Dead Tomorrow

be doing this walk as wrinkly old people in fifty years’ time.
    Humphrey trotted along on his extended lead, holding a large piece of driftwood proudly in his mouth, like a trophy. A small brown dog bounded towards them, yipping, its owner some distance away yelling its name. Cleo broke free for a moment and knelt to stroke it. But it backed away nervously when Humphrey dropped the driftwood and growled. Hushing him, she took a step towards it and it bounded back again. They both laughed. Then, recognizing its name, it suddenly raced away.
    ‘So, Great Detective, howdo you feel?’ she asked, placing her arm back through his.
    ‘I don’t know,’ he said truthfully. He watched Humphrey struggling to pick up the wood again.
    ‘Tell me?’
    ‘Was it the Duke of Wellington who said that the only thing worse than losing a battle is winning one?’
    She nodded.
    ‘That’s how I feel.’
    ‘Something I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘How were all those medical people kept silent for so long?’
    ‘A surgeon in Romania earns 4000 euros a year. Other medical staff even less. That’s how. They were all making a fortune at Wiston Grange, so they were happy as hell.’
    ‘And tucked safely away in the countryside.’
    ‘Most of them not able to speak English. So no gossiping with the locals. It was a smart set-up. Ship them in, let them all make a bundle, then ship them out again. They’re members of the EU, so no cross-border work restrictions, no questions asked.’
    ‘And Sir Roger Sirius?’
    ‘Big money. And he had his own moral justification.’
    They walked on in silence for a while.
    ‘Tell me something, Grace–if that had been our child–that girl, Caitlin. What would you have done?’ With her free arm she patted her belly. ‘If it were to happen to this little person, sometime in the future?’
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘In the same circumstances, ifour only option was to try to buy a liver to save our child, what would you have done–do?’
    He shrugged. ‘I’m a policeman. My duty is to enforce the law.’
    ‘That’s what scares me about you sometimes.’
    ‘ Scares you?’
    ‘Uh huh. I think I would take a bullet for my child. And I think I would be capable of killing for my child. Isn’t that what being a parent means?’
    ‘You think I was wrong, doing what I did?’
    ‘No, I suppose not. But I can understand why the mother did what she did.’
    Grace nodded. ‘In one of the philosophy books you gave me, I read something Aristotle said: The gods have no greater torment than for a mother to outlive her child.’
    ‘Yes. Exactly. So how do you think that woman feels now?’
    ‘Is a Romanian street kid’s life less valuable than a middle-class Brighton kid’s? Cleo, darling, I’m not God, I don’t play God, I’m a copper.’
    ‘Do you ever wonder if sometimes you are too much a copper?’
    ‘Meaning?’
    ‘Enforcing the law at any cost? Hiding behind the human cost? Are you so constricted by your policeman’s view of the world that you can’t see outside it?’
    ‘We saved the life of that Romanian kid. That matters a lot to me.’
    ‘Kind of, job done, move on to the next ?’
    He shook his head. ‘No, never. That’s not how I work–or feel–ever.’
    She held himtighter. ‘You’re a good man really, aren’t you.’
    He smiled wistfully. ‘In a shitty world.’
    She stopped and stared at him, smiling that smile that he truly would die for. ‘You make it a little less shitty.’
    ‘I wish.’

EPILOGUE
    Lynn stood in Caitlin’s room, whichhad remained untouched foralmost two and a half years. Now, amid all the mess of her daughter’s things, there was a stack of cardboard boxes from the removals firm.
    What the hell did she keep and what did she throw away? There wasn’t much space in the tiny flat she was moving into.
    With tears rolling down her cheeks, she stared around at the impenetrable tangle of clothes, soft toys, CDs, DVDs, shoes, make-up containers, the pink stool, the mobile of blue perspex butterflies, shopping bags and the dartboard with the purple boa hanging from it.
    The tears were for Caitlin, not for this place. She wasn’t sorry to be leaving. Caitlin had been right all along, in her way. It had been their house but not their home .
    She walked through into her bedroom. The bed was piled high with the contents of her wardrobe and cupboards. On the very top was her blue coat, still in the plastic zipper where she had sealed it after