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Back Rabbit Hole Save as PDF
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

I told him I didn’t, same as I always do. I’ve never seen Ilias play chess and I’m not convinced he knows how. I’ve never even seen a chess set in here, although there are some jigsaws in a cupboard.

‘What day is it?’ Ilias asked.

‘Friday,’ I said.

‘It’s Saturday tomorrow.’ No flies on Ilias. ‘Saturday, then Sunday.’ Just a nasty rash on his neck. ‘Saturdays are rubbish, aren’t they?’

I couldn’t disagree with him, though the truth is I was never a big fan of the weekend in any case. All that pressure to relax and enjoy yourself. That was if you had a weekend. Criminals don’t tend to take the weekend off, the opposite if anything, so working as a copper never really gave me much time to go to car-boot sales or pop to the garden centre anyway. One of the things I liked about the job.

‘Boring. Saturdays are so boring.’

Like I said before . . .

‘They last so much longer than all the other days and nothing interesting ever happens.’ Ilias looked sad. ‘I don’t mean like fights or whatever, because they’re boring, too. I mean, something really interesting.’

Remember what I said about memory? What I might and might not have done? I can’t swear to it, but I really hope that, just before Ilias broke wind as noisily as ever before wandering away to see if anyone else fancied playing chess, I said, ‘Careful what you wish for.’

THREE

THREE

The alarm goes off in this place a couple of times a week, more if it’s a full moon, so it’s not like it’s that big a deal. Yeah, the nurses snap to it fast enough, but the patients don’t rush around panicking or anything like that. Mostly you just carry on chatting shit – albeit a bit louder – or eating your tea or whatever until it stops. But this time there was a scream first, so it was pretty obvious something bad had happened.

Debbie, the nurse who found the body, has got quite a gob on her.

This was the Saturday night, just before eleven o’clock, and most people were already in bed. I was sitting with Shaun and The Thing in the canteen – which in a pointless attempt to sound a bit more upmarket is officially called the dining room – just letting the last meal of the day go down a bit and talking about nothing.

Music probably, or telly. Bitching about the fact that Lauren never lets anyone else get hold of the TV remote.