We Are the Hanged Man (33 page)

'You're going to interview this guy live on the show?' asked Jericho. 'Tonight?'

'Yes. Should make great live TV.'

'You don't actually suspect him of anything? He's just playing along?'

Claudia looked surprised.

'Yes, yes, we certainly suspect him. While you've been shagging your abject little police accomplice, we've been doing some serious work here, Chief Inspector. He most definitely is a suspect.'

'If you have any evidence to suggest it, then we need to bring him in to the station and interview him. There is due process in law. You can't do it live on television.'

She smiled. Getting him riled. That was perfect.

'This is our show, and we'll do what we fucking want. We have it on much higher authority than yours, Detective Chief Inspector, that we can interrogate any suspect we see fit, and that our trainees are in a position to arrest someone they think might be involved or complicit in the disappearance of Lol. And no one… no one,' she repeated for emphasis, 'has said anything about not filming it live in a TV studio. We're a TV production company for fuck's sake!'

She waited for the riposte, but just about knew Jericho well enough already to realise that he only ever got so far and then backed off. Accepted defeat, or more sinisterly, would back down in order to go and fight the battle in some backstabbing, less confrontational manner.

'So fuck you,' she added, as she had run out of anything else to say, and then she marched quickly from the canteen.

*

Jericho allowed himself to be filmed giving advice to the three contestants on how to interrogate a suspect. It wasn't a great sequence, and watching from the sidelines, Claudia got exasperated and walked out halfway through. He gave solid, sensible advice, and repeatedly knocked down talk of grabbing the suspect by the collar or of threatening to arrest his extended family for trivial offences such as failure to pay the TV licence or driving at 31mph.

He had begun to worry about Light, not believing for a second that she was so pusillanimous that she would be too scared to walk into an office where people might be laughing at her. He called her room and her mobile then, when there was no answer, made another few calls, including to the station at Wells, to establish that she had not been summoned elsewhere, and then headed back to the hotel, the cries of Morris ringing in his ears as he exited the building.

On the pavement outside he met Haynes, who had just arrived, and together they went to the hotel.

The manager refused to give them a key, but agreed to accompany them to the room. They stood waiting for the lift on the ground floor, a slightly uncomfortable silence between them, brought on by Jericho's anger at the manager's reluctance to hand over a key to the room of a paying guest.

He was a man of average height with a strangulated moustache and an expensive dark suit. He wore the same red tie as the rest of the male staff, and considered that he distinguished himself from them by his very demeanour.

'You have a bag,' said Jericho to Haynes, as if he'd only just noticed. He had obviously seen it as soon as Haynes had appeared in front of him, but it was the first time that it had really filtered in.

'The Superintendent wants me to stay until Sunday morning.'

Jericho didn't reply. He stared at the floor. The manager and Haynes were willing the lift to come, to relieve the awkwardness. Jericho could eat awkward and shit it back out as awkward-enhanced and not care.

'You've to replace Sergeant Light?' he asked.

'Yes.'

Jericho continued to stare at the floor. The uncomfortable feeling was growing. If she was in her room, what state would she be in? Emotional? Could she possibly have decided she couldn't come to work because she was too embarrassed? If she was sitting in there, feeling terrible about the fact that the country knew they'd slept together, how uncomfortable was that going to be? Or maybe she was ill, and wouldn't want three men charging into her room.

And perhaps, the most likely event he considered, she wouldn't be there at all. And then what would they do? Would they consider that they had another missing person on their hands, another to add to the current list of the
Britain's Got Justice
Missing One?

The lift door pinged open, the three men stood back while a family of four Bangladeshis walked past them pulling luggage, and then they trooped into the lift.

The manager pressed the button; they stood in silence. The door opened on the fifth floor, and the manager found himself saying, 'This is most unusual,' again as they began the walk along the corridor. Haynes glanced at Jericho, but Jericho wasn't one for snide looks behind the backs of people he thought were talking too much.

The manager stopped at the door and knocked. The three men stood and waited, the manager with his eyes firmly on the door, and ready with all the excuses in the world in case the lady was about to answer with a towel wrapped around her breasts.

Jericho looked at the floor. Haynes glanced around the corridor.

'I recognise it from the photographs,' he said, unable to stop himself.

He smiled in embarrassment; Jericho gave him a look like he was a naughty child, although he almost smiled himself.

The manager knocked again, seeming not to have heard Haynes' glib comment.

'We'll just give her another moment,' he said.

'Oh, for God's sake,' said Jericho. 'How big do you think the room is? Just open the fucking door.'

He dragged his hands across his chin as he said it. The manager breathed deeply, just as deeply wishing that he could tell Jericho to clear off.

He straightened his shoulders, took the key from his jacket pocket, turned the lock and then tentatively opened the door. As he did so, he knocked again and said, 'Madame?'

*

The room was alive with law enforcement. The entire fifth floor had been closed off, the room emptied. Those guests that were affected were offered other rooms in the hotel, or help in finding completely new accommodation. Rumours of the find of a corpse spread quickly, and for every guest who no longer wished to stay in a hotel where someone had been murdered, there were those queuing up to get a room as close as possible to the police action.

Despite his desire to crawl off back to his own room, close the blinds and sit in total silence and darkness, Jericho had been utterly professional. He was out of his own patch and therefore was not the one in charge of the resources required at such a time. It was one of the absurd things about the way this whole thing had been done, and no clear line of command or organisation had been laid down when the case had been taken off Shackleton and handed over to Jericho.

Within a minute of finding the body bundled up on the bed he had put the call through to Shackleton. He had asked that he be as discreet as possible, although under the circumstances it was always likely to be a desperate aspiration rather than something which had the remotest possibility of happening.

Instantly dispatching the manager, Jericho and Haynes had then had a few minutes to look around the room for themselves before the hordes of police arrived.

The body of Lorraine Allison had been dumped on the bed, and no attempt made to suggest that this was where she had been killed. She had clearly been murdered a few days previously. Although the local police pathologist might have been able to give them details suggesting an approximate time of death, and further information about the precise blow or injury that had killed her, it was apparent to Jericho and Haynes that they did not actually need to wait for that information to see for themselves.

Neither of them had ever seen a body so horribly pummelled. Allison had been repeatedly beaten, her body the most awful dirty purple, all over, her face warped and smashed. They didn't touch her, but it was clear from the angle at which she lay dumped on the bed that many bones in her body were broken. Maybe every bone in her body was broken.

The white sheets around the body were still white.

There was one small stain on the sheet close to where her head lay, and Jericho realised with the kind of self-loathing that tortured many of his waking hours that it was a semen stain of his making.

'When Shackleton comes I'm going to hand this over to him,' Jericho had said.

Haynes nodded. He understood. Some officers might have tried to retain control as long as possible, knowing that there was some self-implication involved and trying to keep as tight a lid on it as they could. Jericho knew that he would have questions to answer and therefore oughtn't to be the one asking them.

When the first police officers arrived Jericho kept the room clear and put them to duty closing off the floor and working with the manager to clear all the other rooms. Once Shackleton came he handed everything over to him. He was the one with the contacts in the area, who knew the available resources. The conversation between them had been minimal.

Now Haynes and Jericho were standing at the end of the corridor by the lifts. Haynes had disappeared for a few moments and returned with two cups of coffee. They weren't talking. Haynes had a few questions, but knew that Jericho would be running everything over in his head.

Shackleton appeared from the room and walked towards them.

'The place is buzzing downstairs apparently,' he said. 'Media.'

'I've just been,' said Haynes. 'And, yes, it is.'

Shackleton had questions but obviously found it awkward. He had contempt for Jericho with the way he steamrollered back to London to take over the investigation, but that contempt was mitigated by the fact that he had instantly handed over the investigation as soon as it took this turn.

'It's all right to ask,' said Jericho.

Shackleton grunted, kicked his feet, stared at his shoes. He recognised that Jericho was a better, more instinctive police officer than he was, which added to his resentment.

'This was Sergeant Light's room, yes?'

It was an unnecessary question, the answer to which he already knew. Jericho took the cue to tell him everything he would need to know, answering many of Haynes' queries along the way.

'Sergeant Light and I came up here around nine-thirty last night. We had sex, on the bed. I left around eleven-thirty.'

Haynes' phone stared ringing and he immediately turned it off without looking to see who was calling.

'On leaving the room I was photographed, as I expect you've seen. When I got back to my room, maybe a few minutes after I got back, I thought to call her to warn her that we were likely to be on today's front pages. She never answered. I assumed that she'd taken herself off for a bath. I didn't call again. Presumed she'd turn up at the TV offices this morning, then I got tied up with some of that shit, started calling around looking for her as soon as I got out. When I couldn't get hold of her, we came over.'

Shackleton had raised his eyes a few times, but had difficulty holding Jericho's gaze.

'It's an assumption, but an obvious one, that Sergeant Light was taken by the same person who dumped Lorraine Allison's body in her room, and that perhaps it was done as soon as I left the room. They were waiting for me to leave.'

'Did you see anyone other than the photographer?' asked Shackleton.

'No.'

'We need to get hold of the photographer.'

'Yes,' said Jericho.

'Was he credited with the photo in the papers?' asked Shackleton, and was immediately aware of how stupid a question it was. Neither Jericho nor Haynes answered.

'And we need to check the CCTV,' he said, and he looked up at the ceiling and along the corridor.

His thought processes ran on, but he made the quick decision to stop talking. Jericho maybe wasn't a suspect – yet – but neither was he part of the investigation, and he was most certainly a witness.