Looking Good Dead

it? Did they hand out the notes in Braille?’
    ‘Oh fuck off,’ Glenn replied. ‘You’re a wimp of a passenger, you know that? A real back-seat driver.’
    Grace decided he would feel a lot safer in the back seat.
    The engine stalled and Branson restarted it. ‘Remember the start of The Italian Job , when he drives that Ferrari into the tunnel and – boom!’

    ‘In the remake?’
    ‘No, tosspot, that was crap. The original. The Michael Caine one.’
    ‘I remember the coach at the end. Hanging over the edge of the cliff. That’s what your driving reminds me of.’
    ‘Yeah, well, you drive like an old woman.’
    Grace took the copy of FHM out of his case. ‘Can you pull over for a sec; I need your advice.’
    When the lights turned green, Branson drove a short distance then pulled into a bus stop. Grace opened the magazine and showed him a double-page spread of male models in different fashions.
    Branson gave him a strange look. ‘You turning gay or something?’
    ‘I have a date.’
    ‘With one of these?’
    ‘Very witty. I have a date tonight, a serious date. You seem to be the Sussex Police style guru; I need some advice.’
    Branson stared at the photographs for a moment. ‘I told you already, right, you should do something about your hair.’
    ‘Easy for you to say as you don’t have any.’
    ‘I shave my head, man, because it’s well cool.’
    ‘I’m not shaving mine.’
    ‘I told you before, I know a great hairdresser. Ian Habbin at The Point. Get some highlights put in, keep your sides short, but grow a bit on top and get it all gelled up.’
    ‘I don’t have time to grow it by eight o’clock tonight. But I do have time to get some kit.’
    Branson suddenly gave his friend a really warm smile. ‘You’re serious, man; you really do have a hot date! I’m pleased for you.’ He squeezed Roy’s shoulder. ‘It’s about time you started getting yourself a life again. So who is she? Anyone I know?’
    ‘Maybe.’ Grace was touched by his friend’s reaction.
    ‘Cut the mystery crap. Who is she? Not that Emma-Jane? She’s well fit!’
    ‘No, not her – anyhow she’s far too young for me.’
    ‘So who? Bella?’
    ‘Just tell me what I should wear.’
    ‘Not the old git suit you’re wearing now.’
    ‘Come on, what do you think?’

    ‘So where are you taking her?’
    ‘Out for an Italian. Latin in the Lanes.’
    ‘That’s the old lady’s favourite restaurant! Ari loves the seafood mixed grill.’ He beamed. ‘Hey, you’re spending serious dosh on her!’
    Grace shrugged. ‘What do you think I should do, take her to McDonald’s?’
    Ignoring the comment, Glenn Branson said, ‘Watch how she eats.’
    ‘Why’s that?’
    ‘You can tell from how a woman eats how she is going to be in bed.’
    ‘I’ll remember to watch.’
    Then Branson was silent for some moments, studying the magazine. He flipped over a few pages. ‘For someone of your age, I wouldn’t try to look too young.’
    ‘Thanks.’
    Branson pointed at a model wearing an unstructured casual beige jacket over a white T-shirt, jeans and brown loafers. ‘That’s you. Can see you in that. Mr Cool. Go to Luigi’s in Bond Street; they’ll have something like that.’
    ‘Want to come with me after the mortuary – help me choose something?’
    ‘Only if I get to date you afterwards.’
    There was a loud blast on a horn. Branson and Grace both turned to see the nose of a bus filling the rear window.
    Branson put the car in gear and drove on. A few minutes later they were driving downhill into the busy gyratory system, past a giant Sains-bury’s supermarket to their right and then a strategically placed undertaker’s. Then they turned sharp left in through wrought-iron gates attached to brick pillars bearing the small, unwelcome sign, brighton and hove city mortuary .
    Grace had no doubt that there were worse places in the world, and in that respect he had led a sheltered life. But for him this place was about as bad as it got. He remembered an expression he had once heard, ‘the banality of evil’. And this was a banal place. It was a bland building with a grim aura, a long, single-storey structure with grey pebbledash rendering on the walls and a covered drive-in on one side high enough to take an ambulance.
    The mortuary was a transit stop on the one-way journey to a graveor crematorium oven for those who had died suddenly, violently or inexplicably – or from some fast-onset disease like viral