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

He hadn't endangered himself. Until now .. .
    "You know you're supposed to stay out of the kitchen," Thorne said.
    Then came the two words the old man seemed to say most often these days. His catch phrase he cal ed it, in his better moods. Two words spat out or dribbled, sobbed or screamed, but mostly mumbled, through teeth grinding together in frustration: "I forgot."
    "I know, and you forgot to turn the cooker off. The rules are there for a good reason, you know? What happens if you forget that knives are sharp? Or that toasters and water aren't meant to go together .. .?"
    His father looked up suddenly, excitement spreading across his face as he latched on to a thought. "More people die in their own homes than anywhere else," he said. "Nearly five thousand people a year die because of accidents in the home and garden. I read it. More in the living room than in the kitchen, as a matter of fact, which I thought was surprising."
    "Dad .. ." Thorne watched as concentration etched itself into his father's features and he began to count off on his fingers and thumbs.
    "Fal s are top of the list, if I remember rightly. "Impact accidents", they're cal ed. Electrocution's another good one. Fire, obviously. Choking, suffocation, DIY incidents .. ."
    "Why didn't you give them my number to cal ?"
    His father continued to count off, but began mouthing the words silently. After half a minute or so he stopped, and went back to poking about among the coils and circuits scattered across the table.
    Thorne watched him for a while. "I'l stay the night," he said.
    The old man grinned and got to his feet. He reached into his pocket and produced a crumpled five-pound note. He held it out, waved it at Thorne. "Here you go. Here's some .. . bugger ..
    ." He closed his eyes, struggling to find the word. "A piece of the stuff people buy things with .. ."
    "What do I want money for?"
    "Money!"
    "What do I want it for?"
    "To nip down the road and get us some chips. I stil haven't had my fucking dinner yet.. ."
    He lay awake in the dark, thinking about the burning girl.
    He'd never real y stopped thinking about her, for one reason or another, not for any significant length of time, but lately, for obvious reasons, she'd been on his mind a great deal. The colours and the smel s, which had understandably faded over the years, were suddenly more vivid, more pungent than they had been at any time since it had al happened. Not that he'd had much more than a second or two back then to take it al in. Once the flames had taken hold, he'd had to be away sharpish, down that hil towards the spot where he'd parked the car.
    He'd moved almost as quickly as the girl herself.
    The rest of it the girl's face and what have you had been fil ed in afterwards. He'd seen it, swathed in bandages, splashed across every front page and every television screen. Later, he'd seen what she looked like with the bandages off; it was impossible to tel how her face had been before.
    It was funny, he thought. Ironic. If he had seen her face that day at the playground, he would have realised she wasn't the one. Afterwards, of course, nobody would mistake her for anyone else ever again.
    He drifted, eventual y, towards sleep. Thoughts giving way to fuzzy pictures and feelings .. .
    He remembered her arms flailing in the instant before she began to run, as though it were nothing more serious than a wasp. He remembered the sound of her shoes on the playground as he turned away. He remembered feeling like such a fucking idiot when he realised she was entirely the wrong girl.
    Thorne spent most of the night writhing across nylon sheets, sinking into the ludicrously soft mattress in his father's spare room and dragging back the duvet which had slid away from him down the natural slope of the bed. He felt like he'd only just got off to sleep when his phone rang. He checked his watch and saw that it was already gone nine-thirty. At the same instant that he began to panic, he remembered that