Dead Man's Time

do
that day, and certainly not in this undignified way.
    A television was on in the sparsely furnished living room, a daytime chat show on which, ironically, there was a discussion about the plight of the elderly.
    She glanced around looking for signs of anything personal. But there were no photographs, no pictures on any of the walls. She saw an ashtray full of butts, with a lighter and a packet of
cigarettes beside it, and a beer can with a half-empty glass tumbler. A small, untidy stack of old gardening magazines lay on the floor, next to a pile of
Daily Mirror
newspapers.
    Ralph Meeks had clearly been dead for a while, in here all alone. It was a sad but common story in cities. They were on the second floor of a low-rise apartment block. But Ralph Meeks had no
friends, no neighbours bothering to check he was okay, no one who had thought it odd that the post was getting more and more jammed in the letter box every day. Not until he had started to
decompose, and neighbours had begun to notice the smell out in the corridor, had anyone been bothered to check on Meeks.
    The stench in the corridor was nothing compared with that inside the flat. It was a hundred times worse in here. The stench and the buzzing of flies. It was making her gag, and her colleague, PC
Dave Roberts, was keeping his gloved hand over his nose.
    The two immediate tasks were to call in their Sergeant to help them assess whether this was a natural death, or whether there were any suspicious circumstances, in which case they would involve
CID and seal the flat as a crime scene. Their second was to call a paramedic to have the man’s death confirmed. Fairly unnecessary in this case, but a legal formality. The next duty would be
to ask a Coroner’s Officer to attend. And finally, if it was decided no forensic examination of the body was required in situ, a call would be made to Brighton and Hove Mortuary to recover
the body.
    Sudden deaths – or
G5
s, as the form for them was called – were the least favourite shouts for most Response officers. But Susi Holiday actually liked them, and found them
interesting. This was the fifteenth she had attended since joining the Response Team three years ago.
    Turning to her colleague, eighteen years her senior, she said, ‘Anything bothering you about this?’
    He shook his head, feeling queasy. ‘Nope.’ He shrugged. ‘Except – just the thought that could be me one day.’
    Susi grinned. ‘Best thing is to try to avoid growing old. Growing old kills you, eventually.’
    ‘Yep, guess I’d prefer to die young, with my trousers on.’
    She gave him a mischievous grin. ‘Wouldn’t that depend who you were with?’

9
    Whenever Roy Grace left his front door he was always on guard. After over twenty years as a cop, looking around for anything unusual or out of place had long become second
nature. It used to irritate his former wife, Sandy. One time, during his early days as a Detective Constable, he’d spotted a man slipping a handbag off the back of a chair in a crowded pub,
and chased him a mile on foot, through Brighton, before rugby-tackling and arresting him. It had been the end of their evening, as he’d had to spend the next four hours booking the thief into
custody and filling out forms.
    Often when he and Sandy were out for a meal, she would notice his eyes roving and kick him sharply under the restaurant table, hissing, ‘
Stoppit, Grace!
’
    But he couldn’t help it. In any public place, he couldn’t relax unless he knew he was somewhere there were no obvious villains, and no immediate signs of anything about to kick off.
Sandy used to joke that while other women had to be wary of their men ogling other women, she had to put up with him ogling Brighton’s pond life.
    But there was one thing he never told her, because he didn’t want to worry her: he knew, like all police officers, there was always the danger of retribution by an aggrieved villain. Most
crims
accepted getting arrested – some saw it as part of the game; some shrugged at the inevitability; some just gave up the ghost from the moment the handcuffs were snapped in
place. But there were a few who harboured grudges.
    Part of the reason judges traditionally wore wigs was to disguise themselves, so they would not be recognized later by those they had sent down. The police had never had such protection. But
even if they had, to someone who was determined enough, there were plenty of other ways to track them