every tear that rolled down her cheek and dropped on to her daughter's face.
There was a moment of calm.
Just the noise of the rain coming down, like six-inch nails on to the tiles a few feet above them. Thorne turned to see Jeremy Bishop moving slowly towards his son, his arms outstretched, his face a death mask. James backed into the instrument trolley, which clattered and rolled away from him. He stopped and his head cocked to one side, and then his arm rose gracefully into the air.
Almost as if he were about to take a bow.
It was a movement so casual that he might have reaching to scratch a shoulder-blade. Thorne saw the glint of steel at his fist a second before the blood began to from the artery in his neck.
'No…' Jeremy's voice was a whisper that could have blown down a house.
Thorne leaned against the whitewashed wall and watched as James dropped to his knees and was followed by his father. Jeremy clamped a hand across his son's neck, but the blood gushed between his fingers, running down his arms and pooling across the bleached white floorboards. Up one board.., down another.
Jeremy turned to Thorne, his face already spattered, his hair slick with it. 'Get an ambulance – call somebody.' His voice was thick with desperation. His face implored.
But so did his son's.
James Bishop looked at Tom Thorne and his eyes asked to die. They asked permission to look into his father's face and watch it contort as the blood emptied from the body. He wanted to die watching his father suffer. Thorne was tempted to let him.
Jeremy's voice was hoarse between the sobs. 'For pity's sake, Thorne…'
Then, as Thorne thought about sitting and watching, James Bishop bleed to death, he pictured Maggie Byrne, and Bishop watching as her life poured out on to a cheap duvet.
And he remembered a promise he made to Alison Willetts.
Dying would be easy. He was going to see the fucker tried and put away. He was going to watch James Bishop's hope evaporate.
Jeremy was sobbing uncontrollably, his arms, wrapped tightly around his son's neck, slippery with blood. With a last look at Anne, Thorne stepped down, out of the white room and on to the stairs, hurrying back towards the street, where he hoped Holland would be waiting.
PART FOUR
Don't get me wrong, I'm delighted he's dead. Thrilled about it. Prison is all well and good but I wouldn't want to lie here thinking about him writing his life story, cock of the fucking walk, probably out before he's fifty. Or else in some hospital somewhere, convincing them all he's mental while he pads around in comfy slippers, making model aero planes and remembering the women he killed.
Remembering what he did to me.
Sod that, I'd much rather he was dead. If l could get taken somewhere for the day, you know, loaded up into some special van and taken anywhere I want, I'd like to see his grave. Obviously dancing on it isn't really an option but I'd be happy to be laid across it. Lifted up and laid down on top of him. And I'd lie there with my face on the ground and think dark thoughts that would seep down into the earth and eat into his box like poison.
I'm glad he's dead. Stiff and still, like me. No, not like me. He's not scrabbling like a madman at the lid of the coffin, is he? Not tearing his fingers to stumps to try and get out. Not fed. Not wiped. Not breathed for. On the subject of which – no improvement. No response to the antibiotics and no chance of coming off this ventilator in the near future. Apparently the pneumonia in my lungs has been complicated by a fungal infection. Viruses and fungus. It's like I've become a breeding ground…
What I really can't stomach is that it was his choice. He chose this for me and he chose death for himself.
I'll tell you what's really ironic. I'm actually a dead positive. person. I really am. You may not believe that and I know I've been a bit up and down but you can't blame me for that. Try this for a while. Lie on your back and stare at the ceiling until your eyes start to water, and imagine it. Imagine being half dead and half alive, and the two halves not adding up to anything. Cancelling yourself out.
It's not easy to be happy all the time.
I am a positive person. But, lying here, I don't think of myself as a person at all any more. Not even a person alone, without anyone close. I wouldn't feel sorry for myself anyway because of that, but I can't even feel it. I just feel like something in a museum.
I just feel like the thing he created.
And I don't believe in God or anything afterwards. I'm sorry but I just don't, I never have. I believe in the way things are. The way I am. I believe in the capacity for people to do terrible things like he did and I believe that some people can do good.
I'd like to do something good. I want to do something. Most people don't have a choice about a lot of things. They don't choose to be unhappy or poor, and they don't choose to lose children or get cancer. That's just life, though, that's just the lottery, isn't it? It's the same for all of us. But he chose to kill people and he chose to do this to me, to take away my life and give me the one he decided I' should have. And then, when he was good and ready, he chose the manner of his own death… Anne's coming back to work next week, I think. We need to talk.
I can't do very much, but I can choose too. I want to have a say.
I don't want to let him win.
TWENTY-FIVE
Thorne hadn't been able to make good on his promise of a box. Hendricks wasn't pleased, but they were showing the game on Sky anyway, and he agreed to settle for half a dozen cans of cheap lager and a home delivery from the Bengal Lancer.
There had been no great making up, no moment of acceptance or forgiveness. Hendricks called as soon as he heard what happened and they'd talked for a while. It was all that was needed.
Nearly a month now.
When James Bishop died on the operating table, Thorne had blamed himself. Then the post-mortem revealed the drug, and he knew that, even if he'd reacted quicker, the outcome would have been the same. Warfarin. A drug prescribed to treat certain 'heart and lung disorders and, ironically, used to prevent strokes. An anticoagulant. A drug that prevents the blood clotting,
They couldn't be certain but they guessed he'd been taking it for at least a couple of weeks. Had he been planning it all along? Or had he been taking the drug just in case it ever came down to it? Down to him and his father and a scalpel.
They'd never know for sure.
They'd never know for sure, though Thorne felt pretty certain that Bishop had been the one who'd gone to the press. Leaking the story to free up the channels of information. Once a few decent holes had been torn in the veil of secrecy, he was able to learn so much more about what was happening on the case. The pipeline that fed Bishop information had been a complex one, running back and forth, in many directions and at different speeds from Thorne himself, via Jeremy Bishop, Anne and, of course, Rachel, who James had been seeing for some time. She never re-sat her exams.
Anne wasn't sure when Rachel would go back to school or when she herself would go back to work. That's what she'd said a few weeks ago. Thorne had spoken to her frequently in the days following that night in Bishop's attic, but not since. He thought about her a lot, but never without wondering if his stupidity had somehow
