I nod, trying to think back. I don't like the sound of that "one way or the other'. "Do I remember you bringing me here in a boat?" I ask.

He laughs. "Well, I don't have access to a helicopter." He grins. "Yes. An inflatable."

"Hmm."

He looks to each side, as if checking the gun and the phone are still there. "So; sitting comfortably?" he asks me.

"Well, no, but don't let it put you off."

He gives a small smile that disappears quickly. "I'm going to give you a choice later, Cameron," he says, sounding calm and serious. "But first I want to tell you why I did all those things."

"Uh-huh?" I want to say, It's perfectly fucking obvious why you did them, but I keep my mouth shut.

"It was Lingary, of course, first," Andy says, looking younger still now, and staring down at his hand and the bullet. "I mean, I'd met people I despised in the past, people I had no respect for and who I thought, Well, the world would be a better place without them. But I don't know, maybe I was being naive and expected that in a war, especially in a professional army, it would somehow be better; people would rise above themselves; stretch their own moral envelope, you know?"

I nod cautiously. I'm thinking, Moral envelope? Coast-speak.

"But of course it's not true," Andy says, rubbing the little copper and brass shape of the bullet between his fingers. "War is a magnifier, a multiplier. Decent people act more decently; bastards get to be even bigger bastards." He waves one hand. "I'm not talking about all that banality-of-evil stuff — organised genocide is different — I mean just ordinary warfare, where the rules are obeyed. And the truth is that some people do rise above themselves, but others sink beneath themselves. They don't gain, they don't shine the way some people do in combat and they don't even muddle through the way most people do, scared to death but doing their job because they've been well trained and because their mates are depending on them; they just have their faults and weaknesses exposed, and in certain circumstances, if that person is an officer and his flaws are of a particular type and he's risen to a certain level without ever encountering a real battlefield, those faults can lead to the deaths of a lot of men."

"We all have moral responsibility, whether we like it or not, but people in power — in the military, in politics, in professions, whatever — have an imperative to care, or at least to exhibit an officially acceptable analogue of care; duty, I suppose. It was people I knew had abused that responsibility that I attacked; that's what I was taking as my… authority."

He shrugs, frowns. "The situation was a little different with Oliver, the porn merchant; that was partly to throw them off the scent and partly because I just despised what he was doing.

"And the judge, well, he wasn't quite so culpable as the others; I was comparatively lenient with him.

"The rest… they were all powerful men, all rich — several of them very rich indeed. All of them had all they could ask for in life, but they all wanted more — which is okay, I suppose, it's just a failing, you can't kill people for that alone — but they all treated people like shit, literally like shit; something unpleasant to be disposed of. It was like they'd forgotten their humanity and could never find it again, and there was only one way to remind them of it, and remind all the others like them, and make them feel frightened and vulnerable and powerless, the way they made other people feel all the time."

He holds the bullet up in front of his face, peering at it. "There wasn't one of those men who hadn't killed people; indirectly, the way the Nuremberg Nazis mostly did, but definitely, unarguably, beyond any reasonable doubt.

"And Halziel," he says, taking a deep breath. "Well, you know about him."

"Jesus, Andy," I say. I know I should shut up and let him talk on as much as he likes but I can't help it. "The guy was a selfish bastard and a lousy doctor; but he was incompetent, not malicious. He didn't hate Clare or anything or wish her —»

"But that's just it," Andy says, holding his hands out. "If a certain level of skill — of competence — translates into the gift of life or death it becomes malice when you don't bother to exercise that skill, because people are relying on you to do just that. But," he holds up one hand to me, forestalling, and nods, "I'll admit to a level of personal vengeance there. Once I'd done all the others and I reckoned I didn't have much longer to operate overground, as it were, well, it just seemed the right thing to do."

He looks up at me, a strange, wide-eyed open smile on his face. "I'm shocking you, aren't I, Cameron?"

I gaze into his eyes for a while, then look away out the doorway towards the water and the small white shapes of the circling, crying birds. "No," I tell him. "Not as much as when I realised it was you who'd spiked Bissett like that and it was you behind that gorilla mask and you who burned Howie —»

"Howie didn't suffer," Andy says matter-of-factly. "I stoved his head in with a log first." He grins. "Probably saved him from a terrible hangover."

I stare at him, feeling sick and close to tears at the off-handed way the man I've always thought of as my best friend is talking about murder, and also feeling pretty vulnerable and at risk myself right now, too, no matter what he's said and even though he has untied my hands.

Andy reads my expression. "He was a cunt, Cameron." He pauses, looks at the ceiling. "No that's not fair, and that's what he usually called women, as well; so let's say he was a prick, a dickhead; and a violent prick, a vindictive bullying dickhead, at that. Over the years he broke his wife's jaw, both her arms and her collarbone; he fractured her skull and he kicked her when she was pregnant. He was just an unmitigated pig-fuck of a man. He was probably battered as a kid himself — he never talked about it — but fuck him. That's what we're human for, so we can choose to alter our behaviour; he wouldn't do it himself, so I did it for him."

"Andy," I say. "For Christ's sake; there are laws, there are courts; I know they're not perfect, but —»

"Oh, laws," Andy says, voice saturated with scorn. "Laws based on what? With what authority?"

"Well, how about democracy, for example?"

"Democracy? A two-way choice between tough shit and not-quite-so-tough shit every four or five years if you're lucky?"

"That's not what democracy is! It's not just that; it's a free press —»

"And we have that, don't we?" Andy laughs. "Except the bits that are free aren't read very much and the bits that are most read aren't free. Let me quote you: "They're not newspapers, they're comics for the semi-literate; propaganda sheets controlled by foreign billionaires who just want to make as much money as technically possible and maintain a political environment conducive to that single aim.""

"All right, I stand by that, but it's still better than nothing."

"Oh, I know it is, Cameron," he says, sitting back and looking slightly shocked at being so misunderstood. "I know it is; and I know that what powerful people can get away with, they will get away with, and if the people they exploit let them, well, in a sense that serves them right. But don't you see?" He jabs himself in the chest. "That includes me!" He laughs. "I'm part of it, too; I'm a product of the system. I'm just another human being, a bit better off than most, a bit smarter than most, maybe a bit luckier than most, but just another part of the equation, another variable that society's thrown up. So I come along and I do what I can get away with, because it seems fit to me to do it, because I'm like a businessman, you see? I'm still a businessman; I'm addressing a need. I've seen a niche in the market unfilled and I'm filling it."