Not Dead Enough Read Free Page B

he said.
    It was a very serious-sounding young civilian dispatcher from the Control Room called Jim Walters, whom Grace had spoken to a few times but did not know. ‘Detective Superintendent, I’ve a request from a Brighton Central detective sergeant for you to attend a suspicious death at a house in Dyke Road Avenue, Hove.’
    ‘What details can you give me?’ Grace asked, now fully alert and reaching for his BlackBerry.
    As soon as he had hung up, he pulled on his dressing gown, filled his toothbrush mug with water, took two paracetamols from the bathroom cabinet, downed them, then popped another two from their foil, padded into the spare room, which reeked of alcohol and body odour, and shook Glenn Branson awake. ‘Wakey-wakey, it’s your therapist from hell!’
    One of Branson’s eyes opened, part-way, like a whelk in the safety of its shell. ‘Whatthefucksupman?’ Then he put his hands to his head. ‘Shit, how much did I drink last night? My head is like—’
    Grace held up the mug and the capsules. ‘Brought you breakfast in bed. You now have two minutes to shower, get dressed, swallow these and grab a bite from the kitchen. We’re going to work.’
    ‘Forget it. I’m on sick leave. Got another week!’
    ‘Not any more. Your therapist’s orders. No more sickies! You need to get back to work now, today, this instant . We’re going to see a dead body.’
    Slowly, as if every movement was painful, Branson swung himself out of bed. Grace could see the round, discoloured mark on his six-pack, some inches above his belly button, where the bullet had entered. It seemed so tiny. Less than half an inch across. Terrifyingly tiny.
    The DS took the pills, washing them down with the water, then stood up and tottered around in his boxer shorts for some moments, looking very disoriented, scratching his balls. ‘Shit, man, I got nothing here, just these stinky clothes. I can’t go see a body dressed in these.’
    ‘The body won’t mind,’ Grace assured him.

6
    Skunk’s phone was ringing and vibrating. Preeep-preeep-bnnnzzzz-preeep-preeep-bnnnzzzz . It was flashing, slithering around on the sink-top, where he had left it, like some large, crazed, wounded beetle.
    After thirty seconds it succeeded in waking him. He sat up sharply and, as he did most mornings, hit his head on the low Luton roof of his clapped-out camper van.
    ‘Shit.’
    The phone fell off the sink-top and thudded on to the narrow strip of carpeted floor, where it continued its fuck-awful noise. He’d taken it last night from a car he’d stolen, and the owner had not been thoughtful enough to leave the instruction manual with it, or the pin code. Skunk had been so wired he hadn’t been able to figure how to put it on silent, and hadn’t risked switching it off because he might need a pin code to switch it back on. He had calls to make before its owner realized it was missing and had it disconnected. Including one to his brother, Mick, who was living in Sydney, Australia, with his wife and kids. But Mick hadn’t been pleased to hear from him, told him it was four in the morning and hung up on him.
    After one more round of shrieking and buzzing, the thing fell silent: spent. It was a cool phone, with a gleaming stainless-steel case, one of the latest-generation Motorolas. Retail price in the shops without any special deal would be around three hundred pounds. With luck, and probably after a bit of an argument, he’d get twenty-five quid for it later this morning.
    He was shaking, he realized. And that black, undefined gloom was seeping through his veins, spreading to every cell in his body, as he lay on top of the sheets in his singlet and underpants, sweating one moment, then shivering. It was the same every morning, waking to the sensation that the world was a hostile cave that was about to collapse on him, entombing him. Forever.
    A scorpion walked across his eyes.
    ‘FUCKSHITGETOFF!’ He sat up, whacked his head again and cried out in