Lifeless - 5 by Mark Billingham

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 sympathetical y. Thorne looked down and brushed his fingers against the boy's shoulder. 'Hey, think about your poor old nan wil you Charlie?
    Half past six? You should stil be fast asleep...'
    And Charlie Garner looked up at him then, his eyes wide and keen,
    the bright orange screwdriver clutched tightly in his smal fist.
    'My mummy's asleep.'
    In spite of al 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 stil 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, when they found her, but I thought it would die down... I thought it would stop, after a day or two. There always seems to be people dying in one way or another, so I didn't think that it would be news for very long.
    They've got some sort of witness they said. Whoever it was must have seen me because they know how tal I am. I know I should be worried, Karen, but I'm not. Part of me wishes they'd seen me up close. Seen my face.
    A police officer on the television said it was brutal. 'This brutal kil ing: He said I was brutal and I real y tried so hard not to be. You believe that don't you, Karen? I didn't hit her or anything.
    I tried to make it quick and painless. I don't real y expect them to say anything else though. Why should they? They don't know me...
    The other one, the one in south Iondon, I can barely bring myself to think about that. It was horrible. Yes, that was brutal.
    The scratches are fading, but a couple of people at work noticed and it gave them something else to use against me. Not as if they needed any more ammunition. It was al nudges and giggles and, 'I bet she was a right goer' or, 'did she make a lot of noise?' You know, variations on that theme. I just smiled and blushed, same as I always do.
    Oh my God, Karen, if they only knew.
    Sometimes I think that perhaps I should just tel them everything. That way it would al be over, because someone would go to the police and I could just sit and wait for them to come and get me. Plus, it might at least make some of them think about me a bit differently. Find someone else to belittle. It would wipe a few smiles off a few faces wouldn't it? It would make them stop. Yes, I'd like them to step back and start to sweat a little.
    I'd like them to be scared of me.
    But I'm the one that's scared, Karen, you know that. It's the way it's always been hasn't it? That's why I can't ever tel them. Why I can't ever share this with anyone except you.
    Why I'm praying, praying, praying that Ruth wil be the last one.
    1984
    They caught Bardsley just outside the school gates. He had a few mates with him but they took one look at Nicklin, at his face, and melted away into the background. Some of them were fifth-formers at least a year older than he was, and it excited him to watch them scuttle away like the spineless wankers he knew they were.
    The two of them were on Bardsley in a second. Palmer stood in front of him, solid, red-faced and shaking. Nicklin grabbed the strap of his sports bag and together they dragged him towards the bushes.
    The park ran right alongside the main entrance to the school. A lot of the boys cut across it on the way to school and back, and the sixth formers