‘Trying to dissolve a body in acid: pre-DNA, that was his first smart move – and it wasn’t like getting hold of the acid was hard for him, because he had a key to the builder’s yard where they sold hundreds of gallons of the stuff. He said he went there and picked up what he needed, made an insanely good job of fudging the stocklists so it looked like nothing was missing, and then removed the labels so no one would know where the containers had been bought from once they were found later on. All of this from a first-timer.’

‘And Klein?’

‘Vale said the original plan was to put Klein in the acid bath too, one of them on top of the other. But then – after he left Klein tied up in the motel room, and after he’d picked up all that acid – he deviated from the plan. He used Klein’s driving licence to locate his house instead. Vale decided he needed to discover whatever he could about Klein – which, again, is pretty smart for an amateur. It’s pretty lucid and cold-blooded. That’s what I mean about Vale. He wasn’t right.’

‘So he goes to Klein’s – then what?’

‘When he gets to the house, in the front room, there’s Klein’s mum. She’s badly disabled, wires coming out of her everywhere. So he gets inside the home and just wanders around while she’s sleeping, and he sees the sort of relationship that Klein has with his mother, how close they are – all these photos of the two of them – and that was when the plan changed direction. That was when he knew he could get Klein to take the fall for Pablo’s murder. I mean, Klein was just a kid selling drugs to pay for his mum’s medical bills. He wasn’t some criminal mastermind.’

Mills coughed, the movement hurting him.

‘He manipulated Klein by threatening the mother,’ he went on, hoarser now, ‘maybe because he recognized himself in Klein and knew how to push the right buttons. Vale loved his mother too. He was fucked in the brain but that much was human about him. And the mum, she was how he got Klein up to some park in LA on that same night; she was how he put Klein on his knees up there. Vale pulled the trigger for him but the mother was the reason Klein put the gun in his mouth. He said to Klein that he’d kill her. Vale said he’d make the old bitch suffer.’

A terrible, prolonged silence settled between us.