Mark Billingham - Scaredy cat

Jacqui had cooked lunch for seven without a word of thanks. Roast beef and the rest of it, for her husband, her mother and her sister's lot. As ever, by the time she'd finished, she wasn't actually hungry herself. Staring at her face in the dressing-table mirror, changing her mind for the second time about which shade of lipstick to go with, she decided that she'd grab something when she was out. Maybe some of the other girls might fancy a meal afterwards. If she ever bloody well got there…

It wasn't as if she'd expected any volunteers to help clear up, certainly not any of her own useless lot, but it would have been nice. Her sister, as ever, sat there on her fat behind not raising a finger, so by the time Jacqui had washed up and cleared away the mess her sister's horrible kids had made in the living room, she was really late. It wasn't the first time.

For heaven's sake, it was only every other Sunday. One night, once a fortnight, when her and a few of the girls could let their hair down and talk about how shit everything was at home, and then get back to it before half past ten. She'd tried to suggest that maybe, every other Sunday, her sister could have everybody round to her place. The idea had not gone down well, and that had pretty much been that…

Mim stood in her knickers, the iron in one hand, remote in the other, channel-surfing. She stopped briefly when she got to The Antiques Road show. She knew her mother would be watching it, assuming that she wasn't sulking after the row the two of them had just had, or storming around the house taking it out on her poor father. She carried on surfing, setting finally for a documentary about sharks, and went back to ironing her jeans. It had been a row she'd known was coming, ever since term had ended and she hadn't eagerly hopped aboard the first train home. Miriam, how could you choose to stay in that dingy bedsit rather than with your own parents in a comfortable house blah blah blah…?

She'd tried assuring her mother that she would be home in time for Christmas, but once the tears had started, it had been a lost cause. It wasn't like she didn't want to go home, but quite a few of the people on her course had decided to stay on for a bit and it was a laugh, just dossing about with them, going to the pub every night. She pulled on her jeans and moved hangers back and forth along the clothes rail, looking for a shirt. It was quiz night in the pub and she wanted to get there early, make sure she was on a team with that new bloke in the first year with the nose-stud and the green eyes… Jacqui was ready and waiting on the doorstep by the time her husband had got back from running her mother home. He leaned across and opened the passenger door as she came hurrying down the path. This was their routine. She pulled the door shut, placed her handbag in her lap and the car moved away, beginning their conversationless, ten minute journey to the tube station.

Mim turned off the television before the God Squad began in earnest. There was really nothing else to do on a Sunday night than sit in the pub. Fuck, she worked hard enough, why the hell not? She pulled her door shut, jogged down the stairs and stepped out into the cold. She heard the rumble of a diesel engine and looked up to see a bus coming round the corner. Swearing enough to make her mother faint, she started to run.

Jacqui and Mim lived miles apart. They did not know each other. They would never meet. They would finally come together as two names, the latest pair of names, one above the other in capital letters, on a large square of white, wipe-clean plastic. Two names.

One of them belonging to a dead woman.

Hendricks rang while he was feeding the cat, and Thorne quickly realised he hadn't been the only one having a shit Sunday. Mr. Handy In-The-Kitchen, who was actually called Brendan, had turned out to be Mr. Unreliable-In-Every-Other-Way.

'So where's the next piercing going then, Phil? On second thoughts, don't tell me…'

Hendricks laughed, but Thorne could hear how upset he was. 'Not in a million years, mate. I don't know… I wasn't clingy, I wasn't stand-offish, I really.., tried this time, Tom, you know?'

'Don't forget for a second that you're talking to completely the wrong person here, but for what it's worth, maybe you're trying too hard. That might be what you're doing wrong.'

Hendricks sighed, said nothing for a while, then: 'I know exactly what I'm doing wrong. Cutting up dead bodies, removing brains, and hearts and lungs…'

Thorne understood straight away. This was a conversation they'd had a couple of times before. 'Right. Another one didn't approve of the career choice?'

'Never said as much, but it was obvious. It's always difficult, but since the start of this year, it's like telling people I'm a terrorist or a murderer or something…'

At the start of the year, a scandal about the removal of body parts from dead children had discredited the business of organ harvesting in general and pathologists in particular. The hysteria had died down but damage had been done. Rates of organ donation had dropped dramatically. Transplant numbers were down. Pathologists had trouble making new friends.

'I tell people what I do, there's like this pause, you know?' Thorne did know, very well. Hendricks had started to ramble a little then, and Thorne could tell that he'd been Smoking. The dope was something they never talked about, but Thorne had often smelled it. He could all but smell it now, as Hendricks's voice on the phone dropped to a whisper. 'I wonder if… what I do, is something that I carry on me. D'you reckon?'

'Phil…'

'Not the stink, I know how to get rid of that… I mean, more like a shadow or summat. No… more like, when you're under UV light, like at a club, you know.., same as we use with Luminol… and you can see all the fluff and bits on your clothes, all that twinkly dandruff, glowing.., shining white? Maybe it's like that.., yeah. Little pieces of death starting to show up on me…'

Thorne cooked himself scrambled eggs, ate them at the tiny kitchen table. He thought about his father. Why, as the silly old bugger spiraled increasingly away into the distance, did Thorne feel so… buttoned up? Maybe he needed to do a bit of dope occasionally. Free up his thinking a little. Jan had smoked the odd joint, sometimes. Never in front of him, but he wouldn't really have cared if she had. It wasn't like he had any major objection to it; there was still far too much time and effort wasted in its criminalisation, but ultimately, it wasn't for him. He could always think of something better to spend his money on. Like beer and wine…

Suddenly, he could picture Jan and the lecturer she'd been screwing behind his back, skinning up, giggling, incense burning by the side of the bed. He opened a bottle of a different kind of drug and carried it through to the living room.

Abandoning the fruitless search for distraction on TV, Thorne sat for a while, considering what Hendricks had said. Remembering and thinking ahead. Thinking about bodies stabbed and bodies strangled. Thinking about a pair of cardboard coffins in the cargo hold of a plane bound for Amsterdam…

Were those who worked with death ever free of it?

He stood and walked across to the stereo. His fingers ran along the rows of CDs and lingered over a boxed set of Johnny Cash, before moving on. He'd treated himself to it the year before, a set of three CDs, each containing songs on one particular theme. God, Love and Murder. Much as he loved Johnny Cash, there was still one of them Thorne hadn't listened to.

Later, lying awake in bed, the lights turned out, the radio on, he couldn't get Hendricks's slurred monologue out of his head. It was dope-induced rubbish. It was paranoia, self-pity. It was cliche masquerading as philosophy.

It compelled him.