Cry Baby by Mark Billingham

Author:Mark Billingham
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Police Procedural, Fiction, Suspense, Thriller, Mystery & Detective
ISBN: 9780751582079
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2020-07-13T14:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-NINE

It was a warm night, and George Jones singing about heartbreak and helplessness provided a particularly appropriate soundtrack as Thorne sat outside in one of the rarely used garden chairs, leafing through the property-for-sale section of the Evening Standard. Once he’d got over the extortionate price of everything and started thinking realistically about the sort of place he’d be able to afford, the process became marginally less unpleasant.

Horrible as opposed to straight-up hideous.

He looked at the details of a flat he quite liked the look of in Kentish Town. It was handy for the Tube and there was an Indian restaurant just around the corner he’d heard good things about. Taking into account stamp duty, solicitor’s fees and the like – if he didn’t mind doing without food and furniture for a while – he reckoned he might be able to afford it, once the house was sold and he’d taken his share.

Then he blinked and that memory jumped into his head again. Jan laughing at him. Passing out day in Hendon.

His mum and dad had been there, too, dressed up to the nines, and they’d laughed along with her. They’d always loved Jan, still did as far as Thorne could tell. They certainly kept strangely quiet whenever he said anything negative about her and he nursed an uncomfortable suspicion that they thought the divorce was all his fault. That perhaps he had devoted more time and attention to the Job than he’d done to his wife. That maybe he was the one to blame for what she and the lecturer had been getting up to while he was busy working overtime shifts.

Right . . .

Clearly, he’d as good as begged her to sneak round to the lecturer’s flat wearing brand-new underwear. To unbutton the creepy bastard’s denim shirt and climb into his bed. Candles burning in wine bottles, almost certainly, and a red cloth draped over a lamp, with some tuneless sixties shit playing while they were at it . . .

She’d been taking a picture, that blazing afternoon at the Police Training College, and had struggled to keep the Instamatic straight because she’d been laughing so much.

‘What . . . ?’

‘Nothing. Just . . . you in your massive policeman’s helmet, that’s all.’

Saying the words ‘policeman’s helmet’ made her laugh even more.

‘Just hurry up and take it, love. I’m roasting in all this.’

‘Why d’you have to wear those stupid white gloves, anyway?’

‘How should I know?’

‘Are they so your helmet stays nice and shiny?’

She’d laughed a whole lot harder later on, once she’d watched him trying to march.

Thorne opened the paper again and drew a circle around the Kentish Town flat. It was all academic anyway; looking at places he might be able to buy once the house in Highbury had been sold when the house hadn’t even been put on the market yet. He would do it, because he’d promised Jan, because he knew it was the right thing to do, but not quite yet.

Talk about putting the cart before the horse.

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