For the past thirty minutes all had been quiet. They were thinking about returning to John Street police station to eat their packed lunches, have a comfort break and fill in the paperwork on Meeks.

‘What are your plans for the weekend?’ Dave Roberts asked Susi. They crewed together regularly and got on well.

‘Going to the Albion with James,’ she said. ‘You?’

‘It’s Maxim’s fifteenth birthday on Saturday,’ he replied. ‘Marilyn and I are taking him and some of his friends for fish and chips on the pier – to the Palm Court. Best fish and chips in Brighton!’

‘Tiffany going, too?’

Tiffany was his teenage daughter.

As he was about to reply, their radios crackled into life.

‘Charlie Romeo Zero Three?’

‘Yes, yes, Charlie Romeo Zero Three,’ Dave answered.

‘Charlie Romeo Zero Three, we’ve a call from a concerned individual. A man who normally speaks to his elderly sister every day. Says he’s not been able to reach her for two days. He’s out of the country, otherwise he would have gone round to check on her himself. Her name is Aileen McWhirter. The address is 146 Withdean Road, Brighton. Please check this out, Grade Two.’

All Control Room calls were graded One to Four. Grade One was immediate response, with a target time of within fifteen minutes. Grade Two was prompt response, with a target time of within one hour. Grade Three was a planned response, by appointment, which could 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 shopping there.’

Revson was relieved that she got some time away from the monster. He noticed the shiny Cartier Tank watch on her wrist. ‘Is that new?’

She smiled. ‘Yes, got that there. I found a little jewellery place a few years ago that makes really good-quality copies – not like most of the rubbish. He’s a proper craftsman, can get anything you want copied in just a few days.’

‘My wife wants one of those Cartier bracelets,’ he said, then frowned. ‘A Tennis bracelet, is it? They cost a fortune.’

‘He’d be able to make one for you – she’d never know the difference.’

‘Is it legal?’

She shrugged. ‘I can give you his email address. You can send him a photo of what you want and he’ll send you a quote.’

‘Hmm, thanks, I might well do that.’ Pulling his goggles down over his eyes, he accepted the hypodermic needle from one of his two assistants dressed in identical navy tunics, and stepped forward across the grey and white speckled floor. ‘Okay, ready?’

Sarah nodded. It would hurt, she knew. But the pain was a small price to pay for the difference she felt it would make to her lips. ‘No gain without pain’ was one of her favourite sayings. She said it now.

Royce slid the slender needle through her upper lip.

She winced.

‘Okay?’ he asked.

She nodded with her eyes. No gain without pain . . . No gain without pain . . . No gain without pain. She repeated the mantra continuously, silently.

Steadily, he worked his way along her upper, then lower lips.

‘It’ll look like an allergic reaction for a couple of days,’ he said. ‘Before they settle down.’

‘I’m not on television again until Tuesday,’ she said.

‘You’ll be fine by then.’

‘You think so?’

‘Aren’t you usually?’

‘Yep.’

He smiled. Sure, it was clients like this that had helped make him a wealthy man, but money had never motivated him. Every time a beautiful woman like Sarah Courteney slipped off his couch with a smile on her face, he wanted to punch his fist in the air and give two fingers to whatever sadist that cruel god of ageing was.