We Are the Hanged Man (49 page)

What would he tell any other officer to do in this situation? Turn, walk out, keep an eye on the property from a distance, wait for backup.

Under the circumstances – the events that had preceded this atrocity – it was possible that the police were going to arrive and assume that Jericho was guilty of the crimes.

But that didn't matter. It was all about Durrant. Durrant was waiting for him. Durrant had been setting him up. Durrant had the opportunity to run away and he wouldn't have taken it. Neither would he at any stage.

Jericho didn't care what happened after this, didn't care what he was accused of. Durrant needed to be dealt with, and he had a moment of believing that he was the only one who truly understood him.

Had they asked, had they not been so dismissive of him, he certainly would not have led the television personalities so blindly to their deaths.

He selected the door into the back room and walked quickly forward, stepping between the bodies, picking up blood on his shoes.

He opened the door, made out the five hanging figures in the dim light, put his hand to the wall and turned on the light.

Sergeant Light whimpered, the gag still tight around her mouth, her feet clinging to a grudging table, her hands at her throat trying to keep the noose from her neck. Durrant stood not far in front of her, his arms folded, waiting.

The two men looked into each other's eyes for the first time in thirty years.

Neither of them had ever been much disposed to talk, and thirty years had not changed them.

Jericho looked behind Durrant at the four bodies hanging in a row beside Light. They had each been hung by a rope tied in a noose around the neck.

They were all fully clothed. Skeletal faces, the remnants of skin thirty years dead, hung dryly from the faces. The mouths were open, grey teeth smiled awkwardly down. The eye sockets stared back at Jericho.

The four victims for whom he had searched so long. The bodies that had haunted him, knowing they were out there somewhere in the world waiting to be discovered.

And now at last, he had found them, having been left to hang in the same place for all this time, in a house past which he had walked on many occasions, hand in hand with his wife or on his own, his head bowed in melancholy to the stones. All the while, behind the stone walls, four corpses had slowly rotted away.

'You're under arrest,' said Jericho. 'Sit down in the corner and don't move.'

Durrant at least obeyed the final command. He didn't move. Jericho wondered how long they could remain in a stand off. Long enough for the police to arrive?

Even coming from Woodbridge they were going to take ten minutes, and there were hardly going to be too many police officers to hand. More than likely they would be coming from Ipswich, and even in a desperate, frantic rush were a good twenty-five minutes away.

Light gasped again and Jericho realised suddenly that they'd been acting as if she wasn't there. It wasn't about Light, it was about Jericho and Durrant and a personal battle that had been suspended for thirty years. But Light was currently clinging on for her life, desperately clutching at the noose around her neck. The soon to be hanged woman.

Jericho walked round the table towards her, and finally Durrant moved. He had no weapon, but he did not for a second imagine that he would require one.

Jericho did not have words of comfort for Light. He felt nothing for her, even though the last time he had seen her she had been lying naked in a bed and he had been leaving her for the night.

He had a thought that he would never voice, and did not even like to admit to himself, but he was annoyed at her for allowing herself to be taken.

He walked forward in a manner that suggested he did not expect anything to get in his way, although he barely looked Light in the face.

Durrant took one step nearer and met Jericho with a brutal punch to the chin. Durrant had spent thirty years exercising and working out in prison. Jericho had spent the same time slowing down and gradually getting older.

He thudded back against the wall, blood immediately spurting from his lip, pain piercing through his fractured jaw.

Durrant did not move straight in, instead standing back and looking down on Jericho, who was leaning back heavily against the wall.

There was a movement to his left. Light's legs were struggling weakly on the chair, and the chair had begun to slide a few inches to the side. There was no time to lounge against the wall.

Jericho forced himself up, once again heading straight towards Light, ignoring the fact that there would be something in his way. This time he caught the incoming blow from Durrant in time, parrying it away with his right forearm.

As he reached Light, he felt Durrant's hands on his shoulders, so he ducked down and kicked back, then turned, lashing out an elbow at Durrant's head. The force of the blow sent each man away from the other, off-balance, and then they quickly regained their footing and squared up once more, Light in between them. Her squirming was becoming more frantic, her face a deeper hue, her gasps more desperate.

Durrant reached out with his leg and kicked the seat away from her. The rope stretched with a sound quite unfamiliar to Jericho, and Light was dangling, kicking at air.

It wasn't as if Jericho had been fighting with any compassion before, but now the cold-bloodedness that dwelled inside him, the innate lack of feeling for the well-being of others swept over him. He did not particularly care for Sergeant Light, dangling from a rope and about to die, but Durrant had annoyed him and hurt one of his colleagues, and he was not going to stand helplessly around in a room while it happened.

'Is this all we can do?' said Jericho. 'After thirty years of plotting revenge, is this it?'

Durrant was not drawn, although he had begun to work through the likely outcomes of where they were standing. He did not doubt that Jericho had called the police before he entered the room, and understood perfectly his need to address Durrant on his own before the rest of the force arrived. But the police would be on their way, and while he did not particularly care if he was sent back to prison, it still seemed worthwhile doing what he could to stay free for the time being.

He made a sudden movement that surprised Jericho, and while he flung his fists up in the air in defence, Durrant reached over to Sergeant Light, grabbed the end of the rope attached to the hook, lifted it off – which briefly made it bite even more into her neck, and would have killed her in a few seconds – then dumped her down on the floor, loosening the knot and quickly removing it as he did so.

In all the time he'd been distracted, Jericho had had a perfect chance to counterattack, but Durrant had surprised him and he instead watched dumbfounded.

Light slumped onto the floor, supporting herself with one hand, rubbing her neck with the other, gasping at air, panting. Durrant straightened up and looked at Jericho. Jericho stood three yards away, the four hanged bodies for company.

'What would you like to talk about?' said Durrant.

The words came strangely out of the blue at Jericho. He had not heard that voice in so long. The voice that had stone-walled him and mocked him and kept him at bay. The voice which had never revealed the whereabouts of his victims.

Jericho looked at Light, who was now on all fours, her head down, coughing harshly in the direction of the floor.

'Get out,' said Jericho.

Durrant looked at him, now seemingly completely disinterested in Light. Light did not hear, or did not realise she was being spoken to. For the first time in two days she was free, but this was not a circumstance for relief.

'Sergeant!' barked Jericho. He had been tender two nights previously. 'Sergeant! Get up, get out.'

He did not bend down to grab her, to physically urge her on her way. Did not doubt that Durrant would take advantage of the movement.

She looked up at him. She seemed hurt, annoyed, angry almost. She was annoyed at him shouting at her. How absurd.

'Now, Sergeant!'

Her eyes still on him, not even looking at Durrant, she dragged herself to her feet and lurched towards the door.

'Don't hesitate, Sergeant. Don't look at them. Just get outside.'

She was looking through the door and sure enough had paused at the sight. The bloody slaughter. The walls of Hanged Men.

'Do I have to kick you up the arse, Sergeant?' said Jericho to her back, without looking at her.

Slowly, naked and alone, she walked into the sitting room and began to pick her way through the bodies. Neither Jericho nor Durrant had looked at her as she walked out.

The two men stood either side of the end of the table, the four hanged bodies to Jericho's left, looking down upon them. Neither man was breathing hard. Neither man seemed especially tense. They both stood still, their eyes locked on the other, waiting for the first move.

However, they both knew that it was beholden on Durrant to do something. In the situation where nothing happened, Jericho won. The police would arrive in force; Durrant would be apprehended. Although neither man was considering the real possibility that the police would arrive, their heads filled with the possibility that Jericho was a murderer because that was what they had read in the newspapers, and would take action against him rather than Durrant.

How many of them had heard of Durrant? How many of them would be looking for Durrant? Who among them knew that Durrant would kill nine people in two minutes without a second's thought?

'Shall we make war with words of intellectual merit?' asked Durrant. 'Shall we discuss the aesthetics of hanging? Shall we do battle over the course of history?'

Jericho did not answer. In this strange fight it seemed merely a victory in the fact that it was Durrant who was doing the talking.

With Durrant now standing before him, however, Jericho could not contain the question.

'How did you know about Larrousse?' he asked.

He hated having to ask, as he'd always hated asking Durrant any question. The very thought that Durrant had knowledge that he did not.

Durrant's face gave away nothing, and instantly Jericho felt foolish for asking. Had Durrant ever answered any of his questions?

Never. He had always met Jericho with total silence, apart from when he had chosen to speak. And those moments of abrupt conversation had never been in response to Jericho asking him anything.

There was a noise from the door. Light had re-entered, clutching the knife that Durrant had used to eliminate the television collective. She stood framed in the doorway. The front door was still open and Jericho could see white waves on the grey sea behind her.

She had blood on her feet and around the bottom of her legs. Her neck was bruised and inflamed from the noose. Her body looked cold and frigid, her arms and legs thin, her stomach so flat it looked hollow.

'What are you doing, Sergeant?'

She walked forward, the knife still at her side.

Durrant was not even looking at her. Still he stared at Jericho; still he imagined himself impervious to attack; still he saw Jericho as his foe. No one else mattered, not even a woman with a knife.

A drop of blood fell from the end of the blade as she approached them.

'Sergeant!' barked Jericho. 'Get out!'

When she moved, she surprised him. Two quick steps, knife drawn back, Jericho's eyes widened, but he did not have time to raise his hands in reaction to the swing of the blade.

Durrant watched.

She thrust the knife down at Jericho; he had time only to drop himself an inch or two away from her. It was enough, at least, to mean that the knife plunged into his shoulder rather than into his heart as intended. Still the pain was excruciating, and he cried out.