Mark Billingham - Scaredy cat

Was she actually blushing? 'It's just this stupid-It's probably not even true, it's like an urban myth, about this game they play at public schools.' She turned on to her side. He was staring at her, grinning, waiting for her to carry on. 'OK, basically, all the boys stand in a circle wanking.'

'Wanking?'

'Yes, apparently. There's a biscuit in the middle, and they all come on it, and whoever comes last has to eat the biscuit.'

There was a pause worthy of a great comedian before Holland let out a groan of disgust. 'You're making it up.'

McEvoy started to giggle. 'I swear…'

'Whoever comes last?'

His look of confusion made her laugh even more. 'I said it was stupid…'

'So they're actually being trained to come quickly?'

'I know. Mind you, it certainly explains why all the public schoolboys I've ever shagged have been shit in bed.'

They lay there for a minute, saying nothing, laughing now and again and trying to get their new, rather odd picture of the world into some sort of focus. McEvoy wondered how long he was planning to stay. Holland had just decided that he should be getting home, and was thinking about Sophie for the first time since McEvoy had put her tongue in his mouth and her hand on his cock, when she spoke.

'What about you?'

'What?'

'Were you a public schoolboy?'

Holland raised his head up off the pillow. 'Was I fuck!'

McEvoy's leg slid across his, and her hand began to creep across his stomach. 'Calm down, Holland. I'm kidding. You've already made that very obvious.' She smiled as she hoisted herself across him and began wriggling into position.

Holland put a hand on each of her shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. 'What sort do they use?' She looked down at him, confused, so he explained. 'The biscuit. Digestive, custard cream, bourbon…?'

She was still laughing when they'd finished. Thorne had been right about the relationship counselor bit. Within ten minutes of the kick-off, he'd learned that Brendan had not, as predicted, buggered off as soon as Hendricks had given him his Christmas presents, but had actually stuck around and was now, miracle of miracles, dropping hints about moving in. At half time, Thorne got up and threw the remains of the Chinese takeaway into a bin-liner. There wasn't a great deal of anything left, Elvis having licked both plates clean within moments of them putting down their forks for the final time.

He returned with two more cold cans from the fridge. 'So you're happy about this, are you? Brendan staying?' Hendricks looked decidedly unsure. Thorne handed him a can. 'Oh, for fuck's sake, Phil.'

'It's just unexpected. I need to think about it a bit…'

'Not easily pleased, are you?'

Thorne opened his beer and slumped back into his chair. In the studio, some bald bloke who'd won three caps in the early seventies was attempting to make the previous forty-five minutes sound interesting. Aston Villa and Leeds United grinding out a nil-nil draw in the pissing rain was proving to be far from riveting.

'So what does he make of this then? Brendan…'

'He's not a football fan, well, not beyond thinking Thierry Henry's got nice legs anyway, so he's not really bothered.'

Thorne took a sip, stared at the TV. 'No, I meant, you know, you coming over here…'

For a minute, Hendricks said nothing and Thorne wondered if, like him, he was thinking about what had happened between them a year before.

They had fallen out badly in the middle of a case. Hendricks had told him he was gay, at the same time as telling him what a selfish bastard he was being. Thorne had been gob smacked by the confession and shamed by the accusation – he knew that Hendricks had a point. His friend had gone out on a limb for him and suffered for it. Thorne hadn't been there to speak up on his friend's behalf when he should have been.

Back then, with the bodies piling up, Thorne hadn't even been there for himself.

It was the death of strangers that had eventually brought them back together, as it had brought them together in the first place.

'You want to know what Brendan thinks about you?'

Thorne shrugged, gestured with his can towards the slow-motion replay on the screen. 'Look, he should have scored, he was clean through. Couldn't hit a cow's arse with a banjo. No… just, you know…'

'Why is it that eventually, you always get round to asking if my boyfriends fancy you or not?'

'That's bollocks.'

'Don't get me wrong, you're usually quite subtle about it, but there's always some comment, some bit of fishing…'

'All in your twisted mind, mate…'

'He thinks you're a bit chunky.'

Thorne's show of mock annoyance, the raised voice and wounded expression, barely masked how genuinely pissed off he really was.

'Chunky? What does he mean, "chunky"?'

Hendricks sniggered and reached for the remote. The teams were coming out for the second half. 'Shut up, you tart…'

They watched in silence as twenty-two thoroughly bored-looking individuals with bad haircuts jogged half-heartedly out into the rain. Hendricks picked up the remote again and pressed mute.

'What about you anyway? Much going on horizontally?'

'Sod all. Turn the sound back on…'

'You never rang Anne Coburn, did you?'

Thorne shook his head and pictured the woman he'd been involved with a year ago.

'Why don't you call her?'

A question Thorne had asked himself often enough. 'No, mate. Far too complicated.'

'Don't worry about it, you're better off on your own.' Hendricks made a wanking gesture. 'That's… not complicated.'

'Right, but the conversation's awful.'

Hendricks turned the volume back up, but not very high. They said nothing for a minute or two, listened to the pundits doing much the same thing.

'You haven't said a lot about the case…' Hendricks said. Thorne hadn't even mentioned it, but he didn't need to. It was there all the time, the synapses sparking, the associations bursting into life in his brain and forcing themselves upon him, in spite of his best efforts.

Katie Choi's mother and father owned a Chinese restaurant in Forest Hill…

The programme on television, sponsored by Vauxhall… Would Charlie Garner grow up supporting Aston Villa now that he lived in the Midlands? Or had he already begun to cheer for a London club?

Was Charlie an Arsenal fan like the man lying on the sofa? The man who performed the post-mortem on his mother…

Thorne shifted in his chair, looked across at Hendricks. 'Not much to say.'

Hendricks nodded. 'Just waiting…'

'Yep, for a lot of things. Some tiny piece of fucking luck. Waiting for them to run out of patience and hand me back my uniform. Waiting for a body to show up.'

'Make it a warm one, will you?'

Thorne raised his eyebrows, snorted. 'We'll do our best, Phil.'

'I want the bastard fresh on her, you know?'

Thorne did know. A warm body, a crime scene crawling with evidence. That was what they all wanted.

He nodded at Hendricks and raised his can to him. His friend was someone you could measure yourself against. Someone Thorne did measure himself against. Hendricks's voice was flat, and the words could often sound harsh and ill thought through, but they sprang from somewhere deep and very clean, somewhere passionate and honest.

'Do you think he's still around?' The tone was casual, as if he was asking whether Thorne could see a goal on the cards, second half.

'Oh yeah… he's around,' Thorne said. 'It's just a question of whether he decides to let us know about it.'

Hendricks considered this for a moment. 'I think we can count on it. Man who enjoys slicing and dicing as much as he does…'

Thorne almost spilt his beer. Even for Hendricks, that was a good one. 'Slicing and dicing? Fuck, and they let you near grieving relatives?'