“Me too.” Sellers glanced nervously at Proust as he spoke. “It’s clear what mood Gilligan was in when he wrote that letter. Suicidal, playing the martyr. He obviously trawled the Web for unsolved murders, picked a few at random and decided to confess, since he was confessing to Blundy’s anyway.”

“Why would he do that?” asked Gibbs. “Why confess to four murders you’ve not done?”

“Three reasons,” said Simon. “One, it’s a statement: ‘You all think I’m such a bad person? All right, then, have it your way. I must have killed Damon Blundy, mustn’t I, if I’m the monster you all think I am? And even if I didn’t, I might as well say I did, since you couldn’t think any less highly of me.’ The spirit of ‘You bastards made me do this.’ And maybe also an element of ‘You’re all determined to believe I’m a pathological liar? Fine, then let me confess to a murder—see if you’d rather believe I’m evil or believe I’m a liar. Which is it, since I can’t be both?’”

“I need an aspirin already and he’s only just started,” Proust muttered to Gibbs, who was standing next to him.

“That’s Blundy’s murder covered, but why add three others to his slate?” Sellers asked.

“For reason number two,” said Simon. “Contrary to what all the vindictive dicks on Twitter and Facebook believed, Bryn Gilligan genuinely wanted to be a better man. He wanted to prove he was a good guy. He must have known there was a strong chance his confession’d leak to the press, and that we’d establish pretty quickly that it wasn’t true. I think he wanted everyone to find out he’d tried to take the blame for four crimes he didn’t commit. The more he confessed to, the more heroic he looked. He wanted the world to know he was prepared to make the biggest sacrifice of himself that he could—to atone.”

“Oh, to atone?” said Proust in his red-flag voice. “This detective lark is easy, isn’t it, when you don’t have to worry about logic, motive or evidence? It’s as easy as joining some words together.”

“But it wouldn’t make anyone think better of him, would it?” Gibbs asked Simon. “Perverting the course of justice in four serious crimes, on top of doping before races—it makes him look like even more of a twat. To me, anyway.”

“That’s not how he’d have seen it,” said Simon. “In his eyes, confessing to four murders he hasn’t committed is bringing himself lower than even his worst enemies ever wanted him brought. Throwing himself onto the burning pyre. Turning his ambition, which once made him want to soar to great heights, in the opposite direction: a gruesome drive to claim the depths—”