Scaredy Cat Quotes

“London was a city of ghosts, some deader than others.
Thorne knew that in this respect, it wasn't unlike any other major city - New York or Paris or Sydney - but he felt instinctively that London was .... at the extreme. The darker side of that history, as opposed to the parks, palaces and pearly kings' side that made busloads of Japanese and American tourists gawk and jabber. The hidden history of a city where the lonely, the dispossessed, the homeless, wandered the streets, brushing shoulders with the shadows of those that had come before them. A city in which the poor and the plague-ridden, those long-since hanged for stealing a loaf or murdered for a shilling, jostled for position with those seeking a meal, or a score, or a bed for the night.
A city where the dead could stay lost a long time”
― Mark Billingham, Scaredy Cat

“It was like being some not quite all-knowing, not quite all-seeing force, hamstrung by the missing pieces of the jigsaw. Omnipotent and impotent. Like being God with Alzheimer’s.”
― Mark Billingham, Scaredy Cat

“Death hit people differently. She was getting by. He had all but given up.

There was no middle ground as woman. She was used to it, but it still pissed her off. Frigid, or a slag. Girly, or one of the boys. Hrad, or emotionally unstable.

When USA sneezed , the UK caught the cold.

Her face was often difficult to read, but at that moment it told him whatever McEvoy found Margie Knight o not, she'd tear every dodgy sauna, massage parlour and tin-pot knocking shop in the city apart trying.

It might have been a few minutes, it might have been an hour, when he heard Holland's voice...

The mood she is in right now, Holland, if you're so much as suggest that it might be her time of the month, I'm guessing she'll kill you on the spot.

I think the poison inside me has eaten away every ounce of courage there might ever have been. I need to find just a little more.

"Look, I'm getting tired of saying sorry"
"Well I'm not tired of hearing you say it, OK?"

Maybe they bred them somewhere, taught then how to put their hair in a bun and look down their pointed noses, before sending them out into the world with a pair of bug glasses, a fondness for tweed and something uncomfortable up their backside.

"I'm going to kill Holland. No, I'm going to make him listen to some proper country music and then I'm going to kill him."
"Actually, fuck that, the music would be wasted on him anyway. I'll just kill him."

"fuckfuckbullocksfuck..."

"What? I make you sick? I make you want to hurt me?"

"You knock, you wait, you get asked to come in, you come in. It's pretty bloody straightforward."

...sat at home like Tom Throne, trying to keep the rest of the world well away.

Police officer and prison staff are old enemies. The finders and the keepers resenting each other.

'Everybody says it switches around when you get old and they have to look after you. The parent becomes the child...It's non sense though., it really is. Even when they're cooking for you and getting your shopping in, you know? Even when they're doing up the buttons on your pyjamas and pretending to listen to your stupid stories, even when they're wiping your arse, you're still the father--It never stops, never. You're still the father and he's still the son. Still the son...'


A thin layer across the top of the cistern in the ladies, invisible unless used in some of the more drugs-conscious clubs.

...Depending on how it looks, thy either do nothing, or break it again, re-set it.'
'Do they need volunteers?'

"Don't talk to me. Not like that, do you understand? Not 'are you all right?' Not 'sorry'..."
"I don't..."
"Talk to me like a murdered."


Holland couldn't believe what he was hearing. Palmer?

'Sorry?' Throne shouted. 'Fucking sorry...?'

'Shut your fucking stupid cunt's mouth. I will kill you, is that clear? I'm not afraid, certainly not of you. I don't care what happens. He can shoot the pair of us, I don't give a fuck. But if I hear so much as a breath coming out of you before this is finished, a single poisonous whisper, I'll rip your face off with my bare hands. I'll take it clean off, Nicklin, I'll make you another nice, new identity...”
― Mark Billingham, Scaredy Cat

“No, he needed to mould the context, to shape his environment in a way that would stimulate and spark, that would challenge and charge him.”
― Mark Billingham, Scaredy Cat