Mark Billingham - Scaredy cat

When he opened his eyes and looked down again, Thorne had gone.

He'd always cried easily, even before he'd met Stuart Nicklin. Crying and blushing – he'd had little control over either of them for as long as he could remember. He recalled Smart dancing around him in the playground, singing, chocolate smeared around his mouth. Cherry ripe, cherry ripe…

And him, moving slowly towards the wall behind him, driven backwards by the heat coming off his own face, growing redder and redder…

He recalled the voice of an older Stuart, six months ago, that lunchtime in the brasserie; after those two from work had skulked away and Smart had spoken to him, and it had all begun again. The voice deeper now, and weathered, but still that laugh in it, the laugh that made you want to be near him, and still that ice inside the laugh.

'Do you ever think about Karen? I never told them you know, Mart. Not everything I mean. There was no need was there? It wasn't your fault, what happened. Her going off with that bloke was nothing to do with that other business. The business with you.' He'd stopped then and leaned in close, his face creased with concern. 'Do you think it was your fault? Course it wasn't. Yes, she was upset, but that doesn't mean anything, does it? Mind you, I wonder what people would think, now, if they did know? Do you think they'd blame you? You know what it's like these days, everybody going on about sex and protecting the kids. People getting hounded…'

Palmer had tried not to let the terror show on his face as Nicklin finished speaking, but he knew he'd failed miserably.

'I'm not saying I'd ever tell anybody Martin, but you know, some people have got fucking sick minds…'

Sally from Glasgow: 'We only do it for the children anyway, don't we?'

Arthur from Newcastle: 'Why shouldn't it be commercial?

Shopping means a damn sight more to a lot of these kids than Jesus Christ…'

Bridget from Slough: 'How can we celebrate anything with the world the way it is? People starving. Drug addicts. Folk living on the streets. What about the families of those two poor women shot dead a couple of weeks ago? What sort of Christmas are they going to have?'

The man who used to be called Smart Nicklin stuck a small gold bow on to the final parcel, leaned across and turned the radio up. This was a bit more like it. Bridget, up there on her high horse, had every right to be angry of course: it was a very nasty business. Even if one of the so-called 'poor women' was completely fictitious. Bob, the phone-in host, agreed with the caller. Absolutely. He said a big thank-you for the call, but he was keen to move on to Alan from Leeds who wanted to talk about the shocking increase in the cost of first-class post…

He turned the radio off, stood up and rubbed away the cramp in his legs from squatting on his heels the last half an hour, busy with Sellotape and scissors. This had become something of a tradition Caroline in bed nice and early, and him up late, wrapping presents. Just a few more hours now until it all kicked off. They'd have a houseful tomorrow: Caroline's parents, her sister, her sister's three kids running around like maniacs.

Maybe, this time next year, they'd have one of their own. Not if he could possibly avoid it of course, he was doing his best to duck the issue, but Caroline was bringing it up all the time. Not now though. Not yet. He had a great deal he wanted to do before he went down that road. When he saw himself as an observer might, when he imagined himself in his mind's eye, he was standing, straight and tall over a body, the blood fizzing through him, the light breaking over him like clouds across the wings of a powerful jet. He was cutting through life, slicing through it, capable of anything. He was mercurial. He would not be… lumpen. He would not potter around, hunched over a baby buggy with milky sick on his lapel. Fucked. That was not him. He carried his wife's presents across to the tree and slid them underneath. He straightened up, leaned forward and studied his dim, distorted reflection in a large silver bauble. He still got a shock seeing himself without the beard. He'd been a little worried shaving it off, but he needn't have been. The dramatically different hairline, the filled out cheeks and the nose-job he'd saved up for all those years ago, still gave him a face significantly different from the one he might be expected to have sixteen years on.

As it was, he could probably have kept the beard anyway. The pictures he'd seen in the papers and on TV had been so wide of the mark as to be laughable. Palmer's description must have been all over the shop. Maybe the hormone, or the endorphin or whatever, that was stimulated by fear – was it adrenaline? – Maybe it fucked up the memory circuits.

Perhaps that was how dictators thrived. A line from Robespierre to Pol-Pot, all using terror to keep themselves safe. Make your enemies, and better yet, your friends, so afraid of you that they forget all the terrible things you're doing to them. The question was, did it work the other way around?

If they stopped being afraid, would they remember?

He knelt down to the plug, switched off the lights and stayed there, breathing in the gorgeous smell of the tree and thinking about Palmer. He imagined him now, frightened and alone. Some boot-faced bobby keeping the watch, glaring at him, resentful, fantasising about hurting him and doing everybody a favour. He pictured Palmer's wide, soft, cushion face, his mournful, wide-eyed expression. Staring out into the night, thinking about Karen and waiting to be saved. Chewing on his fat bottom lip and blushing like a girl. What do you want from Santa, Martin?

My head on a plate? My name on an arrest sheet, so that you can slope away to prison, just that little bit less guilty?

Sorry, Mart…

He thought about sending him a message to cheer him up. Christmas e-cards were very popular after all. Something seasonal and simple. A picture of a robin perched on the handle of a snow covered spade and a short message.

I'm thinking about you…

It was a tempting idea but he knew he was just being dramatic. There was no way they could trace it, he was sure about that, but even so it was probably not the right time. He'd get Christmas out of the way first, let things settle down a bit. Then he'd decide what to do next.

Assuming that the decision wasn't made for him. It was starting to rain.

Thorne flagged down a black cab on Abbey Road. He was not a million miles from the zebra crossing the Beetles had so famously strolled across more than thirty years before, McCartney barefoot and out of step.

He opened the door. 'Kentish Town…'

The driver didn't even look at him. 'Triple time now, mate. That all right?'

Thorne smiled at the strip of tinsel wrapped around the cab's aerial. Maybe the gesture was ironic. He nodded and climbed in. 'Yeah, whatever…

'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday' was blasting out of the radio. It was a song Thorne loved, one guaranteed to have him rushing out to buy holly and advocaat, but for the first time in his life, he wanted Christmas to be over and done with. Christmas and New Year, condensed, compressed. He wanted, no, he needed, to be shot of them…

He thought about Charlie Garner.

Would the boy be lying in bed now, listening out for reindeer on the roof, unable to sleep? Or had he been unable to sleep for the last month, and was he lying in bed now listening to his mother screaming?

The taxi rumbled through Swiss C6ttage, down damp, deserted streets, towards Chalk Farm. The cabbie was talking to him, throwing meaningful glances over his shoulder, but Thorne wasn't listening. A boy called Stuart Anthony Nicklin…

Thorne wished the fortnight ahead gone not because of how he was likely to be spending it, nor because of his father, nor Charlie Garner. He needed a leap forward in time to move the case on. There was an outside chance that there might be a break over the Christmas period but he seriously doubted it. What he was sure of was that there would be pressure from Jesmond, and from Brigstocke on his behalf. The Powers That Be would demand to know what was happening. When was this stupid idea of his going to yield anything significant bar an astronomical overtime bill?