Sleepyhead by Mark Billingham

Author:Mark Billingham [Billingham, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Crime & Thriller
ISBN: 9780751531466
Publisher: Time Warner Paperbacks
Published: 2010-03-16T00:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

Rachel sat at the desk in her room, the chemistry textbook in front of her long since invisible. She knew that this was what being involved with someone was about. Highs and lows. She'd gone out with a boy for nearly six months when she was a fourth-former and still remembered the dull ache of the phone that didn't ring and the stabbing agony of the undelivered note. This was much worse, though.

She had her own locker now in the sixth-form common room, and had to fight the urge to run and open it every five minutes to check her phone. By the end of the day there would always be at least a text message. She saved them all and reread them constantly. A voice message was always better, though. She loved his voice especially. She walked over and slumped down on the bed, picking up her phone from where it was recharging as she went. She listened to the message again, that strange part of her that she knew was common to everybody, savouring the pain of it. Like gnawing at a mouth ulcer.

He wasn't sure if he could make it tonight. He might be able to but he didn't want to let her down at the last minute. He was sorry. It was a work thing he couldn't get out of. They'd better cancel. He'd call tomorrow.

As always, she was offered the option to delete the message. She saved it, although it was saved, anyway, in her head. She lay there endlessly pulling to pieces every phrase and analysing every nuance. Had he sounded distant?

Was this the start of letting her down gently? He'd call tomorrow, he said, not later tonight. She wanted to call him but knew she wouldn't. The idea of being clingy made her sick. But she knew that if it came to it she would be.

She desperately wanted a cigarette but couldn't risk it. She'd had a couple in the garden the night before when her mum had been out screwing the policeman. She sometimes climbed up on the desk and opened a window to blow the smoke out but her mum would be coming to bed any time. Her mum who smoked, but said that she couldn't. Very fucking fair.

She'd speak to him tomorrow and everything would be fine and she'd feel like a pathetic sad cow. She wasn't a stupid little girl any more. That was why he wanted her.

The carpet fibres that Thorne had scraped from the inside of Bishop's boot were in a small plastic bag. He knew he couldn't take them to Forensics himself and he didn't feel he could ask Holland yet. But there was somebody he could ask.

When the plastic bag dropped on to the pool table, Hendricks didn't shift his gaze a millimetre as he lined up the shot, the cue sliding easily back and forth along the cleft of his chin. He casually potted the eight ball and straightened up. 'That's another river.' His eyes shifted to the bag and its contents.

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