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.''Does that mean anything to you?' asked Haynes.'You have any relationship to France?''Me?' said Jericho looking up sharply.'Well,' said Haynes, 'the cards have been getting sent to you.'Jericho exhaled a long breath.Allowed his eyes to linger on the card.The vicious scowl of the skeletal figure, knowing and sadistic.'No,' he said, 'not as far as I know.Don't speak French, don't know anyone who's French.Amanda and I went to Paris once, but then, doesn't everyone?''You've never heard of the Larrousse family?''No.''Ever drunk the wine?' asked Haynes speculatively.Jericho looked up, a grimace on his face, then saw that Haynes was smiling.'Bugger off, Sergeant.'Haynes leaned forward and turned the card so that it was in the middle, side on to both of them.'Have you found out about the Larrousse family?' asked Jericho.'Next on my list,' said Haynes.'The professor recognised the chateau, knew about the wine, but not too much about the family.''OK.Well, let me know when you have.''I might need to go to France,' said Haynes.'Although probably not until the summer.''Give me the other envelope,' said Jericho to cut off the flow of jokes.His sergeant seemed to be in rather more robust humour than usual.Haynes handed it over as his phone began to ring.He checked the number, and then put the phone back in his pocket, as Jericho took the lawyer's letter from the envelope.Haynes opened up the fruit salad, and took a piece of melon which he ate like it might have been poisonous.Fruit.His dad ate fruit.But then, his dad was sixty.That was the kind of age when you needed to eat fruit in order to go to the toilet.He was still too young to have to debase his body with anything particularly healthy.Jericho was scowling.'Bloody crap,' he said.'What's that all about?''No idea,' said Haynes.'Take it you don't either?'Jericho shook his head.'The guy they're talking about,' said Haynes.'The dead guy.He was one of the suspicious deaths I was looking into when this all started.'Jericho read the name again and this time recognised it.Chastised himself for the fact that his sergeant had realised it and he hadn't.'Who was that on the phone?' he asked, while his mind ran through the possibilities surrounding Oliver Davis.'The office.I'll think of something.'Jericho leant back and rubbed his chin.Checked his watch.He was already twenty minutes late back for his television appointment.If he left it too long, the bloody camera crew and contestants would probably turn up at the café.'Dylan'll know where you are.She might be vicious, stupid and power-crazed, but she's not stupid.''You just said she was stupid.''Not that kind of stupid.''Maybe we should show her the cards,' said Haynes.'It makes sense.We agree that we've moved on from thinking that it's some kind of joke.There's something going on here, it's coming to a head.We need to tell her.''Did you cross-reference the date of death with any of the cards?' asked Jericho, ignoring him.'Yes,' said Haynes.'It was the first.He died at two in the morning, you got the card in the mail the same day.' He paused, waited for Jericho, but he wasn't talking yet.'It doesn't necessarily tie them together, as this one could have been referencing something that had happened the previous day, but…''They are no coincidences.'Haynes nodded, then continued speaking while Jericho thought it all through.'It would have been sent before he was killed, so that you received it afterwards.Unless it was held up in the post… So we have a link between you and one of the suspicious deaths, we have the connection with the cards, we have the French thing…''Didn't like the way you said there was a link between me and one of the suspicious deaths,' said Jericho grimly.Haynes shook his head.Jericho let out a long sigh, and then got to his feet.'Better go.Do me a favour.Call this lawyer, get me an appointment.Today.Don't care how late.Any time will do.Give me a call and I'll get out of whatever shit they've got me doing in there.And if the shit hits the fan back at the station, just let me know and I'll handle it.'He rubbed his chin, then left the card and the letter sitting on the table.'You'd better keep them.What's the book?''History of the Tarot in French Society.'Jericho nodded.Haynes was doing better work than he was.Of course, Haynes was being given the opportunity to work.'Get to it, Sergeant,' he said, then he indicated the fruit salad.'There's no need to be eating that shit.'He turned.As he did so he nearly bumped into a tall man walking into the café.Jericho didn't look at his face, but grunted an apology.The man, who generally could only focus on one thing at a time, had barely even noticed that they'd nearly bumped into each other.He said nothing and walked to the counter.Haynes glanced up briefly, and then refocused on the table in front of him.Speared another piece of fruit and opened up the Tarot book.Jericho, head bowed and already descending back into his usual depressive state at the thought of returning to the grip of television, had not paid attention to the man who had brushed past him and headed straight for the counter.It had been thirty years since he'd last seen him, but had he taken the time to look at his face he would have instantly recognised him and wondered how it was that he was no longer in prison.Durrant, driven out of his hotel room by hunger and, unusually for him, a restless boredom, asked for a coffee and a sandwich, and was directed to the chiller cabinet.42There was a slight movement in one of the two black plastic bags that had been dumped in the corner.Not from Lorraine Allison, of course.She had been killed a hundred times over.It was Lewis.Not quite dead.Not as dead as Durrant had thought him.Not completely dead.As his body began to move, Lewis was barely conscious.He saw and felt only suffocating darkness, the slow pushing of his arms and legs against the black plastic liner, the memory of movement.Unthinking, unknowing.Woken by his body's last gasping for breath, as slowly the confines of the bag drew the life from him.Cheap bags, left lying in the room for thirty years.Slightly ripped in the hurried act of packaging up the body, letting in just enough air for Lewis to cling on.Turgid fingers pushed against the plastic and slowly poked through.Another hand joined them but the effort of ripping even the thin plastic was too much.Lewis had succeeded in bringing air to his tortured lungs, blessed relief, but it was as much as he could do [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]