He gave a mental shrug – nothing ventured, nothing gained – and returned to the conversation. ‘What finally convinced me, though, was a mistake you made.’

‘Really?’

‘When you were on the street with Ron Pulaski, you referred to the attempted hit in Mexico on the federal police official. The project you’d put together a few years ago.’

‘Right. I wanted to mention something specific. For credibility.’

‘Ah, but that case was sealed. If you were a legitimate lawyer who’d never met Richard Logan, like you claimed, you’d have had no idea about the Mexico City job.’

A pause. Then: ‘Sealed?’

‘Apparently the State Department and the Mexican Gabinete Legal were not happy that you – an American – had come minutes away from killing a high-ranking Mexican law enforcer. They preferred to act as if the incident had never happened. There was no press about it.’

‘Oh.’ He sounded bitter.

Rhyme said, ‘Now answer me a question.’

‘All right.’

‘How did you get the gig? For the Stantons and their AFFC?’

‘It was time to get out of prison. I got in touch with the people who’d been involved in the domestic terror incident a few years ago when you and I went head-to-head. Remember?’

‘Of course.’

‘They set me up with the AFFC – another white supremacist militia. I told them I could put them on the map. Harriet and Billy came to visit me in prison and I laid out a plan. By the way, did you ever see them together, those two, aunt and nephew? Uneasy dynamic there. Gives a whole new meaning to the name American Families First.’

Rhyme demurred. The observation, true or not, didn’t interest him.

The Watchmaker continued, ‘They wanted to make a name for themselves. So we brainstormed. I came up with the idea of botulism in the drinking water. I learned that Billy was a tattoo artist. We’d tattoo victims with an Old Testament message. Apocalypse, I was saying. They just love that kind of rhetoric. Striking a blow for their idiotic values. They loved it too when I suggested they use poisons as the murder weapons. Justice for the minority and socialist values that were poisoning society, et cetera, et cetera. Oh, they just lapped that up. Well, Matthew did. Billy and Harriet seemed a bit more tempered. You know, Lincoln, the small-minded are the most dangerous.’

Not necessarily, the criminalist reflected, considering the man he was conversing with at the moment.

CHAPTER 78

‘So,’ Rhyme continued, ‘in exchange for your plan they slipped you some of the tetrodotoxin. And arranged to bribe medical personnel and prison guards, so you’d be declared dead and smuggled out of the lockup. And found some homeless corpse to be shipped to the funeral home for cremation.’

‘More or less.’

‘Must have been pricey.’

‘Twenty million cash total.’

‘And the funeral home charade? With you as Weller. Why that?’