Scaredy Cat by Mark Billingham

Author:Mark Billingham [Billingham, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Modern fiction
ISBN: 9780061032202
Publisher: New York : William Morrow, c2002.
Published: 2004-04-26T23:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

Thorne thought: so this is old age.

A heavy chair near the television, with its shit-coloured seat covered in plastic and panic buttons everywhere. Handles around the bath and piss-soaked knickers in the sink, and a woman who couldn't really give a toss, popping round twice a day to see if you're dead yet.

'Do you take sugar, Mrs. Nicklin?' McEvoy stuck her head round the kitchen door.

Annie Nicklin shook her head at nobody in particular and Thorne relayed the answer to McEvoy with a more obvious gesture of his own. Though she hadn't said a lot, the woman in the heavy chair, with her clawed hands resting on top of a green blanket, was still fairly sharp mentally, but her body was on the way out. Arthritis, diabetes, angina.., the catalogue of diseases had been reeled off cheerfully by the warden - a hard-faced article named Margaret - as she'd shown them into Annie's flat and explained that they wouldn't get a great deal out of her. Nobody ever did.

McEvoy brought the tea through, and as she handed round the mugs, Thorne continued to ponder the question that had absorbed him since he'd walked through the door. Which was preferable? A good brain and a body that was fucked? Or hale and hearty flesh and bone, with nothing left up top? Obviously, nobody ever really got the choice, but still, Thorne couldn't help weighing it up. Considering the options. It looked as if his old man was heading down the second road, but Thorne reckoned that when it came to it, he'd prefer to go to pieces upstairs and downstairs. At least that way, if he were sitting in his own mess, he'd be blissfully unaware of the fact...

He sipped his tea and thought about meeting Ken Bowles the day before. There was a man who could see pain and loneliness just up ahead. He took a biscuit and thought about the Enrights. As if the everyday agonies of old age weren't bad enough. He had the same old thoughts about the boy, Charlie Garner, who was no age at all. His life still ahead of him and already blighted. His mother taken away by the son of the old lady sitting a few feet away, slurping tea in a shit-coloured chair covered with plastic. Thorne stared at Annie Nicklin. When she had looked at her son, at Smart, back when he was no older than Charlie Garner, what had she seen in his future? What had she dreamed he might become?

'That all right for you, Annie?' McEvoy asked. Mrs. Nicklin nodded again, slurped a bit more, continued to stare at the television screen, even though it wasn't switched on. Thorne hoisted his behind from the depths of the soft, springless sofa and leaned forwards. 'We just wanted to ask you about Smart.'

Nothing. Just the noise of the drinking. The endless beep beep of a lorry reversing somewhere. A dog howling in one of the other flats. Thorne looked across at McEvoy, raised an eyebrow.

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