Read Online We Are the Hanged Man by Douglas Lindsay - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Douglas Lindsay
Ads: Link
take each individual case as potentially suspicious and start reading something else into it, every slightly strange death in the country over the past few days…. Bollocks. Even the drunk teenagers. You take it for granted. Drunk teenagers in a car. That's not fucking news, no one's saying, shit how did that happen, society must be on the verge of collapse.'
He paused. Haynes knew he hadn't finished or, at the very least, that there was no point in him saying anything at this stage.
'But what if someone spiked a drink, the kid didn't know he was drunk until he was flying along the road, adrenaline pumping and….'
He ran out of words, as he often did. He bored himself. Saying things that didn't need to be said.
They would have to investigate every one of the deaths in intimate detail, or at least make sure that the local police had done the job properly. And none of them were going to be happy about being called up for some spurious reason, especially when they found out that it was DCI Robert Jericho behind it. Those who worked with him respected him; those who hadn't just saw someone whose fame was out of proportion to his body of work; that someone who had been in the newspapers as much as he was, really had to want it that way. His upcoming television appearance wasn't going to change anything.
He quickly rubbed his hands over his face.
'Right, Sergeant, we're just going to have to bite the antelope on the arse. I doubt there's going to be one of these that we can just happily throw out. We'll split the list. If either of us have a particular contact we can use, then we'll take it, otherwise…'
He threw a hand in the air. Haynes leaned forward, notebook open, ready to continue.
14
It had been four days and Durrant was restless. The matter of vengeance was in hand, yet he knew that man could not live by vengeance alone. If one's life was consumed by vengeance, then it ate away at you, ate your heart out, turned your soul black.
He had planned vengeance all these years, yet he had also studied and written and published. He knew things that other people did not know, he had widened his base of knowledge. If he had allowed himself to miss anything due to his incarceration, it was the bold experimentation of the months before he'd been arrested.
It was time to start again.
He had been in prison so long that he knew nothing of reality television, knew nothing of the explosion of channels and the modern notion of celebrity. There had been televisions in prison of course. There had been talk amongst the inmates, but Durrant had followed none of it. He never watched TV. His years in prison had left him much the wiser on a variety of subjects: the Mongol empire, the ancient Greeks, the history of torture, the life and works of the much misunderstood Vlad the Impaler. 18 th century France was a particular fascination. Occasionally he had ventured as far forward in history as the Second World War. The death camps. The firebombing of Dresden. The Japanese treatment of POWs. German plans to invade the south coast of England.
The modern day, post-WWII, was mostly unknown to him and of little interest. Too much civilisation. Durrant didn't like civilisation. And where there wasn't civilisation in the modern world, there would be some busybody from another country attempting to impose it.
So although the first person that Durrant would kidnap, rape, torture and murder was currently regularly featured on the front page of three mass-circulation British tabloid newspapers and was well known to people who had no interest in the show in which she starred, Durrant had never heard of her and had no idea that she was enjoying her fleeting few moments in the sun; moments that would be highly unlikely to endure, even if Durrant had not been about to remove her from the harsh glare of public life.
He drove along the A12 heading towards London, sitting at a steady 60mph, the variable speed limit, traffic and roundabouts
He paused. Haynes knew he hadn't finished or, at the very least, that there was no point in him saying anything at this stage.
'But what if someone spiked a drink, the kid didn't know he was drunk until he was flying along the road, adrenaline pumping and….'
He ran out of words, as he often did. He bored himself. Saying things that didn't need to be said.
They would have to investigate every one of the deaths in intimate detail, or at least make sure that the local police had done the job properly. And none of them were going to be happy about being called up for some spurious reason, especially when they found out that it was DCI Robert Jericho behind it. Those who worked with him respected him; those who hadn't just saw someone whose fame was out of proportion to his body of work; that someone who had been in the newspapers as much as he was, really had to want it that way. His upcoming television appearance wasn't going to change anything.
He quickly rubbed his hands over his face.
'Right, Sergeant, we're just going to have to bite the antelope on the arse. I doubt there's going to be one of these that we can just happily throw out. We'll split the list. If either of us have a particular contact we can use, then we'll take it, otherwise…'
He threw a hand in the air. Haynes leaned forward, notebook open, ready to continue.
14
It had been four days and Durrant was restless. The matter of vengeance was in hand, yet he knew that man could not live by vengeance alone. If one's life was consumed by vengeance, then it ate away at you, ate your heart out, turned your soul black.
He had planned vengeance all these years, yet he had also studied and written and published. He knew things that other people did not know, he had widened his base of knowledge. If he had allowed himself to miss anything due to his incarceration, it was the bold experimentation of the months before he'd been arrested.
It was time to start again.
He had been in prison so long that he knew nothing of reality television, knew nothing of the explosion of channels and the modern notion of celebrity. There had been televisions in prison of course. There had been talk amongst the inmates, but Durrant had followed none of it. He never watched TV. His years in prison had left him much the wiser on a variety of subjects: the Mongol empire, the ancient Greeks, the history of torture, the life and works of the much misunderstood Vlad the Impaler. 18 th century France was a particular fascination. Occasionally he had ventured as far forward in history as the Second World War. The death camps. The firebombing of Dresden. The Japanese treatment of POWs. German plans to invade the south coast of England.
The modern day, post-WWII, was mostly unknown to him and of little interest. Too much civilisation. Durrant didn't like civilisation. And where there wasn't civilisation in the modern world, there would be some busybody from another country attempting to impose it.
So although the first person that Durrant would kidnap, rape, torture and murder was currently regularly featured on the front page of three mass-circulation British tabloid newspapers and was well known to people who had no interest in the show in which she starred, Durrant had never heard of her and had no idea that she was enjoying her fleeting few moments in the sun; moments that would be highly unlikely to endure, even if Durrant had not been about to remove her from the harsh glare of public life.
He drove along the A12 heading towards London, sitting at a steady 60mph, the variable speed limit, traffic and roundabouts
Similar Books
