We Are Death (24 page)

‘An interesting character,’ she said.

‘I thought he was just a self-possessed arsehole.’

‘And interesting that he should so easily walk off and leave Emerick, especially after implying that they’d been lovers. Also interesting that Emerick was the target of the hit, and not Geyerson. Why do you think that was?’

Jericho nodded. ‘You’re right, that is interesting. Perhaps they want to cut off the body, so that when they deal with the head he has no support.’

There was no one in the immediate vicinity of Geyerson, and he was almost breaking into a run he was walking so quickly.

‘Perhaps he has had the other three killed, and will now have Harrow killed.’

‘If that’s the case, we really shouldn’t be allowing him to just walk away from here,’ said Jericho. ‘The chances of finding him again are pretty remote.’

‘Yes.’

She pointed away into the distance, where a single man was walking up the path towards them, still some miles off.

‘That’s the policeman, apparently.’

‘Huh.’

‘We could try to call him, get him to stop Geyerson. Arrest him even. Maybe if one of us goes down after him to help.’

He thought about it, then finally shook his head.

‘I’m not sure. I don’t know that I want him getting tied up with the authorities here. It could be a while before they let him go, and I want to know where he’s going next. We should have him followed.’

‘Yes, you’re right,’ she said. ‘I will put a call through to our embassy.’

Jericho lifted his own phone. He’d forgotten he’d put it on silent, with the vibration turned off, the previous day. There were three calls from Haynes.

‘I should call my sergeant,’ he said.

Badstuber looked over her shoulder.

‘I will return to standing guard over the body.’

Jericho glanced round at the scene, shook his head.

‘Most people just seem to want to take a photo standing beside it.’

‘Yes,’ said Badstuber. ‘Hashtag-dead-body-selfie.’

She lowered her eyes as if slightly embarrassed that she’d tried to make a joke, started to walk away then stopped, turned back.

‘You did not have to do what you did. I can look after myself.’

Jericho didn’t know what to say. It had been automatic. Hadn’t been looking for thanks, hadn’t been looking for anything. Like most things, he hadn’t been looking to talk about it at all.

‘You compromised your own ability to get out the way, thereby placing yourself in unnecessary danger.’

Jericho still had nothing. He hadn’t been fearless. He hadn’t had any innate belief that he would be all right. So what had it meant, his happily protecting someone he barely knew while not fearing for his own safety?

He didn’t care, that was all. What did he have to live for? A month from now he wouldn’t even be a police officer any more, and being a police officer was pretty much all that defined him. Was such a life worth risking to protect a good officer, a wife and a mother of three? Of course it was.

Not that he wouldn’t have done the same thing at any other point in his life, but some time ago, so long that he could barely remember, he would have felt fear. He would have felt something.

She stepped forward suddenly, touched his arm, said, ‘Nevertheless, thank you,’ very hurriedly, kissed him on the cheek, the feel of her soft skin against his, and then she turned and walked back over to the crowd, where one of the workers from the hill station was making sure no one interfered with the corpse, while photobombing as many people as possible.

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L
ate Sunday afternoon. Haynes found himself at Dylan’s home half a mile outside Pilton. He had genuinely never thought about where she lived, and here was the answer. A large country house, set back from the road, looking out over fields and hills, the back garden sloping away to an old stone wall. There were sheep in the field beyond.

The garden was largely lawn, with colourful trees and shrubs around the edges. At the bottom of the garden, which must have been seventy yards away, there was a small copse of copper beaches.

Haynes recognised none of the trees or plants, but did recognise that sitting out here on a warm, summer’s afternoon was certainly nicer than being in his flat, or going round the public rec, to sit in amongst the pot-smoking kids and the litter and toddlers called Rio kicking a ball and the dog shit and the strange Nordic walkers.

He was standing with his hands in his pockets, when she came up beside him and handed him a drink. Thatcher’s rosé, a long glass, ice tinkling as she passed it to him.

‘I probably shouldn’t, ma’am,’ he said.

‘You’re all right with one of those, Sergeant.’

She made a slight gesture with her glass, then sat down at one end of the long wooden table. Haynes took the seat beside her, looking out over the view, rather than back into the house.

‘Are they your sheep, ma’am?’ he asked.

She rolled her eyes, smiling ruefully.

‘Roger likes to see himself as a gentleman farmer. Never goes near them himself, of course. David, over the way, looks after them. Roger pays the bills.’

‘Do you ever eat them?’

‘Good God, no! They’ve got names!’

Haynes smiled. Of all the weird things that had been happening, sitting chatting casually on the boss’s patio seemed the most surreal.

‘You must get great tickets for the festival,’ he said. ‘In fact, d’you even need the tickets?’

She shook her head.

‘We get as far away as possible while it’s on. We rent this place out for two weeks, Roger gives the tickets to his niece, and we go and stay in our flat in Bath.’

Haynes nodded. He’d been to Glastonbury three times, but it had been several years. The first two times he’d vowed never to go again, and finally, after the third, he’d stuck to it.

‘Wouldn’t you get more money for the rental of the house if you had the tickets attached?’

‘Oh, no no,’ she said, ‘it’s not like that. We rent through the festival office. The people who stay here are the performers. And, of course, we only permit it if it’s the older acts. We don’t want any of these young guns staying here. Wouldn’t look good for some dreadful pot-smoking, alcoholic, heroin addict to be staying at the house of the superintendent.’

‘I think most of them these days go to the gym and have their lives controlled by record company executives,’ said Haynes.

‘Be that as it may, we prefer to get the likes of Tom Jones and Kenny Rogers, the old men who are more concerned with their intake of prunes and bran, than any intoxicants.’

‘Tom Jones stayed here?’

‘Yes, of course. Roger’s real hope is that his namesake Bob comes to play. Then, I think, he’d hide in the cupboard and wait for him.’

Haynes glanced at the house, then looked back out over the bucolic peace of the English countryside. Money follows money, he thought, and he wondered what Roger did other than keep sheep as a hobby.

‘So,’ she began, ‘we’re looking for a secret organisation called The Pavilion, which used to be the most powerful group in the world, and which may well still be, for all we know?’

She had a slight smile on her face as she said it, and Haynes ruefully shook his head. He had explained everything over the phone, and had been surprised when she’d let him tell the full story, and then asked him to come to her home.

‘On the one hand,’ he said, ‘it sounds stupid. I know it does. On the other... the level of detail and work that went into setting up the boss over the
Britain’s Got Justice
thing, and the vineyard business. I mean, we knew all along that there must be something behind it.’

‘And this conveniently fits the bill.’

‘I don’t know if we can say it’s convenient,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘If it was someone we could easily point the finger at, that might be convenient.’

‘The trouble with secret societies, real or imagined, is that you start seeing them everywhere. Are you seeing them everywhere, Sergeant?’

He caught her eye, then lifted the glass and looked back down towards Roger’s sheep.

‘Did you think it as you were driving over here? Did you wonder if I’m part of it, if I was inviting you to my place in the country to tell you to take a step back? That perhaps you might never be seen again?’

He smiled slightly; his eyes dropped.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It’s difficult not to see conspiracy. But when you think about... I mean, how did the boss end up on that TV show? It fitted in so well with the whole stitch-up? Why him? Why go to all that trouble?’

Choosing to ignore what she said. How could he possibly know what she was thinking? If she was going to reveal herself as part of some grand intrigue, interwoven into the history of the last two hundred years, then presumably she would choose to do so regardless of anything he had to say. She would do it, or not, he had just had to presume she was speaking from conjecture, rather than as a preamble to some grand revelation.

And he really didn’t believe she was about to produce a gun from under the table, or that his drink was spiked.

He looked at his drink.

‘Maybe that’s beginning to emerge,’ she said. ‘If his wife was investigating them.’

‘Why now? Why not back then?’

‘I don’t know, Sergeant. That’s one of the many strands of the investigation.’

He shook his head again, automatically took a drink despite his reservations of a moment earlier. He’d already had some anyway, little point in stopping now.

‘Is that our case now? The disappearance of the boss’s wife? Should I get the files from Scotland Yard?’

For the first time she tapped her long fingernails on the tabletop. Sure sign of her brain working, he always thought. The sound of her thought processes. Nails tapping on wood.

‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if the DCI led that investigation. He wouldn’t have if I’d been in charge, but given his position in the Force at the time, who knows? What’s your professor up to?’

‘She went into her office, trying to find some more information on The Pavilion.’

She looked at her watch.

‘Are you going back up there?’

‘No, not tonight. Work in the morning.’

‘I’m glad you’re remembering,’ she said, then waved away the comment. ‘I’d suggest you take the rest of the day off, but I guess you have the scent of the chase. You might as well spend the day doing whatever you can to track down your secret society. I’ll make a couple of calls up to London. Come and see me in the morning.’

Haynes nodded, lifted his drink, took a longer swallow this time. As he laid the drink down on the table, and once more studied the sheep, he realised he still wasn’t sure why they hadn’t just had the conversation over the phone.

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I
t was late by the time Jericho returned to his hotel room in Marrakech. The trip to the mountains could have gone a lot better, for all sorts of reasons, but on the plus side, at one night it had been as brief as it was ever likely to have been.

Same hotel, different room. He knew Durrant would be inside, even before he opened the door.

He stood outside for a moment, the key in his hand, but if he knew Durrant was sitting in there, waiting for him, then Durrant certainly knew that he was out here.

He opened the door, could see the outline of the man sitting on the bed, his back turned, head bowed, then turned on the light and closed the door.

A regular hotel room, tiled floor, spacious, double bed, fan moving slowly in the centre of the room. White walls, a rattan seat in the corner, a table with a small lamp, a notepad and a pencil. No television, no minibar.

Jericho put the suitcase down and walked forward.

‘What do you want?’ he asked.

Nothing. No words, no movement. Shoulders hunched, head bowed.

Jericho stood looking at him for a short while, then walked around him and sat down in the rattan seat. Back straight, leaning neither forwards nor backwards. Durrant, head down, only a yard and a half away.

Jericho felt a slight tensing of his skin, heart beating a little more quickly.

It was only Durrant. Dead Durrant. What harm could he do him now?

‘How long are you going to keep this up?’

‘Until you understand,’ said Durrant.

Finally he raised his head. He looked tired, old, his eyes bloodshot. Or maybe they were clear. Were the eyes clear? Jericho couldn’t process things when Durrant was in the room.

‘I don’t understand this,’ said Jericho.

‘Neither do I.’

‘Have you killed anyone yet?’

Durrant shook his head.

‘No, I don’t kill people.’

‘That’s what you did,’ said Jericho, leaning forward slightly, feeling the anger rise. ‘You killed people. You tortured them. You left children without parents, husbands without wi–’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ barked Durrant, and Jericho stood up again, walked away, his fist clenching.

‘I was a scientist... I was a... I was making breakthroughs.’ He was directing his comments at the chair, as though Jericho was still sitting there. The words sounded bizarre, as though they were being filtered through something. Filtered through sludge. Filtered through the sludge of Jericho’s brain. ‘If I’d been doing that shit in the nineteenth century, people would still be talking about it, about me. Talking about it in the same breath as Jenner and Pasteur and Parkinson. Instead I get you, and your pious, liberal fucking colleagues.’

‘You killed people!’ shouted Jericho.

‘They were nothing. Those people were nothing. Listen to yourself.
You left children without parents...
Jesus. These people were trash. Their lives were worthless. I was doing work that mattered, that was going to make a difference.’

Jericho was staring at the back of Durrant’s head, his eyes wide. This was what he had looked for back then, all those years ago when they’d first arrested him. The glimpse inside his head. Some explanation of what he was thinking. And however absurd and horrible and depraved and delusional he sounded, wasn’t it exactly the kind of thing he’d assumed Durrant was thinking? That he was above society. That his own work, his own studies as he called them, were all that mattered?