Chapters (73)
- Rabbit Hole
- Also by Mark Billingham
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Preface
- PART ONE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- PART TWO
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- FORTY-SIX
- FORTY-SEVEN
- FORTY-EIGHT
- FORTY-NINE
- FIFTY
- FIFTY-ONE
- FIFTY-TWO
- FIFTY-THREE
- FIFTY-FOUR
- FIFTY-FIVE
- FIFTY-SIX
- FIFTY-SEVEN
- FIFTY-EIGHT
- PART THREE
- FIFTY-NINE
- SIXTY
- EPILOGUE
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- Back Cover
His jigsaw’s nearly finished, but he immediately starts breaking it up, not angry or anything, just nice and calm like that’s what he has to do because he’s been interrupted. He needs to start all over again, simple as that. As soon as he’s finished and all the pieces are laid out in front of him again, he looks up and smiles at me.
‘All right?’
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FOUR
‘Sorry about your jigsaw,’ I say.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ he says.
‘Do you always start again? If you’re interrupted?’
‘Those are the rules.’
‘It must happen a lot.’
‘Yeah, I’ve never finished it.’
‘Why don’t you just take it to your room and do it in there?’
He looks at me like that’s just about the stupidest idea he’s ever heard, so I decide not to labour the point.
‘You got nowhere to live then?’ I can only presume, because the police had not allowed him to leave after what happened to Debbie, that his abode is . . . unfixed.
He shakes his head. ‘Only for a couple of nights at a time.’ He looks around. ‘This isn’t too bad, though.’
I can’t imagine how bad the place where he was staying before must have been. A freezing, rat-infested hovel. Or a Travelodge.
‘Don’t you think things are a bit strange in here right now?’ I ask.
‘Well, I’m not sure I’ve been here long enough to tell.’
‘I’ve been here quite a while,’ I say. ‘And it feels to me like something bad is coming.’
He laughs. A high-pitched, girlish giggle.
‘Why is that funny?’
‘I think something bad has already come, don’t you?’ He laughs again and mimes a frenzied stabbing, like the killer in Psycho.
‘Something else,’ I say. ‘Something bad for me.’
‘Oh, right,’ he says. ‘Like what?’
I fight the urge to say, well if I knew what it was I might be able to do something about it. Instead I just shrug and say, ‘Some people in here think I killed Debbie.’ I realise that he might not even have been here long enough to know her name. ‘The nurse.’ Now I’m the one miming the stabbing. ‘In the toilets.’
He nods. ‘Did you?’
I stare at him and . . . bingo! All this time I’ve been banging on to Banksy about killers coming in here and pretending to be patients and it suddenly strikes me that an undercover police officer would make a damn sight more sense. I’m annoyed I didn’t think of it before. He comes in a few days after Kevin is killed, because Seddon and his useless team are running out of ideas, then after the second murder there’s all the more reason for him to stay where he is. Get to know the suspects a bit better.
Fuck, why not?
It’s definitely what I would have done, back in the day.