‘I’m not one of these modern fuckwits who suffer from things. I said I did it all. Everything you’re charging me with. Everything you’re thinking of charging me with-’
‘If I may have a moment with my client-’
‘Get him out of here!’ yelled Toshack.
‘Are you declining legal representation, Mr Toshack?’ Because, if he was, that was just the old bastard being awkward. Then Quill would have to summon an inspector unconnected to the case in here, who would then have to make a written record of the whole procedure. Quill knew a DS who’d gone ahead without remembering that, and ended up with an inadmissible interview.
‘He can stay if he keeps his gob shut!’
So it hadn’t been a ploy. Quill suppressed a grin, thinking it was a week late for Christmas. He carefully finished his list of charges, watching Toshack’s face as he read them out.
Toshack sat back in the chair heavily, listening carefully, nodding along. ‘You’re not going to believe this,’ he said, when Quill had finished, ‘but this is my only way out now. I think I’ve made a big mistake.’ Quill kept his expression neutral. ‘I think. . someone’ll come for me, and I don’t know how long that might take. The first thing I have to say is. .’ He seemed to have to make an effort in saying it. ‘I’m sorry.’
Quill blinked. ‘You’re sorry?’
‘I’d. . like you to get the chaplain in here, actually, Quill. I’m going to clear my conscience, tell you everything I’ve done. I am begging forgiveness.’
‘We’ll get the clergy involved further down the line. If you want forgiveness from me, you’ll need to name names. Every name.’
Toshack took a deep breath, then he nodded. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘but not here and now. I’m going to need certain things doing. .’
Quill was thinking how Toshack must reckon he was born yesterday if he thought he was going to put him in a van, to be rescued by his freelancers. Quill later remembered that thought very clearly; it was frozen inside his head. He would recall it every time he remembered what happened next.
Toshack suddenly stopped talking, his lips tightly pursed. Then he jerked his hands up in the air, waved them around violently as if trying to push something away from him. There was a look in his eye which it took Quill a second to register: a look of recognition, as if someone he knew had just walked into the room. He leaped up out of his seat and staggered around. His face was going purple, and it looked as he was having some kind of seizure.
Of all the bloody times!
‘Get the doctor!’ Quill shouted to Watterson, who was already running for the door. Then he remembered the tape. It was otherwise just him and the brief in here now, but at least the security camera would be getting this. ‘Mr Toshack seems to be suffering from some sort of medical. . event!’
Which was when Toshack became suddenly hard to look at.
Quill wondered if he himself was suffering his first migraine. He felt he was suddenly viewing Toshack from the far end of a long lens; as if, impossibly, Quill was far below and the other man was flying. But, when he blinked and told his brain to get a grip, there the man was again, up against the wall. . yeah, of course, that was the wall. He was staring at Quill, not playing some trick with him, but terrified — terrified because that look in his eyes was terrified. It was more than terror at what was happening to him, because his eyes were moving so swiftly, as if he was dreaming, as if there was some new horror in every direction he looked. He looked to be trying to scream without even being able to open his mouth. His face had gone purple, and he looked completely full of blood. Quill imagined cartoon steam coming off him and, just for a moment, he swore he actually saw it. The brief was frantically questioning Toshack, asking if he was fit to continue.
Quill tried to reach towards the stricken man, to usher him back down into his seat, to tell him medical help was on the way, because he wouldn’t be getting out of it that easily-
The blood exploded into Quill’s face.
He fell with the force of it, hit the desk and then fell. Great gouts of blood, far too much, flew around him, covering the furniture, the tape recorder, the room, as if a bucket of it had been thrown over him. Quill managed to heave himself upright, and found blood still showering like rain. He was covered in it. So was the brief, who was yelling hysterically. Toshack, or what was left of Toshack — no, whole Toshack, for there he was, all of him — was just a mass of blood which had come from that mouth, that had burst from him, from his lolling dead head.
The doctor came running in, and there were cries and shouts along the corridors outside. Quill tried to get up, but he slipped in the blood. The doctor was stumbling towards him, as if something could still be done, getting the blood on the soles of her shoes. The brief was now just staring. Quill started to shout that maybe. . maybe this was a crime scene. Maybe poison! Gipsy Hill needed to be shut down. Now! Now! Lofthouse rushed in, along with a lot of uniforms. She started yelling at him, all the questions Quill couldn’t answer. Quill stood away, by the wall, his hands held away from his body, his suit covered in blood, feeling that he would at any moment wake up.
FOUR
Lisa Ross sat in the dark in her tiny anonymous office at the trading estate in Norwood, listening to the Nagra tape for the third time. She didn’t want to think about what they’d just called to tell her, about what had just happened. It was too big to comprehend. She had ready in front of her, on the ancient laptop the Met let her have the use of, her report forms where she’d been annotating the background and any possible follow-ups to everything Toshack had said. She invariably found new elements to add on every listen. She’d always felt privileged that DI Quill wanted her to listen to these tapes before he did, that he’d recognized her specialist knowledge in that way. She liked to work straight from the tape, and only look afterwards at the transcripts prepared by SCD 10’s blind audio typist, Stacey, who was presumably up as late as she was.
But that would be in preparation for a trial. And now there wasn’t going to be a trial. Not of Toshack, at least. Someone might have got to him, they were saying, but it wasn’t clear how, since he’d been kept well isolated and hadn’t eaten anything since his arrest.
She wanted to hit something. She wanted to rip the throat from something. But the only thing she really wanted to do that to was Toshack himself.
The universe had made her the butt of an enormous joke, and she could hear it laughing.
They’d said he’d started to confess. Maybe that was something, at least. For the longest time now, as intelligence on the Toshack organization had always failed, as every avenue of inquiry had shut down, as jury after jury had failed to convict, she’d felt that nothing she had been trying to do would ever work.
Now she knew it certainly never would.
But Toshack was dead. Wasn’t that revenge on him of a kind? So why didn’t she feel anything? God, she hoped she eventually would, or what was left to her?
Detective Superintendent Lofthouse herself, to Ross’ astonishment, had brought over the tape and transcripts in the early hours. ‘I’m up anyway,’ she’d said, ‘so I thought let’s cut out one more courier.’ Ross had felt weird, receiving them from this smart woman at the door of her office unit, with herself dressed in sweatshirt and leggings. Ross had been told her appearance could put the fear of God into people at the best of times. Her right eye was blue, but her left one was grey, and her nose was askew, like a boxer’s. For a boxer’s reason, too. But Lofthouse, who amazingly had seemed to know who she was, had turned out to be all right. She’d said she hoped someday Ross could come into the Ops Room, get to meet the team. Like other intelligence analysts did, was what she hadn’t added.