Free [PS & GV #6] Death on Demand by Jim Kelly

his right eye – ‘they know this too. 1818. Now you know. How do you say? Join the club. So it’s easy to come and go. But I make rounds, on the hour, and see nothing. I don’t check, I don’t open doors, unless someone rings a bell, or I hear something.’
    ‘It’s part of your job to monitor the CCTV?’ asked Shaw.
    ‘I make rounds. I don’t watch TVs. It will be on the record, yes. But I don’t see.’ He licked his lips, tasting salt. ‘You look at film?’
    ‘We’re doing that now. But it’s several hours and there’s six cameras,’ said Shaw.
    ‘Last night busy too,’ said Copon. ‘The medical log will have this in the writing, yes? I go up to the secure wing to help patient there, Mrs Blanchard, she needs regular medication, every four hours. And Mr Eyres, he thinks I am room service. Ring for this. Ring for that. Really, he wants to talk, about diamonds and gold and silver, because he was a jeweller, and he wants to think about anything he can that isn’t what the doctors say: that he will be dead this year. I’m a nurse. So I listen. It’s better than the pills. I don’t see Ruby, not once, although she is a friend.’
    He actually placed a hand over his heart, on his bare chest; a gesture so theatrical that Shaw felt, intuitively, that it must be genuine. Copon shook his head to dislodge sea water from his hair, the movement of the neat skull on the muscular shoulders fluid and easy and strangely reminiscent of Nano Heaney’s attempts to dislodge Walsingham’s hailstones.
    ‘There are pictures in her room of Ruby with a woman, the staff told us she was an old friend, but they didn’t know her name. They seem close, was she a relative, a sister?’
    Copon took his time answering, blowing on his tea. Somewhere overhead a paraglider flew past, the material of the great single wing crackling.

    ‘She was yes, she died, a year ago,’ said Javi. ‘Beatrice. Beatty Hood.’
    Shaw kept a poker face: Beatrice Hood was the woman whose death certificate they’d found Sellotaped to the back of one of Ruby Bright’s paintings.
    ‘Great woman,’ said Copon, the jaw hardening as if to emphasize the weight of the word great . ‘You know, dying I see very often. Often, almost always, it is not like that …’ He clicked his fingers. ‘An event. No, a process, yes? And sometimes this process begins when people fall alone. A husband dies, a wife dies. The downward path begins. Then – sometimes – they find someone else. Ruby, she has Beatty. Not a resident, no. But for many years a friend. They share this passion for art, for paintings. They cling together. Very close. Lost souls …’
    Gail, who’d sat down on her towel, hugged her knees.
    ‘They make death wait these two. They want to live, this I’m sure is the secret; they want to live to spend more time with each other. They love life together …’
    He held out a hand and, as if by telepathy, Gail rummaged in a large leather handbag and gave him a smartphone. Scrolling into a photo album, he showed them a shot of Bright in a wheelchair on the front at Hunstanton, pointing out to sea, where a line of breakers was dotted with wetsuited surfers.
    Copon pressed a button and the picture became a video, revealing Bright’s animated face, a wide – genuine – grin, which crumpled into a laugh. The wind, blustery, wrapped a scarf around her neck and blew her hair into a wind-sock, but she looked delighted just to be outside. The contrast with Shaw’s only previous image of this woman was shocking.
    ‘Mr Copon,’ said Shaw, handing the phone back to Gail, ‘can you think of any reason why Ruby would have ordered, and kept hidden, a copy of Beatty Hood’s death certificate?’
    Copon massaged his left shoulder and Shaw thought he detected a minute hesitation, a half-second break in the smooth manipulation of the pectoralis major, the thumb pressed into the flesh.
    ‘Death certificate? Where?’
    ‘I’m asking the questions, Mr