The Burning Girl-4 by Mark Billingham Read Free Book Online Page A

hit the panic button. For a while, I don't think he could remember what the noise was."
    Thorne let his head drop back, looked up at the ceiling. There was a spider's web of smoke-stained cracks around the light fitting. He knew very wel that, some mornings, his father had trouble remembering what his shoes were for.
    "We real y need to think about doing something. Tom?"
    Thorne looked across at her. For years, Eileen and his father had not been close, but since the Alzheimer's diagnosis two years earlier, she had been a tower of strength. She'd organised virtual y everything, and though she lived in Brighton, she stil managed to get up to his father's place in St. Albans more often than Thorne did from north London.
    Thorne felt tired and a little light-headed, exhausted as always by the combination punches of gratitude and guilt.
    "How come they cal ed you}' he asked.
    "Your father gave one of the firemen my number, I think .. ."
    Thorne raised his arms and his voice in mock-bewilderment. "My number's on al the contact sheets." He started looking in cupboards again. "Home and mobile."
    "He can always remember my number, for some reason. It must be quite an easy one .. ."
    "And why did it take you so long to ring? I could have got here wel before you."
    Eileen walked across to him, let a hand drop on to his forearm. "He didn't want to worry you."
    "He knew I'd be bloody furious with him, you mean."
    "He didn't want to worry you, and then I didn't want to worry you. The fire was already out by the time they cal ed, anyway. I just thought I'd better get here first, tidy up a bit."
    Thorne tried to shut the cupboard door, but it was wonky and refused to close properly, however hard he slammed it.
    "Thanks for doing that," he said, final y.
    "We should at least talk about it," she said. "We could consider the options." She pointed towards the cooker. "We've been lucky, but maybe now's the time to think about your dad going somewhere. We could get this place valued, at the very least.. ."
    "No."
    "I'm worried he might start going off; you know, getting lost. There was a thing on the radio about tagging. We could get one of those tags put on him and then at least if he did forget where he was .. ."
    "That's what they do to juvenile offenders, Eileen. It's what they put on bloody muggers." He moved past her and into the narrow hal . He glared at himself briefly in the hal mirror, then leaned on the door to the living room and stepped inside.
    Jim Thorne sat forward on a brown and battered armchair. He was hunched over a low coffee-table, strewn with the pieces of various radios he'd taken apart and was failing to put together again. He spoke without looking up.
    "I fancied chips," he said. He had more of an accent than Thorne. The voice was higher, and prone to a rattle.
    "There's a perfectly good chippy at the end of the road, for Christ's sake .. ."
    "It's not the same."
    "You love the chips from that chippy."
    "I wanted to cook 'em." He raised his head, gestured angrily with a thick piece of plastic. "I wanted to make my own fucking chips, al right?"
    Thorne bit his tongue. He walked slowly across to the armchair next to the fire and dropped into it.
    He wondered whether this was the point at which the disease moved official y from 'mid' to 'late' stage. Maybe it wasn't defined by anything clinical at al . Maybe it was just the first time that the person with the disease almost kil ed themself.. .
    "Bol ocks," his father said to nobody in particular.
    It had been a struggle up to now, no question, but they'd been managing. The practical difficulties with keys and with mail and with money; the disorientation over time and place; the obsession with trivia; the complete lack of judgement about what to wear, and when to wear it; the drugs for depression, for mood swings, for the verbal y abusive behaviour. Stil , his father hadn't wandered away and fal en into a ditch yet. He hadn't started knocking back bleach like it was lemonade.