Death Message Read Online Free PDF Page B

of every available snack. They watched some TV and talked about football, and facelifts, and the tumour Hendricks had found inside the stomach of a middle-aged woman which had turned out to be a long-unborn twin.
    The usual stuff.
    Around eleven-thirty, Hendricks phoned for a cab back to his flat in Deptford and, while they waited, they talked about the photograph some more. They'd discussed it earlier, in three separate phone conversations: Thorne and Louise; Louise and Hendricks; Hendricks and Thorne. Then they'd spoken about it when each had arrived at the flat, and again when the three of them were finally together. It was always just a question of when they'd get back to it.
    'Until you find a body, it's just a picture,' Hendricks said.
    'You didn't see it.'
    'So what?'
    'You should listen,' Louise said. She put a hand on Thorne's arm, nodded in Hendricks' direction. 'He's spot on. It's just a photograph. You might never find a body.'
    'What am I supposed to do, then?'
    'Forget it.'
    'Like I said to Phil . . .'
    'No, I haven't seen it, but I know what death looks like. Come on, Tom, we all do.'
    Thorne knew she was right, but couldn't shake the unease. It was like a draught he kept walking through. 'It feels like it's mine, though . . . It is mine.' He hunched his shoulders, the chill at them again, bracing himself as Louise leaned in against him. 'It was sent to me.'
    Hendricks nodded slowly. His eyes flicked momentarily to Louise, then dropped to his watch. He stepped across to the window, pulled back the curtain and peered out on to the street.
    'The cab firm said to give it ten minutes,' Thorne said.
    They all moved into the hall and stood a little awkwardly around the front door. Though Thorne had spent the better part of twenty-four hours trying to avoid it, he suddenly felt the question hanging there between them; could feel the weight and the heat of it. Certain as nausea.
    Hendricks was as good a person as anyone else to voice it.
    'Why you?' he asked.
    After Hendricks had gone, Thorne and Louise didn't take too long to get into bed, but nothing that came afterwards was any more than half-hearted. Tiredness, beer or something else altogether had dampened the desire, and warmth or simple proximity had been enough for both of them.
    'I don't think you're a miserable git,' Louise said, just before she turned over.
    Later, Thorne lay awake in the dark, fighting hard to silence the shrill, insistent, 'Why?' Until, in the end, it became like a car alarm to which you grew accustomed. It was not exactly a comfort, but he knew there was every chance that the answer would present itself before he'd had to spend too long worrying about the question.
    With Louise snoring quietly next to him, he thought about something he'd said earlier. When Kitson had asked him why he hadn't just handed over the SIM and kept his handset.
    He'd said it casually then, without thinking.
    ' Well, I'll know next time .'
    He'd done a lot of walking at night. During the last few months, anyway.
    It was partly because he could , obviously; because the novelty had still not worn off. The flat wasn't small, not by a long stretch, but anywhere started to close in after a week or two; and it felt nice to get out. He didn't care a whole lot about the rain or the wind. It was just weather, and all of it was good.
    Tonight it was cold and dry as he walked quickly along the main road, past the shuttered-up shops and the all-night garages. He turned into a side street, letting his hand rest against the spanner in his coat pocket as he moved towards a group of teenagers on the corner.
    He'd walked just to kill time at first; to get through the endless hours without sleep. He was still managing no more than a couple of hours each night, three at the most, in fifteen- or twenty-minute bursts. He didn't think he'd managed more than that since that morning they'd been in to see him.
    The second time his life had been turned upside down.
    Funny how both times