Not Dead Enough

88

It was now almost completely dark outside. Distractedly, Roy Grace ran his eye down the pages and pages on his screen of today’s incident reports log, looking for anything that might be relevant to the two cases. He found nothing. He scanned through his email inbox, deleted several where he had just been copied in and fired off a few quick responses. Then he looked at his watch. It was fifteen minutes since Cleo had said she would call him right back.

He felt a sudden knot of anxiety in his stomach, thinking how much he cared for her; how he could not bear the thought of anything happening to her. As Sandy had been for so many years, Cleo was starting to feel like the rock to which his life was moored. A good, solid, beautiful, funny, loving, caring and wise rock. But sometimes in shadow, not sunlight.

Roy, this is not the woman Lesley and I saw last week. We really are convinced we saw Sandy. Best, Dick

God, he thought, it would have been so much simpler if Dick had replied to him that yes, this was the woman they had seen. It still wouldn’t have given him the closure he sought, but at least it would have put Munich back in its box. Now it was drawing him towards another journey there. But at this moment, he wasn’t able to think about that. He was remembering only too vividly that some creep had slashed the roof of Cleo’s MG yesterday, in broad daylight, outside the mortuary.

The place attracted every imaginable kind of weirdo and sicko, of which Brighton had more than its fair share. He still found it hard to understand how she could enjoy working there as much as she claimed she did. Sure, you could get used to just about anything. But that didn’t mean you could like anything.

Car roofs mostly got slashed in urban streets, either by people breaking in to steal something or by swaggering yobs late at night, high or drunk, who were passing by. People didn’t pass by the mortuary car park, especially not on a hot Sunday afternoon. Nothing had been stolen from the car. It was just a nasty, malicious piece of vandalism. Probably some lowlife jealous of the car.

But was that person outside the mortuary now?

Call me. Please call me.

He opened an attachment and tried to read through the agenda for this year’s International Homicide Investigators Association annual symposium, in New Orleans, now just a few weeks away. It was impossible to concentrate.

Then his phone rang. Grabbing it, he blurted in relief, ‘Hi!’

But it was Jane Paxton, telling him that Bishop was about to see his solicitor and she was heading over to the observation room at the custody block. She suggested that he came over in about ten minutes.