Rabbit Hole by Mark Billingham

Author:Mark Billingham [Billingham, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime
ISBN: 9780751577280
Google: IWFXzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group Limited
Published: 2022-01-06T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-EIGHT

It was one of the best nights ever in the TV room, though for the life of me I couldn’t tell you what everyone was watching, because I wasn’t really paying attention. Not to the TV, anyway. I’d got in early to bag a VIP seat next to Lady Lauren up the front and sat there, happy as Larry, while she got more and more pissed off because I was wearing my headphones. I wasn’t listening to anything, obviously, so I could hear the TV perfectly well, but I just sat nodding my head like I was well into my tunes and really enjoying myself because I knew it was winding her up.

You’ve got to have a hobby, right?

When Lauren couldn’t control herself any more and started waving her arms around and having a go at me, I made out like I couldn’t hear. I just shook my head and pointed at my headphones until eventually she started shouting.

‘What are you playing at?’

‘I can’t hear you.’ I deliberately said it too loudly, you know, like people do when they’ve got headphones on. I pointed at them again and said, ‘I’ve got headphones on.’

‘Take them off then.’

It was hard to keep a straight face because by now I could hear other people shouting ‘Quiet’ and ‘Shut the fuck up’ from the back. I thought Lauren was going to have a stroke or start frothing at the mouth or something, so in the end I slid the headphones off and looked at her, all innocent. ‘What?’

‘Why the hell are you watching the telly with those things on?’

‘I just like the company,’ I said.

The company was no better than it ever was and I was actually there on surveillance, keeping an eye on one particular nurse who was sitting in the corner like butter wouldn’t melt. I watched her get up and move between patients, trying to keep a lid on things, because quite a few people were on their feet and shouting by now. That’s how it works in here. One patient kicks off a bit and the rest of them tend to join in, like that Russian bloke and his dogs. Chekhov?

I watched her speak calmly to each of them in turn, a hand laid on an arm where it was needed, until some semblance of normality had returned. As normal as it can ever get when a woman is walking from wall to wall and a slightly camp bald bloke keeps pointing at the TV and announcing, ‘I’ve shagged her.’

It was funny, I thought, that the nurse never said anything to Shaun.

I watched her go back to her seat and sit there staring at me. I’m sure anyone else who clocked it thought it was because I was the one who’d started the trouble, but I knew it was because she’d seen me looking at her and that was fine, because I wasn’t trying to hide the fact.

I knew she was worried.

I knew she should be.

I stared right back and smiled until she looked away.

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