Not Dead Enough

your house. It’s your home as much as Ari’s. She might be pissed off with you, but she can’t actually throw you out. You have rights.’
    ‘Yeah, and you’ve met Ari.’
    Grace had. She was a very attractive, very strong-willed lady in her late twenties who had always made it abundantly clear who was boss in the Branson household. Glenn might have worn the trousers, but his face poked out through the fly buttons.

    It was almost five in the morning when Grace pulled some sheets and a blanket out of the airing cupboard and made up the spare bed for his friend. The whisky bottle and the brandy bottle were both nearly empty, and there were several crumpled cigarette butts in the ashtray. He had almost stopped smoking completely – after recently being shown, in the mortuary, the blackened lungs of a man who had been a heavy smoker – but long drinking sessions like this clobbered his willpower.
    It seemed it was only minutes later that his mobile phone was ringing. Then he looked at the digital clock beside his bed and saw, to his shock, that it was ten past nine.
    Knowing almost certainly the call was from work, he let it ring a few times, trying to wake up properly so he didn’t sound groggy, his head feeling like it had a cheese-wire sawing through it. He was the duty Senior Investigating Officer for this week and really should have been in the office by eight thirty, to be prepared for any major incident that might occur. Finally he pressed the answer button.
    ‘Roy Grace,’ 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