Not Dead Enough

this evening?’
    ‘No probs.’
    When she hung up she looked at her watch and realized she had been so wrapped up in her thoughts about Roy that she had completely forgotten to go to the mortuary. She and Darren had left the woman’s body they’d brought off the beach last night on a trolley, because all the fridges were full – one bank of them was out of commission, in the middle of being replaced. A local undertaker was due to collect two of the bodies at midday, and she was meant to let him in, and at the same time put the woman in one of the vacated fridges.
    She hauled herself to her feet. There was a message on her answering machine from her sister, Charlie, who had phoned about ten o’clock. She knew exactly what it would be about. She would have to listen to Charlie’s blow-by-blow account of being dumped by her boyfriend. Maybe she could persuade her to meet somewhere in the sun, in a park or down on the seafront, for a late lunch after the mortuary? She dialled the number and, to her relief, Charlie agreed readily, suggesting a place she knew under the Arches.
    Thirty minutes later, after crawling along in heavy traffic headed for the beaches, she drove in through the mortuary gates, relieved to see that the covered side entrance, where bodies were delivered and removed out of sight of the public, was empty – the undertaker had not yet arrived.
    The car’s roof was down and her spirits were up, a fraction, thinking about something Roy Grace had said to her a few weeks ago, as she had driven him out to a country pub in this car. You know, on a warm evening, with the roof down like this and you beside me, it’s pretty hard to think there is much wrong with the world!
    She parked the blue MG in its usual place, opposite the front door of the grey, pebbledash-rendered mortuary building, and then opened her bag to take out her phone and warn her sister she was going to be late. But her phone wasn’t in it.
    ‘Bugger!’ she said out loud.
    How the hell could she have forgotten it? She never, ever, ever left home without it. Her Nokia was attached to her via an invisible umbilical cord.
    Roy Grace, what the hell are you doing to my head?
    She closed the roof of the car, even though she was only intending to be a few minutes, and locked it. Then, standing beneath the exterior CCTV camera, she inserted her key into the lock of the mortuary’s staff entrance and turned it.

    One of the vehicles in that solid stream of traffic trickling along the Lewes Road gyratory system, on the far side of the mortuary’s wrought-iron gates, was a black Toyota Prius. Unlike most of the rest of the traffic, instead of continuing on down to the seafront, it made a left turn into the next street along from the mortuary, then cruised slowly up the steep hill, which was lined on both sides with small terraced houses, looking for a parking space. The Time Billionaire smiled. There was a space right ahead of him, just the right size. Waiting for him.
    Then he sucked his hand again. The pain was getting worse; it was muzzing his head. It didn’t look good either. It had swollen more during the night.
    ‘Stupid little bitch!’ he shouted, in a sudden fit of rage.

    Even though Cleo had been working in mortuaries for eight years, she was still not immune to the smells. The stench that hit her today, as she opened the door, almost physically knocked her backward. Like all mortuary staff, she had long ago trained herself to breathe through her mouth, but the reek of decaying meat – sour, caustic, fetid – hung heavy and cloying, as if weighed down by extra atoms, cloaking her like an invisible fog, swirling around her, seeping in through every pore in her skin.
    Just as quickly as she possibly could, holding her breath and forgetting about the call she was going to make, she hurried past her office and entered the small changing room. She pulled a fresh pair of green pyjamas off a hook, dug her feet into her white wellington boots, tore a fresh pair of latex gloves from a pack and wriggled her clammy hands into them. Then she put on a face mask; not that it was going to do much to reduce the smell, but it would help a little.
    She turned right and walked down the short, grey-tiled corridor and into the receiving room, which adjoined the main post-mortem room, and switched the lights on. The dead woman had been booked in as Unknown Female , the name given to all unidentified women who fetched up here. Cleo always felt it