Dead Man's Time

– and today,’ she announced.
    Dave Roberts rang the doorbell. They waited. But there was no answer. Then he knocked on the door. It was a knock he had perfected, and one, he proudly boasted, that would wake the dead.
    It was greeted with silence.
    He rammed his hand through the letter box, and it plunged into a whole mass of correspondence. He pulled some out. A mixture of letters and advertising pamphlets. Among them a buff envelope with HMRC printed on it, addressed to Mrs Aileen McWhirter, appeared to confirm they were at the right address.
    He pressed his nose up against the letter box, and sniffed for that unmistakable leaden, clingy, rancid smell of death. Unlike at Ralph Meeks’ home earlier, he did not detect it, but that
gave him no assurance that Mrs McWhirter was still alive. Even in these summer months it could take a week, at least, before a body started to smell.
    He gave one more knock, then dialled the phone number that the Controller had given them. They could hear it ringing, somewhere inside the house, but there was no answer. After some moments, it
went to answerphone.
    They made a complete circuit around the exterior, peering intently through each window for signs of life. The television was on in the kitchen. They saw a copy of the magazine
Sussex
Life
on the table. Alongside it was a plate, with a knife and fork. A saucepan sat beside the Aga.
    ‘What do you think?’ PC Holiday asked.
    In reply, her colleague pulled on a pair of protective gloves, took out his weighted baton, and smashed a pane of the leaded-light window beside the front door. Then he pushed his hand through,
careful to avoid the jagged glass, found the door latch and opened it.
    They walked through into a large, oak-panelled hallway, on which lay several fine, but worn, Persian rugs. Almost instantly they noticed dark rectangles on the bare walls, as if pictures had
once hung there. And the entire hallway, for such a grand house, seemed strangely bare.
    As did most of the downstairs rooms they searched.
    Leaving his colleague to continue downstairs, Dave Roberts walked up the ornate circular staircase. Only a few moments later he shouted, ‘Susi, quick! Up here!’

13
    Roy Grace was not due in court until sometime next week at the earliest. And it was a bank holiday weekend ahead of him. Hopefully time to spend with Cleo and Noah. He’d
taken a bunch of paperwork home so he could relieve Cleo from baby duties for a while. And, so far so good! Although tomorrow, Friday, was normally a jinxed day for him. So often, just as he
thought he was getting away with a quiet week as the duty Senior Investigating Officer, whenever he got to Friday, something seemed to happen. He was really hoping that, for once, he’d be
left in peace. He had some great plans for this weekend, if he was.
    On Saturday afternoon he’d been invited by a colleague who had a pair of tickets to one of the first football games of the season at Brighton’s fabulous new Amex Stadium, which he
had only been to once. He really hoped he’d be able to make it. Then in the evening he and Cleo planned to go out for a meal for the first time since Noah had been born.
    It was mid-afternoon. He’d changed Noah’s nappy and Noah was now sleeping in his cot, with a white dummy in his mouth. Cleo was having a snooze in bed. Humphrey lay in his basket, a
rubber bone in front of his nose, still sulking away with jealousy about Noah, despite his master having taken him for a five-mile run along Brighton seafront early this morning.
    Roy Grace removed a lengthy form from a large envelope. After several months of having his house in Hove on the market, the estate agents had finally found a buyer for it. A woman with a small
boy, currently living in Germany. He had not met them, but she seemed serious and a date had been set for the exchange of contracts. The form was a detailed questionnaire about all aspects of the
property, from the woman’s conveyancing solicitor.
    Cleo’s house, where he was now living, was also on the market. Their plan was to pool the proceeds of the two houses and buy a property in the country, a short distance from Brighton,
where Humphrey could have a decent-size garden, and maybe even a field, to roam in.
    The only person not happy about the whole situation was his colleague and closest friend, Glenn Branson, who had been lodging at Roy’s house since splitting up with his wife. Poor Glenn
would have to find somewhere new