Mark Billingham: Sleepyhead

'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 was all Bishop would need to hurt Rachel. Instead Thorne offered him an answer to the question: 'Killing two birds with one stone.'

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

Thorne disagreed. 'You did plenty of killing, James.'

Bishop shrugged.

A weapon would even things up a little. Thorne's eyes flashed to the instrument trolley, 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 skull.

'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 still don't really 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 judgment 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 killings, 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 than he'd have got part-ex from a garage but, well.., 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. Forensically compromised, I'm afraid.'

'These things happen. I'm sorry about the Byrne woman. I'm sorry about all the ones who died, sincerely I am, but I've told you that, haven't I? Of course, she would not 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 Byrne 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 killer.

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 call. 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 call that Margaret Byrne had seen him make: Bishop had been calling his father, to see if he'd been called in to work. Checking his 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 be fine. '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 all 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 all 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 killed when he 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 lolling 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 all right? Somebody's forced open your front door.'

Half a minute gone…

There was no way of knowing what James would do with his father here but Thorne had little option.

Ninety seconds left. Rachel was nearly half-way dead. Thorne shouted, 'Bishop. We're up here!'

Jeremy Bishop appeared in the attic like a ghost rising up through the trap in a stage. The image was completed instantly as the blood deserted his face and the light vanished from the eyes.

Thorne knew what he would look like when he was dead.

'My God -James?' He leaned forward and for a second Thorne thought he was going to pass out. At the last moment Thorne realised he was moving towards his son and reached out an arm to stop him. Bishop glared angrily at him and then, as if woken from a dream, nodded slowly, taking in the full, horrific implications of what he could see around him.

Anne. Rachel. James.

Thorne watched the son glare at the father. Couldn't be much more than a minute now…

James's voice was childish, taunting. 'What is it, then?

Horror? Outrage? Or just surprise that I know how to do it? A pretty advanced procedure, all in all, considering that I couldn't cut it. Considering what a major disappointment I was…'

'Please-'

James screamed, 'Shut up! Fucking shut up, will you?'

Rachel's eyes were rolling up into her head. Sixty seconds, if that…

'I always meant to ask you something. When exactly did you start believing the things you do? There must have been a time when you thought the same as the rest of them.

About the human body, I mean. All that bollocks about a miracle of design and efficiency. Christ, I'm grateful you 388 taught me what crap that was. Your belief in technology was inspiring, did you know that? Truly inspiring. I'm just sorry I couldn't repay the faith you had in me academically. But even when I was fucking it all up, even when I was failing so brilliantly to become the doctor you wanted me to be, I still believed in all the things you did.' He started to cry. 'I still remembered everything you taught me.'