down, chastened by Claudia's withering looks, followed by the Three Musketeers, camera and sound.

Xav looked nervous, Ando looked like he was one of the A-Team, albeit not the one who was scared of helicopters, while Cher started to cry again. No one really paid attention, or was quite sure whether she was crying out of relief, excitement, fear or continuing grief. In fact she was crying because her advisor had told her that those who weren't going to vote for her were doing so because they thought she came across as too masculine.

The intrepid team stormed out; the door closed. Silence.

Washington closed his eyes and rubbed the top of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, enjoying the still of the office. Then he shook his shoulders, stretched his arms out wide, cracked his knuckles, drummed his fingers on the desk and took his iPhone from his pocket.

They were the old tunes, the ones with Bix Beiderbecke and the Paul Whiteman orchestra.
Rockin' Chair, Stardust, Washboard Blues…
Scratchy. A lot of piano, the voice harsh and unrefined.

'You talked about him in your sleep sometimes.'

Jericho looked curiously at her. The music was quiet, in the background, but always there. The light was dim and he couldn't tell from her face if she was joking.

'No I didn't.'

She laughed lightly. A beautiful laugh. The one that he remembered when he remembered her laughing.

'How would you know?'

'I just… I'd stopped thinking about him.'

'Perhaps. But your subconscious hadn't.'

She was smiling, a kind smile. Comforting. She was never angry any more.

'Why didn't you say?' he asked.

'You seemed so… troubled. I wondered if you'd mention him, but you never did.'

He looked at the carpet, started thinking about his marriage, those days living in the small flat on the other side of Green Park. He may have been a police officer at the time, but it seemed another world from Durrant. Durrant's monstrous, evil, terrifying world.

'You're not really here, are you?' he said eventually, his voice filled with sadness.

'No,' she replied. She sounded much more matter of fact.

'Where are you?' he asked, looking up.

The chair was empty.

*

Jericho did not sleep well. He may have drifted off almost as soon as his head had hit the pillow, but he woke an hour later and slept restlessly thereafter. He finally gave up the ghost of attempting to sleep and got out of bed at just after five a.m. He showered, drank some water and ate the last of the food that he had in the room, then went downstairs and back out onto the dark streets of London, hat pulled down low over his face, slightly incongruous with his new suit. He walked with even more of a hunch than normal, heading down four blocks to Oxford Street, where he knew he would find a twenty-four hour internet café.

There were not many people abroad at this hour. Those who were did not look at him. It was still well before dawn; the streets were wet although it was not raining as he took his ten-minute walk.

He bought a coffee, nearly bought a croissant but identified it as having been there since the previous day so chose not to, and then ensconced himself at a monitor near the back corner. There were twenty-four computers available; only one other was occupied at that point. He sat with his back to the door, but could see the entrance reflected in the wall in front of him.

The guy at the counter seemed tired and did not, as far as Jericho could tell, recognise his customer as the new most wanted man in Britain.

He'd had a growing sense of unease since the previous evening and, as he'd shuffled around his bed, never quite getting back to sleep, he'd finally admitted to himself the cause of that unease.

Durrant.

It was a long time since he'd thought about him, but the man had had enough of an effect on him to colour his early years as a police officer. Nowadays Jericho would have been offered counselling to cope with the things he'd seen; in the early '80s it had all been part of the job. You got your counselling in the pub later that evening with your fellow officers. Yet it had, without any doubt, fucked him up for a long time. Him and several others.

Ten years to stop seeing the images in his head, another five before he could possibly have said that a day went by when he didn't think of Durrant, and then he'd met Amanda and finally had something that consumed him, and took his mind off all the endless terrible things and terrible people with which his days were filled. For a while his thoughts were about love, and then they'd married and suddenly the police hadn't been his entire life, just a part of it, just the thing he did during the day until he got home. And then Amanda disappeared and Jericho was once more faced with life, so tragic and brutal.

He started off by Googling Gordon Durrant, as Haynes would a couple of hours later, to no end. A lot of Gordon Durrants, none of them his Gordon Durrant. Certainly there was no mention of him having recently been released from prison, which gave him some hope. The thought that it could be Durrant who was behind all of this really scared him.

Durrant's victims came back to him. Every one of them. All the names, all the details. The injuries, the photographs, the corpses, the notebooks intimately describing the effects of torture.

He Googled the names of the victims, leaving the most common to last. Given that it had been pre-internet days when the crimes were committed, he did not expect to discover much, if anything.

He found a mention of the third name on his mental list – Marion Waters – in a blog written by a distant relative. They mentioned a few details of the case, most of which were inaccurate.

Given that it had not been widely reported at the time, he was not surprised that there was nothing to be found about the victims all these years later. The final name he came to – Jane Smith – he gave up on rather quickly.

He thought of everything else he could in relation to the crimes and the victims. Places, addresses, methods, torture, notes, implements.

He had another thought. In the early years he had followed Durrant's career in prison, and he had learned much about the criminal/psychotic mind. As a young police officer he had wondered if Durrant would be a riot of destruction in prison. After a few years he had come to understand the man much better than he had while investigating him.

In retrospect his quiet isolation in prison had been entirely predictable. He did not need anyone else; he was not interested in anyone else other than as subjects.

From the minute he entered prison he had devoted himself to learning and study, which was exactly what he'd done prior to being admitted to prison in the first place.