Picture You Dead

21

Thursday, 26 September

Buoyed by his meeting with the Acting ACC yesterday, Roy Grace sat in his office shortly after 8 a.m., buried in paperwork from the twenty-seven crates of files from Nick Sloan’s original investigation on Operation Canvas, preparing for next week’s briefing. It was a tedious but vital task. As he sipped his increasingly tepid coffee, he suddenly realized he’d not spoken to Norman Potting about his cancer scare for some time. He had been so consumed by his own grief he’d not thought about Norman. He picked up his phone and called the DS, inviting him in for a chat, and quite welcoming the distraction.

Potting responded eagerly, although his voice sounded a little strange, a bit croaky, and there was a knock on his door less than a couple of minutes later.

‘Yes, chief?’ he said as he entered, his voice definitely sounding a little hoarse, as if he’d been shouting. He stood massaging his neck between his finger and thumb, and Grace could see the worry in the detective’s eyes.

Grace signalled for him to sit, and Potting perched on one of the two chairs in front of his desk. He was looking, as he had been for several days now, paler and less confident than normal. Grace knew the detective was living on his own and probably didn’t have many people – if anyone – to share his worries with. But he saw something in the way the DS was looking at him that reminded him of the fear in his father’s eyes, despite the brave face he’d tried to put on after his diagnosis of cancer.

‘Sorry about my voice, chief.’ He coughed as if trying to clear his throat. ‘Woke up with it like this.’ He grinned nervously. ‘Just a bit of a frog in my throat. What can I do? Better than a toad in my hole some might say!’

‘I just thought it would be good to have a quick catch-up on your health, Norman. Do you have any news?’

‘Thanks for asking, chief. That’s really kind. I don’t want to trouble you with my problems at this really tough time for you. But I am worried – shit scared, to be honest with you.’

‘I want to help. Where are you at with everything?’

‘Well, as I think I told you, my GP sent me to an ENT consultant – she was a pretty cold fish. When I told her I smoked a pipe she said it was quite possibly laryngeal or oesophageal cancer, straight out, just like that. But she also said it might just be laryngitis.’ He lowered his head, to avoid meeting Grace’s eyes. ‘I’m worried sick.’

Grace nodded sympathetically. ‘But it could be one of a number of other things, couldn’t it, Norman? Cancer is only one possible diagnosis. Have you tried Fisherman’s Friends?’

Potting smiled bleakly, then shrugged. ‘Yeah, I’ve tried them, they don’t work. Used to, but not any more. It may seem strange to say this, but ever since Bella died, I’ve been feeling under a cloud, chief. As if it was my fault she died, and that if I’d been there, it wouldn’t have happened.’

Grace looked at him face to face, with a sympathetic frown. ‘Norman, Bella was on her way to work when she heroically went into a burning building to try to save lives. And in a couple of months we’ll be recognizing that gallantry when we go to the Palace to receive her medal. How can you possibly blame yourself for not being there when she died?’

Potting shrugged and said lamely, ‘I know, chief. It’s daft, but I do.’

‘So now you think you’re being punished by being given a cancer diagnosis? Really? Do you have some kind of death wish to join Bella, where you’ll both be happy together in an eternal afterlife?’

Potting shook his head. ‘I’m not religious, chief. She’s gone – the only woman I truly loved – and I know I have to move on. I don’t buy all that crap that we’ll be together in some kind of eternity.’

‘So how can you believe you’re being given terminal cancer as some kind of retribution, Norman?’

Potting shrugged. ‘I know, it’s stupid. But that’s what I keep thinking.’

‘Want to know what I think?’

‘Please.’

‘It’s something my mother used to say: Don’t paint the Devil on the wall.’

Potting grinned. ‘I like that,’ he said. ‘I like that a lot. Maybe it is just laryngitis – I have had that before, although this somehow feels different. She sent me to the laryngologist, who asked me all sorts of things. How long has it been going on? Have I noticed blood in my phlegm? Does it feel like something is stuck? Do I smoke? Do I drink?’

‘Well, she’s got you there!’ Grace said humorously.

‘Fair enough, right. Then she massaged my neck to check my glands, which was all fine, but then she shoved a snake-like object down my nose and said she could see a polyp. They need to remove it.’

‘So?’

‘So, it could be anything,’ Norman said solemnly.

‘Well, whatever it is we’ll tackle it; you are not alone.’

Potting coughed again, then squeezed his throat between his finger and thumb. ‘Bloody frog. They are down all our throats since Brexit, aren’t they?’ He gave him a wry smile.

Roy Grace looked him straight in the eye for some moments, then shook his head and said, trying not to sound too stern, ‘Norman, we’ve known each other a number of years, right?’

Potting nodded. ‘We have indeed, chief.’

‘You’re a highly valued detective and I’m very fond of you, and I do enjoy your humour, but we’re in a very different world to when we first worked together, and sometimes you run your humour pretty close to the line. I’d hate to see your brilliant career ended because of something you said without thinking. I’m a good one to talk – I still occasionally say the wrong thing, but we’ve all got to be aware and think about other people’s sensitivities. So here’s my suggestion – before you open your mouth to say something witty, count to three, OK?’

‘Good advice, chief. I’m suitably chastened.’

‘I’m not criticizing you, Norman. I’m giving you a survival lesson.’

Potting nodded, looking downcast. ‘I appreciate it, chief. I was always rubbish at maths, but I can just about manage to count to three.’

‘I was pretty crap at maths, too.’

Potting shook his head. ‘You and I – we’d never have made it into the force today, would we?’

Grace smiled.