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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 looked across at Shaun again, hoping against hope, but his head was on Femi’s shoulder and his eyes were closed. Stupid of me really, because what was I actually expecting? I knew what I wanted. I wanted him to miraculously recover the power of speech, to stand up and run to the front. I wanted him to say, ‘Kevin was being held to ransom by such and such a drug gang and he did . . . something they didn’t like and in the end he had to die, so he was killed by . . .’

I wanted that witness who blows the case wide open.

I wanted him to tell everyone what he’d been so afraid to tell me.

Debbie was the last nurse to come up. I saw that she had tears in her eyes as she lit the final candle. I swear I heard a sob before she gently touched a finger to Kevin’s picture, then crossed herself.

Quite touching, I suppose, if you give a stuff about any of that.

Everyone drifted away pretty quickly after that. Places to go, people to see. I offered to tidy the room up, but Marcus said the staff would do it later on.

‘So, were you pleased with how that went?’ he asked.

I told him I was, that I thought it had all gone really well.

‘Pleased to hear it,’ he said, as I walked past him. He wasn’t really trying to hide the sarcasm and it was obvious he was pissed off because I’d shafted him, but I was beyond caring.

My brain was still racing when I got back to my room and more than ever I felt the urgent need to talk everything through with someone. I couldn’t get hold of Banksy, so I called Sophie. Maybe I was gabbling or just not making any sense, but either way she didn’t seem very interested, so in the end I gave up and let her ramble on about her job for a while.

Her fantastic new flatmate, again.

Her new boyfriend.

After that I decided to just chill in my room for a while until dinner. I’d been working on the memorial all the way through lunch, so I was bloody starving. More important, I was keen to know what people had made of it all and to find out if grief – or what passed for it in a place like this – had shaken anything loose.

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-THREE

Johnno and I worked this fatal stabbing in Dollis Hill one time.

It was a bad one; not like any of them are ever good, but this one was really nasty. A teacher named Gordon Evans, carved up in his front room in the middle of the day. Point is, we knew very well who’d done it and why – were talking about making an arrest within twenty-four hours of catching the case – but the problem was we were struggling to prove it.