The wrong hands, p.32
The Wrong Hands,
p.32
Natalie took her jacket off. ‘Happy days . . . ’
Dinner was demolished in short order and, though nothing had been previously discussed, there was no talk about the murders that had brought them together. The victims, living or dead. There was no mention of hired killers with a penchant for alliterative aliases, of severed hands in briefcases, pepper spray or welding.
There was plenty of chat though, and Miller was happy enough to sit and listen.
Natalie told a story about a man who’d come into A&E with a Kinder Egg wedged up his bum and Xiu described an incident when a woman had rung 999 because her local McDonald’s had run out of McNuggets. They raved about TV shows they loved and slagged off those they hated and, when they were discussing music and Natalie confessed to Xiu that she was a big heavy metal fan, Miller almost spat out a mouthful of steak pie.
Everyone, especially Finn, laughed a lot.
Once everything had been cleared away, Finn went outside to smoke and Natalie and Xiu generously volunteered to do the washing up. Miller politely asked the smart speaker to play Abbey Road and walked across to the window.
Staring out, he could see the distant lights from Wales . . . or perhaps it was the Isle of Man. Miller was never quite sure. The sea was just an undulating mass of blackness, but in the wash from the necklace of streetlamps he could just make out the figure walking slowly down the hill towards it.
Alex.
It might have been anyone, of course, but Miller recognised the swing of her arms as she moved and the orange Blackpool FC hat she’d bought outside Bloomfield Road one Saturday afternoon. She hadn’t been a football fan. She just liked the colour, she’d said. Miller watched, holding his breath, because it was the first time he’d seen her outside the house and he wondered what it meant.
He could not take his eyes off her as she walked for another half a minute or so, moving in and out of the shadows before stopping and turning. She stared back at the house, back at him.
She raised a hand.
Miller didn’t hear Finn come back in and only knew she was standing next to him when he felt her hand slide into his.
‘That was nice,’ she said.
They stared out together into the darkness for another minute or so and it felt perfectly comfortable, perfectly normal, even though Miller knew she wasn’t seeing what he was.
‘I think I just said goodbye to your mother.’
Finn didn’t seem thrown at all and just let out a soft breath. ‘I said goodbye to her a long time ago.’
‘No, you didn’t.’ Miller squeezed her hand. ‘And she certainly never said goodbye to you.’ He watched as the shape of his wife began to blur until he could barely make it out. He touched the fingers of his damaged hand to the glass and said, ‘I love you,’ wondering why, after all the conversations they’d had since her death, he’d waited until now to say it.
Finn turned to look at him, unaware that the words had not been meant for her, or that they might just as well have been. ‘Don’t be soft,’ she said.
Miller turned away from the window and gave her a look, because he didn’t want her to feel awkward. Because wasn’t he just a big daft idiot who was always saying the wrong thing?
‘Sorry . . . ’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am delighted (not to say enormously relieved) that Declan Miller’s first outing in The Last Dance seems to have gone down well with the majority of readers. As you are someone who has just read the second book in the series, I can only assume that you are one of those. So, thank you. Of course, you might be one of those weirdos who turn to the last page first (trust me, they exist) so you may not actually have read it yet, but either way, you’ve paid good money for a copy, so my ‘thank you’ still applies. If you’ve stolen/borrowed/illegally downloaded it, I’m not quite so grateful, but a reader’s a reader, right?
Even if they’re light-fingered or ‘careful with money’.
This is my twenty-third full-length crime novel and, as always, I am indebted to a huge number of people for getting it across the line. The team at Little, Brown have been as supportive and encouraging as always, despite the jokes (sorry/not sorry) and left me free to wander off in all manner of strange directions, confident that, from start to finish, The Wrong Hands was in the right hands. So, a massive thank you – once again – to David Shelley, Charlie King, Catherine Burke, Robert Manser, Callum Kenney, Tamsin Kitson, Jon Appleton, Tom Webster, Sean Garrehy, Hannah Methuen, Gemma Shelley and Sarah Shrubb. Outside of LB, I am yet again thankful for the forensic and life-saving attentions of Wendy Lee and Nancy Webber.
All of the above are amazing, but special thanks are due to my editor Ed Wood, my agent Sarah Lutyens and the best publicist in the business, Laura Sherlock for putting up with me. They are, without doubt, the best one man/two women trio of superstars since Boney M.
My thanks are also winging their way across the pond to the Miller posse in the US, more specifically, the team at Inkwell and at my US publisher Grove Atlantic. I’m hugely grateful to Morgan Entrekin, my editor Joe Brosnan, my publicist Jenny Choi and my agent David Forrer for keeping the faith and pretending to get jokes about saveloys, Homes Under the Hammer and that bloke from the Go Compare adverts.
Fist-bumps and hugs to my fellow Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers – Luca Veste, Doug Johnstone, Chris Brookmyre, Stuart Neville and Val McDermid – for the rock, the roll and all the laughter this year. The best gang there is, with a fried egg on top.
And I’ll say it again, but the most heartfelt thanks of all are due to you – dear, dear, wonderful, wise, highly attractive and, above all, discerning reader. Thank you for welcoming Declan Miller so warmly and I hope his sophomore appearance in print has only increased your tolerance to his antics.
Oh, and in true James Bond fashion and in response to a good few emails of late, Tom Thorne will return next year in . . .
Finally, before anyone fires off an email using capital letters to signify their outrage, I’m well aware that there haven’t been any peanuts in a bag of Revels for ages. That’s why the incident described took place a good while ago, besides which, why should cold hard facts get in the way of a good joke?
Mark Billingham, The Wrong Hands
