Birdman Quotes
"North Greenwich. Late May. Three hours before sunup and the river was deserted."
"He lay blinking in the dark, collecting his thoughts, fighting the impulse to tilt back into sleep."
"No more Glenmorangies in standby week, Jack, swear it now, swear it."
"The first attending CID officer got onto Croydon exchange, asking for pager numbers for the Area Major Investigation Pool."
"The only light was the weak sodium yellow of the scattered streetlamps."
"The garden. Now there, he thought, there was perfect proof that the relationship was on a tilt."
"His history was embedded too deeply in this quarter acre of loam and clay to pull it out on a whim."
"The accelerated-promotion new blood in the Area Major Investigation Pool: younger, harder, fitter."
"Caffery held his hands up. ‘OK, OK. Whatever you say. Sir.’"
"Fine. That’s fine. Go home and pretend to sleep."
"In the stinking stew at the bottom of the blood-spattered bowl, five tiny dead shapes huddled together as if trying to keep warm."
"The way with those types, they've got that busting for a hit they've gone and done a trick for some fucking lunatic."
"I meant what I said. This is not a black crime."
"Every human is sentenced to a particular lifelong exercise of will, with a duty to accept it with grace and strength."
"The inhuman and sick cannot stay apart for long. They will collide."
"Are you a little poofter, T? Tell me? Are you a little buggerer?"
"It wasn’t any worse than the nightmares I’ve had since you two came knocking at my door."
"I don’t have time for a display, Lucilla. Just tell me what I do now."
"He only disposes of them when they become too putrid."
"It's been bugging us why they weren't raped. And here's the explanation."
"Nope, there’s no overtime left in the pot anyway. No—we’ll put Diamond at the incident room, let him make amends."
"I was just looking at Marilyn’s lot. You know—thinking about Steph and Laure at that age."
"I’ll get the governor to OK forty-eight hours. Then we review."
"I don’t love you, Veronica. I don’t want you in my house any more."
"The only time he could forget was for the hours he spent with the women."
"It’s fathers who abuse—not mothers—nothing in the papers or on TV about mothers."
"I believe you’ve got a taste for Golden Triangle mountain air."
"I don’t care how tired everyone is, think 'shit' and 'shovel' on this."
"Birdman is the mutilator. Harteveld is dead, Birdman’s still working."
"A necrophiliac’s club. Usual rules: no blacks, no Jews, no spikes in the clubhouse."
"She wasn’t opened for the simple reason that she had her own healthy heart pumping in her body."
"The birds were alive when they went in. They’d have struggled."
"It made him tremble to think how easy the abduction had been."
"By his birthday he’d be ready for the real thing."
"Every intention of exploiting it. I suppose I should be thrilled that it’s not all over yet."
"The world was dry by the time the blue Peugeot reached Wildacre Cottage."
"The rain came in clear pellets, hard as glass balls bouncing off his open eyes."
"He had killed and not confessed—he was now the predator who knew his quarry."
"The realization that he had no idea, no sense, made goosebumps rise on his arms."
"He could let it go on, continue to scratch at it—rise to Penderecki’s bait, allow him to reinvent ways to keep the torment fresh—and trek on, alone and childless in this life."
"Odd how calm you are. Is that all there is to it? Is it really this simple to lie and be believed?"
"As if he hadn’t fully inhabited his life but had sat looking the opposite way, watching and planning, trying to make amends, trying to trap the past, while his life played itself out over his shoulder."
"He dropped his head and stood against the fence, hands linked in the wire, his heart slowing while the evening gathered around him."