Dead Like You

temper at an inept waiter or shop assistant had left him feeling acutely embarrassed. But that spirit in her was part of what had attracted him to her in the first place. She had all the support and enthusiasm in the world for success, however big or small, but he just had to remember that, for Sandy, failure was never an option.
    Which explained, in part, her deep resentment, and occasional outbursts of anger, that, after years of trying almost every fertility treatment possible, she was still unable to conceive the baby they both so desperately wanted.
    Humming the words of Eric Clapton’s ‘Change the World’ – which for some reason had popped into his head – Roy Grace carried his mug of coffee down to his desk in the deserted open-plan Detectives’ Room on the second floor of Brighton’s John Street police station, with its rows of partitioned desks, its manky blue carpet, its crammed pigeonholes and its view to the east of the white walls and gleaming blue windows of the American Express headquarters. Then he logged on to the clunky, slow computer system to check the overnight serials. While he waited for it to load, he took a sip of coffee and fancied a cigarette, silently cursing the ban on smoking in police offices which had recently been introduced.
    An attempt had been made, as it was every year, to bring some Christmas cheer into the place. There were paper-chains hanging from the ceiling. Bits of tinsel draped along the tops of the partitions. Christmas cards on several desks.
    Sandy was deeply unimpressed that this was the second Christmas in three years that he had found himself on duty. And, as she quite rightly pointed out, it was a lousy week to be working. Even most of the local villains, off their trolleys with drink or off their faces with drugs, were in their homes or their lairs.
    Christmas was the peak period for sudden deaths and for suicides. It might be a happy few days for those with friends and families, but it was a desperate, wretched time for the lonely, particularly the elderly lonely ones who didn’t even have enough money to heat their homes properly. But it was a quiet period for serious crimes – the kind that could get an ambitious young detective sergeant like himself noticed by his peers and give him the chance to show his abilities.
    That was about to change.
    Very unusually, the phones had been quiet. Normally they rang all around the room constantly.
    As the first serials appeared, his internal phone suddenly rang.
    ‘CID,’ he answered.
    It was a Force Control Room operator, from the centre which handled and graded all enquiries.
    ‘Hi, Roy. Happy Christmas.’
    ‘You too, Doreen,’ he said.
    ‘Got a possible misper,’ she said. ‘Rachael Ryan, twenty-two, left her friends on Christmas Eve at the cab rank on East Street to walk home. She did not show up for Christmas lunch at her parents and did not answer her home phone or mobile. Her parents visited her flat in Eastern Terrace, Kemp Town, at 3 p.m. yesterday and there was no response. They’ve informed us this is out of character and they are concerned.’
    Grace took down the addresses of Rachael Ryan and her parents and told her he would investigate.
    The current police policy was to allow several days for a missing person to turn up before assigning any resources, unless they were a minor, an elderly adult or someone identified as being vulnerable. But with today promising to be quiet, he decided he’d rather be out doing something than sitting here on his backside.
    The twenty-nine-year-old Detective Sergeant got up and walked along a few rows of desks to one of his colleagues who was in today, DS Norman Potting. Some fifteen years his senior, Potting was an old sweat, a career detective sergeant who had never been promoted, partly because of his politically incorrect attitude, partly because of his chaotic domestic life, and partly because, like many police officers, including Grace’s late father, Potting preferred front-line work rather than taking on the bureaucratic responsibilities that came with promotion. Grace was one of the few here who actually liked the man and enjoyed listening to his ‘war stories’ – as police tales of past incidents were known – because he felt he could learn something from them; and besides, he felt a little sorry for the guy.
    The Detective Sergeant was intently pecking at his keyboard with his right index finger. ‘Bloody new technology,’ he grumbled in