Not Dead Enough

the magazines, manuals and entrails of the computers that he was building on the floor, then returned to the photograph again, aware that circumstances had changed. There had been a call on his bank; he could no longer luxuriate in being a time billionaire. The stuff was running out.

48

Just before four o’clock, Holly Richardson stood at the till of Brighton’s coolest new boutique, paying for the insanely expensive, seriously skimpy black dress, edged with diamantes, that she had decided she totally could not go to the party tonight without. She was buying it courtesy of a Virgin credit card that had conveniently landed on her doormat, followed by the pin code, just a few days ago. Her Barclay-card was already maxed out, and by her calculations, on her current rate of outgoings, her earnings from the Esporta fitness centre at Falmer, where she worked as a receptionist, would enable her to pay it off fully around the time of her ninety-fifth birthday.

Marrying someone rich was not an option, it was a necessity.

And maybe tonight Mr Seriously Gorgeous Very Rich Who Likes Curly Dark Haired Girls With Very Slightly Big Noses might just be at that party she and Sophie were going to. The guy throwing it was a successful music producer. The house was a stunning Moorish pad right on the beach, just a couple of doors along from the one Paul McCartney had bought his ex-beloved Heather.

And, oh shit! She just remembered that she had promised to call Sophie back yesterday, when she was out of the hairdresser’s, and it had completely slipped her mind.

Carrying her extremely expensive purchase by the rope handles of the store’s swanky carrier bag, she went out into busy East Street, dug her tiny, latest-model Nokia out of her handbag and dialled Sophie’s. It went straight to voicemail. She left an apologetic message, suggested they meet for a drink about seven thirty, then share a taxi to the party. When she finished, she then dialled the landline in Sophie’s flat. But that went to voicemail too.

She left a second message there.

49

Roy Grace didn’t leave a message. He had already left one earlier on Cleo’s home phone, as well as on her mobile, and he’d also left one on the mortuary’s answering machine. Now he was listening to her breezy voicemail intro on her mobile for the third time today. He hung up. She was clearly avoiding him, still in her strop over Sandy.

Shit, shit, shit.

He was angry with himself for handling it so bloody clumsily. For lying to Cleo and breaking her trust in him. OK, it was a white lie, yadda yadda yadda. But that question she asked, that one simple question, was one he just could not answer, not to her, not to himself. Always the killer question.

What happens if you find her?

And the truth was he really did not know. There were so many imponderables. So many different reasons why people disappeared, and he knew most of them. He had been over this ground so many times with the team at the Missing Persons Helpline, and the shrink he had been seeing on and off for years. In his heart he clung to the slim hope that, if Sandy was alive, she was suffering from amnesia. That had been a realistic possibility in those first days and weeks after she had disappeared, but now, with so many years gone by, it was a straw almost too thin to clutch.

A pink-faced Swatch wristwatch with white letters and a white strap dangled in front of his face. ‘I got my nine-year-old one of these. She was over the moon, like, totally wow, know what I mean?’ the shop assistant said helpfully. He was a pale Afro-Caribbean, in his early thirties, smartly dressed and friendly, with hair that looked like a bunch of broken watch springs.

Grace focused back on his task. His sister had suggested he buy his goddaughter a watch for her birthday tomorrow, and he had phoned her mother to check they were not giving her one. There were ten laid out on the glass counter. His problem was that he had no idea what a nine-year-old would consider cool or horrid. Memories of the disappointment of opening dreary presents thrust on him by his own well-meaning godparents haunted him. Socks, a dressing gown, a jumper, a wooden replica of a 1920s Harrods delivery van where the wheels wouldn’t even turn.

All the watches were different. The pink with the white face was the prettiest, the most delicate. ‘I don’t know what’s in and out with watches – would a nine-year-old girl consider this one cool?’

‘This one rocks, man. Totally. This is what they’re all wearing. You ever see that show on Saturday morning, Channel Four?’

Grace shook his head.

‘There was a kid on it last week wearing one of these. My daughter went mental!’

‘How much is it?’

‘Thirty quid. Comes in a nice box.’

Grace nodded, pulling out his wallet. At least that was one problem solved. Albeit, the smallest of the current