Dead Tomorrow

124

This had always been Roy Grace’s favourite walk, underneath the chalk cliffs, east from Rottingdean. As a child it was almost a Sunday ritual with his parents, and recently, at least on those Sundays when he didn’t have to work, it was becoming a ritual for himself and Cleo.

He loved the sense of drama, particularly on rough days, like this afternoon, when there was a blustery wind and the tide was high, and occasionally the sea surged right up the beach and sent spray and pebbles crashing over the low stone wall. And the signs that warned of the danger of falling rocks added to that drama. He loved the smells here too, the salty tang and the seaweed and the occasional whiff of rotting fish that would be gone in an instant. And the sight of cargo ships and tankers out on the horizon, and sometimes yachts, closer in.

Today was the last Sunday before Christmas and he knew he should be feeling free, and looking forward to some time off with the woman he loved. But inside he felt as churned up as the roiling, spuming, grey Channel water to his right.

They were both wrapped up warmly. Cleo had her arm comfortably looped through his and he wondered, suddenly, if they would still be doing this walk as wrinkly old people in fifty years’ time.

Humphrey trotted along on his extended lead, holding a large piece of driftwood proudly in his mouth, like a trophy. A small brown dog bounded towards them, yipping, its owner some distance away yelling its name. Cleo broke free for a moment and knelt to stroke it. But it backed away nervously when Humphrey dropped the driftwood and growled. Hushing him, she took a step towards it and it bounded back again. They both laughed. Then, recognizing its name, it suddenly raced away.

‘So, Great Detective, how do you feel?’ she asked, placing her arm back through his.

‘I don’t know,’ he said truthfully. He watched Humphrey struggling to pick up the wood again.

‘Tell me?’

‘Was it the Duke of Wellington who said that the only thing worse than losing a battle is winning one?’

She nodded.

‘That’s how I feel.’

‘Something I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘How were all those medical people kept silent for so long?’

‘A surgeon in Romania earns 4000 euros a year. Other medical staff even less. That’s how. They were all making a fortune at Wiston Grange, so they were happy as hell.’

‘And tucked safely away in the countryside.’

‘Most of them not able to speak English. So no gossiping with the locals. It was a smart set-up. Ship them in, let them all make a bundle, then ship them out again. They’re members of the EU, so no cross-border work restrictions, no questions asked.’

‘And Sir Roger Sirius?’

‘Big money. And he had his own moral justification.’

They walked on in silence for a while.

‘Tell me something, Grace – if that had been our child – that girl, Caitlin. What would you have done?’ With her free arm she patted her belly. ‘If it were to happen to this little person, sometime in the future?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘In the same circumstances, if our only option was to try to buy a liver to save our child, what would you have done – do?’

He shrugged. ‘I’m a policeman. My duty is to enforce the law.’

‘That’s what scares me about you sometimes.’

‘Scares you?’

‘Uh huh. I think I would take a bullet for my child. And I think I would be capable of killing for my child. Isn’t that what being a parent means?’

‘You think I was wrong, doing what I did?’

‘No, I suppose not. But I can understand why the mother did what she did.’

Grace nodded. ‘In one of the philosophy books you gave me, I read something Aristotle said: The gods have no greater torment than for a mother to outlive her child.’

‘Yes. Exactly. So how do you think that woman feels now?’

‘Is a Romanian street kid’s life less valuable than a middle-class Brighton kid’s? Cleo, darling, I’m not God, I don’t play God, I’m a copper.’

‘Do you ever wonder if sometimes you are too much a copper?’

‘Meaning?’

‘Enforcing the law at any cost? Hiding behind the human cost? Are you so constricted by your policeman’s view of the world that you can’t see outside it?’

‘We saved the life of that Romanian kid. That matters a lot to me.’

‘Kind of, job done, move on to the next?’

He shook his head. ‘No, never. That’s not how I work – or feel – ever.’

She held him tighter. ‘You’re a good man really, aren’t you.’

He smiled wistfully. ‘In a shitty world.’

She stopped and stared at him, smiling that smile that he truly would die for. ‘You make it a little less shitty.’

‘I wish.’