Not Dead Yet

wanted information, and he would miss him.
    An entire rogue’s gallery of Brighton’s underworld hurried by in front of him, through the rain, and in through the chapel entrance. Grace recognized almost all of the faces. Most of them were male, but there were a couple of significant females, too, notably brothel queen Gloria Jouvenaar, and alongside her an elderly lady on a stick, Betty Washington, who in her time had been the wiliest of all the city’s madams.
    While he waited in his car for the cremation service to be over, he called Glenn Branson to wish him luck at the Crimewatch recording. The DS sounded nervous as hell. Grace did his best to calm him down.
    ‘Can I ask you a favour?’ Branson said.
    ‘Try me.’
    ‘The movie with Gaia. I don’t suppose there’s any chance of my getting a few days off – like – taking some annual leave – so I can take my kids – and be extras? I’ve no idea if we could even get to become extras, but it would mean an awful lot to them.’
    ‘Matey, just think that through, will you? You’re the deputy SIO in the early days of a brutal homicide enquiry, and you’re suddenly stepping away to become a film extra? Hello?’
    There was a long silence. ‘Yeah, thought you’d say that,’ he replied finally.
    Grace felt his friend’s pain. He knew just how shitty life had been for him this past year, but if you wanted a career in Major Crime, your work was always going to have to come first. ‘Look, tell you what I’ll do – no promises – but I imagine I’ll be meeting her sometime in the next couple of days to review her security here. I’ll see if she’d be willing to meet you and your kids for a couple of minutes. What do you think?’
    Branson sounded elated. ‘You know, old timer, sometimes you’re not at all bad – for a white man.’
    ‘Sod off!’ Grace replied with a grin.
    Then people began to emerge from the chapel. The service was over fast. Clearly not too many eulogies for Tommy Fincher. He ended the call and sat watching, waiting. Smallbone came out holding the arm of a woman he did not recognize.
    He watched them climb back into the black limousine, then after some moments the car moved off. Grace started his engine and began to follow, keeping a safe, discreet distance behind.

38
    He couldn’t believe it! They were calling him back from the production office of The King’s Lover , less than an hour after he had phoned. A young woman with an irritatingly cheerful voice, like she wanted to give him the impression she was his new best friend .
    ‘Jerry Baxter?’
    He did not like her tone one bit. He was tempted to ask her if she had seen the news today on television, about the famine in Africa. Heard it on the radio? Read it in a newspaper? He wanted to ask her how she could sound so happy with the knowledge of that terrible thing happening out there in the world.
    Our world. Everyone’s world. Was she totally stupid?
    The snakes were rising. Stuff was getting all tangled up inside his head as it often did when he got angry. He needed to focus, remember why he was here, why he had phoned the production office in the first place.
    ‘That’s me!’ he said.
    ‘Thanks for calling us. We’re casting for extras now. We start shooting on Monday and we’d need you every day next week until Saturday evening. Would you be free?’
    ‘Absolutely,’ he replied.
    ‘We’re shooting crowd scenes outside the Pavilion, weather permitting. I’ll give you the address to come for costume fitting.’
    ‘Are you filming inside the Pavilion, too?’
    ‘Yes, a lot, but there won’t be any requirement for extras there.’
    ‘Ah, right,’ he said, slightly disappointed. But the information was helpful, he decided, although he wasn’t sure why. He filed it away. Sometimes his brain felt like a junk room where the light bulb had blown and no one had replaced it. You had to root around with a torch for stuff you wanted; and each year as he got older the torch got smaller and the batteries dimmer. There was stuff he’d filed away in there that he had long forgotten about and probably neverwould retrieve now. Mostly the place was guarded by the snakes that rose, their tongues flicking, each time he looked in there.
    After he ended the call, he went down into the lobby of the hotel and approached the reception desk. He asked for information about the Brighton Pavilion: what time did it open and close, were there guided tours, did you have to