Dead Man's Footsteps

Lorraine said glumly. ‘That’s just bloody great. When do you think he might get back?’
    ‘I don’t know – I’ll get an update as soon as I can.’
    Lorraine heard a child calling, and Mo saying, ‘One minute, darling. Mummy’s on the phone.’
    Lorraine crushed out her cigarette. Then she jumped down from the stool, still watching the television screen, pulled out a tea bag and a mug, and poured in the water. Still without taking her eyes from the screen, she stepped back and bumped her hip, painfully, into the corner of the kitchen table.
    ‘Shit! Fuck!’
    She looked down for a moment. Saw the fresh red mark among the uneven line of bruises, some black and fresh, some yellow and almost gone. Ronnie was clever, he always hit her in the body, never her face. Always made bruises she could easily hide.
    Always cried and begged forgiveness after one of his – increasingly frequent – drunken rages.
    And she always forgave him.
    Forgave him because of the deep inadequacy she felt. She knew how badly he wanted the one thing she had not been able, so far, to give him. The child he so desperately wanted.
    And because she was terrified of losing him.
    And because she loved him.

33
OCTOBER 2007
    It hadn’t been the best weekend of his life, Roy Grace thought to himself at 8 o’clock on Monday morning, as he sat in the tiny, cramped dentist’s waiting room, flicking through the pages of Sussex Life . In fact, it didn’t really feel as if the previous week had actually ended.
    Dr Frazer Theobald’s post-mortem had gone on interminably, finally finishing around 9 p.m. on Saturday. And Cleo, who had been fine during the post-mortem, had been uncharacteristically ratty with him yesterday.
    Both of them knew it was no one’s fault that their weekend plans had been ruined, yet somehow he felt she was blaming him, just the way Sandy used to blame him when he’d arrive home hours late, or have to cancel some long-term plan at the last minute because an emergency had come up. As if it was his fault a jogger had discovered a dead body in a ditch late on a Friday afternoon, instead of at a more convenient time.
    Cleo knew the score. She knew the world of the police and their erratic hours better than most – her own weren’t much different. She could be called out at any time of the day or night, and frequently was. So what was eating her?
    She had even got annoyed with him when he’d gone back to his own house for a couple of hours to mow the badly overgrown lawn.
    ‘You wouldn’t have been able to mow it if we’d been up in London,’ she’d said. ‘So why now?’
    It was his house that was the real problem, he knew. His house – his and Sandy’s house – still seemed a red rag to a bull with Cleo. Although he had recently removed a lot of Sandy’s possessions, Cleo still very rarely came round and always seemed uncomfortable when she did. They’d only made love there once, and it hadn’t been a good experience for either of them.
    Since then they always slept at Cleo’s house. The nights they spent together were becoming increasingly frequent, and he now kept a set of shaving kit and washing stuff there, as well as a dark suit, fresh white shirt, plain tie and a pair of black shoes – his weekday work uniform.
    It had been a good question and he didn’t tell her the truth, because that would have made things worse. The truth was that the skeleton had shaken him. He wanted to be on his own for a few hours, to reflect.
    To think about how he would feel if it was Sandy.
    His relationship with Cleo had gone way, way further than any other he had had since Sandy, but he was conscious that, despite all his efforts to move forward, Sandy remained a constant wedge between them. A few weeks ago at dinner, when they’d both had too much to drink, Cleo had let slip her concern about her biological clock ticking away. He knew she was starting to want commitment – and sensed she felt that, with Sandy in the way, she was never going to get it from him.
    That wasn’t true. Roy adored her. Loved her. And had begun seriously to contemplate a life together with her.
    Which was why he had been terribly hurt early yesterday evening when, having gone back to her house clutching a couple of bottles of their current favourite red Rioja wine,he had opened her front door with his key to be greeted by a tiny black puppy which sprinted towards him, put its paws around his leg and peed on his trainers.
    ‘Humphrey,