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

Back in the MDR that day, when the detective told me I’d been wrong about who had killed Kevin, I’d felt like a mistreated dog that had been given one final, hard kick for good measure. Sitting there and sobbing, I remembered being with Shaun in the TV room, the night he collapsed and stopped talking. His eyes shifting and fixing on the nurse who was sitting in the corner and me, like the smartarse I am, thinking I knew what he was trying to let me know.

No, not just a nurse, you idiot. That nurse . . .

I remembered the same terror on his face when he was writing me those messages, when I didn’t give him time to explain the very last one.

There’s something i need to tell you.

Now I know what that was and I can finally understand what I’d thought was his confusion about why Debbie had been killed. During the course of my so-called investigation into Debbie’s death, I’d asked myself a few times if I was being stupid in never suspecting Shaun. Well, I was and I wasn’t. The fact is, though he was not unhappy that a woman he hated was dead, Shaun never had a motive for killing Debbie, because he knew she wasn’t the one who’d killed Kevin.

He’d known who that was all along.

Malaika.

Now I can’t decide which colour lippy to go with, so I quickly reopen the heads-or-tails app and that decides for me.

Electric Orchid, if you’re interested.

As to why Malaika killed Debbie, the best guess is because Debbie found out about what she’d done and was threatening to expose her. Poor Debbie, who had been trying to do the right thing, but could not have known just what the person she was dealing with was capable of.

The clearer everything becomes in my mind, the worse I feel every day about what happened to Debbie and guiltier about the things I believed she’d done. Not just Kevin’s murder, but the whole . . . sexual abuse thing. I did believe it, for a while at any rate, but now it seems obvious that it was all about convincing myself (and Banksy) that I was after the right suspect. Maybe I just resented Debbie being a bit . . . offhand when she examined me that first day. Or it could just be that I got what actually went on mixed up with what Lucy told me had happened to her.

To be fair, I was mixing a lot of things up back then.