Not Dead Enough

here.’
    ‘You have DI Murphy. She can handle it.’
    ‘She’s your understudy,’ he said disparagingly.
    ‘If you want to call her that. So far as I’m concerned, she’s my deputy SIO.’
    ‘You know what they said about Greta Garbo’s understudy?’
    Struggling to remember any movie he had ever seen the screen legend in, Grace replied testily, ‘No, what did they say?’
    ‘Greta Garbo’s understudy can do everything that Greta Garbo does, except for whatever it is that Greta Garbo does.’
    ‘Very flattering.’
    ‘You geddit?’
    ‘I geddit.’
    ‘In that case get your ass on the next plane back here. Alison Vosper thinks she has your scalp. I don’t give a toss about those politics, but I do give a toss about you. And we need you.’
    ‘Did you remember to feed Marlon?’ Grace asked.
    ‘Marlon?’
    ‘The goldfish.’
    ‘Oh, shit.’

63
    Cleo tried to scream, but the sound stayed trapped in her throat. She struggled manically, trying to free her arms, the man’s face a blur to her unfocused eyes. She lashed out with her leg, kicking him in the shin.
    Then she heard his voice.
    ‘Cleo!’
    Quiet, plaintive. ‘Cleo! It’s me! It’s OK.’
    Spiky black hair. A startled expression on his young, pleasant face. Dressed casually in an orange top and green shorts, headphones plugged into his ears.
    ‘Oh, shit.’ She stopped struggling, her mouth dropping open. ‘Darren!’
    He released her arms very slowly, warily, as if not yet quite sure he could trust her not to stab him. ‘Are you all right, Cleo?’
    Gulping down air, she felt as if her heart was trying to drill its way out of her chest. She stepped back, looking at her colleague, then at the knife on the floor, then back at his brown eyes. Numb. Too numb to say anything else for a moment.
    ‘You gave me such a shock.’ The words came out in a breathless, whispered rush.
    Darren raised his hands and pulled out his earphones, letting them dangle by their white wires. Then he raised his hands again, in an attitude of surrender. He was trembling, she realized.
    ‘I’m sorry.’ She was still hyperventilating, her voice shaky. Then she smiled, trying to remedy the situation.
    Still looking uncertain, he said, ‘Am I that scary?’
    ‘I – I heard the door,’ she said, starting to feel foolish now. ‘I called out and you didn’t reply. I thought you were an intruder. I – I was…’ she shook her head.
    He dropped his hands, cupping his earpieces. ‘I was listening to some heavy music,’ he said. ‘I didn’t hear you.’
    ‘I’m so sorry.’
    He reached down and rubbed his shin.
    ‘Did I hurt you?’
    ‘Actually, yes! But I’ll live.’ There was a nasty mark on his shin. ‘I suddenly remembered we’d left the body out. I thought, with this heat, it ought to go in a fridge. I called you, but there was no answer from your home or your mobile, so I decided to come in and do it.’
    Feeling more normal now, Cleo apologized again.
    He shrugged. ‘Don’t worry about it. But I never thought of working in a mortuary as being a contact sport.’
    She laughed. ‘I’m so, so sorry. I’ve just had a shit twenty-four hours. I—’
    ‘Forget it. I’m OK.’
    She looked at the red weal on his leg. ‘It was good of you, that you came in. Thank you.’
    ‘I’ll think twice next time,’ he said good-humouredly. ‘Maybe I should have stayed in my last job – it was a lot less violent.’
    She grinned. In his previous job, she remembered, Darren had been a butcher’s apprentice. ‘It’s good of you to give up time on a Sunday,’ she said.
    ‘It got me out of a barbecue at my girlfriend’s parents,’ he said. ‘That’s the downside of this work. I can’t cope with barbecues since I started working here.’
    ‘That makes two of us.’
    They were both thinking of burns victims. Usually their skin was blackened, crisp like pork crackling. Depending how long they had burned for, their flesh was sometimes grey and hard, sometimes raw and bloody liked seared, undercooked pork. Cleo had read once that cannibal tribes in central Africa called white man long pig . She understood exactly why. It was the reason many people who worked in mortuaries were uncomfortable at barbecues. Particularly when pork was involved.
    Together they rolled the cadaver on to her stomach and examined her back for tattoos, birthmarks and bullet-entry wounds, but found nothing. With relief they finally eased her into a body-bag, zipped it up