Read Online In the Dark by Mark Billingham - Free Book Online

that he was making himself something to eat. With luck, she might be asleep again by the time he came to bed.
    He came into the bedroom a few minutes later and she stayed turned away from the door, knowing he was getting undressed as quietly as possible so as not to wake her. Laying his watch down nice and gently. She could smell garlic when he climbed in next to her and she knew that he’d been out to eat.
    People from work, most likely.
    It wasn’t the first time that she’d asked herself if he might be having an affair, and she was still thinking about it when she heard his breathing shift, and knew he was asleep.
    Not the first time, but as always there was one thought that nagged harder than the ‘Who?’ and the ‘Where?’ Harder even than the ‘How could you?’
    One thought.
    What right have I got to complain?
    Â 
He could feel the cash in his back pocket when he sat down. He reached around and took out the notes, dropped them on the coffee-table. Two hundred in tens and twenties, Easy had given him. Passed them across when he’d dropped Theo off; before he’d pointed his fist towards Theo’s and walked back around to the driver’s side of the car.
    â€˜What’s this for?’
    â€˜You helped out,’ Easy said.
    â€˜I did nothing.’
    It was way too much. Theo knew that Easy wouldn’t be getting anything like that for what they’d just lifted from that house. He guessed that his friend was just showing off.
    But still . . .
    â€˜This the kind of paper you could be getting,’ Easy said. ‘If you moved up.’
    â€˜And how’s that happen?’
    â€˜I talk to Wave and make it happen.’
    â€˜Simple as that?’
    â€˜You just need to move up that triangle, T.’ Easy made that gliding motion with his hand again. ‘Spend a little more time indoors, get some of these kids running around for you . Come out on a few more trips like this with me, yeah? Fun and cash, what more d’you want, man?’
    Theo thought briefly about waking Javine to show her the money, but he knew it was a stupid idea. She was like his mum: she didn’t want to know. Right, Theo thought, but she liked the money well enough when she had it. She’d be trying to decide which shoes to buy while she was shaking her head and telling him she didn’t want to know where the cash had come from.
    But it had to come from somewhere, didn’t it?
    When the Audi had roared away, he’d seen a group of kids watching from the shadows near the garages; their looks eating up the car.
    Now, he moved the cash to one side and put his feet up on the table. Sat there listening to the noises of the estate - to the rhythms and the raised voices that sang against the concrete - and tried not to think about a picture on a computer screen.

SEVEN
    Paul had left home before seven, beating most of the traffic through Brixton and into Kennington, but he had clearly not been the only one hoping to get the office to himself for an hour or two. Quite a few early birds were wearing pinched, Monday-morning faces when he got in. Not that most of them didn’t look every bit as pissed off on any other day of the week.
    Happy coppers were the ones in sitcoms, or breathing in the funny-smelling smoke at music festivals.
    The conversations over coffee and the first fag in the backyard all tended to meander back to the same topic: the fact that Paul hadn’t been seen around the place a great deal of late.
    â€˜Whose arse you been licking, you jammy sod?’ was the friendliest of the comments. ‘Why should we sit here doing all the donkey work while you skive off and swan around, you lazy bastard?’ was more typical.
    Paul produced the same smug look as usual, and told them nothing. He knew they all had better things to worry about than what he was doing with his working day. He bonded and schmoozed where he needed to; drained the coffee and