We Are the Hanged Man (38 page)

Her interest was immediately piqued, being no stranger to a conspiracy theory. A rich man had died leaving no relatives; the closest person to him, a man who potentially stood to inherit a large sum of money that he might well have had no idea even existed, had also died.

She was on the trail and she was voracious. Everything else on her desk was immediately dropped. She was on the phone and on the internet, and in the space of a few hours it opened up in front of her, an unfolding drama of death and conspiracy, one name linking quickly and curiously to another.

She got lucky on a couple of occasions when she found herself requiring confidential information from other law firms where she was owed favours. She called them in; she charged on with her quest.

While Jericho plodded through the process from the other end, only arriving at the same conclusion as Jane Ray because he knew where it started and where it was going to end, she had the connections made and the process mapped by six in the afternoon.

That morning's Sun was still lying on a table in the open plan office, and she glanced over at the front cover more and more as she began to realise where the trail from Larrousse's death led.

It had taken her six hours, and at the end of it she had found a distant relative of Gerard Larrousse who wasn't dead.

*

The camera had lovingly documented the reaction of the Three Musketeers as they wept at the news of Lol's death. There had been some discussion in the production office about who should be given the task of breaking the news to them. It ought to have been Jericho, but once he'd left the office that morning it seemed a fairly safe bet that he wouldn't be coming back. Sergeant Light had vanished, and although they'd known they would then have Sergeant Haynes in the line-up, they needed to tell the three of them sooner rather than later. They were bound to find out eventually, despite being kept for the time being in isolation, and they wanted their reaction on camera to be real and raw. The three of them had not got to where they were on the back of their acting ability.

It was decided that Washington would be the best person to break the news. He was the godfather of the show; he was known to have had a thing with Lol; it would make the best television.

He started with Xav, then Ando, finally Cher. He did not break it gently to any of them. And then, as their tears flowed, he partly looked at them and partly looked at the camera, said that in this job they had to learn to have hardened hearts, and then produced a series of photographs illustrating Lol's bloody, brutalised unrecognisable body.

Cher had screamed. And screamed. Xav fainted. Ando was sick.

*

It pained him to do so, but Haynes knew he was under orders to bring the TV people in on everything that he discovered; and he had to admit that the only reason they had identified three cars in the area of the hotel at the time of both disappearances was thanks to the manpower the producers had been able to throw at the problem. The police would likely have taken much longer to find anything.

And so he walked into the production office where the Three Musketeers were sitting drinking hot cocoa and trying to come to terms with the brutal death of their colleague. It was all being captured on film, and there had been some discussion on whether the show had been cancelled; a discussion that Washington had allowed to take place as lip service to any sort of decency, while of course having every intention of forging ahead.

As usual in team discussions Washington took part with his MacBook before him, endlessly flicking through news sites trying to get a handle on what was being said about the show; and it was with enormous gratification that he saw that Lol, Jericho, BritainsGotJustice, #BGJffs and he himself were all trending on Twitter.

Washington had never thought that they'd be able to match the heady days of the peak of the singing and talent shows they'd put on in the late noughties, but Lol's death and the irascible DCI Jericho had been the most extraordinary blessing.

Cher was agonising on camera over whether to make a unilateral statement of withdrawal. She accepted that the show had to go on, yet at the same time thought it callous and unforgivable. She didn't want to offend anyone, of course. The producers were letting her talk it through, knowing that she would more than likely come to her own decision not to quit, and that if she didn't, then they would come to the decision for her.

Claudia was spending a lot of time squeezing her arm as if she cared.

Everyone stopped and looked at Haynes. Haynes found himself looking at Washington. Outside it was already dark, and the early January evening was turning cold and bitter.

'They've finished searching the databanks of CCTV footage from the hotel environs. We've identified three cars that were captured on film on both evenings in question.'

Washington smiled and rubbed his hands together, although he did manage to stop himself saying, 'Fuck, yeah!'

'So we go and get them?' said Claudia, already disengaging her arm from Cher and beginning to stand.

'You must have, like, car number plate info on computers and shit,' said Ando helpfully, determined that he was going to take every opportunity to say something in a desperate last-ditch effort to endear himself to the voting public.

'Yes,' said Haynes, looking curiously at him, 'that we do. Unfortunately one of the cars isn't registered, anywhere. If it turns out that this hasn't been a wild goose chase, then the chances are it's that one. We've put out a bulletin for the car, and we've got police forces all over the country checking. But you know, when it comes to this kind of level, it really is a needle in a haystack. Nevertheless…'

'What about the other two?' asked Claudia, who was halfway between her seat and standing upright, as if stuck in some middling evolutionary step.

'… nevertheless,' Haynes continued, 'I've set the team we've assembled onto the task of tracking other CCTV cameras in London on those nights in the hope that we see the car again. Particularly last night, as it was much later and there was a lot less traffic about. If we can find what road it was on we can get a better idea of whereabouts in London it was heading, or which way out of the capital.'

'What about the other two?' said Claudia again, this time with her annoyance not at all concealed.

'We have their addresses and we're about to go round there now.'

Claudia heard herself say, 'Hot damn!' and then looked slightly embarrassed as she straightened up.

'You people are going to want to film it?' he asked.

He was appalled at the thought, but knew that it was a given. There was at least the plus side that he was the one who was doing it, rather than Shackleton, who he already did not trust.

'Of course,' said Washington.

'Is there going to be a car chase?' said Ando, getting to his feet, determined that the camera would look at him.

'No,' said Haynes dismissively.

'Maybe,' said Ando, 'you know, maybe we could give them a couple of minutes warning, not long like, and see if they leg it. Then we could chase them with like five cars and a load of helicopters and shit.'

He looked enthusiastically around the room. The other TV people seemed to like the idea.

'Don't be stupid,' said Haynes. 'As I said, the chances are that if one of these cars was used in the kidnapping, it's likely to be the one that's not registered. These other two visits are part of the process of ruling people out of the investigation.'

'That's bullshit!' ejaculated Claudia, finding Haynes every bit as annoying as Jericho.

'What is?' asked Haynes dryly.

'You've already made your mind up. We could be about to turn up on the doorstep of some deranged killer. Shouldn't we get all sorts of back up, an armed SWAT team, all that stuff?'

'Because that's what would happen on TV?'

'Yes,' said Claudia. 'That's what people expect. How stupid are you going to look if it turns out one of these men is the killer and you've arrived with three trainees and a soundman?'

'And how stupid are we going to look if we turn up with an armed response unit and it turns out they were each on their way home from an evening shift at Burger King?'

He looked around the room, aware that he was instantly filling Jericho's shoes in terms of contempt for these people and this process.

'We're leaving now. Anyone who wants to come, then come. But no bullshit and no overreacting.'

He walked out. Everyone followed except Cher, who was staring at the table, her eyes once more beginning to fill with tears.

Jericho sat in a café at Victoria station watching the passers-by. He had removed the coat that he seemed to wear permanently, as he realised that it was his most identifiable feature. Mary had given him one of her husband's old hats, which Jericho now sat beneath, with it pulled down over his forehead. He looked slightly odd, and yet no one really noticed him, this man who had been on more front pages in the last three days than any of the bloated, plastic, deformed C-listers who usually dominated the country's newstands.

He wasn't the greatest person with technology, but he did at least know how to muddle his way through the internet on his phone, so as he sat, the dregs of a coffee going cold on the table in front of him, he read the same newspaper home pages that Washington had been reading.

Every one of them now had a headline about the case, even the broadsheets. Lol was dead, horribly murdered, and the story had been transformed. Conspiracy theorists could run wild and there was a dead celebrity in town. Jericho, who had gradually been becoming the villain of the piece – at least in the eyes of the newspapers – was dragged onto the home pages of many of them.

Lol Dead As Randy Copper Kicked Off Case
yelled the Mirror, once more using the picture of Jericho leaving Sergeant Light's hotel room.

Heroic Lol Dead, Rozzers In Turmoil
: The Sun Demands,
What The F**k Is Going On?

The Spook, The Chief, The Plod And Her Lover
, said the Telegraph, over pictures of respectively, Lol, Dylan, Light and Jericho. Bit of a stretch, he thought, without anything of a smile on his face.

And so it went on, a panoply of outrage and concern, fear and loathing and ridicule, with enormous levels of excitement surrounding the fact that Lol's body had been discovered by Jericho in Sergeant Light's bedroom, two facts which gave weight to the very possibility that Jericho was responsible for the murder.

He read it all without so much as an ounce of judgement or concern, except for one thing which made him angry and filled him with concern for how this was going to progress over the following couple of days. The press already had much more information than they should have had, and which they would have done had he been in charge of the investigation. Which meant that someone in the police was either happily leaking information at an alarming rate, or else giving the television production company far too much respect and passing them case details concerning Lol's death which they somehow expected to be treated with discretion.

He sat in Victoria station for an hour and a half. Hiding in plain sight. He kept his head down and followed the evolving story throughout. Much of what was written was utterly fatuous, but it didn't mean that he wouldn't be able to pick up any useful pieces of information.

At one point he came across a site which stated that he had not only been kicked off the investigation, but that he had been told he was likely to be taken into police custody and had consequently absconded. This was an exciting development that soon spread across all the news sites he was following.

As he sat in a café, doing nothing, having not developed his part in the story in any way over a long afternoon, he had evolved into a suspect.
The
suspect. The police hadn't actually said as much yet. They hadn't, in fact, made any official comment about Jericho at all, yet to the media it seemed quite apparent.