Scaredy cat by Mark Billingham Read Free Book Online Page A

genuinely comical, but Thorne began to laugh. Then Charlie laughed too.
    'I hammer your shoe...'
    'Ow... ow... ouch!' Thorne winced in mock agony, and as the boy began to laugh even louder, he sensed that the moment might be right.
    'Do you remember the man who was there when your mummy got hurt?'
    The laughter didn't exactly stop dead, but the answer to Thorne's question was obvious. Charlie was still hammering on the shoe but it was purely reflexive. The intermittent squeak of the toy hammer was now the only sound in the room. Mary and Robert Enright sat stock still on the sofa, and Sarah McEvoy was all but holding her breath, afraid that the slightest movement could spoil everything. Thorne spoke slowly and seriously. He was not following a different tack to McEvoy for any particular reason. There was no strategy involved. Instinct just told him to ask the child the question, simply and honestly. Can you tell me what the man who hurt your mummy looked like?'
    A squeak, as the hammer hit the shoe. And another. Then the tiny shoulders gave a recognisable shrug. Thorne had seen the same gesture in a hundred stroppy teenagers. Scared, but fronting it out. Maybe I know something, but you get nothing easily.
    'Was he older than me do you think?' Charlie glanced up, but only for a second before returning to his hammering. 'Was his hair the same colour as yours or was it darker? What do you think?' There was no discernible reaction. Thorne knew that he was losing the boy. Hearing a sniff, Thorne looked up and could see that the old man on the sofa was quietly weeping, his big shoulders rising and falling as he pressed a handkerchief to his face. Thorne looked at the boy and winked conspiratorially, 'Was he taller than your Granddad? I bet you can remember that.'
    Charlie stopped hammering. Without looking up he shook his head slowly and emphatically. Thorne flicked his eyes to McEvoy. She raised her eyebrows back at him. They were thinking the same thing. If that 'no' was as definite as it looked, it certainly didn't tally with Margie Knight's description. Thorne wondered who was the more credible witness. The nosy working girl or the three-year-old?
    Eye witnesses had screwed him up before. So, probably neither... Whatever, as far as Charlie was concerned, it looked as though the shake of the head was all they were going to get. The hammering was growing increasingly enthusiastic.
    'You're good at hammering, Charlie,' Thorne said. Mary Enright spoke up from the sofa, she too sensing that the questions were over. 'It's Bob the Builder. He's mad on it. It's what he calls you sometimes, isn't it, Bob?' She turned to her husband, smiling. Robert Enright said nothing.
    McEvoy stood up, rubbing away the stiffness in the back of her legs from where she'd been kneeling. 'Yeah, my nephew's always going on about it. He's driving his mum and dad bonkers, singing the theme tune.'
    Mary stood up and began tidying things away, while Charlie carried on, the hammer now replaced by a bright orange screwdriver. 'I don't mind that,' Mary said. 'It's just on so early. Half past six in the morning, on one of those cable channels.'
    McEvoy breathed in sharply and nodded sympathetically. Thorne looked down and brushed his fingers against the boy's shoulder. 'Hey, think about your poor old Nan will you Charlie? Half past six? You should still be fast asleep...'
    And Charlie Garner looked up at him then, his eyes wide and keen, the bright orange screwdriver clutched tightly in his small fist.
    'My mummy's asleep.'
    In spite of all the horrors to come, the bodies both fresh and long dead, this would be the image, simple and stark, that would be there long after this case was finished, whenever Thorne closed his eyes. The face of a child.
    It's been over a week now, Karen, and it's still on the television. I've stopped watching now, in case something comes on and catches me unawares when I'm unprepared for it. I knew that it would be on the news, you know,