We Are Death (2 page)

‘So, how’d it go?’ asked Haynes. ‘You still got a job? Or is this you looking after me and getting me to eat properly because you got your arse handed to you and I’m in charge?’

‘No, there was no arse handing. They asked questions. I obviously answered them at some length. At some point I expect they’ll decide something and... well, I don’t know what they’ll do. Normally, when they think they need to look like they’re doing something but can’t find anything wrong, there’ll be some fudge or whatever. A reprimand, a demotion, a whatever...’ He waved a half-hearted hand. ‘But really, they know I had nothing to do with all those deaths. If anyone thought otherwise, I wouldn’t be before them, I’d be in court. I had nothing to do with someone dying and leaving me twenty million, and I’m gifting the money to the police. They’re going to reprimand me for that?’

He shook his head, then added, ‘I don’t know what, but I expect they’ll conjure up something from nowhere that I won’t have seen coming.’

Jericho could feel the sun on the top of his head, the heat of it making him aware of his thinning hair. The bald patch just around the corner.

‘Have I missed anything?’

Haynes put a large piece of quiche in his mouth and ran his thoughts over what had passed for crime in Wells since the previous evening. In any case, Jericho had asked the question with the minimum of expectation. You could go away for a month and not miss anything.

‘There was a guy tried to break into the Natwest cash machine with a kitchen knife. We got a report while the crime was in progress, and Sam caught him in the act.’

‘How much progress had he actually made?’

‘He’d stabbed himself in the finger, lost some blood... Hadn’t done any damage to the cash point.’

‘Do we know him?’

The police in Wells generally knew everyone. It was a ‘round up the usual suspects’ kind of a town.

‘Ade Winger,’ said Haynes. ‘Sam knows him, but I hadn’t seen him before.’

Jericho thought about it for a moment, then shook his head.

‘How’d you get on in Bath last night?’

Haynes looked at Jericho for a moment, slightly surprised. Jericho never asked about what he did in his spare time.

‘Seriously?’ he found himself saying.

Jericho paused, fork halfway to his mouth.

‘What?’

‘You really want to hear about what I did in Bath?’

Jericho’s brow crinkled slightly as his fork completed its journey.

Haynes had arrived in Wells three years previously to be Jericho’s new detective sergeant. His fifth in seven years. Up until that point, Jericho had held a fairly dim view of the people working with him, and Haynes has been appropriately warned.

On his first week on the job, Haynes had screwed up. Had it been an act of carelessness, or thuggery, or police entitlement, if he’d screwed up because he had used his position inappropriately, Jericho would likely have shown him the door. At the very least, their association would likely have been brief and ill-humoured. However, his mistake had been because of a woman. Older, very attractive; the kind of woman Jericho would easily have fallen for, except he would have been experienced enough to see through her, had he been involved from the start. Haynes had allowed himself to be manipulated.

Jericho remembered the woman better than he remembered the details of how Haynes had let her wriggle free. It had been a neighbourhood dispute leading to a single incident of botched pet poisoning. Ultimately insignificant – unless you’d been the pet – but Dylan had been furious. Sitting in her office, on a cold Tuesday afternoon in May, Jericho had found himself coming to Haynes’s defence, and not just because he was happy at any time to stand up to Dylan.

Perhaps he’d recognised something of his younger self in Haynes. A basic decency, coupled with susceptibility, that needed to be tempered by experience. His own had come quickly, in those early London days, with the Durrant case. He hoped for Haynes’s sake that he would never have a Durrant.

He’d had Haynes’s back in the meeting with Dylan, and nothing had changed since. Haynes did not know that Jericho treated him differently to his predecessors, but he appreciated the boss’s confidence and support. Yet, there were times when Jericho’s demeanour bordered on cordiality and it still surprised him.

Jericho shrugged, indicating for Haynes to keep talking.

Haynes smiled and thought he might as well share the story he’d promised not to tell. Jericho was a fairly safe repository for guilty secrets.

‘Was really just in bookshops, that kind of thing, looking for a present for Mum’s birthday. Anyway, funny thing... I’m in a café having coffee and cake, won’t tell you where. I think I kind of recognise the waitress, and I can’t think where from. I’m trying not to look at her, but I can see she’s noticed. And it was a bit weird. Then I realised.’

He took another bite, Jericho raised his eyebrows indicating for him to continue.

‘Internet porn.’

‘You recognised her from internet porn?’ said Jericho.

‘Yes.’

‘You’d watched the porn, and she was in the porn?’

‘Yes.’

‘Nice. That must have been life-affirming for you both.’

‘She’d done this amateur, Slovenian gangbang video. Like, her and thirty blokes.’

Jericho stared at Haynes across the short distance of the table.

‘Then finally she comes and sits down and speaks to me. We quickly get to the point where she admits to having been in that video–’

‘And you admit to having watched it?’

‘Well, yes, that...’ Haynes laughed. ‘She was like,
please don’t tell anyone. I’ve been here five years and no one’s ever recognised me before.
’

‘So not only do you watch Slovenian gangbang videos, you’re the only one?’

Haynes laughed again.

‘So, we had a chat. You know, about what it’s like to have sex with thirty blokes at once.’

Jericho could feel his interest in the conversation beginning to wane. He sometimes wondered if he alone never watched people having sex on the Internet.

‘And?’

‘She said she got bored.’

Jericho nodded. ‘I guess you would.’

‘And to be honest, you can kind of see it in the video.’

Jericho didn’t really know how else to contribute to the conversation, which wasn’t a first for him, regardless of the subject matter. Haynes stared wistfully off to the side.

‘That’s why I’d remembered her,’ he said. ‘There was something sad about it. It had, I don’t know, a kind of romantic melancholy.’

Jericho caught his eye, while he chewed his salad.

‘You mean, like Jane Austen?’

‘Something like that,’ said Haynes, smiling.

‘Can we talk about something else now?’

––––––––

T
he town of Grindelwald in the Swiss Alps was no less warm than the small city of Wells. The previous day the clouds had been low, obscuring the town, cutting visibility to less than a hundred yards. That morning, however, had dawned bright and sunny, and now there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The gondolas carrying tourists up into the mountains were full, the streets of the town were crowded.

It didn’t seem that long since Ian Connolly had looked upon the Eiger, being a regular visitor here, but he’d needed to get away from home much earlier than he’d expected. A trip to the Alps was so much more interesting than spending another two weeks back at home, listening to his father introduce him to everyone in the village. He realised, after listening to Carter, that it was better to have his family proud than dismissive, but it would have been easier if they could have stopped some way short of overbearing.

His mum had cried, as ever, when he’d announced that he had to leave two weeks early. He’d told them that an opportunity had arisen to join an American sponsored climb of the north face of the Eiger. There was money involved, there was a chance at some great exposure. It would have been mad to say no.

And so he had left, after one more big meal to allow people the opportunity to speak to the conquering mountaineer, and one more photoshoot, organised by his father, for the local newspaper.

He’d only been in Switzerland two days – having travelled from London by train – and he hadn’t decided yet what he would do with his time. Drinking and sex were certainly on the list, and he’d already made a promising start, but he thought he would take a nose around the climbing community, see what was happening, then try to link up with anything interesting that came up.

He was certainly an accomplished enough climber to tackle anything available in the area, but usually that wouldn’t be enough. Now, however, he had money to spend and climbing expeditions were always interested in money.

There had been no new money in the past few months, not since Kangchenjunga had finished, but now he didn’t need to worry about the future. The future would be arriving soon, and it would be arriving in a first class train and stopping at his station. Those savings he’d been hoarding for the past ten years had become irrelevant. They had suddenly become spending money.

As it happened, he was right. The savings were irrelevant.

The first night had been good. Straight off. Managed to get the hotel receptionist into bed. She’d been fantastic, and not some annoying attachment who would presume that he’d want to spend every night of his stay with her. A few drinks, great sex, and then she’d left his room.

Last night had been even better. He’d managed to get an invite to a party in a chalet further up the mountain. More alcohol, cocaine – not something he usually cared for, but it was just enough to have an effect, not enough to mess too much with his head – more sex. Early on, with a British girl who spent the entire night putting herself around, and then at the end of the night with a stick thin, flat-chested, short-haired German, who had fucked him spectacularly for well over an hour.

Tonight, he thought, would be a night off. He still hurt. Not that it hadn’t been worth it.

If the weather had been bad again he had intended spending the day in bed, but the sun had lured him out. He was walking up the hill, the stiffness of the night before slowly easing, looking forward to a late lunch in one of the high cafés. He’d probably walk back down the hill at the end of the afternoon, but it wasn’t out of the question that he’d take the gondola with the Chinese tourists.

That night he’d start making enquiries to see if there was anything worthwhile piggybacking in the area. Didn’t have to be the Eiger, didn’t have to be based in Grindelwald.

He was alone on a short stretch of straight road. A car had just gone past half a minute earlier. A couple had walked by him on the way down a short time previously, smiling at him as they went. He felt that he’d got more of a smile from the girl. I could have her, he’d thought.

Maybe he would. What was that guy going to do about it?

When he fell, there was no one there to see him. Not that they could have done anything for him if there had been.

Sniper bullet in the head, top of the skull exploded, instantly dead. Connolly fell where he stood. His head banged off the tarmac, blood began to run downhill. The noise of the shot echoed around the town, travelling across the valley.

Everyone heard it. No one saw a thing.

––––––––

J
ericho knocked and entered Superintendent Dylan’s office. She glanced up as he came in, then she returned to what she was doing – scribbling a quick note inside a file – and indicated the chair.

‘Sit down, I won’t be long.’

Jericho rarely sat down in her office, and if he did, it would likely only be after she’d asked him several times. He turned his back and stood at the window, looking out on the warm day. Her office looked onto the Glastonbury Road, the same as his; this office benefited from air conditioning, however.

On a day like this, it felt glorious just walking in here, the temperature set at a cool eighteen degrees. Usually he couldn’t get out of her office quickly enough, but today he wondered if he might try and drag the conversation out as long as possible.

He turned and looked at her, her head still lowered over her desk. She was humming. He’d never heard her humming before. Usually their conversations were either stilted and uncomfortable, or downright angry and unpleasant.

‘What’s that?’ he said.

She looked up, surprised, then glanced down at her report.

‘I’d don’t think it’s really anyth–’

‘No, the tune.’

She paused, seemed to have to think about it.

‘
All Things Must Pass
,’ she said.

He looked blank.

‘George Harrison.’

‘I know,’ he said.

‘Wonderful record.’

‘Been a while since I heard it.’

She held his gaze for a moment, glanced back down at the folder, then closed it. She would regularly get into some sort of absurd testosterone-fuelled battle of wills trying to get Jericho to sit down, but today she really wasn’t in the mood. She got to her feet, round the desk, and stood beside him looking out on the sunlit afternoon.

At first glance she could count seven builders across the road with their tops off.

‘I should have had the air con installed in the open plan, not in my office, shouldn’t I?’ she said. ‘It would have cost more, which is why it didn’t happen, but even so...’

Jericho wasn’t sure what to say. He’d caught her humming, and now she was asking slightly remorseful rhetorical questions. Observing standard protocol, he elected to say nothing.

‘Well, it will be up to someone else to maybe look at changing things.’

‘Sorry?’

She turned, gave him a smile, looked back out of the window.

‘How did it go in Bristol? I’ve sat on a few of these things. Very dependent on the quality of the panel, I have to admit.’

‘It was hard to discern the quality of the panel,’ answered Jericho. ‘Or, indeed, if it had any at all.’

She smiled.

‘Ultimately, I don’t think it’ll really matter. We all know you had nothing to do with the deaths, and they can hardly bust you for being in receipt of someone’s will, can they?’