We Are Death Page 9

  She stopped talking. Jericho gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles going white, then he forced himself to relax. Or at least he forced his fingers to relax. He couldn’t force his head.

  He didn’t look at her, but he could tell she was staring straight ahead, her face expressionless, as she had been doing throughout the journey.

  The conversation was over. He hadn’t received an answer to the question he’d asked, but for the moment he did not care. Hopefully, he thought, they would get back to Wells, DI Badstuber would announce that she was now travelling to Marrakech, and Dylan would look at Jericho, sadly shake her head, and say that there was no money in the budget for him to accompany her.

  18

  Harrow had hired a bodyguard. Geyerson, of course, was paying for him, but it was Harrow who was being guarded. Twenty-four hours a day. The bodyguard, as far as Harrow knew, slept while he himself slept, but that was largely conjecture on his part. He was always awake when Harrow was awake, that was all he knew.

  He had hired a Dagestani named Baschkin, who spoke no English. He knew little about him, and although Baschkin was learning a lot about him, Harrow wasn’t particularly worried. He had other things to be worried about.

  Baschkin had an air about him of quiet, unthinking brutality. A man who would kill anyone or anything at any moment, and feel nothing. Yes, he was only there for the money, and if someone came along with more money he could likely be bought. But there weren’t many people with more money than Geyerson, and Harrow wasn’t of a mind to worry about whether any of them would want him dead.

  For the moment, in any case, no one else even knew why it was that Geyerson was having him guarded in the first place. That, at least, was what Harrow presumed.

  Still, an unthinking, brutal thug was the kind of protection Geyerson had decided Harrow needed; Harrow had been delighted to go along. He knew he’d needed someone watching his back for the few months following Kangchenjunga, and a man who never looked with any judgement on Harrow or the women he slept with, the alcohol he drank, or the drugs he ingested, was perfect.

  It was three thirty-four on a Thursday afternoon, and Harrow was on a large motorised yacht in a small bay at the eastern end of Cyprus. He’d risen at some point late in the morning. When he was asleep, at least, he wasn’t nervous. He’d swum for half an hour. He had eaten lunch with his hosts, fresh seafood prepared by the chefs on the boat, had drowned out his anxiety with Louis Roederer Cristal, and had talked about everything except why he was there. And now he was lying back on his bed, raging with lust, one woman straddled across his face, grinding her pussy against his mouth and his desperate tongue, while another bit and sucked on his engorged penis, before climbing on top of him and ramming him deep inside her.

  Harrow, unaware of what had happened to Carter and Connolly, was doing his best to have fun, while Baschkin watched.

  *

  They were all in Dylan’s office. The cards were, quite literally, on the table.

  Leighton, Haynes and Badstuber were sitting around the desk in a small arc of chairs. The fourth chair was empty, Jericho standing at the window, feeling as detached as he looked.

  He’d barely spoken since losing his temper at Badstuber. Facing the end, he suddenly thought. That’s what it was. At first, the idea of retiring in just four weeks’ time had seemed incredibly quick, as though his long career would be over in a blur. Now, just two days later, it seemed as though he was already used to it, had already accepted it. He was done. His career in the police was over.

  So what was the point in chasing down one last case? What was the point in tackling some great, mysterious organisation? If they were as vast and all-powerful as it seemed Badstuber wanted them to be, what could they hope to achieve?

  The world is ruled by power. Powerful people, powerful societies. An individual, or a small police station, trying to do something about it, was like the UK trying to get people to recycle plastic bags, while China and India spewed billions of tons of waste into the world. It was a pinprick. It was nothing. And that was how he felt, up against these invisible people, up against the police force and up against the oncoming rush of retirement.

  But wasn’t he compelled to go after them now for all sorts of reasons?

  Dylan was looking at the blown-up images of the two tarot cards Haynes and Leighton had brought with them from London. The expanded pictures clearly showed the detail that was intended to be identified by the police, so they could see who they were dealing with. The powers at their disposal, the all-encompassing nature of how invincible they were.

  In close up it was revealed that, in the card left at Jericho’s bedside, the faces of the dead lying at the feet of Death belonged to the nine people killed by Durrant in his old seaside haunt. The faces of the more distant victims included some of those killed in the months prior to that, as part of the set-up that had ultimately implicated Jericho. There were many more dead, piled high in the background, whose identity it was not possible to determine.

  In the card Haynes had received the day before, it was clear that the five hanging men had the faces of Geyerson, Emerick, Harrow, Connolly and Carter. The latter two were the ones who had already died. It was no longer conjecture that the three others would be next on the list. It seemed unequivocal.

  ‘So when were you going to tell me about this?’

  ‘I only got my card last night,’ said Haynes, defensively. ‘And I’ve been up in London. This is my first chance.’

  She held his gaze for a moment, then turned to Jericho.

  ‘And you?’

  Jericho looked down at her with the old loathing. He hadn’t enjoyed her tone since he’d come in. He didn’t like that they were all in there at once, this collective group, with an outside officer and a civilian, being spoken to with Dylan’s old, familiar arrogance.

  ‘I intended taking it to my grave,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you changed your mind. Should we thank you?’

  ‘Looking at the blown-up images,’ said Jericho, ignoring the attitude, ‘it’s clear that the card that was left with me was a wrap-up. There’s no one on there who wasn’t already dead. It wasn’t a threat. It was... it was just letting me know they were still out there and they were in charge. Well...’

  ‘Jesus!’ she said, scorn pouring forth although her voice was hardly raised. ‘Like that wasn’t enough? Your report, our official report from this station, had those cards sent to you by Durrant and Sergeant Light. Like it was all the work of Durrant and Sergeant Light. And you had clear proof, clear proof, that it wasn’t.’

  ‘You knew it wasn’t.’

  ‘What?’

  He took a breath. Held her gaze. Pondered just walking out. Realised, at that moment, that he hadn’t felt like this in a long time. Since back then. He hadn’t had a real moment of crushing depression since he’d been in hospital. He’d been drifting through life, ignoring everything, doing his job, not having to carry the burden that so often sat in the middle of his head, infecting everything, weighing him down.

  And now, he just wanted to leave.

  Another deep breath. Dylan wouldn’t be backing down on this one. She couldn’t, not with someone from an outside force in the room.

  ‘You knew,’ he said. ‘Everyone knew. There was no way Sergeant Light or Mr Durrant had the capacity to make that man in France hang himself from a window. There was no way Sergeant Light had enough time to be so involved with everything that was done in the lead-up to the guy killing himself. All those people who died, the extent of the set-up. And why? So Durrant could get his revenge on me? Who, seriously, who is going to wreak their revenge on someone by engineering that they get left over twenty million euros? That’s not revenge. This went far beyond those two. You knew it did, the chief constable knew it did, and if the press actually had any paid journalists left, then quite possibly one of them would have spent the time to find out that it did. Whoever is sending these cards...’

  He stopp
ed, because he had nowhere to go that wasn’t speculation or wouldn’t be gross exaggeration just for the sake of it.

  ‘He’s right,’ said Leighton, diving into the tension.

  Haynes raised an eyebrow, stopped himself smiling.

  Dylan turned slowly, held her gaze for a moment. The phrase, who the fuck are you? came immediately into her head. She wanted to say it. She wanted to spit it out. It sounded good. The thought of it sounded good. But she’d thought about it too long, and the moment had gone, which was, she realised, obviously for the better.

  It shouldn’t have mattered that Margot Leighton was younger than her, it definitely didn’t matter that she was more attractive, or that she was already a professor of something, and yet, as the rebuke slowly died away in her head, she knew that all those things did matter, and she didn’t really care that they did.

  ‘What is it you’re a professor of?’ she asked.

  The question might have been reasonable; the tone was brutal. Haynes felt embarrassed. Jericho felt contempt.

  Leighton held Dylan’s gaze for a moment, then stood quickly.

  ‘I’ll wait in the office,’ she said to Haynes, then left, closing the door behind her.

  There was a quick shot of warm air, then the air-conditioned silence, the cool of the room to accompany the atmosphere, returned. Dylan looked at the three remaining officers in turn. Haynes could feel the kind of contempt for her that Jericho usually had, but he was too young yet to have Jericho’s level of open disdain.

  ‘Detective Inspector...’ began Dylan, looking at Badstuber, who had sat impassively throughout. Badstuber cut her off.

  ‘I will need to speak to my superintendent. Someone needs to interview Mr Geyerson. My information is that he will be in the High Atlas mountains in Morocco for another few days. It is possible that we could get local law enforcement to speak to him, or perhaps some international agency located in the country. It might be that the Americans want to take care of it, given his nationality and that of Mr Emerick, his assistant. However, if we believe that someone involved in the on-going investigation should speak to him, I will certainly volunteer.’

  She looked at her watch, ignoring the fact that Dylan was watching her impatiently.

  ‘I have changed my plans. I will not be staying the night. I am now booked on a flight to Zurich in three hours. I will arrive home late, and tomorrow I will speak to my superiors and we will make a strategy.’

  Jericho had turned away and was looking out the window. Badstuber hadn’t said anything about being booked on an evening flight. He wondered if she had organised it remotely, sitting in the car, looking at her phone.

  Dylan looked at the back of Jericho’s head, couldn’t keep the look of contempt from her face, then turned back to Haynes and Badstuber. The nail on her right index finger tapped on the desk, the only noise in the room. A rapid, rhythmless sound. Then she stopped, straightened her back.

  ‘There’s no sign of anyone grabbing this by the balls yet,’ she said. ‘People don’t want to know. You two are going to have to start sorting this out, until I hear otherwise. Sergeant Haynes, I’m not entirely sure why you brought your... whatever she is, down here with you, but perhaps you could enlist her help in trying to further identify these people. Whoever they are. We can’t just be floundering around while someone mocks us like this. If this gets out again... Jesus. Speak to her if you want, but actually, I don’t care what you do, or who you talk to. Get into this and bring me something. We need to have some idea of who we’re dealing with. I mean, this has gone as far as the Foreign Office, and we’re going to look bloody stupid if this is all we’ve got. Blown-up pictures of children’s cards.’ She indicated them with a dismissive wave. ‘I don’t care what all this petty symbolism means, all I care about is that there’s still someone out there taking the fucking piss out of you two, and I want to know who it is. You can go.’

  The final three words were so abrupt, so unexpectedly inserted into the tone of outrage, that Haynes found himself quite taken by surprise. He waited a moment, then rose quickly, leaning forward to lift the cards and the blown-up images. He shared a glance with Jericho before he left the room, then was gone, back out into the heat, the door closed behind him.

  Dylan looked at Badstuber for a moment, an empty gaze as she had nothing to unload on her, then she turned to Jericho, who had watched as she’d downloaded her wrath upon Haynes.

  ‘I want you gone,’ she said, her voice dropping a level or two from her dismissal of Haynes. ‘I don’t know why I thought we could actually be civil to each other for even a month. But don’t think I’m just letting you walk out the door. I’d like to see you reciprocate with the detective inspector. I’ve already spoken with her boss,’ she glanced at Badstuber to let her know that she was ahead of her, ‘and they’re expecting you in Interlaken tomorrow morning. See that you get booked on the same flight to Zurich, and make whatever other arrangements you need. Once you’ve completely familiarised yourself with the case, I’d like you to travel on to Marrakesh and speak to Mr Geyerson. Someone will also need to attempt to locate Harrow. Are we done?’

  Jericho held her gaze for a moment, then turned and quickly walked out of her office. He knew it was petty, but he couldn’t help himself: he left the door open.

  19

  Haynes sat down at his desk, looking across at Leighton. Silence for a moment, then Leighton smiled.

  ‘She’s an interesting character.’

  Haynes nodded, couldn’t bring himself to smile back yet. Didn’t feel like smiling at all. Felt impotent and stupid, the way anyone does when spoken to in such a manner by their boss. Or, in this case, his boss’s boss.

  Should Jericho have stepped in and said something? Perhaps he had done so after Haynes had closed the door. All the more awkward and uncomfortable with Badstuber in the room. Of course, it was Dylan who looked bad, it was Dylan who came across as a boorish, insecure bully. Nevertheless, no one wants to be spoken to like that, especially when there was really no way to respond in kind.

  ‘When I write my dinosaur book,’ said Haynes, his voice flat, ‘she’s getting bitten the fuck in half on the first page.’

  ‘I had a boss like that once.’

  ‘How did you handle it?’ asked Haynes. His voice was dead, trying to control the anger.

  ‘Don’t remember exactly. I think she might have been the one whose liver I ate with some chocolate beans and a nice chardonnay. Or was that someone else?’

  Finally Haynes cracked and he laughed.

  The door to Dylan’s office opened and Jericho emerged. He looked over at Haynes and was going to summon him in his usual way, which would probably have been a thumb jerked in the direction of his office. Unusually for Jericho, however, he was aware that there was something between his sergeant and the professor, and that there had been enough stupid management thrown at him in the previous ten minutes. He approached the desk.

  ‘Professor,’ he said, nodding at Leighton.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector.’

  ‘Thanks for coming down to help.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘I just need Stuart for a few moments alone, if you don’t mind waiting here. We won’t be long.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Sergeant,’ said Jericho, and he walked towards his office.

  *

  ‘So you didn’t kill her before you left her office?’

  Jericho looked dully across the desk. He wanted to smile, but he had that grim sense of utter defeat in the pit of his stomach.

  ‘You all right?’ asked Haynes, which surprised Jericho.

  ‘I’m afraid the limit of my defiance was, as you’ll have noticed, to leave the door open on her precious air conditioning.’

  Haynes started smiling, and finally Jericho found himself laughing.

  ‘Jesus...’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You know the problem, Sergeant?’

  ‘What’s that, sir?’

  �
��I should never have slept with her.’

  Haynes wasn’t sure what to say to that, eyes widening slightly.

  ‘Too much information. I know.’

  Jericho sighed heavily, looking around at his desk. Searching for something to actually look at. Something to hold onto, something to do. There was nothing. There were a few pieces of paperwork, but it was all trivial. Yet, what did he want? If he wanted something interesting, it was being offered to him on a plate, and all he aspired to was walking away.

  ‘She’s sending me to Switzerland tonight,’ he said.

  Haynes wasn’t sure what to say. Had been wondering if he might get to go to Switzerland, and had rather liked the thought, but it didn’t sound like it was happening.

  ‘And then, if no one from higher up intervenes, it looks like I’ll be going on to Morocco.’ He shook his head at the thought. ‘Right, Stuart. You have your orders. You’ve got to attempt to track down who these people are and I’m just going to have to leave you to it. If they are.... Jesus, if they turn out to be as seemingly omnipotent as they appear to be, I’m not sure you’re going to get very far.’

  ‘Need to give it a go, sir,’ said Haynes.

  ‘Yes, you do. So, good luck, and be careful. Really, I know that’s casually thrown around, but they’re not messing about. They have killed at will, and obviously they’re continuing to do so. Try to make sure it’s not you. Or...’ he indicated the closed door, ‘your professor out there. I would say...’ he hesitated, then waved away what he was going to say.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  Given that it sounded as though it was going to relate to Leighton, Haynes wasn’t letting it go.

  ‘I’d appreciate if you said what you were thinking, sir,’ he said.

  Jericho nodded.

  ‘All right. I stopped myself, because really, I’m hardly one to say this, but just be careful with her. Remember she’s a civilian. Whoever they are, they’ve turned their attention on you. Now might not be the greatest time to get too close to someone. I know you need her help, but just be wary of her getting sucked into this mess.’