Dead Man's Time

hall.
    Moore stood, staring at Lucas Daly, then up at the large, blank face of the Apologist.
    ‘My dad’s a gentle person, Mr Moore. So we’re going to take you away from here; he wouldn’t like to see what we’re going to do to you – to help jog your
memory, you see?’
    Ricky Moore gurgled with terror as he felt himself being propelled towards the front door. Moments later he felt a damp patch down the front of his trousers.
    He had pissed himself.

23
    Once, way back when she had a life, Sarah Courteney used to love Friday nights. The start of the weekend, a time to kick back, watch rubbish TV,
Big Brother
or
whatever, followed by an even trashier, smutty 10 p.m. show on Channel Four. But not any more. Friday nights now meant her husband, Lucas, arriving home even drunker than all the other nights of
the week. If he arrived home at all.
    She woke up with a start. The television was on, muted, an old film playing. Peter Sellers, as Inspector Clouseau, standing in Herbert Lom’s office. It was 2.30 a.m. Upstairs she could
hear awful heavy metal pounding from her bolshie teenage son’s room. And the sound of bed springs creaking. Accompanied by the faint smell of marijuana. That was all Damian seemed to do these
days. Listen to God-awful music, get stoned, and wank.
    Ever the dutiful wife, she had cooked Lucas a meal, made it ready for eight o’clock, when he’d said he would be home, and kept it in the warming oven ever since. She heard the sound
of the front door opening, then banging back against the wall – the stop had long ago been ripped out of the floor and never replaced – then her husband’s clumsy footsteps.
    They stopped as he entered the large, open-plan living area of their house on Hove’s smart Shirley Drive. A house they were only still living in because of her earnings paying the
mortgage.
    ‘What the fuck have you done to your face?’ he slurred, then sniffed.
    ‘We talked about it last night. Your dinner’s in the bottom oven,’ she replied.
    ‘I said,
What the fuck have you done to your face?
’
    ‘Are you deaf? I said we talked about it last night. You wanted dinner at 8 p.m.’
    ‘Stop ignoring me, bitch. I’ve had business to deal with. Yeah? My auntie who got murdered, yeah? Where’s your sympathy?’ He tapped his chest. ‘You have any idea
how I feel? Had to deal with the bastard that done it. Wasn’t nice. Had to have a couple of beers to get over it. Know what I’m saying?’
    He staggered over and stood above her.
I loved you once
, she thought.
God almighty, I really, really loved you. You pathetic beer-sodden wreck. I loved the way you used to make me
feel, the way you used to look at me. I loved your knowledge of antiques. I loved the way you could walk into a room and tell me everything about every piece of furniture in it.
    ‘You’ve had that Botox again, haven’t you? Lovely Dr Revson. Paying him money we don’t have. Are you fucking him or something?’
    She held her composure. ‘More losses at the casino today?’
    ‘I’ve had a shit day.’
    ‘Just for a change? I’ve had my face done,’ she said calmly, ‘to try to preserve my career. So I can afford to put food on our table – and beer in your fat, stupid
belly. I had it done so you don’t have to go running to your dad for more money every few months—’
    She never got the rest of her words out. His right fist smashed into her chest, knocking her to the floor. The bastard was clever. He always hit her where it wouldn’t show.
    Tomorrow, she vowed, she would leave him. And yet she knew tomorrow he would weep, and apologize, and tell her how much he loved her and that he could not live without her. Tomorrow he would
promise, as he always did, that they would make a fresh start.

24
    Peregrine Stuart-Simmonds was a tall, cheery man in his mid-sixties, with a portly figure elegantly parcelled inside a double-breasted chalk-striped suit. He sported a full
head of wavy silver hair, and his narrow, horn-rimmed spectacles, worn right on the end of his nose, gave him a rather distinguished, academic air.
    He sat at the round meeting table in Roy Grace’s small office, exuding the smell of a masculine soap, and stifling a yawn. ‘Apologies!’ he said, cheerily, in a booming,
salesroom voice. ‘Been up most of the night working on the inventory for you.’
    It was 7.20 on Saturday morning, another weekend shot to hell. Grace yawned, too. He’d also been up most of the