‘Sometimes I feel I’m like the scorpion in that fable.’
‘Which fable?’
‘The one where the scorpion asks the turtle to give him a ride across a river to the other side. The turtle replies, “I can’t do that. You might sting me to death.”
‘The scorpion says, “Look, I’m not dumb. If you carry me across the river and I sting you, we will both die – you from my sting, and I will drown.”
‘So the turtle says, “Okay, that makes sense!”
‘They get halfway across the river and the scorpion stings the turtle. The turtle, in agony and starting to sink, turns and looks at the scorpion and says, “Why did you do that? Now we’re both going to die.”
‘The scorpion replies, “I know. I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it. It’s in my nature.”’
‘So you’re the scorpion, you think?’
She said nothing.
‘Is that what you like to think, to justify your anger?’
‘It’s not rational, I know. I should be happy that he has moved on, but I’m not.’
‘Do you want him back? Does he represent the past, something you want but can’t have back? None of us can.’
‘Maybe I’m a psycho and should be locked away,’ she said.
‘The fact that you recognize that tells me you are not. You have all this anger inside you, and it has to go somewhere, so you vent it on him, and on the woman you think is stopping him coming back to you.’
She sat, thinking, in silence.
After some moments, changing the subject, he said, ‘In our last session you were going to tell me something about the baby. Do you want to tell me now?’
She shrugged. Then she said, ‘The thing is, I’m not sure it was Roy’s.’
‘Oh?’
‘I was having an affair. With one of his colleagues.’
59
‘Eamonn Pollock’s not been flavour of the month for a long time,’ Glenn Branson said. ‘Not among the Brighton antiques fraternity. Your mate Donny Loncrane was right.’
Grace turned the car in through the entrance to the Downs Crematorium. Of Brighton’s two multi-denomination crematoriums, Roy Grace much preferred the municipal one, Woodvale, with its air of a village parish church, and its woodland setting. But the private one, the Downs, was the one chosen by most of the city’s wealthier people.
He had always considered it a courtesy to attend the funeral of murder victims whose cases he was working on, but he always had another, ulterior motive, which was to scrutinize all those attending, and any lurkers in the background who might be watching. Sometimes, sick killers turned up to observe. And the perps who had killed Aileen Mcwhirter were, unquestionably, very sick indeed.
He reversed the unmarked Ford into a space, giving himself and Glenn Branson beside him a clear view of the arriving cortege.
It wasn’t a long procession. Out of the first limousine following the hearse emerged Gavin Daly, his son Lucas and his wife Sarah. From the next a couple emerged, along with two young children. Aileen McWhirter’s granddaughter and her husband, Nicki and Matt Spiers, Grace presumed, and her great-grandchildren, Jamie and Isobel. From the one behind that emerged a number of elderly people, one of whom Grace recognized as Gavin Daly’s housekeeper; he wondered if two of the others were Aileen’s housekeeper and her gardener.
They were followed inside by a woman he knew and liked a lot, Carolyn Randall, the hardworking Area Manager of Sussex Crimestoppers, presumably one of the charities the dead woman had supported. Next he recognized the Head of Fundraising for Brighton’s hospice, the Martlets.
Glenn Branson unclipped his seat belt, slipped his hand inside his suit jacket and took out an envelope, which he handed to Grace. ‘His mugshot. Eamonn Pollock.’
Grace shook it out of the envelope and stared at it. A morbidly obese man in his mid-sixties, with a generous thatch of short, wavy grey hair, and an unbearably self-satisfied grin, stared back at him. He was wearing a white tuxedo and holding up a glass of champagne in a mock toast to the photographer. ‘What intelligence do we have on him?’
‘He’s on a few historic Association Charts, but only one previous: for handling stolen watches and clocks – that was back in 1980. He got two years’ suspended.’
Grace’s interest was instantly piqued. ‘Watches and clocks?’
Branson nodded.
‘I think someone had better go and have a chat with him.’
‘Yeah, I wouldn’t mind a trip to Marbella – in normal circumstances.’ He shrugged and suddenly looked deeply forlorn.
Grace put his hand out and squeezed Glenn Branson’s. ‘You okay, matey?’
Branson nodded. Grace could see the tears suddenly welling in his eyes.
‘Did Ari ever say what she wanted?’
‘She didn’t want to be burned.’ Glenn Branson sniffed. ‘So I guess I have to respect that. I’ve told the funeral directors I want a plot for her at Woodingdean Cemetery. Will you come with me to the funeral?’
‘Of course. Do you have a date yet?’
The DS shook his head. ‘I’m waiting for the Coroner to release her body.’
A young couple climbed out of a small Audi, then lifted a baby out of the rear seat. Looking at his watch, Grace saw it was five minutes to go. ‘Rock’n’roll?’
‘Yep.’
As they opened their doors and climbed out into the warm sunshine, the Detective Superintendent’s phone rang.
‘Roy Grace,’ he answered.
It was the Crime Scene Manager, Dave Green, sounding excited. ‘Roy, thought you’d like to know we’ve found a tiny blood spot, down the inside of a double radiator we removed from the house.’
‘The one that Aileen McWhirter was chained to?’
‘Yes, it’s microscopic, but it looks in good enough condition to give us DNA.’
Grace thought immediately of the scab on the knuckle of the arrogant telesales man, Gareth Dupont, and what Donny Loncrane had said to him in Lewes Prison yesterday. ‘Can you get it fast-tracked?’
‘It’s en route to the lab now.’
Only a couple of years ago, DNA results took several weeks. Now, less than twenty-four hours was sometimes possible. ‘Brilliant work, Dave!’ he said.
‘Thanks, boss, but let’s see.’
‘Of course.’
He ended the call, and was about to tell Glenn Branson the news as they approached the chapel door when Branson’s phone rang.
They stopped and stood still. ‘Yeah, you’re speaking to him,’ Glenn Branson said. ‘Sorry, not a good line – can you say that again?’ He was silent for a moment; then, his face lighting up with excitement, he said, ‘Shit! Really? You’ve confirmed the IDs?’
Grace watched his friend looking more animated than he had seen him in a long while. After a couple of minutes, the DS terminated the call and turned to Roy Grace. ‘I think you’re going to like this!’
60
Returning home from the funeral at 4 p.m., the large house felt emptier than ever and unusually gloomy. Gavin Daly, drained, sat in his study, drinking a larger than usual glass of wine and smoking a cigar. He had gulped the first glass straight down. He stared out through the window.
Aileen’s family had invited him to a restaurant for a meal after the funeral, but he wanted to be alone with his thoughts. At 6 p.m. he walked along to the dining room and sat down, with the local Brighton paper the Argus in front of him, a little smashed and in need of an early supper.
And if you couldn’t drown your sorrows in one of the world’s finest wines at the age of ninety-five, then when the hell could you? he liked to tell people, particularly Betty, his housekeeper, who sometimes chided him for his drinking. But he knew she always kept a bottle of Bristol Cream sherry concealed in a kitchen cupboard – and it got replaced at very regular intervals.
Betty had prepared him his favourite supper, one he ate at least twice a week: smoked salmon from the local Sussex smokery, Springs, with a large wedge of lemon and scrambled
eggs on the side. Oily fish. Something else to which he attributed his fitness in old age. Not that he cared if he keeled over right now, in his current mood.
But this evening he finished his meal more quickly than usual, anxious to return to his study.
Back at his desk, with his study lights on, he removed the brown envelope, containing a photograph of the broken Patek Philippe watch, from a drawer. But to his surprise, the envelope was empty. He frowned, wandering where he had put it. He could visualize it so clearly; the bent crown. The hands, frozen permanently since 1922. The Man in the Moon forever invisible, behind the quarter yellow disc against the blue background and gold night stars.
Then he fretted again over the numbers that had been hand-written, in now fading ink, on the reverse of that page from New York’s Daily News.
953704042404
Watch the numbers, the messenger who had given him the gun, the watch, and the page of the newspaper had said.
He drank some more wine, then clipped the end of his next cigar. Something was staring him in the face. Something blindingly obvious. So damned obvious it had taken him nearly ninety years, and countless experts, to still not see it.
It was there. He knew that. It was there as loudly and clearly as if his father was whispering into his ear, from the grave.
Hey, little guy, you still awake?
Yep, big guy, I am! Can I see your watch?
Time was running out on him.
People said that life was a gift. Maybe. Or perhaps a curse. In his view, life was a journey. A kind of circular journey. He was back in New York, in 1922, as a child. Remembering that night his mother was killed and his father abducted. Remembering his promise, on the stern of the Mauretania.
One day, Pop, I’m going to come back and find you. I’m going to rescue you from wherever you are.
There was a Hemingway quote he repeated often to himself. He did not fully understand it, but he knew it applied to him.
There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things, and because it takes a man’s life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.
What, Gavin Daly asked himself often, had he got from life?
Vast riches. No one to share them with, and just Aileen’s granddaughter and family to leave it to. Just a small bequest to his son, on legal advice, to make it hard for Lucas to challenge the will. What the hell had been the point of it all?
Sure, at times he had enjoyed the ride. For several decades he’d been the undisputed King of the Brighton antiques scene. And now?
And now?
Ever since Black Monday, and then 9/11, when Americans had stopped coming here, the antiques trade, particularly in brown furniture, had died a rapid and brutal death.
That was all history now. None of it mattered. Within the next few years he’d be out of here. And a few decades after that, his name would be completely forgotten, as if he had never even been born. How many people, he often wondered, could remember their great-grandparents? Could anyone? Certainly not many. That was how it was.
Then his phone rang. ‘Gavin?’
It was the treacly-rich New York accent of a very charming Manhattan rogue, Julius Rosenblaum, who had carved a good living from handling valuable timepieces of dubious provenance. He had contacted Rosenblaum because one of his specialities was rare nautical watches and clocks. But all kinds of precious watches and clocks, whether illegally looted from sunken ships or stolen in robberies and burglaries, had passed through his hands with few questions asked. ‘Gavin, thought this might be something in relation to our conversation earlier. I got a call a short while ago from a guy with an English accent saying he has a Patek Philippe pocket watch circa 1910, asking would I be interested in taking a look at it. Says he’s looking for the best offer over three million dollars.’
‘Oh?’
‘Well, there’s a few things that didn’t feel right. He was pretty evasive on the timepiece’s history; his terminology when I asked him about the watch’s complications was real layman stuff – you’d expect a guy who has a timepiece that rare to have a little knowledge, right?’
‘Ordinarily, yes,’ Gavin said. ‘Did you get a phone number or anything?’
‘No, but he’s going to bring it in – he said he’d call me in the morning – he was tied up the rest of the day.’
‘Could you take some photos when he brings it in – fax or email them to me?’
‘Of course.’
‘While you’re at it, get a photograph of him, too.’
‘No problem, I have CCTV here.’
‘Did he give you his name?’
‘Robert Kenton.’
‘Robert Kenton?’
‘Do you know him?’
‘No, I’ve never heard of him.’
‘No guarantee that’s his real name.’
‘Indeed.’ Gavin thanked him and hung up. He debated for some moments whether to phone Detective Superintendent Grace, then decided against it.
Instead, he poured himself another drink, relit his cigar and thought hard.
61
‘Team, we have a result,’ Glenn Branson announced, rejoining the evening briefing after having stepped out to take a phone call. ‘Boss, that call I had this afternoon at the funeral, right? The two bodies found in the harbour at Puerto Banus close to the yacht, Contented? Its upturned dinghy near them. The boat owned by the man your informant in Lewes Prison told you about, yeah?’
Grace looked up at the large rectangle of paper that had been slightly crookedly Blu-Tacked to a whiteboard. On it was written, OPERATION FLOUNDER – ASSOCIATION CHART. EAMONN POLLOCK. Computer-generated, it looked like a family tree from school history books, but with modern heads and shoulders, the men in blue, the women red.
‘The one who has previous for fencing, you were told,’ Branson continued.
‘Yes, that’s right – with another old friend of ours.’ Grace pointed at a line running to a small box to the right on the Association Chart. ‘Look what we have here, our very own Six Degrees of Separation. Except there’s no separation. On the fencing job Pollock was done for – a haul of watches – Amis Smallbone was known to be involved. I had a look at the file; Smallbone was charged but released for lack of evidence.’ He turned to the indexer, Annalise Vineer. ‘Nice work, Annalise,’ he said, then turned back to Branson.
‘I think you got your money’s worth from your informant, chief.’
‘Tell me more.’
Glenn Branson had everyone in the Conference Room’s attention. Roy Grace shot a glance at Bella Moy then at Norman Potting. Although they were both on his team, they both deserved some happiness. So as far as he was concerned, good luck to them.
‘That was my Spanish Interpol contact calling me. They’ve got positive IDs on both of the bodies. One’s called Anthony Joseph Macario and the other Kenneth Oliver Barnes. Both – despite Macario’s name – Irish citizens.’ He looked at the indexer. ‘Can you do a nationwide check on those names as quickly as possible and see if that throws up anything?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good work, Glenn,’ Grace said. ‘So, we have the knocker-boy, Ricky Moore, who we think may have been the originator of this burglary, apparently tortured within twenty-four hours of Aileen McWhirter being found. Then Gavin Daly’s son goes to Marbella on a “golfing” holiday, despite there being no evidence he’s ever picked up a golf club in his life. Eamonn Pollock becomes a possible Person of Interest. And now two bodies are found in the vicinity of his boat. If we could connect Macario or Barnes to the house in Withdean Road or to Pollock, we might be getting somewhere.’
Grace looked at DC Alec Davies, one of the younger members of his team. ‘Alec, I’m tasking you with finding out if Lucas Daly flew to Spain alone or was accompanied. Start with the airlines, like easyJet; they should be able to tell yo
u if he was on his own or not.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He looked at Potting. ‘Norman, I’d like you to fly out to Marbella and see what you can find.’
‘Yes, chief.’ Potting’s eyes darted momentarily towards Bella, then back to Grace. ‘Should I take someone with me?’
‘Not with our current budget, I’m afraid.’
‘Don’t forget your bucket and spade, Norman,’ Guy Batchelor said. ‘Nice beaches there, I’m told.’
‘I got the shits last time I was in Spain,’ Potting replied. ‘From a dodgy paella.’
Grace’s phone, on silent, vibrated with an incoming call. He was about to kill the call, then thought better of it, and took it. ‘Roy Grace,’ he said quietly.
Two minutes later he ended the call, feeling a real buzz for the first time on this case. He looked at Potting. ‘Got your Holy Bible with you, Norman?’
A titter of laugher rippled through the assembled company of thirty-five police officers and civilian support staff.
‘Think I must have left it on my regular pew, chief,’ Potting replied with a grin.
Bibles were needed when a police officer requested a search warrant from a magistrate.
‘Lucky I keep one in my office, then,’ Grace said. ‘I think we’d better get a search warrant in case our friend isn’t in when we turn up to spin his drum.’
‘Whose drum is it, boss?’ Guy Batchelor asked.
Roy Grace smiled. ‘I’ll tell you whose it isn’t. It’s not Ringo Starr’s. So don’t bother bringing your autograph album. That was the Fingerprint Department calling me. A bronze statuette that was found in Lester Stork’s house, among his hoard of nicked goods, was identified by Gavin Daly as belonging to his sister.’
‘We’ve got a result?’
Grace grinned.
62
It was 10.35 p.m. by the time Roy Grace had all his ducks in a row. Norman Potting had sworn a search warrant in front of a magistrate called Juliet Smith, and had the document signed. Roy Grace, who wanted to be there himself, had assembled a group of police officers from the Local Support Team. One carried the ‘big yellow key’, as the battering ram was known, and another held the hydraulic ram for pushing out doorframes. Alongside them was a POLSA – a Police Search Advisor – Lorna Dennison-Wilkins, with her team of specialist search officers.