The smile vanished. ‘How’s Emma ever going to get a baby brother if we never do it? I could dress up: would that help? You know, be a fireman, or a doctor, or something?’
Change the subject. ‘So, what we got – pair of oldies?’
‘Naw.’ He took her hand and led her back towards the dissecting room, where Professor Muir and Mr Unwin were hefting a dark-blue body-bag onto one of the mortuary’s examination tables. ‘Quite romantic really: man and woman, both early twenties, found holding hands on the bed. Painkillers, sleeping pills, and a big bottle of milk.’
‘What the hell’s romantic about that?’
‘Decided they just couldn’t live without each other. If one of them was going to die, they were both going to die.’
‘Oh yeah?’
Professor Muir unzipped the bag, revealing a pretty blonde woman. Upturned nose, small overbite, and bright-red lips. Her face was plastered with make-up, hiding the bloodless yellow waxy pall of death. But from the neck down she was all corpse. And not a natural blonde either.
‘So which one was dying? Let me guess, she–’
‘It was him. We found a letter from the hospital: test results. Turns out his HIV just got upgraded to full-blown AIDS.’
She scowled. ‘Great, just what we need – a pair of fucking biohazards. They take forever.’
‘Yeah, well, you just make sure you take care, OK?’ He patted her on the arse. ‘Don’t want nothing happening to my woman.’
She didn’t bother answering that, just stomped across the room as Muir and the undertaker manhandled the other body-bag out of its stainless steel coffin. ‘Better watch out,’ she pointed at the bag, ‘this one’s got AIDS.’
The professor swore, then pulled on a surgical mask and another pair of latex gloves. Scowled in DI ‘Stinky’ McClain’s direction. ‘No one bloody tells me anything.’ He hauled down the zip, zwwwwwwwwwwwwip . . . and there was Kevin.
The floor wobbled beneath Sandra’s feet.
It was Kevin. Kevin was dead. Kevin was lying on his back, on a cutting slab, staring up at the mortuary ceiling with a faraway look in his glassy eyes.
She stumbled back a couple of steps. He had AIDS! Just two days ago they’d had unprotected sex in a ‘dangerous area’: the multi-storey car park behind Marks and Spencer. The bastard never even told her he was HIV positive!
Oh fuck. . .
‘Sandra?’ Good old Ewan, at her side in a flash, playing the big, strong husband. ‘You OK?’
She couldn’t take her eyes off Kevin’s dead face.
The cheating, dirty, diseased, two-timing bastard hadn’t even bothered to tell her! That could be her lying there next to him, all peaceful and serene and not having to worry about dying from some horrific disease. Instead of some STUPID BLONDE TART.
‘Sandra?’
Kevin didn’t even have the common decency to ask her to commit suicide with him. He never really loved her at all.
Men were such bastards.
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