We Are Death (25 page)

‘So, why are you back? Because you never got to finish? You never got to publish your definitive, groundbreaking work, the one that would’ve cemented your place in the Scientific Hall of Fame?’

‘I’m back for you!’ shouted Durrant, standing up and looking at Jericho, his eyes straining, muscles tensed, and for the first time the words sounded clear, like it was the first honest thing Durrant had said to him.

There was a knock at the door. Jericho turned. The sudden noise, in the tension of the moment, like someone banging at his head. Why was there always someone at the door? Were they in league with Durrant? Did Durrant have it all so meticulously planned?

The knock at the door, of course, was the sound of the door closing on Durrant’s exit. When Jericho looked back round, the man was gone.

He stood in silence for a moment, sweating more now than he had been in the heat of the day, holding his breath, which suddenly came out in a gasp and a quickly drawn intake of air. The tension was leaving his body, and he felt exhausted, as though the confrontation with Durrant had lasted several hours rather than just a couple of minutes.

Two or three deep breaths, clenched and unclenched his fists, got to the door just as it was being knocked on a third time.

Badstuber, dressed the same as when he’d left her. It was only five minutes, why would she be dressed any different?

Jericho looked confused, worried and angry.

‘Are you all right, Chief Inspector?’

He nodded. He needed some water. He needed to get out the room.

‘I’ll be fine. Just need to get a drink. Water, I just need some water.’

She looked over his shoulder, into the empty room.

‘Who was in here?’

Jericho lowered his eyes, leant against the doorframe. Why did talking to Durrant take so much out of him? Sucked him dry.

For thirty years he’d known they’d had some sort of attachment. He’d hated the thought of it, but it was undisguisable. Perhaps that was what was bringing Durrant back now. This strange bond. And when he came, he was sucking the life out of Jericho.

‘Could you hear him?’ he asked.

She hesitated, unsure how to respond.

‘Durrant, could you hear Durrant?’ he said, his voice more insistent.

Finally she nodded, still not trusting herself to say anything.

Jericho straightened himself, literally gave himself a shake. Trying to get the thought of Durrant out of his head.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I should concentrate. What did you need?’

He hoped she hadn’t come because she’d heard the argument. He needed it to be something else. Something else to focus on.

‘Geyerson is on a plane to Frankfurt, with a connection in the morning to Oslo.’

Jericho let out a long sigh, lowered his head again. A wild goose chase, back to Europe. Here, there and everywhere. And for what? To try to be there the moment Geyerson got a bullet in the head?

No, there had to be some reason Geyerson was still alive, or he would have been killed the same instant as Emerick.

‘Are you going?’ he asked.

‘I need to speak to my boss.’

‘All right. I should do the same.’

‘Do you want to have dinner?’ she asked.

It was late, and they had already agreed to go their separate ways for the evening. Now, however, Jericho looked just as he felt; like he needed company.

‘Give me fifteen minutes,’ he said. ‘I’ll meet you downstairs.’

*

J
ericho had ordered couscous and chicken, Badstuber a lamb tagine. She was drinking a glass of red wine, Jericho a glass of water. They hadn’t spoken much since they’d sat down, beyond ordering food.

He was still calming down. Had been aware, standing under the shower, that he dreaded walking back into the room. That Durrant would be there, waiting for him.

He was scared, hard though that was to admit. Scared of the dead Durrant. Scared that Durrant was back, haunting him. Scared, more than anything, because he did not know how to get rid of him.

That was the problem. He was a detective. He solved puzzles. There was a beginning, a middle and an end to every investigation – except the only one that had truly mattered – and if ever he ran into a brick wall, there was always something else to try.

But Durrant, appearing dead in his room, as seemingly disconcerted by it as Jericho, was something he did not even know how to start tackling.

He didn’t want this to go on happening for the rest of his life, but he’d already had the thought. What if death for him meant an eternity with Durrant?

‘You are still thinking about him.’

He nodded. Opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. He took a drink of water.

‘I cannot explain it,’ she said.

He shook his head. Neither could he. Still no words.

‘My boss wants me to go to Norway. However, first I have negotiated a day in the office. I admit this is somewhat selfish, as I want to spend a night with my family.’

‘Of course,’ said Jericho.

‘I will arrive in Oslo at noon on Tuesday. We will obviously keep track of Mr Geyerson, and if his stay in Oslo is brief, I will likely change my plans. Perhaps if our people can uncover the movements of this Harrow, we will have another destination to consider.’

Jericho nodded again, didn’t immediately say anything. He should have called Dylan already but hadn’t felt like having the conversation. He should have spoken to Haynes, but the two of them still hadn’t managed to find each other.

‘I should go home, too,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if I’ll be in Oslo. I’ll need to see the lay of the land once I return to the station.’

‘Well, perhaps this will be our last evening working together,’ she said. ‘We shall see.’

Jericho held her gaze for a few moments, then turned as the waiter arrived, a large plate of food in each hand. And there it was, the thing that finally took Jericho’s mind from the horror of Durrant. The realisation that he was incredibly hungry.

His mood seemed to lift with the food before him, and he lifted his fork quickly, before putting it back down, waiting for Badstuber to start first.

‘Can I have a beer, please?’ he said.

The waiter nodded and turned to the bar.

Badstuber smiled slightly awkwardly, could see the difference in him, the slight lifting of the tension and the anger, and took a small bite of lamb.

‘I should apologise,’ she said, not looking at him as she spoke.

‘What for?’ He really couldn’t imagine.

‘I was rude when we first met. Brushing you off, as though I had to put you in your place. That was more about me than you. There is such a melancholic quality about you. I can see why women...’

She let the sentence go. Jericho wasn’t sure what to say. Head slightly lowered, he continued to eat.

Please don’t say anything more. Don’t have that conversation. And don’t invite me back to your room. Because I’ll come. And you shouldn’t do that. You have your husband and your three daughters to go home to.

They caught each other in a quick glance, some look of longing, Jericho thought, but one into which he chose to read acceptance of the fact that nothing could happen.

Have my melancholy,
he thought.
It’s all I’ve got to give.

––––––––

J
ericho walked into the station at two thirty-nine pm. Exhausted. Had slept badly the previous night, then again when he’d tried to catch up on the plane, and on the train down from Paddington. When he had slept, he’d dreamt about Durrant, and when he’d awoken, he’d wondered if the dreams had all been of his own mind, the usual fervour of a vivid imagination at rest, or whether Durrant, the dead Durrant, was now also inside his head.

Durrant was dead. If he could sit on the edge of Jericho’s bed and sit at his kitchen table, then why wouldn’t he be able to walk unhindered into his dreams?

After trying to sleep on the train, and quickly abandoning the attempt, he’d put a call through to Haynes and they had filled each other in on the weekend. For some reason Haynes had felt his tale of the secret society was even more far-fetched when telling it to Jericho than when he’d told it to Dylan. Perhaps it was just distance. The previous day the story had still been fresh, still been dusted with Leighton’s enthusiasm and credulity.

Monday morning had meant the cold light of day.

Jericho, nevertheless, had listened, had asked questions, had taken it all in. He sounded more credulous than Haynes had been upon hearing the story in the first place.

Walking through the open plan, Jericho nodded at Haynes, indicating for him to follow into his office. Haynes walked after him, closing the door behind them as Jericho sat down behind his desk.

The room was warm, but the weather wasn’t as stifling as it had been the previous week. There was a window partially open, admitting the slightly cooler air of the day.

‘You look terrible, sir,’ said Haynes.

‘Just tired,’ he said. ‘Sit down, Sergeant.’

Haynes pulled up a seat, Jericho rubbed his hands across his face, then he stared blankly at his desk for a few moments. Was he in any state to think properly?

‘Everything all right?’ asked Haynes, when it seemed as though Jericho was prepared to sit in silence for a while.

He shook his head, a real act of shaking off the cobwebs, then said, ‘Sorry, Sergeant, I need some coffee. Can you...?’

‘I’ll get it, sir, won’t be long.’

Jericho nodded his thanks, and once more bowed his head.

*

‘D
o you believe it, sir?’

‘Yes,’ said Jericho. ‘What else is there to believe? Especially now that we know... now that there’s a connection to Amanda.’

‘You should have said.’

‘Sorry, Sergeant, you’re right, I should. I won’t keep anything else from you.’

Jericho was looking down at the third Death card, which had been lying on the desk for a few minutes. Slowly, with the coffee and the conversation, Jericho was being revived.

‘Why now?’ asked Haynes. ‘In fact, why last January? And given that the deaths of these people to whom you were related started happening last summer, this whole thing goes back a year. Why did they, a year ago, start setting up the husband of someone who had been investigating them ten years before that?’

‘That’s the question, Stuart,’ said Jericho.

‘Did anything happen last summer? Anything, even, that at the time seemed inconsequential? Anything involving Amanda? Anything at all that just seemed out of place?’

This was the real reason Jericho was distracted, of course. He’d already worked through it in his head, back to the previous summer. That was when it had all started, even if he hadn’t known it at the time.

What had the previous summer brought? There had been little of interest in Wells, and it was hard to imagine what impact it could possibly have had. There was just one thing, of course. That one strange evening. Night time, more than evening. It had seemed too peculiar at the time, and he’d pushed it from his mind. What else could he have done? Amanda was dead, wasn’t she? Why else would she disappear for so long?

‘You seem to be thinking, sir,’ said Haynes, trying to get through. ‘You just said you wouldn’t keep anything else from me.’

Jericho nodded. Very easy words to say, and so quickly coming back to bite him. He felt the uneasiness of the situation crawl into him, the defensive depression begin to take hold. It was so much easier to be miserable and not care about anything.

But Haynes was right. He couldn’t not say.

‘I dream about Amanda often,’ he said, the words accompanied by a slight movement of the hand, a justification, as though he needed one. ‘I wake up and it feels like she’s been there in the night. Like we’ve been talking.’

His voice was quiet, wistful almost. Haynes had never heard that tone from Jericho before, and he felt slightly uncomfortable. But he was the one who had forced the words from him, he could hardly now ask him to stop.

‘What do you talk about?’ asked Haynes, and Jericho shook his head.

‘It doesn’t matter. Nothing significant. It’s not the words. Usually I don’t even remember them anyway. It’s just that she’s there.’

His eyes fell further, now looking at an indistinct spot on the carpet, off to his right.

‘The thing is, I... when I... if I’ve slept with another woman, she rarely comes then. Like she knows. Like she’s thinking I don’t need her that night.’

‘So, something happened?’ asked Haynes, his feeling of nervous discomfort growing. ‘Something different.’

‘Yes. I... it was last summer. June maybe.’ He shook his head, waved away the last couple of words. ‘I know it was June. I woke up, there was someone lying next to me. A woman from... doesn’t matter. You’d know her, so better I don’t tell you who it was. And there was Amanda standing by the window, looking down at me. That’s what usually happened. I’d wake up and she’d be there, looking out the window, this... like this wall of sorrow around her. This time she was looking at me.

‘I did what I usually did. Said hello. It didn’t seem real. How could it be real? She told me to go back to sleep, and I closed my eyes. Just for a moment. And then, the actuality of it, the realness, kicked in, and I opened my eyes again. Suddenly I was awake, fully awake...’

‘And she was gone?’

Jericho nodded.

‘Did you hear her in the house? Did you get up?’

‘No, and yes. I went downstairs. There was no sign of her. And yet, it felt... I could feel that she’d been there.’

He looked up, a quick glance, then his eyes dropped again.

‘Maybe you just wanted to believe it.’

Jericho nodded, the movement slow, the look in his eye glazing over again.

‘That’s what I thought. That moment, when she told me to go back to sleep, it was the same as so many others. And yet, I knew it wasn’t. I knew.’

‘You really think she might have been in your room?’

‘I don’t know. Didn’t know what to think at the time, so I pushed it from my mind. And then... I just started thinking about it in the past week, when we learned about this Kangchenjunga business. What if she, I don’t know, if she was on the run from them all this time, if she’d been held prisoner all this time, and somehow escaped. This was her coming back for me. She walks in, and... there I am, in bed with someone else.’