Bishop looked at the DC sardonically. ‘Do you mean, did I want to kill her?’
‘You said that, sir, not us,’ Branson slammed in.
Grace was interested to see Bishop’s display of emotion. Perhaps they were just crocodile tears for the benefit of the interviewing team.
In a faltering voice Bishop said, ‘I loved her, I never wanted to kill her. People have affairs, it’s the way of the world. When Katie and I first met, we were both married to other people. We had an affair. I think I knew in my heart then that if we did marry, she would probably end up doing the same to me.’
‘Is that why you were unfaithful to her?’ Nicholl asked.
Bishop took his time to respond. ‘Are you referring to Sophie Harrington?’
‘I am.’
His eyes moved left again. ‘We’d been having a flirtation. Nice for my ego, but that’s as far as it’s gone. I never slept with her, although she seems – seemed,’ he corrected, ‘to enjoy fantasizing that it had happened.’
‘You have never slept with Miss Harrington? Not once?’
Grace watched the man’s eyes intently. They went left again.
‘Absolutely. Never.’ Bishop smiled nervously. ‘I’m not saying I wouldn’t have liked to. But I have a moral code. I was stupid, I was flattered by her interest in me, enjoyed her company – but you have to remember, I’ve been down that road before. You sleep with someone and if you’re lucky, it’s a crap experience. But if you are unlucky, it’s a gosh-wow experience and you are smitten. And then you are in big trouble. That’s what happened to Katie and me – we were smitten with each other.’
‘So you never slept with Ms Harrington?’ Glenn Branson pressed.
‘Never. I wanted to try to make my marriage work.’
‘So you thought kinky sex might be a way to achieve that?’ Branson asked.
‘Pardon? What do you mean?’
Branson looked at his notes. ‘One of our team spoke yesterday to a Mrs Diane Rand. We understand from her that she was one of your wife’s best friends, is that correct?’
‘They spoke to each other about four times a day. God knows what they had to say to each other!’
‘Plenty, I think,’ Branson responded humourlessly. ‘Mrs Rand told our officer, a WPC, that your wife had been expressing concerns recently over your increasingly kinky sexual demands on her. Would you like to elaborate on this?’
Leighton Lloyd interjected quickly and firmly. ‘No, my client would not.’
‘I have one significant question on this issue,’ Branson said, addressing the lawyer. Lloyd gestured for him to ask it.
‘Mr Bishop,’ Branson said, ‘do you possess a replica Second World War gas mask?’
‘What is the relevance of that question?’ Lloyd asked the DS.
‘It’s extremely relevant, sir,’ Branson said.
Grace watched Bishop’s eyes intently. They shot to the right. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Is it something you and Mrs Bishop used in your sex life?’
‘I’m not allowing my client to answer.’
Bishop raised a pacifying hand at his solicitor. ‘It’s OK. Yes, I bought it.’ He shrugged, blushing. ‘We were experimenting. I – I read a book about how to keep your love life going – you know? It sort of flags after a while between two people, when the initial excitement – novelty of the relationship – is over. I got stuff for us to try out.’ His face was the colour of beetroot.
Branson turned his focus on to Bishop’s dinner with his financial adviser, Phil Taylor. ‘Mr Bishop, it’s correct, isn’t it, that one of the cars you own is a Bentley Continental, in a dark red colour?’
‘Umbrian red, yes.’
‘Registration number Lima Juliet Zero Four November Whiskey Sierra?’
Unused to the phonetic alphabet, Bishop had to think for a moment. Then he nodded.
‘At eleven forty-seven last Thursday night, this vehicle was photographed by an Automatic Number Plate Recognition camera, on the south-bound carriageway of the M23 motorway, in the vicinity of Gatwick airport. Can you explain why it was there and who was driving it?’
Bishop looked at his solicitor.
‘Do you have the photograph?’ Leighton Lloyd asked.
‘No, but I can let you have a copy,’ Branson said.
Lloyd made a note in his book.
‘There’s a mistake,’ Bishop said. ‘There must be.’
