Dead Tomorrow

and forms took up most of the space on her desk.
    During the winter months it was permanently freezing cold in here, which was why she had her fleece jacket on. Despite the asthmatic wheezing of the blower heater at her feet, her fingers were so cold she was finding it hard to grip her ballpoint pen. It would feel warmer at the bottom of the English Channel, she thought.
    She turned the page of the dive log, then made more notes on the form. Suddenly her phone rang, distracting her, and she answered it a little absently.
    ‘Sergeant Whitlock.’
    Almost instantly she switched to full attention. It was Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, from HQ CID, and it was unlikely that he would be calling for a chat about the weather.
    ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘How’s things?’
    ‘Fine, Roy,’ she said, transmitting more enthusiasm than she actually felt today.
    ‘Did I hear a rumour that you got married not long ago?’
    ‘In the summer,’ she said.
    ‘He’s a lucky guy!’
    ‘Thank you, Roy! I hope someone tells him! So–what can I do for you?’
    ‘I’m at Brighton mortuary–we’re doing a Home Office PM on a young male hauled up yesterday by the dredger, Arco Dee , about ten miles south of Shoreham Harbour.’
    ‘I know the Arco Dee –it operates mostly out of Shoreham and Newhaven.’
    ‘Yes. I think I’m going to need you guys to take a look and see if there’s anything else down there.’
    ‘What information can you give me?’
    ‘We have apretty good fix on the position where they found it. The body was wrapped in plastic and weighted down. It could be a burial at sea, but I’m not sure about that.’
    ‘Presumably the Arco Dee hauled it up from a designated dredge area?’ she said, starting to make notes on her pad.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘There’s a specific charted area for burials at sea. It’s possible a body could drift from there in the currents, but unlikely if it was a professional burial. Want me to come over?’
    ‘If you wouldn’t mind?’
    ‘I’ll be there in half an hour.’
    ‘Thanks.’
    As she hung up, she grimaced. She’d been planning to leave early today to get home to cook her husband, Rob, a special meal tonight. He loved Thai food and she’d stopped and bought everything she needed on the way in–including some fresh prawns and a very plump sea bass. Rob, a pilot with British Airways long haul, was home tonight before going away again for nine days. By the sound of it, her plans had just headed out the window.
    Her door opened and Steve Hargrave, nicknamed Gonzo, peered in. ‘Just wondered if you were busy, chief, or if you had a couple of minutes for a chat.’
    She gave him an acidic smile that could have dissolved a steel girder in less time than it took for him to register her displeasure.
    Raising a fingeras he started retreating, he said, ‘Not a good moment, right?’
    She continued smiling.

26
    Who are you? Roy Grace wondered, staring down at the naked body of Unknown Male, who was laid out on his back on the stainless-steel table in the centre of the post-mortem room, beneath the cold glare of the overhead lights. Someone’s child. Maybe someone’s brother too. Who loves you? Who will be devastated by your death?
    It was strange, hethought. This place used to give him the creeps every time he came here. But that had all changed when Cleo Morey arrived as the new Senior Anatomical Pathology Technician. Now he came here eagerly, at any opportunity. Even in her blue gown, green plastic apron and white rubber boots, Cleo still looked incredibly sexy.
    Maybe he was just perverse, or perhaps it was true what they said about love blinding you.
    It struck him that mortuaries shared something in common with lawyers’ offices. Not many people, other than their staff, came to mortuaries because they were happy. If you were an overnight guest here, it meant you were pretty seriously dead. If you were a visitor, it meant that someone you knew and loved had just died, suddenly, unexpectedly and quite often brutally.
    Housed in a long, low, grey pebbledash-rendered bungalow, just off the Lewes Road gyratory system and adjoining the beautiful, hillside setting of Woodvale Cemetery, Brighton and Hove City Mortuary consisted of a covered receiving bay, an office, a multi-faith chapel, a glass-sided viewing room, two storage areas, recently refurbished with wider fridges to accommodate the increasing trend of obese cadavers, an isolation room for suspected deaths from AIDS and