Vyner swallowed, visibly sweating in the room that now only held Anna and John as Gwen excused herself the moment Vyner started whimpering. Anna almost wished she could go with her. Sniveling cowards and bullies falling apart into blubbering messes never proved as satisfying in the moment as the imagination beforehand led one to believe.

"You have to understand," He babbled and Anna steeled herself for the waterfall of excuses that would come pouring out of the trapped man's mouth. "It wasn't like that at first."

"Wasn't like what at first?" Anna sucked the insides of her cheek. "Wasn't like you were helping a woman run drugs into this country or weren't helping a serial killer evade justice?"

"It's… It's not like… It isn't as simple as all that."

"Then explain it to us in chronological order. And for the love of gods pull yourself together and stop crying." John threw a handkerchief at him. "If I've got to make you repeat this because you're sobbing so much we can't understand you or the tape won't pick it up, I swear I'll book you right here and now instead of later so you have to write out your confession by hand."

"Then you'll offer me a deal?"

"I highly doubt that." John rolled his eyes, turning to Anna. "I'm not feeling very charitable."

"Nor me." Anna shrugged Vyner looked to her for sympathy. "It's been a bloody long day. Long weekend, actually, and you've just made it all worse."

"Then I've got nothing to say." Vyner crossed his arms and John sighed, pulling the envelope close enough to dig into the bottom of it to pull out another set of pictures. "What are… What are those?"

"Just more photographs provided by someone who finds you as loathsome as we do." John snagged the last one, "I'm sure these aren't the only ones he's got in whatever album he collected on you but he gave us a nice sampling."

With each one he laid out before Vyner, the other man's face tinged white to green to purple. Once they spread out the way Vyner previously spread Anna's multitude of IDs there was silence. John turned to Anna and she shrugged as Vyner appeared close to choking. "I'd say these are pretty incriminating."

"I don't know." John held up one of Vyner guarding Vera as she spoke to another man with a pile of money between them. "This feels a little staged. Like movie level staged."

"But this one though," Anna held up another photo "It looks almost a hundred percent awkward. Like 'Candid Camera' caught you with your trousers down."

She turned back to Vyner, "So tell me, exactly what would you think you could give us that would make all of this something any jury would excuse?"

"I've got…" Vyner swallowed, "I've got a few locations."

"That sounds vaguely promising." Anna laid down the photo. "But it's a little too vague for what we're asking."

"Locations of what, specifically?"

"Vera had-"

"I'm not interested in the remains of the drug operation that crumbled with Vera's death." John frowned and shook his head. "That's for the vice department to handle. And even if we were on it, it's all going to blow away without our help."

"You think, just because she's dead, Vera's operation'll just roll up and die like a forgotten cig?" Vyner shook his head in return, "Someone else'll just come along and take her place. That's the way it all works. I can give you an idea of who it'll be and what they'd go for. How to strike white the iron's hot."

"Then you'd have to give us a breakdown of Vera's entire operation, down to the ground, before we could possibly consider cutting a deal." John tapped the table to bring Vyner's attention back to him. "Because if these pictures say anything, it's that you have as much to gain from the next horrible person who sits in her chair as you did from when she sat there."

"But that's not really what we want." Anna interjected before Vyner could speak again. "We want you to tell us what you know about a serial killer."

Vyner shuffled in his seat, "It's not as simple as all that."

"Then make it simple because you're giving me a headache every time you say 'it's not simple'." Anna circled her finger in the air. "It's all around the merry-go-round with you and I'm sick of it."

"She's right." John twitched his head toward Anna. "If you can't speak clearly to us then it's really a waste of our time to be here."

"And given how exhausted I am, I'm all for tossing you in a corner where you can sweat it out." Anna sighed, "It's been an exhausting weekend and I'm beyond trying to play games with anyone."

"It's-"

"If you say 'it's not simple' again, I'll walk right out that door and all this'll be over for you." John pointed and waited a beat. "You'll be at the mercy of whomever we've got in lockup and then, once you're released, whoever finds you on the street and wants to make sure they're tying up loose ends."

"You wouldn't." Vyner visibly paled under the fluorescent lights and the ring of sweat around his collar only deepened. "You can't do that."

"The key is that we're not doing anything because we've got no dog in the fight. However," Anna dragged his attention back to her. "We're giving you this chance, right now, to speak your piece while we've still got any reason to be sympathetic in the slightest to your case."

"If you want a lawyer, ask for one. If you want to write this all out by hand, then say so. But we've got nothing else to say to you if you're not saying anything of worth to us." John ensured Vyner stared at him before continuing, "Do you understand what we're offering you?"

Vyner swallowed again and nodded, "I was going to say, it's not like that."

"Not like you're helping a known drug lord or not like you were complicit in hiding a serial killer from the police?" Anna made a face, "Because I get the feeling neither of those are good excuses."

"Or even remotely true." John muttered and Anna could only shrug in agreement with his statement.

"It wasn't the job I thought it would be. The job wasn't…" Vyner fidgeted again in his seat, "I wasn't hired to do either of those things… originally."

"You were hired as a Guard. I would say that what you were hired to do originally and what you've been doing are diametrically opposed." John folded his arms over his chest, his fingers digging into his skin to stop himself reacting. "So what else were you hired to do?"

"A few things. Side work, to keep the bills paid."

"What kind of side work?" Anna frowned, flicking her eyes toward John but he only gave her a second of a shrug.

"Protection stuff." Vyner shook his head, "I'd done that sort of work before. Moonlighting for extra money on the side. Small-time bodyguard type stuff. It's what got me into the Met in the first place."

"Who were you protecting with these moonlighting jobs?"

"Rick kids, some of those celebrities who pass through on tours or whatever, people who needed an extra hand making sure people didn't make more trouble for then than they could handle."

"And you handled that?"

Vyner nodded, "It was how Vera found out about me."

"And it was that easy to get involved in her operation then? A step up from your moonlighting?" John raised an eyebrow. "That's a bit of a leap."

"It's all about how you bend the rules." Vyner's hands came up onto the table top, interlacing and separating in alternating motions. "Once you've added a few false claims or made things a little more exaggerated so you can get around some tricky lawyers, it's really not too hard to think beyond that."

"You were doing that?" John's voice edged and Anna put out a hand to stop him continuing into another statement as Vyner spoke.

"It's what my training officer at the Met taught me. Ways around the system. Simple stuff that made our jobs better." Vyner almost looked down his nose at them. "The kind of thing you don't want to get out because people think less of you for it."

"You're right." Anna rolled her eyes, "I can't imagine how anyone could think less of you once they'd heard you say something like that."

"You don't know." Vyner bit at her, "What it's like to walk beats people don't want to walk. To break up fights no one cares about. To try and solve crimes in parts of the city left to rot because they're full of chavs and whores. It's survival of the fittest and I fought and clawed for what I got."

"And look where it dumped you?" Anna pulled a tight smile, "I'm guessing you thought that if you shoveled the shit long enough no one would notice that you'd shoveled it wrong."

Vyner's defiance ebbed and his shoulders hunched. "It got into some trouble there and a friend of mine helped me out of it. Got me transferred here on some conditions that I'd rather not talk about."

"The Met might want to talk about them if what you're saying, in any way, impeded their investigations." John made a note, "I'm guessing they've got a file or two they want to talk to you about."

"At this point it doesn't matter, it's all under the rug anyway."

"Your friend do that for you?" Anna's jaw tightened. "Before he made you promise to help him out of a jam, I'm guessing."

"He needed my help with something else."

"With what?"

"He needed someone to look out for his son." Vyner shrugged, "It wasn't anything different than what I was already doing."

"With the moonlighting or had you already thrown in with Vera and her lot by this point?"

"Vera…" Vyner sighed, "I met Vera in London. I'd bagged a few of her runners there and she'd made some kind of threat but I wrote it off. When I took the Guard job here she… She tracked me down. She had her own kind of threats to make and it was different now that I was here so I… I traded services for silence."

"I'm sure you weren't doing it for free."

"It's all part of the game."

John shook his head, "I'm sure it is."

"Look, don't judge me Bates." Vyner scoffed in John's direction, "I did what I had to so I could survive. And whatever kind of judgment you want to cast at me, just know I'll bite whatever bullet's coming for me when it does come."

"Don't tempt me with the idea that I could make it come sooner." John took a breath and continued. "Whose son?"

"What?"

"The protection gig that got you out of jail free in London." Anna's pen poised over the page, "Who was it?"

"I can't-"

"If you dragged us through your pitiful excuse of a life story to stop just short of the punch line we actually care about, then I'm going to be infuriated." Anna's free hand clutched into a fist so hard her knuckles whitened. "Who hired you?"

"Nigel Green did, the head of Special Branch."

Anna almost thudded back into her seat. "Alex Green's father hired you to help his son?"

"All I knew is that his son had a bad run on some investigation or operation or something, I don't know." Vyner shrugged, "Nigel just said his bastard kid needed someone to give him a roof for a bit, help him recover."

"Code for 'lie low' I'm sure." John worked his jaw, "And who refers to their son that way?"

"It's not his full-blood son. Alex was his kid from some relationship that soured when he was on the rocks with his wife." Vyner shook his head, "It was back when we were in the service together. Whatever side piece he had didn't go well and he went back to his wife before he took a government job."

"And his ill-legitimate son simply happens to join the industry he was running?" John looked at Anna but she only stared at the wall with her entire body almost quivering with the intensity of her rage. "How convenient."

"The kid had issues from the start. He'd gotten into trouble as a child with killing stray animals and pets or something and they sent him to some military school. He got expelled out of there and had troubles in university so Nigel had the bastard sent to the Army. It straightened him out… for awhile."

"What do you mean, 'for awhile'?"

Vyner shrugged, "I don't know. All I could get out of Nigel about it was that his kid went almost postal somewhere. His unit stopped him but civilians were killed and it… It didn't play well to the press. So they did an overhaul to keep his name out of it and make it all look like an accident. He left the Army and joined a Special Branch squad. That was the last I heard of him before Nigel gave me a ring, calling in the favor I owed him."

"The favor for getting you out of hot water with the Met?"

Vyner nodded, "I was already working with Vera, I'd moonlit a bit for Mason but he didn't like me-"

"Shocker." John snorted but Vyner continued.

"Nigel gave me a bit of money to keep his son on the downlow until he could go back to England. But he'd only been here a week before he vanished. Just left the spare room in my flat and never came back."

"Did you look for him?" Anna cut in and barely noticed the way Vyner flinched at the tone in her voice.

"What?"

"Did you look for the deranged serial killer, trained by the Army and Special Branch, when he left your flat?" Anna enunciated each word slowly and carefully, trying to relax one muscle at a time in her body. "Or did you simply let a killer walk out of your flat unopposed?"

"I called Nigel when I hadn't seen his son in twenty-four hours. That was the procedure for it." Vyner raised his hands, "I didn't know he was off his rocker, alright. If I'd known he was crackers I wouldn't have agreed to it."

"But you didn't tell anyone else, did you?" John sighed, "And that allowed Green to blackmail you too."

"What'd you mean?"

"Jane Moorsum's picture, the one we found on Vera's body, was left for you, wasn't it?" John waited, watching as Vyner's face paled once again. "Thought so."

"What does Green know about Ms. Moorsum?"

"I…" Vyner shrugged, "I don't know. I remember mentioning her once or twice, back when… It was to Nigel and I didn't… I don't know."

"And the pieces fall into their places." Anna shook her head, "The banality of evil, in all its wretched glory, sits before me now."

"I was going to say the epitome of selfishness but she said it better." John gathered his things, "I'm sure this'll all sort itself out in a way that-"

The door opened and the three occupants of the room froze in place as a woman with a face like thunder directed herself at Vyner. "I'd advise you not say anything else, Mr. Vyner."

"Who are you?" Anna was half out of her seat as the woman took up a position on the opposite side of the table. "This is an interrogation and-"

"And I'm this man's counsel." She flipped out a pad, two business cards whipping toward Anna and John in a second, and had a pen in her hand to scrawl something. "So it'll be my privilege to let you both know that the interview you just performed will not be admissible in-"

"We offered him a lawyer and, at no point, did he choose to ask for one." John bit out but the woman barely stopped in her continuous scrawl over the paper. "And who the hell are you?"

"Sarah O'Brien, esquire." Anna read from the card, "I've heard of you."

"Have you?" O'Brien did not stop her notetaking. "How flattering."

"Then you misunderstood the context." Anna tucked the card away, "I've a friend in the business with you who… Well, she's not had many kind words to offer on your behalf in this business."

"No?" O'Brien finally looked up, her pen pausing. "Then I guess I'll take that as a compliment."

"I must've said it wrong." Anna tucked herself back into her seat. "And the interview we just performed, with your client, is entirely valid."

"I'll be the judge of that. No," O'Brien let a smug smile take over her face. "A judge'll be the judge of that. And after the evidence I'll give him, I doubt he'll argue that you've abused your positions here."

"Not sure he will." John folded his arms. "It's not as if we don't have the evidence already."

"Evidence you obtained from questionable sources."

"I'm sure, when all's said and done, the sources in question will come forward and attest to what they gave us." Anna held O'Brien's gaze as John gathered up the photographs and the evidence. "There is a serial killer on the loose, you understand."

"And that's a reason to flout the rule of law?"

"I wouldn't know anything about that." Anna nodded toward Vyner, without her eyes leaving O'Brien's. "But your client would."

"Since we're speaking about my client-" O'Brien raised the pad, her eyes going to it to read off, in rapid fire, a list of questions there. Anna, for the first three, attempted a response but O'Brien spoke so quickly she covered up whatever Anna said until Anna ceased attempting to respond. When O'Brien noticed she finally paused and lowered the pad. "Aren't you going to answer any of those questions?"

"That's not how this works." John tried to say but O'Brien barely spared him a glance before snapping back to Anna.

"I've got questions that need answering."

"I'm sure you do but I wanted to wait until you were finished so you could stop interrupting me." Anna provided her most condescending smile. "If you're done then I can try to answer them one at a time."

"Wha-"

"See," Anna held up a finger, "I thought I'd show you some respect and let you finish your line of questions, which actually just sounded like complicated word vomit meant to fluster me into a stupid response as it confused me. Then, when you were done, I'd speak so I didn't look like an asshole… Unlike yourself."

"Excuse me! That's-"

"Rude? Very much so, yes." Anna leaned toward O'Brien. "I was hoping you'd learn some lessons by example but, if you haven't, that's really not my concern. So, if you're actually going to let me speak to answer your questions I'll take them one at a time and wait between them for you to record my answers."

O'Brien simmered but Anna waited through it. "When you're finished trying to wrap your mind around what I said then we can continue. But if you're just going to overheat while you try to think of a good response or dissolve into another stream of senseless consciousness, then I think we'd better end this here."

"I think," O'Brien gathered her things, "It's best if I speak to my client alone."

"But I'm-" Vyner almost managed, the first words he attempted to utter since O'Brien entered the room. "I didn't-"

"Keep your thoughts to yourself, Mr. Vyner, if you want to get out of here." O'Brien moved to help him stand. "We've got to discuss-"

"Who hired you for him?" Anna took her things, standing to match O'Brien. "I'm sure Mr. Vyner'll work that out in a minute."

"I didn't-"

"And you'll get used to him not having the capacity to form sentences on his own." Anna nodded at the two of them before jerking her head toward the door. "Mr. Bates, if you'll join me out in the corridor."

John followed Anna, bringing the evidence they had against Vyner, and left O'Brien and Vyner in the room. "We'd better get that tape to Branson. Have him get a copy of it before O'Brien busts a nut trying to get it for herself."

"I'm not as worried about that as I am about who hired her." Anna folded her arms across her chest. "I'm sure you already worked it out."

"If I said Nigel Green what kind of prize would I get?"

"The same one I do." Anna shook her head, pacing for a moment before turning back to John. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"Are you as exhausted as I am?"

"Of this case or in general?"

"I'll take either answer and call your bet."

John snorted, "I'm beat. I've been beat since I started this case."

"Because no amount of work or effort feels like enough, no matter how hard you try or how much effort you put into it?" When John nodded Anna let out a breath. "Yeah, I'm feeling the same."

"The most exhausting part is that there are always more questions than answers. Everything we find is just another host of questions." John leaned back against the wall. "It's like cutting the head off a hydra."

"Two more grow in its place." Anna nodded, leaning against the wall next to him. "It feels like an age since we were just lying in bed together."

"We definitely weren't 'just lying in bed together'." John gave a snort of his own. "And while I thoroughly enjoyed the activity, I think the next time we're in a bed I'll just pass out and sleep for a week."

"Maybe we could take a day to actually do that." Anna closed her eyes. "I wouldn't mind a pillow and a mattress right now."

"Me either." The change in John's tone had Anna cracking an eye open to look at him. "How'd she get here so fast?"

"How'd you mean?"

"I know you got a lawyer for Talbot because you went and found one." John pivoted, jerking his thumb back toward the interrogation room. "But how'd he get one? He's been in that room since he dragged you in and since he never asked for a lawyer and your friend didn't call one for him…"

"Who asked on his behalf?" John nodded and Anna bit at the inside of her cheek before letting her eyes rove the room. "Who's got access to your cameras?"

"Mary's the one who-"

Anna pushed off the wall, walking along the corridor and into the main office as she tracked all the cameras. Following them, leaving the evidence on John's desk, she crossed to where Talbot sat quietly in the cage. Her fingers barely grazed the side to get his attention and he shifted just enough to let her know he was listening.

"Have you watched the cameras?"

"While I've been in here or before that?" When Anna only raised her eyebrow Talbot gave a laugh. "There may be a way into the system."

"Did you use it?"

"Didn't have to. Green was never here."

"Did Nigel Green send you to target his son?" Talbot flinched slightly at that. "Who in Special Branch sent you to do this?"

"I can't say, Anna."

"Because you're afraid I'll tell someone?"

"No," Talbot stood, coming to stand before Anna. "Because I don't know. And even if I did, I'd not tell you."

"To protect whom?"

"Everyone." Talbot shrugged, "He's our problem. This monster was born in our midst and we did nothing about it. Nothing when a bullet between his eyes in any number of circumstances could've saved a number of lies."

"But Nigel's trying to protect him?"

"Some people don't know when to let go. They've bought into the sunk cost fallacy of their own press." Talbot lowered his voice, "And if you're looking for someone to blame, it wouldn't hurt you to know that Nigel Green's in Dublin right now. There's a conference with him involved."

"When?"

"Starts day after tomorrow."

Anna straightened, looking over her shoulder before turning back to Talbot. "Gwen's going to get you out of here but I need your help."

"I've got my quarry to catch."

"What if I said the wanker who put you in here is a friend of Nigel Green's?" Anna waited through the flare of Talbot's nostrils. "Or that he might have some possible locations for you to track so you're not just pounding pavement?"

"I'd ask what you're willing to sacrifice by giving me this information."

"I want Nigel Green and I need your help to get him." Anna took a breath, "Difficult as it might be to get-"

"My help?" Talbot snuck a little smile that dropped the moment someone appeared next to Anna.

"She's probably talking about me signing off on this." John sighed, "And as much as I won't like whatever it is you two are probably plotting about, I'm willing to risk a few things if it means catching this guy."

"Then I suggest you both deal with the bastard you've got in your interrogation room and get some rest." Talbot cracked his neck. "I don't slow down for anyone so you'll either keep up or get left behind."

"How flattering." Anna pushed off the cage as Gwen joined them. "Getting your client all free?"

"He's free to go." Gwen paused, looking between Talbot and Anna. "And don't think I've been gone from… what we used to do so long that I don't recognize when you both plotted something together."

"I take offense at the term 'plotted'." Talbot voiced but he quieted when Gwen and Anna both looked at him. "I am."

"That's beside the point." Anna faced Gwen, "You're out of it. You've done your bit and that's what we needed."

"I…" Gwen let out a breath. "Be careful Anna. This… It doesn't feel like it used to. This feels worse."

"We'll be fine."

"I hope so." Gwen nodded at Talbot. "We square?"

"As square as neither of us are straight."

Gwen rolled her eyes, "Goodbye, Henry." She put a hand on Anna's shoulder, "Take care, alright?"

"I will." Anna watched her go before turning back to Talbot. "Alright, I'm sure you've got a plan so tell me what it is."

Talbot only smiled, "That's spoil the surprise."

"Gods give me strength." John muttered.