Dead Man's Time

be made several days later.
Grade Four
was no attendance by police, but dealt with over
the phone.
    ‘Charlie Romeo Zero Three, we’re on our way.’ Then, doing a quick calculation, Dave Roberts said, ‘We’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.’
    Both officers looked at each other. They’d not had a G5 in several weeks, until this morning. One of their colleagues had joked they were like buses. You had none for ages then two came
along together.

11
    Sarah Courteney lay back nervously on the blue reclining couch in the doctor’s clinic. It wasn’t the needle or the pain that scared her; it was a whole bunch of
other stuff. Some of it was to do with her hitting forty in two weeks’ time, and all the unwelcome shit that went with that particular milestone. Such as the wrinkles that were becoming
increasingly persistent; the grey hairs that were starting to appear. Her career as a local TV news presenter was constantly under threat from younger, fresher faces.
    But what scared her most of all was her husband, Lucas. More and more every day. He was losing the plot and blaming everything on her, from his increasing gambling debts, his bouts of impotence
– not entirely unrelated to his heavy drinking – and his rages. One constant target of his rages was her inability, after eight years of constant trying – including four of IVF
hell – to go to term with a baby. She had a son by her previous marriage, but his relationship with his stepfather was disastrous – and not much better with her. There was constant
friction in the house.
    Royce Revson stood in his small, sterile clinic, studying a monitor displaying an array of turquoise symbols, amid a bank of technical apparatus. Nudging fifty-six, he could have passed for
someone in his mid-forties. A stocky, energetic man with short, jet-black hair, who exuded charm, he was wearing a purple short-sleeved shirt, collegiate tie, black trousers, blue surgical gloves,
and had an infrared goggle headset clipped to his forehead. He turned from the machine and beamed down at his patient, his winning, boyish smile filled with all the genuine enthusiasm and
confidence of a man on a mission.
    And he was indeed on a mission: to help women – and frequently men, too – ward off the cruelties of ageing with a little help from cosmetic chemicals. Such as the woman who lay back
at this moment on his blue reclining couch. A raven-haired beauty, wearing a black tunic dress over black leggings and black suede sandals with large buckles.
    Her husband, she had confided in Revson, the way many of his patients did, was a bully who often hit her. One of the city’s prominent antiques dealers, he had a constantly roving eye and a
vile temper, which had got progressively worse as the antiques trade had diminished – partly due to the financial climate, but more because of the change in fashion. People wanted a modern
look in their homes these days.
    Why Sarah did not leave the brute was a mystery that, in Royce Revson’s long experience, was repeated by women many times over. He hoped to keep her looking young and attractive enough so
when the day finally came that her marriage was over, she’d be able to attract someone new and hopefully kinder. Maybe even himself? But he pushed that thought away almost before it had even
entered his head. Fancying his patients was not an option. However tempting. And Sarah Courteney was very tempting indeed.
    Unlike some of his clientele, which numbered a high percentage of the city’s richest, spoilt bitches, Sarah was a genuinely nice and kind person. For the past two years since she’d
become a patient, he’d done a good job of keeping her looking youthful, through Botox, collagen and the lasering away of the occasional unwelcome vein that popped on her cheeks.
    To inspire client confidence, it helped, of course, that he’d had a fair amount of non-surgical intervention himself. And a bit of actual surgery that he omitted to talk about –
reducing the wrinkles on his neck, and raising his drooping eyelids. He loathed what he called ‘the tyranny of ageing’, and had devoted much of his life to, if not halting or reversing
it, at least cheating it of some of its worst ravages.
    ‘You’re looking very tanned, Sarah,’ he said.
    ‘I’ve just got back from Dubai.’
    ‘Holiday?’
    She nodded.
    ‘With your husband?’
    ‘No, with a girlfriend – we go every year. I love it there. I do my annual clothes