Free Lifeless - 5 by Mark Billingham

wearing. Contained excitement, like trying to hold a shit inside. He wondered what Jesmond, no doubt holding a large glass of red wine and studying his DCI's strange expression, would be making of it.
    Brigstocke was starting to sound a little impatient. 'So, what is it? A new lead on the kil er?'
    Thorne kept it nice and simple. 'Kil ers, Russel . Plural. There's two of them.'
    1985
    It was a moment he would always remember. Karen sitting on the bank, pushing a strand of blonde hair behind her ear, and Smart smiling, mouth ful of chocolate as always, his dark eyes focusing on something in the distance, searching for it, seeking out the source of their next adventure.
    And him, looking from one to the other, nervous but happy, the sun in his eyes and a smal cloud of gnats swirling in front of his face...
    It was a moment that took him back to a day two summers earlier. That day with the cricket bat. The day when he saw Karen for the first time. That was when he and Smart were at the same school of course. Before the business with the air pistol...
    The two of them weren't real y supposed to see each other after the Bardsley incident. Fol owing the expulsion, efforts had been made to keep them apart, and for a while Palmer had been happy enough to go along with that. After al , the police had told their parents that it would be better for everybody if they were not al owed to be together. There had been talk of
    'influence' and of 'geeing up'. He missed the excitement though, he missed the unpredictability, and he was delighted when Smart, once they'd started hanging around together again, told him that he'd missed it too. Plus, he always felt better about being around Karen, if Smart was close by.
    Karen was older than he was, closer to Smart's age, but Stuart couldn't make her laugh the way he could. He'd always been the one that got her giggling, ever since that day when she'd crawled through the hole in the fence and seen the business with the frog. There were times, when he saw the two of them whispering, or smoking, or watched them walking ahead of him along by the railway line, that he would start to feel like he shouldn't be there. Then Karen would stop and smile that smile at him and ask him to pul some stupid face, or put on a sil y voice or something and he would soon have her in fits. Sometimes he thought that perhaps she was teasing him a little, but he didn't real y mind. He could see how important he was to her, and to Stuart. He could see the three of them together, friends for good, the long grass of the railway embankment becoming the careful y tended lawn of a col ege quadrangle and the back garden of one of the big houses that each of them owned.., and final y, the rambling parkland of that Heath in London his mum had taken him to once, where the three of them would sit together on a park bench, with dogs, and perhaps children.
    Palmer knew, as much as he knew anything at barely fourteen, that he was in love.
    Karen stood up and looked around for a few seconds before half running, half-tumbling down the bank. She pretended that she was going to crash into Nicklin, and he pretended to be frightened. At the last minute, she jumped and Nicklin staggered back as he caught her, shouting and laughing, one hand holding tight to her arse.
    Palmer laughed too and swatting the swarm of gnats aside, fol owed them as they each lit a cigarette and began walking slowly towards the smal group of blackened, broken-down railway buildings in the distance.
    Once inside the main building - a disused equipment shed - they did the usual quick sweep, searching for signs of habitation. Tramps slept here sometimes. The place stil smelt of stale piss and strong lager. They'd found the remains of a fire a few times before now, and empty tins and syringes, and once, a used condom which Nicklin had picked up and chased Karen around with for a while. Today the place seemed even more deserted than usual. The usual fixtures and fittings. A