Scaredy Cat (39 page)

Not in here.

As he stepped back on to the landing he heard a noise from somewhere above him. He froze. The lazy creak of a floorboard underfoot.

Underfoot.

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Whether or not he'd heard the noise, Thorne would stil have skipped the final room. As he stepped towards it and glanced to his right, he could see the way he needed to go. The stairs leading up to what must be the top floor had been stripped and scrubbed. Each tread, along with the handrail, had been meticulously covered in thick, clear polythene.

Sterile.

Thorne looked up. The stairs climbed steeply, at least twenty feet into what had to be an attic or roof conversion. Straight up and into it. Above him, al he could see was a square of light, a hole in the floor of the room above his head. He weighed it up quickly. He knew that he'd be going in blind. He would be able to see nothing of what was in the room above him until the moment his head came up through the floor.

There was nowhere else to go.

'It always comes down to the final door, Tommy...'

Above his head he heard a floorboard moan quietly. A

second later, he heard a smal human voice do the same. Anne...

Thorne raised his head and began to climb.

Despite the attack in his flat and the fact that the man had kil ed at least six women, Thorne didn't think instinctively of Bishop as somebody violent. As he climbed slowly up, one step at a time, towards whatever awaited him in the attic, he never for a second thought it might be something that could hurt him physical y. Bishop would have the advantage of surprise and geography, but Thorne guessed that he would not be waiting for him as his head appeared, inch by inch, above the floor of the attic, with a foot drawn back to kick him in the teeth or an iron bar in his hand.

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He was nearing the top now. Just a few more feet.

He felt no real sense of physical danger and yet he was

as frightened as he'd ever been in his life.

The last couple of steps.

He was not worried about what he was going to feel...

He put his foot on the last tread and pushed his body upwards.

�.. he was terrified of what he was going to see.

His head moved up, through the hole and into bright white light. He blinked quickly to adjust then opened his eyes. Thorne's last thought, before his body turned ice cold and he began to shake quietly, was that he'd been right to be afraid.

He hauled himself up on to floor level, like a drowning man clambering aboard a lifeboat ful of holes, and stared in disbelief.

White, white wal s and smooth, shining floorboards. The light from a row of wal -mounted halogen Damps bounced off the gleaming metal of the sharps bin and the instruments trol ey. An elegant chrome mixer tap fed two highly polished white basins. To one side a simple black chair, the only piece of furniture in the room. Everything else, cold and functional. Necessary to the procedure.

Bishop was standing in the very middle of the room. He was busy. He raised his head and smiled at Thorne a little sadly.

Thorne was staring at the girl's eyes, bulging as she fought the movements of his fingers on her neck with every ounce of strength she had and without the slightest success. The drug that was coursing through Rachel Higgins had made her limbs as useless and uncooperative as they

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would become permanently, if the procedure Bishop was about to perform was successful.

From his left Thorne heard a grunt. He turned. Anne

lay motionless against the wal , her eyes wide open, drool spil ing from her mouth, the Midazolam doing its work on her too, so that she could do nothing but stare helplessly at the hands working on her daughter.

The voice brought Thorne's head whipping back round. Bishop was caressing the back of the girl's neck. 'Hel o, Tom. Come to spoil our party, have you?'

Thorne stood completely stil , staring at Bishop. Not wanting to move and Spock him. Unable to move even if he'd wanted to. His mouth utterly dry. Voice no better than a whisper.

'Hel o, James...'

There would be a hundred difficult questions to come, and a complex knot of motivation and psychosis to unravel eventual y, but just for a few seconds, in the stark and horrifying tableau in front of him, Thorne saw it al perfectly. Just briefly, for a heartbeat or two, there was clarity, and he knew exactly what and why and who. He saw how he'd been manipulated, how he'd been used. How James Bishop had played him and prodded him and nudged him, exploiting his weak spots and playing to his strengths. How he'd been completely right and horribly wrong. Why Margaret Byrne

died and why she might stil be alive, were it not for him. How he'd been led by the fucking nose. Outclassed.

James Bishop was naked from the waist up. Crisscrossing his stomach were half a dozen straight pink puckered scars, like giant worms beneath his skin. Knife wounds, Thorne thought. Self-inflicted.

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Anne : '... he was a bit screwed up about it:

Rebecca : '... James went off the rails a little:

The scars were the least remarkable thing. The short hair was greying. Spray on dye was the easiest explanation. 'Tried being an actor. Anything that pays the rent: He was wearing identical glasses and it was easy to see it, even here in a brightly lit room from a few feet away. At night, outside with only the light from a streetlamp, or no light at al , nobody could be blamed for seeing a man ten years older than he real y was.

It was Thorne who had seen Jeremy Bishop.

Thorne looked at Rachel and at Anne. 'What's the point of this, though, James? What's this got to do with anything?'

Bishop chuckled. Wasn't it obvious? 'Wel , as you've so bril iantly failed in your efforts to arrest and convict the wrong man...'

'Your father.'

'My father, yes. I'm having to finish things off a little quicker. With a little less subtlety. It isn't what I wanted but it wil have the desired effect.'

'Which is?'

Bishop shook his head. 'You're real y not the man I thought you were, are you, Tom?'

'I could say the same for you, James...'

'Anne's daughter becoming one of her own patients is pretty tidy, though, isn't it? He may not even be able to live with that.' He was running his thumbs-slowly up and down the base of Rachel's skul . 'Mind you, he's lived with himself long enough...'

Thorne's eyes didn't move from the long, thin fingers. From the hands encased in the tight surgical gloves. Skil ed hands.

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James in his flat. Cocky, immature and so easy to read. "I wasted a couple of years at col ege, yeah. I'm not the ivory tower type: The question Thorne had never thought to ask. Four stupid little words.

What did you study?

It was important to keep him talking...

'Is that al this has been about, James? Hurting your father? Getting your own back?'

Bishop glared at him. The mask of civility slipping. 'Don't be fucking stupid, Thorne. Al this is about?' He looked disgusted at the suggestion. Then his voice softened and changed, becoming almost gentle, concerned, yet with the strength that came from conviction. 'This is about aiming for something like perfection. It's about taking something flawed and weak and rotten and removing the need for it. Eliminating the reliance on it. Letting the brain, which is the only part that's worth anything at al , flourish without the handicap of the body. It's about freedom.'

Thorne threw a quick look to Anne. A look to tel her it would be al right. He put his hands in his pockets, trying to appear relaxed as he turned slowly back to Bishop. Casual, enquiring.

'The frailty of the human body. Something your father taught you?'

'One of many things...' The voice had changed again. Casual, disinterested.

'And framing him for it?'

Bishop removed a hand from Rachel's head and ran it slowly across the noughts and crosses scar tissue on his stomach. The other hand stayed where it was, kneading the muscles at the back of her neck. Thorne considered running at him - he could be on him in a second. But a second

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was al Bishop would need to hurt Rachel. Instead Thorne offered him an answer to the question: 'Kil ing two birds with ol e stone.'

'Close enough. Except for the kil ing bit, obviously. Not very appropriate.'

Thorne disagreed. 'You did plenty of kil ing, James.' Bishop shrugged.

A weapon would even things up a little. Thorne's eyes flashed to the instrument trol ey, to the gleaming tools lined up in a row. Clamps, forceps, a scalpel.

Bishop caught the look. 'Please don't compromise this procedure, Thorne.' He smiled, glancing at the scalpel. 'I think I could reach it before you.'

Thorne nodded slowly. He could feel Anne's eyes on him. Begging.

Bishop stroked the muscle at the base of Rachel's skul . 'The sternocleidomastoid, Tom. Are you familiar with it?'

Thorne was familiar enough. He knew what Bishop was looking for. Feeling for. 'Why the attack on me, though, James? I stil don't real y understand that.'

'I knew you'd think it was my father. I knew you'd be sure. It was easy. Your relationship with Anne came in very handy. Perhaps your dick clouded your judgement a little. You were so easy to ginger Up, Tom, so easy to goad.'

Thorne winced a little at the truth of it: seizing hungrily on every clue Bishop had dropped in front of him; clutching at every straw that had been so deliberately scattered in his path - the drugs, the timing of the kil ings, the car... 'The Volvo?'

'The old man swears by them. When he bought his new one I persuaded him to let me have the cast-off. I gave him a hundred pounds for it, I think, which is obviously less 384 MARK BILLINGHAM

than he'd have got part-ex from a garage but, wel .., he is my father.'

That was the key, Thorne realised. Nobody knew Jeremy Bishop better. His son knew his movements, his whereabouts, the words he used. He knew everything his father knew about Alison, about the case. He knew how to steal his wedding ring.

'Sorry it didn't work out with the ring, James. Forensical y compromised, I'm afraid.'

'These things happen. I'm sorry about the Byrne woman. I'm sorry about al the ones who died, sincerely I am, but I've told you that, haven't I? Of course, she would n't have needed to die were you not planning to go charging in there waving your stupid photographs. Have you thought about that, Tom?'

James in his flat. Seeing Margaret Byrne's address on a piece of paper next to the phone ....

Thorne had got it so completely wrong. Margaret Byme hadn't died because she could identify Jeremy Bishop. She had died precisely because she could say for certain that Jeremy Bishop wasn't the kil er.

They stared at each other, across six yawning feet of gleaming white space, the rain hammering on the roof above their heads.

Thorne jumped, and they both turned their heads when the bleeper went off.

He remembered that Anne was on cal . The bleeper was inside her handbag, dumped on the floor next to her.

By the time the bleeping had stopped Thorne had worked something else out. The phone cal that Margaret Byrne had seen him make: Bishop had been cal ing his father, to see if he'd been cal ed in to work. Checking his

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availability. 'You bleeped your father on the way to the hospital. That night with Alison. You were probably sitting outside, waiting for him to arrive, giving him an alibi that was almost watertight, putting his name on a list.' Bishop smiled modestly. 'Same with the drugs in Leicester--'

Bishop cut him off. 'Yes, a mistake of a sort, obviously. Had you even worked that out?'

Thorne looked across at Anne. Everything was going to befine. 'Anne worked it out.'

Bishop smiled. 'I'm impressed. But it did, as you say, put my father's name on a list. That was the hook. It got you interested...'

It had certainly done that.

'But it would never have worked, James. It was al circumstantial. There wasn't any real evidence.'

'That never seemed to bother you, though, did it, Tom?'

Thorne could say nothing, his tongue sticky against the roof of his mouth.

Suddenly Bishop grinned. Thorne could see that his fingers were locked in position, as was the look of something approaching rapture on his face.

'This is my favourite part, Tom. It al begins here.' The muscles in Bishop's chest flexed as he began to squeeze Rachel's carotid artery. Thorne remembered Hendricks with his hands on his neck, taking him through it. They had about two minutes until she stopped breathing.

Thorne glanced at Anne. The look on her face was desperate. A snarl came from somewhere deep down inside her.

Save my daughter.

Thorne had no idea how. Bishop kil ed when he

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needed to, that much was obvious. The hands that were squeezing away Rachel's life in front of them were as dangerous as any weapon. He could snap her neck in a heartbeat...

Thorne felt leaden, useless. Mummified.

Ten seconds gone already. Her tongue lol ing out.

'How does this hurt him, James? How does this make him suffer?'

Bishop said nothing. His lips moved soundlessly as he counted away the time in his head.

'This won't bring your mother back, James.' Thorne was shouting now. Anything to get a reaction, to make him stop. James was lost in concentration, readying himself for the difficult part, once the girl had stopped breathing. The manipulation.

Time ticking away. Thorne felt the seconds hurtling past him, Rachel's breath rushing past him as he stood frozen and useless.

'Please, Tommy...'

'Helen?'

'She's a child...'

' What can I do? WHAT CAN I DO?'

Then suddenly, a voice from below them. 'James?'

A reaction from Bishop. A reaction to the voice of his father. Fear maybe? Certainly a tension in his body and in his face. Tension in his fingers...

'James? I saw you driving away with Anne - what's going on? Is everything al right? Somebody's forced open your front door.'