Free The Burning Girl-4 by Mark Billingham

first physical symptom of a virus that had been lurking inside her, waiting for the chance to blossom since the day she'd handed over her warrant card. She'd tried to ignore it on other occasions, when an unfamiliar reaction to something had forced her to ask the question.
    Have I stopped being a copper inside}
    She knew what the answer was. The cold-case stuff was Mickey Mouse; it was just playing at what she used to do for real. Now, she could feel doubt, worry, pain, anger. And fear. She felt them al in a way she never had for those thirty years she'd spent watching other people feel the same things. She felt like a civilian. And she hated it.
    She knew that this was al about Gordon Rooker. The reassurance that had come from Thorne's visit to the Royal had lasted no more than a couple of hours. God, it was al so bloody stupid. After al , the facts were pretty obvious: Rooker was locked up; Rooker was guilty; whoever had been phoning her and sending the letters was some nutcase who, by the look of it, had probably stopped now anyway.
    It hadn't been facts, though, that had made her throw up. She needed to deal with the feelings. She needed to deal with the panic.

    She needed to start behaving like a real copper again.
    "It's definitely not the food," Jack said as he slowed to turn into their quiet crescent. "How many times have we eaten in that place over the years .. .?"
    Hendricks was already asleep by the time Thorne got in, just after eleven. As Thorne crept past the sofa-bed towards the kitchen, Elvis, his psychotic cat, jumped down from where she'd been curled up on Hendricks' feet and fol owed him. While he waited for the kettle to boil, Thorne poured some cat munchies into a grubby plastic bowl and told Elvis one or two things about his day. He'd rather have talked to his friend, who was a marginal y better conversationalist, but the snoring from the next room made it clear just how wel away Hendricks was.
    Thorne didn't want to wake him. He knew that Hendricks had probably had a fairly tough day himself.
    Up to his elbows in the cadavers of Muslum and Hanya Izzigil.
    Drinking his tea at the kitchen table, Thorne thought about those who would spend the coming night sleepless. Those with money worries or difficulties at work, or relationship problems.
    It was odd what could keep some people awake, while a man who dealt in death usual y one that had been anything but peaceful could sleep like a baby. He thought about Dave Hol and, bleary-eyed at 4 a.m." who would tel him just how ludicrous that expression was.
    Of course, he didn't know what went on in Phil Hendricks' dreams .. .
    Thorne hadn't slept bril iantly himself since the night he'd come so close to death the year before. There had been nightmares, of course, but now it was just as if his body had adapted and required less sleep. Most nights he'd get by on four or five hours and then col apse into something approaching a coma when he took a day off.
    Having removed his shoes, Thorne carried them, and what was left of his tea, towards the bedroom. On the way through the darkened living room he picked up his CD Walkman and a George Jones album. He held the bedroom door open for Elvis, and watched as she hopped back up on to Phil Hendricks' legs.
    "Sod you, then," Thorne said.
    He padded into his bedroom with his tea, his shoes and his music, and closed the door behind him.
    It was a sudden change in the light, no more than that.
    Carol Chamberlain saw it reflected in the dressing-table mirror as she sat taking her make-up off. She'd washed most of it off earlier, rubbing cold water into her face in the toilets at the Italian restaurant. Trying to stop the dizziness and to bring back a little colour to her cheeks.
    Jack was moving around downstairs. Locking up, pul ing out plugs. Keeping them safe .. .
    She sat in her night-dress and stared hard at herself. It was time to sort her hair out, and maybe shift a few pounds though, at fifty-six, that was a damn sight