Dead if You Don’t

51

Saturday 12 August

22.30–23.30

‘So what made you join the police?’ Norman Potting asked his colleague, seated beside him, as he drove the unmarked Ford up the hill, heading towards the east of the city.

‘My dad was a police officer in Belfast,’ Velvet Wilde said in her Northern Irish accent, the smell of pipe smoke on Potting’s clothes reminding her of him. ‘He was killed by a car bomb during the Troubles. I made the decision that as soon as I was old enough, I would do something to stand up against any kind of tyranny or intimidation.’

‘I like feisty women,’ Potting said. ‘Good on you.’

She said nothing.

Potting was silent for a beat. Street lights flashed by, overhead, briefly illuminating their faces. ‘Like I said,’ he repeated, ‘I like feisty women.’

‘I’m sure Brighton is full of them, gagging to get laid by you.’

He smiled. ‘Are you allowed to say that these days with all the political correctness about workplace harassment?’

‘You know what, Norman, so far as I’m concerned most of it is absolute bollocks.’

‘I agree with you, Velvet. So would you permit me to tell you that you’re a very attractive lady?’

‘Well, that’s what my partner tells me,’ she said.

‘Ah.’ Potting nodded. ‘He’s a lucky man. What’s his name?’

‘Julia.’

There was a long silence. ‘Right,’ Potting said, clumsily.

‘I understand your fiancée was a police officer who died in a fire,’ she said.

He nodded, gloomily. ‘Bella. She was the love of my life.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Thank you.’ He shrugged. ‘You’re happy with Julia?’

‘She’s the love of my life. Very happy.’

‘You’re lucky.’

‘I am.’

The satnav indicated half a mile to their destination. They were high up above the cliffs of East Brighton and in daytime they would have had commanding views, to their right, across the English Channel. Now it was a vast, inky blackness.

‘I heard that Detective Superintendent Grace lost the love of his life, too,’ DC Wilde suddenly said.

‘Well, he’s very happily married now,’ Potting replied, guardedly. ‘He lost his first wife but I couldn’t say whether she was the love of his life.’

‘How did he lose her — what was her name — Sandy?’

‘He doesn’t talk about her much. As I understand, they married when he was quite young. Then he came home, on the evening of his thirtieth birthday, after they’d been married ten years, to find she had vanished.’

‘Vanished?’

‘Into thin air. No note or message. He came home to take her out for a birthday dinner and she wasn’t there. I think they found her car at Gatwick Airport, but there were no transactions on her credit cards, nothing. He spent ten years looking for her — I heard he even consulted mediums.’ He shrugged. ‘Eventually he had her declared legally dead and married a lovely lady, Cleo, who runs the Brighton and Hove Mortuary. They have a baby son, Noah.’

‘She is so nice — I’ve met her. And did he ever find out what happened to his wife?’

‘Only very recently. Sandy was in a coma after being hit by a taxi in Munich and then died — leaving behind a ten-year-old son he never knew existed.’

‘His son?’

‘As I understand.’

‘God,’ she said. ‘How does he cope with that — how does his new wife?’

‘He doesn’t talk about his personal life much. Not at work, anyhow. But I’ve known him a long time — he’s pretty resourceful.’

She shook her head. ‘None of us ever knows what’s around the corner, do we?’

‘That’s why we do this job,’ Norman Potting said.

‘Because we don’t know what’s around the corner?’ She looked puzzled.

‘Exactly.’

‘In what sense?’

He pulled out his warrant card. ‘One day, when you’re as old as I am, you’ll understand. This card, this job, it lets us see around blind corners. Whether we like the view or not.’

‘We’re not about to like the view ahead, right?’

Norman Potting shook his head. ‘That’s never an option. We don’t like or dislike. We just do what we do. Roy Grace says all we can do as police officers is to try to lock up the villains and make the world a slightly better place.’

‘And do we?’

‘Lock the villains up? Or make the world a better place?’ he asked.

‘Make the world a better place.’

‘I think we help stop it getting worse.’