BooksBarbecue
Back Rabbit Hole
Chapters (73)
  1. Rabbit Hole
  2. Also by Mark Billingham
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. Epigraph
  7. Preface
  8. PART ONE
  9. ONE
  10. TWO
  11. THREE
  12. FOUR
  13. FIVE
  14. SIX
  15. SEVEN
  16. EIGHT
  17. NINE
  18. TEN
  19. ELEVEN
  20. TWELVE
  21. THIRTEEN
  22. FOURTEEN
  23. FIFTEEN
  24. SIXTEEN
  25. SEVENTEEN
  26. EIGHTEEN
  27. NINETEEN
  28. TWENTY
  29. TWENTY-ONE
  30. TWENTY-TWO
  31. TWENTY-THREE
  32. TWENTY-FOUR
  33. TWENTY-FIVE
  34. TWENTY-SIX
  35. TWENTY-SEVEN
  36. TWENTY-EIGHT
  37. TWENTY-NINE
  38. THIRTY
  39. THIRTY-ONE
  40. THIRTY-TWO
  41. THIRTY-THREE
  42. PART TWO
  43. THIRTY-FOUR
  44. THIRTY-FIVE
  45. THIRTY-SIX
  46. THIRTY-SEVEN
  47. THIRTY-EIGHT
  48. THIRTY-NINE
  49. FORTY
  50. FORTY-ONE
  51. FORTY-TWO
  52. FORTY-THREE
  53. FORTY-FOUR
  54. FORTY-FIVE
  55. FORTY-SIX
  56. FORTY-SEVEN
  57. FORTY-EIGHT
  58. FORTY-NINE
  59. FIFTY
  60. FIFTY-ONE
  61. FIFTY-TWO
  62. FIFTY-THREE
  63. FIFTY-FOUR
  64. FIFTY-FIVE
  65. FIFTY-SIX
  66. FIFTY-SEVEN
  67. FIFTY-EIGHT
  68. PART THREE
  69. FIFTY-NINE
  70. SIXTY
  71. EPILOGUE
  72. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  73. Back Cover

For the next ten minutes we drank our tea and I gave her the lowdown on Ilias, Lucy and the rest of the gang. I told her their nicknames – well aware that I’d need to come up with one for her – and as many of their strange habits as I could remember. I told her not to let Lauren use her bathroom under any circumstances. I told her about Graham and the waiting, Donna and the constant walking, and when I got to Tony’s preoccupation with the Thing, she just stared at me like she’d never heard anything like it.

‘I’ve barely even started, love. Proper madhouse in here.’

She thought that was funny.

I’d just started to dish the dirt on the staff when Clare looked up, noticed Shaun peering in at us through the window and immediately burst into tears again.

‘Jesus . . .’ I got up to shoo him away and yet again, by the time I’d sat down with her again the crying had stopped and the soggy tissue was being nudged out of sight. ‘Is it blokes?’ I asked. ‘You got a problem with blokes?’

She shook her head.

‘Thing is, there’s quite a few in here, so you might need to have a word with someone about that.’

‘I’m fine,’ she said.

‘You can talk to me,’ I said. ‘I’ve had some training—’

‘Carry on with what you were saying before.’

I immediately decided that she must have had some kind of breakdown after being raped. It made perfect sense, and I don’t know why I hadn’t clocked it earlier. I know they normally try to put patients like her on a single sex ward, but that it isn’t always possible. There’d been a woman like that in here when I arrived, and I’d talked to any number of victims who’d been through much the same thing when I was on the Job.

‘Tell me about the nurses,’ she said.

I moved my chair a little closer to hers. ‘Well, I’m not sure if anyone mentioned it to you . . . I mean they almost certainly didn’t . . . but we had a murder in here a couple of weeks ago. One of the—’

And just like that, she was blubbing again.

So, not blokes then.

I’ll be honest, the on-off waterworks were doing my head in by now, so I got up and opened the door, keen to find someone else to deal with her. I saw Mia outside the 136, so I shouted and waved, and while I was waiting for her to stroll over I decided that – pain in the arse as Clare ‘like the county in Ireland’ was – I did, at least, have a nickname for her.

Clare, aka Tiny Tears.

It was even funnier, because she was tall, yeah?