The Last Dance

Mark Billingham has twice won the Theakston Old Peculier Award for Crime Novel of the Year, and has also won a Sherlock Award for the Best Detective created by a British writer. Each of the novels featuring Detective Inspector Tom Thorne has been a Sunday Times bestseller. Sleepyhead and Scaredy Cat were made into a hit TV series on Sky 1 starring David Morrissey as Thorne, and a series based on the novels In the Dark and Time of Death was broadcast on BBC1. Mark lives in north London with his wife and two children. Also by Mark Billingham The DI Tom Thorne series Sleepyhead Scaredy Cat Lazybones The Burning Girl Lifeless Buried Death Message Bloodline From the Dead Good as Dead The Dying Hours The Bones Beneath Time of Death Love Like Blood The Killing Habit Their Little Secret Cry Baby The Murder Book Other fiction In the Dark Rush of Blood Cut Off Die of Shame Rabbit Hole SPHERE First published in Great Britain in 2023 by Sphere Copyright © Mark Billingham Ltd 2023 The moral right of the author has been asserted. All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental . All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN:978-1-4087-2634-1 Sphere An imprint of Little, Brown Book Group Carmelite House 50 Victoria Embankment London EC4Y 0DZ An Hachette UK Company www.hachette.co.uk www.littlebrown.co.uk CONTENTS Step One Challenge Position One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen Nineteen Twenty Twenty-One Twenty-Two Twenty-Three Twenty-Four Twenty-Five Twenty-Six Twenty-Seven Twenty-Eight Twenty-Nine Thirty Thirty-One Thirty-Two Thirty-Three Thirty-Four Thirty-Five Thirty-Six Step Two Hammerlock Position Thirty-Seven Thirty-Eight Thirty-Nine Forty Forty-One Forty-Two Forty-Three Forty-Four Forty-Five Forty-Six Forty-Seven Forty-Eight Step Three Shadow Position Forty-Nine Fifty Fifty-One Fifty-Two Fifty-Three Fifty-Four Fifty-Five Fifty-Six Fifty-Seven Fifty-Eight Fifty-Nine Sixty Sixty-One Sixty-Two The Final Step Fallaway Sixty-Three Sixty-Four Acknowledgements For Claire, remembering our first dance . . . ‘You dance love, and you dance joy, and you dance dreams.’ GENE KELLY ‘Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.’ H. P. LOVECRAFT The coloured lights from more than a million lamps seem to dance above the town’s main street and their reflections shimmer on the surface of the black sea just beyond. On the street itself, a thousand neon signs dazzle and buzz and the slow-moving STEP ONE CHALLENGE POSITION ONE Miller stared at the rat and the rat stared right back. ‘So, what’s it to be, this morning?’ The rat raised itself up, bead-black eyes bright and whiskers quivering. ‘A nice bit of kedgeree, maybe?’ Miller waited, smacking his