Dead Simple

patrol car screamed past. Then an ambulance. Another patrol car, flat out, followed by two fire engines.
    Shit. There had been road works when he’d come this way a couple of days ago, and he’d figured that was the reason for the delay. But now he realized it must be an accident, and fire engines meant it was a bad one.
    Another fire engine went past. Then another ambulance, twos-and-blues full on. Followed by a rescue truck.
    He looked at the clock again: 9.15 p.m. He should have picked her up three-quarters of an hour ago, in Tunbridge Wells, which was still a good twenty minutes away without this hold-up.
    Terry Miller, a newly divorced Detective Inspector in Grace’s division, had been regaling him with boasts about his conquests from a couple of internet dating sites and urging Grace to sign up. Roy had resisted, then, when he started finding suggestive emails in his inbox from different women, found out to his fury that Terry Miller had signed him up to a site called U-Date without telling him.
    He still had no idea what had prompted him to actually respond to one of the emails. Loneliness? Curiosity? Lust? He wasn’t sure. For the past eight years he had got through life just by going steadily from day to day. Some days he tried to forget, other days he felt guilty for not remembering.
    Sandy.
    Now he was suddenly feeling guilty for going on this date.
    She looked gorgeous – from her photo, at any rate. He liked her name, too. Claudine. French-sounding, it had something exotic. Her picture was hot! Amber hair, seriously pretty face, tight blouse showing a weapons-grade bust, sitting on the edge of a bed with a miniskirt pulled high enough to show she was wearing lace-topped hold-ups and might not be wearing knickers.
    They’d had just one phone conversation, in which she had practically seduced him down the line. A bunch of flowers he’d bought at a petrol station lay on the passenger seat beside him. Red roses – corny, he knew, but that was the old-fashioned romantic in him. People were right, he did need to move on, somehow. He could count the dates he’d had in the past eight and three-quarter years on just one hand. He simply could not accept there might be another Miss Right out there. That there could ever be anyone who matched up to Sandy.
    Maybe tonight that feeling would change?
    Claudine Lamont. Nice name, nice voice.
    Turn those sodding fog lamps off!
    He smelled the sweet scent of the flowers. Hoped he smelled OK, too.
    In the ambient glow from the Alfa’s dash and the tail lights of the car in front, he stared up at the mirror, unsure what he expected to see. Sadness stared back at him.
    You have to move on.
    He swallowed more water. Yup.
    In just over two months he would be thirty-nine. In just over two months also another anniversary loomed. On 26 July Sandy would have been gone for nine years. Vanished into thin air, on his thirtieth birthday. No note. All her belongings still in the house except for her handbag.
    After seven years you could have someone declared legally dead. His mother, in her hospice bed, days before she passed away from cancer, his sister, his closest friends, his shrink, all of them told him he should do that.
    No way.
    John Lennon had said, ‘Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.’ That sure as hell was true.
    By thirty-six he had always assumed Sandy and he would have had a family. Three kids had always been his dream, ideally two boys and a girl, and his weekends would be spent doing stuff with them. Family holidays. Going to the beach. Out on day trips to fun places. Playing ball games. Fixing things. Helping them at nights with homework. Bathing them. All the comfortable stuff he’d done with his own parents.
    Instead he was consumed with an inner turbulence that rarely left him, even when it allowed him to sleep. Was she alive or dead? He’d spent eight years and ten months trying to find out and was still no nearer to the truth than when he had started.
    Outside of work, life was a void. He’d been unable – or unwilling – to attempt another relationship. Every date he’d been on was a disaster. It seemed at times that his only constant companion in his life was his goldfish, Marlon. He’d won the fish by target shooting at a fairground, nine years ago, and it had eaten all his subsequent attempts to provide it with a companion. Marlon was a surly, antisocial creature. Probably why they liked each other, Roy