He nodded. ‘I stayed silent and listened to him explain to me how killing nine people at the same time was easier. He said he’d already been away from work longer than he should have been.’ Mills smiled, an anguished, distressed twitch of the mouth. ‘Longer than he should have been – like he’d been talking to the neighbours and hadn’t realized the time.’ Tears flashed in his eyes. ‘So, yes, I stood about where you are now and watched him do it all. I stood and did absolutely nothing. I just watched them drop, one after the next, bang, bang, bang, bang. I was a fucking coward.’ More tears, and then more. ‘All I could think about was getting out of here; getting it done, going home, trying to forget any of it had ever happened. All the money I’d taken from him up until that point, all the shit he had me do, none of it was anywhere near as bad as this. I knew what I was doing for him wasn’t legal – but I wasn’t hurting or injuring people. I was just keeping him insulated. Because of his money, there was always someone out to get him, blackmail him, always someone trying to twist him in whatever direction they thought would get them what they needed – so that was all I was doing: twisting things back. It was mucky, it was grey, but it was never like this.’

He wobbled a little from side to side, the quiet filled by the sounds of the forest. ‘And then I came out here with him, and I watched him do this, and my complicity became the catalyst for him to tell me the truth, for him to reveal he was actually Adrian Vale. And that was what he wanted: he wanted to tell someone, because lies become so heavy, even if you’re as good at them as he was.’

I looked into the trees again.

I could see something now.

‘He was the devil.’

I could see the nine graves, shallow mounds against the forest floor, speckled white with frost.

‘I don’t sleep any more,’ Mills sobbed. ‘I just lay awake at night and I see the nine of them lined up here. I hear them too. That’s even worse, hearing them. I hear them crying and begging for their lives, and then the crying and the begging gets worse each time Vale kills one of them – they start moving around, running, going to one another – and then I remember Freda Davey was at the end of the line …’ He stopped, his speech fractured. ‘She just stood there, and turned and faced him before he shot her. She just looked him in the eyes.’

There was nothing except the sound of Mills crying.

No wind. No birds.

‘I stayed behind and buried them all,’ he whimpered.