Good as Dead by Mark Billingham

Author:Mark Billingham
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780748120482
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2011-08-17T22:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-TWO

‘You don’t appear to be with us today, Mr Jaffer … ’

Rahim looked up and stared at his tutor. She waited, as though expecting an explanation for his lack of attention or perhaps a précis of the topic she and the other students had been discussing for the previous few minutes. All Rahim could do was mumble an apology, feeling the blood rush to his cheeks while some of the others around the table laughed and shook their heads. The woman began talking again and Rahim did his best to listen. He scribbled a few notes on a page that was already covered with meaningless doodles, but within a minute or two the pen grew heavy in his hand and the tutor’s words had become no more than background burble and hiss.

So rack that fucking big brain of yours …

Thorne’s words were still ringing loud and clear though, the expression on the policeman’s face vivid enough to tighten the cold and slippery knot in Rahim’s guts whenever he closed his eyes.

I’m betting he had more than one secret.

He was squeezing the pen so tightly that purplish half-moons of blood had formed beneath his fingernails. He cast his eyes in the direction of his tutor and told his head to nod, while he tried to regulate his breathing. To keep the anger in check. He was not a child any more, and he hated being made to feel like one. He resented feeling ashamed and fearful when he had left shame and fear behind him, locked away back in his parents’ house with the ugly carpets and the stink of patchouli.

The other students laughed suddenly. One of his tutor’s bad jokes.

He laughed along, while he sat there and told himself that none of this was his fault. Not what Amin’s stupid father was doing and not what had happened to Amin. He could never have foreseen that, or done anything to stop it, and nothing he could do or say now would change the fact that he was dead, would it?

Dead was dead, even if there was no need to rack that big brain of his. Even though he knew exactly what Thorne was after. Dead was dead, whatever his parents and their priests might have taught him, and did it really make any difference to anyone except one policeman and a crazy old newsagent how it happened?

Or why?

He was your friend …

Rahim looked up at the mention of his name. Saw the look of concern on his tutor’s face.

‘Perhaps you should go home,’ she said. ‘You really don’t look well.’

He did not need a second invitation. He stood and gathered his books, said something about a virus and hurried from the room without bothering to close the door behind him.

He was lucky that the toilet was only a few steps away.

Ten seconds later his books and papers lay scattered on the floor of the cubicle, as he dropped to his knees, clutched at the edge of the bowl and threw up.

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