Dead Man's Time

  They climbed out of their vehicles in the Brighton Marina yacht basin, in front of the steep escarpment of the white chalk cliff. A strong breeze was blowing in off the English Channel. Rigging clacked and pinged, and there was a steady creak of mooring ropes and squeak of hulls against fenders from the dark, empty yachts moored a short distance away. In front of them was a modern, lowrise apartment building.

  ‘Flat 324, guv?’ said the Sergeant in charge of the LST.

  ‘Yep,’ Grace said, then looked at DS Potting for confirmation.

  Potting checked his notepad and confirmed, ‘Three-two-four.’

  There was a row of parking bays in front of the building. In number 324, Grace clocked a black Porsche cabriolet. He memorized the registration.

  Their first task when raiding a flat in a block was to get into the building without being seen. With advanced planning, they could usually get a key or entry code from the caretaker, but tonight they’d not had sufficient time. Grace despatched three of his team to cover the fire-escape exits from the building, and the rear entrance to the block.

  Norman Potting pressed a couple of buttons on the entry phone and waited. After some moments, he tried another two flats.

  A young, cheery female voice responded to one of them. ‘Hello?’

  ‘FedEx delivery,’ Potting said.

  ‘FedEx?’

  ‘Flat 221?’

  ‘Yes. that’s me!’

  ‘I’ve a FedEx delivery.’

  ‘Ah – you from Amazon?’

  ‘Yes.’ Potting said.

  There was a loud click. He pushed the door and they were in.

  ‘Is there a name on the package?’ the woman’s voice said. But she was history now.

  The rest of the team of officers walked quickly along the corridor, ignoring the lift, and took the stairs. They assembled outside the front door on the third floor. There was a faint whiff of curry. All eyes turned to Roy Grace.

  Grace was aware that he and Potting were the only officers not wearing body armour, or even a stab vest. So he kept Potting back with a restraining hand. ‘Go!’ he said.

  One officer rang the doorbell, then waited. After thirty seconds, he rang again.

  They waited for some moments, then, in unison, they shouted, ‘POLICE! THIS IS THE POLICE.’ They stepped aside as an officer put the door in with the bosher. Then, all of them, in a standard shock-and-awe tactic, shouting ‘POLICE’ at the tops of their voices, crashed into the apartment. Grace and Potting brought up the rear. It was a smart, minimally furnished modern flat, with a huge picture window looking onto a row of berthed yachts, barely illuminated in the darkness.

  Moments later there was a shout from one of the LST. ‘Guv, in here!’

  Grace ran in the direction of the voice, followed by Norman Potting, through an open-plan living and dining area and into a bedroom. Then stopped in his tracks.

  A king-sized four-poster bed almost filled the softly lit room. Occupying the centre of the bed was the telesales man, Gareth Dupont. He was lying on his back, his hands and feet secured with silk ties to the bedposts. And he had an erection that, by any standards, Grace considered impressive. A gravelly, sultry female voice was singing in Italian on the sound system.

  Standing beside Dupont, and holding a stick on the end of which was attached a bright red feather, was a woman wearing a sinister, black Venetian mask, naked except for a pair of shiny, wetlook thigh boots. She had an attractive body, Grace thought, but not in the first bloom of youth. In particular he noticed the bruises below her right collar bone.

  A female member of the team handed her a dressing gown.

  ‘Tickling your fancy, is she?’ Norman Potting asked Gareth Dupont.

  ‘That’s not even funny,’ Gareth Dupont said. ‘She’s got nothing to do with this.’

  Grace stared in growing disbelief at the bruises. He knew them, and he wished to hell he did not. Then, with difficulty, he focused his attention on the suspect.

  ‘Gareth Ricardo Dupont,’ Roy Grace said, ‘evidence has come to light, as a result of which I’m arresting you on suspicion of robbery and the murder of Mrs Aileen McWhirter. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Is that clear?’

  ‘You sure know how to pick your moment.’

  ‘It’s known as getting your comeuppance!’ Norman Potting said to Dupont. Then, unable to resist, staring pointedly down at the man’s rapidly shrinking member, he added, ‘Or in your case, more of a comedownance.’

  Grace stared at the woman in the mask. He hoped she would keep it on, to preserve her anonymity and her dignity for just a little while longer. This was not about her.

  But Sarah Courteney went ahead and removed it.

  63

  From an upstairs window of his new home, where he had set up an observation post and where he sat in darkness, Amis Smallbone waited for Roy Grace to arrive home. It was half past midnight.

  Smallbone had rented the place fully furnished. It was modern stuff, really not to his taste, but it was a lot better than the shithole he had just vacated.

  Tomorrow, he was expecting delivery of two pieces of electronic kit. One was an up-to-date, encrypted police radio from a bent technician who had worked in the Police Communications Department. The other was a scanning device, which he had bought through a contact of Henry Tilney, that could pick up any phone call, whether a landline or mobile, within a two-hundred-metre radius, and read any email or text.

  He looked forward to becoming fully acquainted with his new neighbours’ movements. But what he was looking forward to most of all was Detective Superintendent Roy Grace discovering who his new neighbour was. After years of the detective being in his face, the thought that he was now going to be in Grace’s face was very sweet indeed.

  But not as sweet as all the different possibilities for destroying his life that were going through his mind. As if picking up his thoughts through the wall, he heard a baby crying. The Grace baby.

  He poured himself another large whisky, and lit another cigarette. Then stiffened.

  Someone was walking through the entrance gate: a man in a suit and tie, holding a bulging briefcase.

  Hey, Noah! Smallbone mouthed silently. Daddy’s home!

  64

  Gavin Daly poured himself another large Midleton whiskey and relit his cigar. It was just gone half past midnight and he was wide awake, fuming. The news, earlier, from the New York nautical timepiece dealer Julius Rosenblaum, had lit the fire inside him. He was a man on a mission. A man on fire.

  Laid out on his desk in front of him was a three-foot-tall Ingraham chiming mantel clock. Beside it lay his specialist timepiece tool kit spread out, each item in its velvet sleeve. Also on the table lay the Colt .32 revolver, with six live rounds in the chambers, that he had been handed all those years back on Pier 54. It was heavy and cold and smelled of the gun-oil with which he lovingly cleaned it every year, on the anniversary of his father’s disappearance.

  Inside the clock’s fine inlaid mahogany case was a round brass gong. It was hollow, and comprised two brass discs screwed together. It was a slow and intricate job but finally he carefully removed the gong, laid it down, then began undoing each of the screws. None of them had been touched in over the one hundred and fifty years since the clock had been made, and it took him time to free each one in turn. He was perspiring by the time he had finished. He laid the discs down and then picked up the revolver, and laid it in one. It fitted snugly.

  He went through to the kitchen, glad that Betty was up in her room, probably asleep, and helped himself to a couple of J-cloths. Then he returned to his study.

  He wrapped the revolver in the cloths, binding them with Scotch tape, then placed the package inside one disc of the gong. He placed the other disc over it, then held the gong up and shook it. To his immense satisfaction, there was no sound at all.
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  Then, with painstaking care, he began to replace the gong in the clock, and reassemble the chiming mechanism. It was important, if anyone were to take a close look, that it was in perfect working order.

  He finished shortly before 3 a.m. But still he wasn’t tired.

  Still he burned.

  A fire that had been lit on a February night in 1922 burned even more intensely now, early on this September morning nine decades later.

  He crushed the tiny remaining stub of his cigar out in the ashtray, then looked down once more at the page of the Daily News. At the four names written in the margin.

  At one in particular.

  Pollock.

  Mick Pollock.

  Pegleg Pollock.

  Then at the list of names, scribbled in his shaky handwriting, on the notepad on his desk. The ones given to him by the genealogist Martin Diplock.

  Coincidence? God’s calling cards?

  Or a dead man whose time had come?

  65

  At 4 a.m. Noah began crying, wanting another feed. Feeling totally exhausted, Grace climbed out of bed and followed Cleo through into his room as she switched on the light.

  ‘Go back to bed, darling,’ she said, lifting Noah out of his cot.

  ‘I’ll sit up with you.’ In truth, he felt wide awake. He was still finding it hard to believe that the lovely Sarah Courteney was having an affair with that little shit, Gareth Dupont. And he sincerely hoped for her sake that her thug of a husband, Lucas, never found out.

  Cleo carried Noah back into the bedroom, then sat on the edge of the bed and lowered her nightdress over her right breast. Roy Grace watched, mesmerized. This tiny creature was their son. His son. One day he would play football with him. Cricket. Go swimming. Maybe cycling. This frail human, sucking away on Cleo’s breast. They had made this little person. Brought him into the world. They would be responsible for him for ever.

  Cleo had a small rash above her breast. Her hair tumbled around her face as she looked down at Noah, with such deep love in her eyes that Grace felt his own eyes filling. Noah’s thin, straggling hair was matted forward across his forehead in a way that reminded him of the character of Bill Cutting that Daniel Day-Lewis played in Gangs of New York.

  Throughout his career, he had confronted a few monsters. But you couldn’t pigeon-hole murderers into any one category. Some were tragic people who killed in the heat of the moment out of jealousy, and spent the rest of their lives regretting those few minutes of madness. Some were greedy villains with no conscience, who would kill for a bag of beans. And then there were the predators who slaked a lust by killing.

  There was one common denominator among most of the people he had ever locked up. They came from broken homes.

  He hoped that Noah would never find himself in a broken home. Cleo had been upset with him a few days ago, for working so late. Looking at the woman he loved and the child he loved, he knew, as much as he loved his job, that if he had to make a choice right now between his career and being a good father to his son, he would quit the police tomorrow.

  Then, in his mind, he saw the photograph of Aileen McWhirter’s face – like a ghost.

  It was followed by the image of Lucas Daly’s wife, the broadcaster Sarah Courteney, with her incredibly sexy body, taking off her mask in Gareth Dupont’s bedroom. She was shagging him? Shagging a man who had robbed and murdered her husband’s aunt?

  Just what the hell was all that about?

  Different scenarios played in his mind. Had Gareth Dupont targeted her as an unwitting stooge? Perhaps to get information about the old woman’s movements? He was casting his mind back to the visit he had paid her at her Shirley Drive home, with DS Batchelor. She had told him then she was close to Aileen McWhirter. She had also seemed genuinely upset over her death. Crocodile tears?

  He didn’t think so. She had a bullying husband, which made her vulnerable; had Gareth Dupont preyed on that? That was the most likely scenario, he decided. He’d called her, to try to make an appointment to go and talk to her again – without her husband present – but she told him she was out of town for two days, working on a pilot for a new daytime television show.

  ‘I think we’ve got new neighbours,’ Cleo said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The house next door that was up for rent.’

  ‘The owners are in Dubai, right?’

  ‘Yes, I think on a two-year contract. The to let sign’s been taken down and I saw lights on in there this evening.’

  ‘You haven’t met them?’

  ‘No – and so far they’ve been very quiet.’

  ‘Do you think we should invite them over for a drink sometime?’

  She shrugged. ‘I suppose that would be a nice gesture. Sometime when you are actually here,’ she added pointedly.

  He nodded.

  ‘Go to bed, darling,’ she said. ‘You look exhausted.’

  ‘I was thinking,’ he said, and smiled.

  ‘Thinking what?’

  ‘How lucky Noah is to have such an amazing mother.’

  ‘His dad’s not bad, either!’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She wrinkled her nose in agreement, and grinned. ‘Sometimes.’

  Noah burped.

  Grace went back to bed, but sat up, picked up the book he had been reading, and found his place. It was one from the pile of books on the early gang history of New York that he had bought from City Books.

  Halfway through the first page of the chapter he saw a name, and froze.

  66

  Gavin Daly was feeling his age this morning. He’d stayed up until 5 a.m. phoning his old contacts in America, first in New York, then, as it became late, he switched to a contact in Denver, Colorado, followed by one in Los Angeles. He was feeling ready for his eleven o’clock glass of wine and his first cigar of the day. Then he heard the front doorbell ring.

  A few minutes later his housekeeper knocked on his study door and entered. ‘There’s a police officer asking if he could have a word with you, Mr Daly.’

  He nodded, his eyes feeling raw. ‘Show him in – I’ll see him here.’

  Moments later, Roy Grace entered. Daly stood up and mustered a cheery smile. ‘Detective Superintendent, what a pleasant surprise. Do you have some news for me?’

  ‘I’d like to have a chat with you, Mr Daly.’

  He ushered Grace to one of the studded red chesterfields. ‘I was about to have a drink. Do you like white Burgundy?’

  ‘I do, but I’m on duty, sir. Some coffee would be very welcome.’

  The detective looked and sounded as tired as he himself felt. Daly instructed Betty to bring coffee and his wine, then sat back in his chair and swivelled round to face Grace. ‘Do you have some news for me?’

  ‘We made an arrest last night, sir, of a male suspect involved in your sister’s robbery.’

  ‘That’s extremely welcome news. May I know his name?’

  ‘Do you have any views on possible suspects yourself, sir?’

  ‘I don’t, no.’

  ‘Other than the knocker-boy, Ricky Moore?’ Grace watched his eyes carefully.

  ‘Other than Moore, no.’

  ‘I’d appreciate your keeping this confidential, for the moment.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The man we arrested is called Gareth Dupont. Does that name mean anything to you?’

  Daly shook his head. Then echoed the name. ‘Gareth Dupont?’

  Grace continued studying his face. ‘I can’t say too much at the moment, but we have evidence linking him to the scene. You’ve never heard your sister mention his name?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘I’m trying to find out if he would ever have had a legitimate reason for being in the house.’

  ‘Not so far as I know.’

  ‘I wonder if you could tell me in a little more detail about the watch that was taken from your sister’s safe? To help us try to identify it. It’s extremely difficult without a photogr
aph, as I’m sure you can appreciate. We know the make and we have a description, but there are quite a number that may fit that description.’

  Daly shook his head. ‘No, this was unique. Well, let me qualify that, almost unique. I don’t know how much you know about watches, Detective Superintendent?’

  Grace glanced down at the sturdy but heavily scratched Swiss Army watch Sandy had given him for his thirtieth birthday, the day she disappeared; its leather strap was almost worn out. ‘Very little, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Well, it’s pretty fair to say that Patek Philippe & Cie, founded in 1851, is the inventor of the pocket watch, which evolved into the wristwatch familiar to us all today. The firm invented automatic winding, the perpetual calendar, the split-seconds hand, the chronograph, the minute repeater – as a result, vintage Patek Philippes tend to have an exceptionally high value. The world record price ever paid for a watch was $11.3 million, at auction some years ago, and that was for a unique Patek Philippe – it was known as the Patek Philippe Henry Graves Supercomplication.’

  ‘So, the one that was stolen from your sister’s safe – would there be many identical ones?’

  ‘To be honest with you, it was always a mystery how my father obtained the watch in the first place. He was a humble dockworker – all right, he was in a gang, but the gang basically existed to protect the rights of Irish people on the Manhattan and Brooklyn waterfronts. Even back then the watch would have had a very high value. But you have to remember parts of New York were pretty lawless in those days. I like to think he might have won it in a poker game, or been given it in lieu of a debt, but I know from the history he was a hard man – you had to be to survive then. It’s possible he got it some other way.’