Not Dead Enough

When had she opened that bottle of wine? About six o’clock. Four and a half hours ago. Two units of alcohol would put the average woman at the limit for driving. A bottle of wine contained six average units. You burned off one per hour. She should be OK to drive, just about.
    Five minutes later she left her house, walked up the street and unlocked the door of her MG sports car.
    As she climbed in and fumbled with her seat belt, a figure emerged from the shadows of a shop doorway, just a short distance down the street, and took the few short steps to his own car. She started the MG, revved the engine and pulled into the street. The small black Toyota Prius, running on just its electric motor, glided silently through the darkness behind her.

53
    So far no one had said a word about her dress. Not Suzanne-Marie, not Mandy, not Cat, not a single one of the girlfriends she had bumped into at the party tonight had even seemed to notice it. Which was very unusual. Four hundred and fifty quid and not one comment. Maybe they were just jealous.
    Or maybe it looked a disaster on her.
    Sod them. Bitches! Wandering through into another room, which was pulsing with coloured lights, crammed with people, music pounding, the sharp, rubbery smell of hashish heavy in the air, Holly downed the last dregs of her third peach martini and realized she was starting to feel decidedly tipsy.
    At least men were noticing her.
    The black, diamanté-edged dress seemed even skimpier when she had put it on tonight than it had in the shop. It was so open at the front that there was no possibility of wearing a bra – and hell, she had great boobs, so why not flaunt them, the same the way the dress – or rather the lack of it – enabled her to flaunt her legs, almost every inch of them, most of the way up to her navel? And she did feel good in this, wickedly good!
    ‘Cool dresshh. Where you from?’
    The man, slurring his words through sharp, pointy little teeth that reminded her of a piranha’s, swayed in her path, smoke from his cigarette curling in her eye. He was dressed in black leather trousers, a skin-tight black T-shirt, a rhinestone belt, and sported a large gold earring. He had one of the stupidest haircuts she had ever seen.
    ‘Mars,’ she said, sidestepping past him, looking around, increasingly anxiously, for Sophie.
    ‘North or south?’ he slurred, but she barely heard him. Sophie had not returned the two messages she had left about meeting for a drink before this party and sharing a taxi. It was now half past ten. Surely she should be here by now?
    Pushing her way through the crowd, looking everywhere for her friend, she reached open French windows and stepped outside on to a relatively quiet terrace. One couple sat on a bench, locked in serious tonsil hockey. A very spaced-out man with long, fair hair was staring at the beach and sniffing, repeatedly. Holly dug her mobile phone out of her bag and checked for a text she might have missed, but there was nothing. Then she dialled Sophie’s mobile phone.
    Again it went straight to voicemail.
    She tried Sophie’s home number. That went to voicemail too.
    ‘Ah – here you are! Losht shight of you!’ His sharp incisors glinted demonically in the flash of a strobe. ‘You come out for air?’
    ‘And now I’m going in again,’ she said, walking back into the mêlée. She was worried, because Sophie was reliable. This simply wasn’t like her.
    But not so worried it was going to stop her from enjoying herself tonight.

54
    Because of a problem with a baggage door, the plane took off half an hour late. Roy Grace spent the entire journey bolt upright in his seat, which he didn’t even think about reclining, staring out through the window at the rivets on the bulbous grey metal of the starboard engine casing.
    For two interminable hours in the air he had been unable to concentrate on anything for very long, to pass the time, other than memorizing part of the street map of Munich city centre. The cardboard box containing the plastic wrap and empty box of the unpleasant cheese roll he had eaten out of sheer hunger, and the dregs of the second bitter coffee he had drunk, wobbled on his tray as the plane bumped through clouds, finally starting its descent.
    He was frustrated about the loss of those precious thirty minutes, eating into the very short time he had ahead of him today. He barely noticed the hands of the stewardess reaching down in front of him and removing the detritus of