Mark Billingham: Sleepyhead

Then a bedroom. Maybe a little cleaner but stuffed and cluttered and stinking of stale sweat. There were shoes lined up along a mantelpiece. An ironing-board stood in the corner next to a full-length mirror. Piles of magazines spilled out on to the faded cork floor tiles from beneath the unmade bed and cardboard boxes were piled high against the far wall.

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.

Whether or not he'd heard the noise, Thorne would still 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, all 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 small 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 killed 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 physically. 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.

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 full of holes, and stared in disbelief.

White, white walls and smooth, shining floorboards. The light from a row of wall-mounted halogen Damps bounced off the gleaming metal of the sharps bin and the instruments trolley. 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 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 wall, her eyes wide open, drool spilling 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.

'Hello, Tom. Come to spoil our party, have you?'

Thorne stood completely still, 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.

'Hello, James…'

There would be a hundred difficult questions to come, and a complex knot of motivation and psychosis to unravel eventually, but just for a few seconds, in the stark and horrifying tableau in front of him, Thorne saw it all 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 still 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.

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 graying. 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 all, nobody could be blamed for seeing a man ten years older than he really 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? 'Well, as you've so brilliantly 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 will have the desired effect.'

'Which is?'

Bishop shook his head. 'You're really 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 skull. '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. Skilled hands.

James in his flat. Cocky, immature and so easy to read. "I wasted a couple of years at college, 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 all 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. All 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 all, flourish without the handicap of the body. It's about freedom.'

Thorne threw a quick look to Anne. A look to tell her it would be all 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?'