Not Dead Yet (Ds Roy Grace 8) by Peter James

Author:Peter James [James, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Crime, recent
ISBN: 9780230764897
Publisher: Macmillan Publishers UK
Published: 2012-06-06T23:00:00+00:00

62

There were two levels of post-mortem carried out in the Brighton and Hove City Mortuary, as in all other mortuaries throughout the country. The standard one was for victims of accidents, sudden deaths, or when people had died more than fourteen days since they had last seen their doctor and cause of death was uncertain.

With the bodies prepared in advance by Cleo and her assistants, the actual post-mortem itself, carried out by one of a rota of local pathologists, took about half an hour, with further analysis of fluids carried out later in the labs. But for suspicious deaths, a specialist Home Office pathologist would be called in, and the post-mortem would last many hours.

Brighton and Hove City Mortuary processed an average of 850 bodies a year, the vast majority being standard post-mortems. These were carried out in the mornings, and by mid-afternoon, most days, work was finished for the mortuary staff – unless they were called out to recover a body.

A few weeks ago, Cleo had collapsed at work, suffering internal bleeding and had been rushed into hospital. The consultant gynaecologist had kept her in for several days, and then released her with strict instructions that she was to do no heavy lifting and to take a rest at some point during every working day. Grace knew she was ignoring both of these edicts and he was increasingly worried. When she had collapsed previously, she had been lucky that her assistant, Darren, had been there to drive her straight to hospital. But she was often alone in the mortuary and he worried what might happen if she collapsed again when she was the only person there. So he made a point of phoning her around 3.30 p.m. every afternoon to check she was okay, and again just before the evening briefing, to check she was fine at home.

He was truly terrified of losing her. Perhaps, he reflected, it was because after Sandy had gone he had believed he would never be happy again. And always Sandy’s shadow was present. Some days he was convinced that she was dead. But more often, he believed she was still alive. What would happen, he sometimes pondered, if she were to turn up again now? If she had some completely rational explanation for her disappearance? One scenario he played over often was that she had been kidnapped for this past decade and finally escaped. How would she feel to find him married with a child?

How would he feel, if he saw her?

He tried not to dwell on that, to push it from his mind. Sandy was in the past. Ten years ago, in almost another life. He would be forty years old very soon. He had to move on. All the legal processes for having Sandy declared legally dead were under way, with advertisements placed here and in Germany, where there had been a reported but unsubstantiated sighting by a police officer friend, who had been on holiday in Munich. As soon as the ink was dry on the formalities, he and Cleo would marry.

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