Mark Billingham - Scaredy cat

'Only when they're very short-staffed.'

'Turn it up.' The teams were about to kick off. They let a silence fall between them as they stared at the television, both trying to think about anything but warm bodies and cold slabs. After about ten minutes Thorne turned to Hendricks again.

'Fucking "chunky"?'

The second forty-five minutes was, if anything, less entertaining than the first. This, combined with beer and central heating, and the general level of fatigue that was creeping over everybody on the case, ensured that they were both asleep at just after eleven, when the phone rang.

It was Martin Palmer.

'There's more instructions. He wants to do it again.'

It was as if Thorne had been jolted awake with a cattle prod.

'When?'

'Tomorrow.'

'Fuck.' He looked across at Hendricks who was already walking towards the kitchen mouthing 'coffee'. Thorne nodded.

'He's going to do it again tomorrow.' Palmer sounded as if he was on the verge of tears. 'Can you stop him?'

'Just shut up, Palmer, OK? Shut up. Shit…'

Thorne could hear the beep on the line. That would be the boys in IT trying to reach him. They were monitoring Palmer's computer and would have seen the e-mail at the same time he had.

'Palmer…'

The beep on the line stopped, and immediately the landline began to ring. Hendricks came through from the kitchen and picked up the phone.

Thorne could have hung up and talked to the technicians, but he wanted to hear it now, that second, from the man it had been sent to.

'Palmer, is there anything else? What does the message say exactly?'

Palmer held back the sobs just long enough to tell him.

Date: 9 January

Target: Male (Let's not be predictable)

Age: You're as old as you feel

Pickup: Immaterial

Site: Indoors, target's home

Method: Blunt instrument… in conjunction with a sharp mind The man had once observed the same routine every morning. Moving from room to room and getting himself ready for the day with great care and precision. These days, the effort was all too much. Where once the clean white shirt would have been laid out ready the night before, now he just grabbed another un-ironed one from the pile and often turned the previous day's socks inside out. He put on the kettle and radio, cut himself shaving, then pulled on his rumpled cardigan in front of the heavy, free-standing oak mirror that had been a wedding present, many years earlier. He placed his battered and bulging briefcase next to the front door, made himself a slice of toast and settled down to listen to ten minutes or so of Today on Radio 4.

The knock at the door was puzzling, but nothing to be alarmed about. He checked his watch. It was too early for the post. Perhaps it was a neighbour, or the man to read one or other of the meters. He put down his toast, rose slowly from the kitchen chair, and moved towards the front door.

His wife had always used to tease him about his passion for routine, and the way that any disruption to the order of things could put him in a bad mood. Then, perhaps, it had been true, but not any more. These days, a surprise of any sort could be an unexpected fillip. Something to be welcomed with open arms. There was a second knock, a fraction louder, just before he reached the door.

'Just a moment…'

When the door was opened, the man with the leather sports bag at his feet smiled, cleared his throat, and punched the man in the creased white shirt, full in the face.

Then he picked up his bag and stepped inside. The man on the floor held his hand to his shattered nose, but the blood ran through his fingers on to his shirt and on to the carpet. The blood felt strange and warm. It was oddly smooth against his freshly shaved cheeks. He was crying, which annoyed him greatly, and he was desperately trying to clear his head just a little, so that he might reach his shattered spectacles and work out where the noise was coming from. The noise that was like a drumming, like a thumping, like a train passing beneath the floor. The noise that drowned out the sound of the sports bag being opened.

Zzzzzzip…

Then a gentle rustle as something was removed from the bag, and the man on the floor suddenly realised that the mysterious noise was the sound of his own heart smashing against his chest like a trapped animal. He was pleased that he'd worked it out. Now, there was just the pain in his face, and the terror… He glanced up and his body spasmed, and he cried out a girl's name as he saw the long, dark shape Coming down. His eyes screwed shut and his hands flew from his face to his head. Every one of his fingers was broken, a fraction of a second before his skull was shattered. The man with the cricket bat in his hand needed to get about his business quickly and that annoyed him. It distracted him. With him, the looking.., the considering, had always been as much a part of it as anything. After he killed, he could rarely remember the details of the act itself. His mind had been elsewhere when that was happening. Today, there wasn't much time for enjoyment. With a grunt, he swung the bat.

The man on his knees seemed to jump then, and he screamed a name which the man with the bat knew belonged to his dead wife, and the noise of the bat making contact was like jumping on egg boxes. The man who used to be simply Stuart, lifted up the bat which came away wet and a little sticky. He hoisted the dripping wooden blade high above his head and brought it back down again with every ounce of strength in his body. He felt the shudder up his arm and across his shoulders. He closed his eyes, and the colours and shapes that swam about in the blackness were like the blood flying into the dirt, and the pulped body of the frog sailing gloriously across the blue and into the long grass…

The man who was variously First Friend and Blast From The Past and occasionally Ghost Of Summer, lifted and swung, lifted and swung, and each time he thought would be the last, but each new contact, each vibration, shook loose some new desire in him, liberated the hunger again and he felt the urge in his head and the action down his arms…

Finally, after many minutes, the man who had signed his most recent e-mail Night Watchman stopped and looked down at the swirls of bone and brain and blood making new patterns in what was already a somewhat garish carpet.

It took him thirty seconds or so to regain his breath, and then he was moving, quickly. He removed the gloves, wiped down the bat and put it back into the bag, having already taken out the fresh set of clothes. He stepped away from the body, taking care to mind his shoes. He didn't want to be walking bloody footprints all round the place for the rest of the day.

In less than ten minutes he was changed and ready to go, with plenty of time left to get to work. As he closed the front door behind him he checked his wristwatch. He tut-tutted at his carelessness. The face of the watch was flecked with blood. Someone, he wasn't certain who, had once said something Thorne was particularly fond of. A phrase he'd heard and never forgotten. Knock hard, life is deaf

It was a sentiment he did his best to live by, but there were occasions, many of them in fact, when those around him might have been happier had he tried to keep the noise down a little. Times when they seemed unwilling to discover what might be on the other side of the door.

Usually, this would only make Tom Thorne knock harder, bang louder. Today, even he was not sure he wanted to see that door opened. Today, a man was going to die a violent death. A man who, but for Thorne, but for the course he had chosen to follow, might otherwise live. It was pretty much that simple, and it was not a pleasant thought to be bouncing around in your head from the second you opened your eyes in the morning.