Not Dead Yet

court when the jury had returned their guilty verdict. Amis Smallbone, in the dock, had curled his fingers around an imaginary gun, pointed it at Grace and mouthed the word bang!
    ‘I’ve got possibly worrying news for you, Roy,’ Tom Martinson said. He looked at his biscuit, but still did not touch it. ‘I thought I should warn you, as I doubt anyone from the prison service will bother. I’m an old university friend of the Governor of Belmarsh Prison, who kindly tipped me off. Amis Smallbone was freed from there, on licence, three days ago.’
    A chill rippled through Grace, thinking of the phone conversation he’d just had with a very distressed Cleo. ‘Does he have a release address, sir?’
    Grace knew that a prisoner serving a life sentence would have his release address set by his probation officer, with numerous reporting conditions attached.
    ‘He does, Roy, a hostel on Brighton seafront. But he’s in breach. I’m afraid he hasn’t been seen for two days.’

23
    You needed to know the right time and wrong time to buy in the icon’s cycle. Like all the fervent Gaia memorabilia collectors, Anna Galicia knew this only too well.
    She sat in the gilded, white velour upholstered armchair that was an exact copy of one she had seen Gaia lounging back in, in a Hello! magazine feature on her Central Park West apartment. Anna had had the replica made by a firm in Brighton, so that she could lounge back exactly the same way Gaia did, unlit cigarette gripped louchely between her forefinger and middle finger. Sometimes, sitting in this chair, she could imagine she was in the Dakota building, and that her view was over Central Park. The same building where John Lennon had been shot dead.
    Something had always excited her about stars who met violent deaths.
    She took an imaginary drag on her cigarette then tapped the end in the ashtray enamelled with Gaia’s face. Saturday morning was her favourite time of the week, with the whole weekend stretched out in front of her. A whole two days to spend indulgently immersed in her idol! And next week, oh God, she could barely contain her excitement. Next week, Gaia would be here, in Brighton!
    In the local paper, the Argus , open in front of her, was a photograph of the tiny house in Whitehawk where Gaia was born. Of course she wasn’t called Gaia Lafayette then. She was Anna Mumby. But hey, Anna thought with a wry smile, who didn’t change their name?
    She carefully lifted her computer from her lap and set it on the floor, took a sip of her Gaia Save Exploited Lives medium roast coffee, stood up and walked over to the silver balloon, with the pink words G AIA I NNER S ECRETS T OUR , which had cost her sixty pounds, and which was floating on its string, just below the ceiling. It was starting to look a little wrinkled, and sagging. She tugged it downand lovingly gave it a long, steady top-up burst of helium from the cylinder she kept here for that purpose, and released it.
    Then she sat down, breathing in the smells of this room. The scents of cardboard, paper, vinyl and polish and the faint trace of Gaia Noon Romance fragrance that she sprayed daily. She picked up her laptop and returned to the eBay auction page she was on.
    It was for a bottle of Gaia organic Pinot Noir, from her own Napa Valley vineyard, the label bearing her tiny Secret Fox logo, like all her merchandise, and personally signed. All proceeds of the original sale of this bottle, auctioned at a charity, had gone to support a school in Kenya called Stahere. Yet another example of what a wonderfully kind and human person Gaia was. It was being sold by a Gaia fan in the UK, who had outbid Anna three years ago when it had originally been auctioned on eBay. Another Gaia collector had told her, confidentially, on a Gaia chatroom site, that this collector had lost his job and needed to raise cash.
    Anna didn’t have any of the Gaia Special Cuvée Pinot Noir wine. It was one of the glaring gaps in her collection. There were known to be only twelve bottles with signed labels in the whole world. At this moment her pockets were feeling deep. She would bid high on this. Oh yes! No one out there was going to beat her today. Let them try, she thought, darkly.
    When she met Gaia next week it would be good to tell her about this bottle. Maybe she’d even take it with her and get her to initial the date on it!
    Twenty-eight minutes remaining on the auction time. She saw another bid pop up: £375! That was £100