Mark Billingham - Lifeless
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Mark Billingham: author's other books
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Lifeless
Mark Billingham
Prologue
Prologue
January 12
I won't waste any time asking how you've been, because I know, and I don't much care. I'm sure you care even less about me, plus you'd have to be stupid not to figure out that things have been less than rosy for some of us. You'd have to be stupid (which I know you're not), not to work out what I want.
I don't think I'm better than you. How could I? But I'm guessing you're a bit better off. So that's basically why I'm asking. I just need a bit of help. I don't have a lot left aside from unpleasant memories. Oh, and the one, more concrete reminder of course. The "evidence" that I'm sure each of us still has.
I can't afford to care how despicable it makes me sound, having to come to you like this. Desperation drives a steamroller across self-respect. Besides, you could never hate me more than I hate myself for what happened back there. For dredging it all up again now in search of a few hundred quid.
That's all I need...
You'll notice a lack of address. I'm not being mysterious; I just don't really have one at the moment. I'm busy wearing out the welcomes of what few friends and family I've got left.
I'll write again to fix up the where and when. We can arrange a time and place to meet then, okay?
Anonymity is all very well, of course, all very James Bond, but unless you've been keeping tabs on each of us, I can't see why you should have a bloody clue who I am. Which one, I mean. You'll find out soon enough, obviously, but it can't hurt to keep the suspense going for a bit, can it?
Could be any one of four, right? Any member of the crew. I'd be amazed if a single one of us is particularly well-off.
So... for now,
Happy New Year
Part One
Breakfast and Before
The first kick wakes him and shatters his skull at the same time.
He begins to drift back toward unconsciousness almost immediately, but is aware of the intervals between each subsequent kick-though actually no more than a second or two-warping and stretching. It gives his brain, which is itself already beginning to swell, the time for one final, random series of thoughts and instructions.
Counting the kicks. Counting each smash of boot into flesh and bone. Counting the strange and, oh God, the glorious spaces in between.
Two...
Cold, in the early hours of the morning and damp. And the attempt to cry out is agonizing as the message from the brain dances between the fragments of bone in what had once been his jaw.
Three...
Warm, the face of the baby in his hands. His baby. The face of the child before it grew and learned to despise him. Reaching in vain for the letter, dog-eared and greasy, in the inside pocket of his coat. The last link to the life he had before. Groping for it, his flappy fingers useless at the end of a broken arm.
Four...
Turning his head, trying to turn it away from the pain toward the wall. His face moving against the floor, the stubble-rasp like the breaking of faraway waves. Feeling the blood, warm and sticky between his cheek and the cold cardboard beneath. Thinking that the shadow he'd glimpsed, where the face of his attacker should have been, looked blacker than black. Slick, like tarmac after a shower. Thinking that it was probably a trick of the light.
Five...
Seeming to feel the tip of the boot as it breaks through the delicate network of ribs. Aware of it in there, stamping around, distorting his organs. Kidneys-are they his kidneys?-squeezed out of shape like water-filled balloons.
Sinking fast through six, seven, and eight, their impact like crashes at a distant front door, vibrating through his shoulder and his back and the tops of his legs. The grunts and growls of the man standing above him, of the man who is kicking him to death, growing quieter and farther away.
And, Christ, what a jumble, such a scramble of words. Riot of colors and sounds. All slipping away from him now. Fuzzing and darkening...
Thinking. Thinking that this was a terrible and desperate kind of thinking, if it could still be called such a thing. Sensing that the shadow had finally turned away from him. Luxuriating then, in the bliss as the space grew, as the knowing grew that, sweet Jesus, the kicking had finally stopped.
Everything so strange now, and shapeless and bleeding away into the gutter.
He lies quite still. He knows there's little point in trying to move. He holds on tight to his name and to the name of his only child. Wraps what's left of his mind around these two names, and around the name of the Lord.
Prays that he might cling on to the shape of these few, precious words until death comes.
ONE
He woke up in a doorway opposite Planet Hollywood, with a puddle of piss at his feet that was not his own and the sickening realization that this was real, that there was no soft mattress beneath him. He exchanged a few words with the police officer whose heavy hand had shaken him roughly awake. Began to gather up his things.
He raised his face slowly skyward as he started to walk, hoped that the weather would stay fine. He decided that the emptiness at the center of him, which might have been simple fear, was probably even simpler hunger.
He wondered whether Paddy Hayes was dead yet. Had the young man charged with making the decision pulled the plug?
Moving through the West End as it shook away the sleep and slowly came to life was always a revelation. Each day he saw something he had never seen before.
Piccadilly Circus was glorious. Leicester Square was better than it looked. Oxford Street was even shittier than he'd thought it was.
There were still plenty of people about, of course. Plenty of traffic. Even at this time the streets were busier than most others in the country would be during the rush hour. He remembered a film he'd seen on DVD, set in London after most of the population had been turned into crazed zombies by some plague. There were bizarre scenes where the whole city appeared to be utterly deserted, and to this day he didn't really know how they'd managed to do it. Computer tricks, like as not. This-the hour or so when the capital showered, shaved, and shat-was about as close as it ever came. Far from deserted, but quite a few zombies shuffling about.
Most of the shops would be shut for another few hours yet. Very few opened their doors before ten these days. The caffs and sandwich bars were already up and running, though. Hoping to pull in passing trade for tea and a bacon sandwich, for coffee and croissants, in much the same way that the burger vans and kebab shops had tempted those weaving their way home only a few hours earlier.
Tea and a sandwich. Normally he'd have spent the previous night gathering enough together to get himself something to eat, but today someone would be buying him breakfast.
Halfway along Glasshouse Street, a man in a dark green suit stepped out of a doorway in front of him and tried to pass. They moved the same way across the pavement, and back again. Smiled at each other, embarrassed.
"Nice morning for a dance..."
The sudden knowledge that he'd clearly encountered a nutcase caused the smile to slide off the man's face. He turned sideways and dropped his head. Shuffled quickly past, muttering "Sorry" and "I can't..."
He hoisted his backpack higher onto his shoulder and carried on walking, wondering just what it was that the man in the suit couldn't do.
Return a simple greeting? Spare any change? Give a toss...?
He walked up Regent Street, then took a right, cutting through the side streets of Soho toward Tottenham Court Road. A strange yet familiar figure, stepping in unison alongside him, caught his eye. He slowed then stopped, watching the stranger do the same thing.
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