‘It just happened,’ I heard him say. ‘I didn’t mean it to end up like this …’ His voice was detached and distant, almost as if he was talking to himself. ‘Ray never meant to kill Mum and Dad, he just wanted to get back at them for being such bastards. But after he’d burned the house down, and then Pin Hall … well, I knew then that he’d got a taste for killing, and that he was going to carry on doing it, and that there was nothing I could do to stop him. So I just thought it’d be best if he moved away …’
‘Why, for God’s sake?’ I said. ‘What good did you think that would do?’
He shrugged. ‘If he’d stayed here … if he stayed anywhere for too long, he’d get caught. But if he kept moving around …’
‘It’d be easier for him to get away with it.’
Bishop nodded.
I shook my head. ‘And moving around costs money, which you supplied. Money, false ID, cars, homes … you funded him. All the drugs you stole, all the bribes you took, all the lives you fucked up — including my father’s — you did all that just to make sure that your fucking brother could go round the country brutalising and killing people without getting caught — ’
‘They were whores.’
‘What?’
‘He only killed whores. Most of them would probably have been dead within a year or so anyway.’
I shook my head, more in annoyance with myself than anything else. I couldn’t believe that I was actually conversing with this man, treating him like a human being, or that just a few minutes ago I’d almost been tempted into feeling sorry for him.
‘You’re no better than your brother, are you?’ I said to him. ‘The only difference is that he’s a bit more honest than you.’
Bishop shrugged. ‘Well, that’s as maybe … but none of us gets to choose who we are, do we? Or what we do. You, of all people, should know that, John.’
‘What do you mean?’
He smiled. ‘Anton Viner …?’
I shook my head. ‘Viner’s — ’
‘Dead … yes, I know. It took me a while to figure it out, but once I started thinking about it … well, it was the only thing that made sense.’
‘I don’t understand — ’
He laughed. ‘It’s all right, John. You don’t have to keep pretending any more. I know you killed him. I don’t know how you did it, but I know you did.’
‘That’s ridiculous — ’
‘John … John,’ he said gently, almost intimately. ‘It’s all right … I don’t have a problem with it. He killed your wife, you killed him. If I’d been in your shoes, I would have done exactly the same. My only concern is that I didn’t know you’d killed him until after I’d planted Viner’s DNA on Anna Gerrish’s body.’
‘So you knew your brother had killed her?’
He sighed, looking at Ray. ‘I told him not to come back. I fucking told him … but he just …’
‘What?’
Mick looked at me. ‘He just wanted to see me, that’s all. We hadn’t seen each other for years … he said he was lonely. I didn’t think he’d do anything while he was here.’
‘But he did.’
Mick nodded. ‘I guessed he’d killed Anna as soon as I found out that she worked the streets. He always went after whores.’ He shook his head. ‘They make it so fucking easy. I mean, all you’ve got to do is …’ He sighed, shaking his head again. ‘Anyway, I went to see Ray, and he denied it at first, but I knew he was lying. And he couldn’t keep it up for long, not with me. He never could. So I got it all out of him — where he’d picked her up, what he’d done with the body — and I thought it’d be all right. I thought I’d have enough time to get him out of Hey and sort everything out before the body was found …’ He looked at me. ‘But then you got involved. Not that I was worried at first, because I didn’t think you’d stick with it, but once I realised you weren’t going to give up, I knew I had to do something. It was too risky to move the body, so all I could do was try to make sure that if it was found, there was no way it could be connected to Ray.’
‘But why did you use Viner’s DNA?’ I said. ‘What was the point?’
‘That first day you came to see me, when I told you I’d been going through your wife’s case file? I wasn’t lying. I had been going through it.’
‘Why?’
He shrugged. ‘I always like to know as much as possible about the people I’m meeting before I actually meet them, so I had somebody bring me all the paperwork on your wife’s murder. Paperwork, photographs, evidence … I had it all in my office. And later on, when I decided I had to plant some evidence on Anna’s body, it was all still there. Nice and convenient. And then, of course, I realised that if the body was discovered, and we released the fact that Viner’s DNA had been found under Anna’s fingernails, everyone’s attention would be drawn to you and Viner and the whole serial-killer thing, and while all that was going on, Ray could just quietly disappear. But now …’ He glanced down at Ray again, then back at me. ‘Well, that’s out of the question now, isn’t it?’
I nodded. ‘It’s over … for both of you.’
Bishop smiled. ‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘Give me your phone,’ I said.
‘I don’t think so.’
Without taking my eyes off him, or the gun from Ray’s head, I reached back and felt through Ray’s trouser pockets, looking for a mobile. The front pockets were empty, so I leaned over and dug into his back pocket, but that was empty too.
‘You’re wasting your time, John,’ Mick said to me. ‘He doesn’t carry a mobile when he’s …’
‘When he’s what? Killing people?’
Mick shrugged.
‘Give me your phone,’ I said to him again. ‘Or I’ll kill your brother.’
He sighed. ‘I’ll tell you what, John. You give me the gun, and then we can talk things over. How about that?’
I shook my head. ‘I’d rather just kill him.’
‘Like you killed Viner?’
‘Exactly.’
‘But this is different, John.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because if you kill Ray, you’ll have to kill me too.’
‘And why wouldn’t I want to do that?’
He smiled. ‘Because I’m a DCI, I’m a serving police officer. And no matter how dirty I am, no matter how much I’m loathed and despised … I’m still a serving police officer. And that means that if you kill me, you will go down. Guaranteed. You’ll be locked up for the rest of your life.’
‘You know what?’ I said, suddenly feeling incredibly tired. ‘I really don’t care any more. I don’t care what happens to me, and I don’t care whether you believe me or not.’ I looked down at Ray. He was starting to come round now — moaning softly, his semi-conscious eyes gazing up at me. I stared back at him, seeing nothing but a half-dead sack of bones and blood, a heartless thing with a broken head. And in the dulled grey mirror of his eyes, I saw myself holding the gun to my own head … and I heard a voice that might have been mine, or it might have been my father’s:
It won’t feel like anything, John.
It won’t feel like anything at all.
And I knew then that all I had to do was pull the trigger.
‘What about Bridget?’
I looked up slowly at Bishop. ‘What?’
‘You might not care about yourself,’ he said. ‘But what about Bridget?’
I sighed. ‘What about her?’
‘Well, knowing Ray, I’m guessing that she’s been through a hell of a lot in the last hour or so. And I’d imagine that when all of this is over, however things turn out, she’s going to need somebody to look after her, somebody who understands what she’s been through. And I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you how it feels when you lose someone you really care for, John, someone who really understands you. Of course, I don’t know how close the two of you are — ’