Dead Man's Time

  The two men smiled at each other, the innuendo hanging, unresolved, in the air.

  ‘Now, as to your question about other identical ones. Some years back when I realized the watch was so valuable, I tried to find its provenance. I contacted Patek Philippe in Geneva and gave them the serial number, but they said that it did not tally with their records; the number was wrong.’

  Grace frowned. ‘Is that implying the watch is a fake?’

  ‘That’s what I thought at first. But then I found out something that was common practice back in those days. You see, at that time, all their watches were bespoke, commissioned by buyers. Many months of work would go into a single pocket watch. Well, apparently, top apprentices would make themselves a duplicate at the same time, secretly of course. I suspect that’s what my father’s watch is. I believe in the rag-trade, where workers make themselves duplicate garments from left-over cloth, it is called cabbage.’

  ‘Some cabbage!’ Grace said, and smiled. ‘And it doesn’t detract from its value?’

  ‘Far from it,’ Gavin Daly said. ‘It’s an important piece. Part of watchmaking history.’

  ‘You never took photographs?’

  ‘Oh, I did, I have them somewhere. But maybe they got misfiled or thrown out. I’ve searched high and low and so far nothing. And, of course, the photo Aileen had has gone.’

  Changing the subject abruptly, Grace asked, ‘So how did your son get on with his golfing weekend in Marbella?’

  ‘To be honest, I wouldn’t know. Lucas and I are not that close.’

  He nodded, then sat in silence for some moments. ‘Do you know an Anthony Macario or a Kenneth Barnes?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ He answered too quickly, as if he had expected to be asked. And that, together with his eye movements, gave Grace a strong indication he was lying. Daly compounded this by scratching his nose, a further tell-tale sign.

  ‘They were found floating in the water at Puerto Banus yesterday morning, with a capsized dinghy near them. It normally takes two to three days for a body to rise to the surface after being put into the sea in warm water. Your son went to Marbella on Friday. I always like to look at coincidences.’

  Grace paused as the housekeeper came in with a tray on which was a bottle of wine opened, a single glass, a china cup and saucer, a small coffee pot and a milk jug. While she was setting down their drinks, he took the opportunity to look around the room, seeing what he could learn about the old man from his lair.

  He looked at the crammed bookcases, the busts, some on shelves, some on plinths, and at the beautiful gardens beyond the window. Then at the fine inlaid mahogany clock with a Roman numeral dial on the old man’s desk.

  The housekeeper departed, and Grace took a grateful sip of his coffee.

  Daly was glaring at him, his mood perceptibly different now, bordering on openly hostile. ‘Just what are you insinuating, Detective Superintendent?’

  ‘Nice coffee, thank you.’ He set the fine bone china cup down in its saucer. Then he pointed at the clock. ‘That’s very beautiful.’

  Daly looked at it, then looked at Grace, with a strange expression. He looked decidedly uncomfortable suddenly, Roy Grace thought.

  ‘It’s an Ingraham. Handmade in 1856. A very fine example. I’m shipping it to a client in New York.’

  ‘So you still keep your hand in?’

  ‘Oh, indeed. Keeping active, that’s my secret. Keep doing what you love. You’re a young man, but you’ll understand me, one day.’ Gavin Daly caressed the clock, becoming animated. ‘This was made by a true craftsman. There’s nobody today could make something like this.’ Then his mood reverted to anger once more. ‘So, would you mind telling me exactly what you are insinuating?’

  ‘Well, let’s take Ricky Moore. Your sister was tortured, hideously, with cigarettes and heated curling tongs. The night after she died, Moore was kidnapped and tortured with a hot instrument.’ Grace raised his arms and smiled disarmingly. ‘Bit of a coincidence, but perhaps no more than that. Then your son went to Marbella the following Friday and just days later, two bodies were found. Their time of death is estimated by our Spanish police colleagues at between Friday night and sometime on Saturday.’ Grace picked up his cup, blew on the coffee, and drank some more.

  ‘And just what the hell does that have to do with Lucas?’

  ‘I was hoping you might be able to tell me, sir.’

  ‘I told you, we rarely speak.’

  Grace put his cup down, then pointed at the bust of T. E. Lawrence. He recognized him because Cleo had been studying Lawrence for her Open University degree in philosophy, and had encouraged him to read some of his writings. ‘You have him there for a reason, I presume?’

  ‘I have all of them for one reason. They were great Irishmen whose works I admire.’

  ‘Then you’ll remember something Lawrence once said: “To have news value is to have a tin cat tied to one’s tail.”’

  Daly frowned. ‘Actually, I don’t remember that. What in hell does that mean?’

  ‘It means I can hear the sound of your son clanking every time you move, Mr Daly.’

  Daly stood up, his face flushed with rage. He pointed at the door. ‘Out, Mr Grace – Detective Superintendent or whatever your damned rank. Out! If you want to speak to me or my son again, I’ll give you the number of my solicitor.’

  ‘Mind if I finish my coffee first?’

  ‘Yes, actually I do. Just get the hell out of my house, and don’t bother to come back without a warrant.’

  The housekeeper let Roy Grace out through the front door. He thanked her for the coffee, and walked across the gravel towards his car with a smile on his face. He was leaving with a lot more than he had dared to hope for.

  67

  ‘They’re nineteenth century,’ Lucas Daly said to the two quiet, polite Chinese dealers in business suits, to whom he had sold items previously, pointing at the pair of baluster-shaped Chinese vases. The Chinese and Japanese were among the few people who still spent good money on antiques these days.

  ‘Cantonese.’ He pointed at the panels of Oriental figures. ‘Quite exquisite! We acquired them from the home of the Duke of Sussex – he was forced recently to sell off some heirlooms to pay for maintenance of his stately home. We understand from him that these were bought in Canton by his great-great-grandfather, who helped John Nash with many of his acquisitions for the Royal Pavilion. They’re really exceptional pieces, I think you’ll agree.’

  There was no Duke of Sussex. He’d bought them from a local fence, Lester Stork, no questions asked, for one hundred pounds.

  ‘How much?’ asked one of them.

  ‘Two thousand five hundred for them both. Very rare to find a pair in such good condition, you see—’

  ‘Lucas?’ His assistant, Dennis Cooper, who had on an even more hideous Hawaiian shirt than normal, interrupted him.

  ‘I’m busy.’

  ‘It’s your father. Says it’s urgent!’

  ‘Tell him I’m with important customers.’

  When he turned back, the two Chinamen were walking towards the door.

  ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘Hey! Make me an offer!’

  ‘Don’t like your face,’ the one he had been talking to said.

  ‘Fuck you!’ he shouted back, as the door closed behind them.

  Dennis Cooper wheeled his chair over and held the phone out to him. He snatched it, angrily, from his hand. ‘I’m busy, Dad.’

  ‘You twat!’ Gavin Daly said. ‘You absolute bloody idiot. You were meant to get information from them, not kill them.’

  Lowering his voice and moving further away from his assistant, Lucas Daly replied, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I told you to go to Marbella to find out where the watch is. I didn’t tell you to kill anybody. What the hell did you think you were doing? Why did you kill them? I want my watch back. I don’t want blood on my hands.’

  ‘I didn’t kill anyone.’

  ‘No? So how come the bodies
of Tony Macario and Ken Barnes were found floating in Puerto Banus Harbour?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘No idea? Really? You and your Albanian thug, Boris Karloff, went to see them, right?’

  Lucas Daly tried to think fast, on his feet. Not one of his natural talents. ‘Yeah – like – we had a chat with them. They were a bit pissed – been out clubbing. They were fine when we left them. Like I told you, they said Eamonn Pollock had gone to New York. We searched the boat and found the safe, which had nothing in it. Then we left.’

  ‘I’ve just had a visit from the Senior Investigating Officer on the case, Lucas. He made it pretty damned clear he thinks I’m involved in their deaths.’

  ‘They were drunk when we left them, Dad. Maybe they fell overboard.’

  ‘Did you look up at the night sky?’

  ‘Up at the night sky? What do you mean?’

  ‘Did you look up at the bloody night sky when you were there? After you and Boris left them?’

  ‘His name’s not Boris; it’s Augustine Krasniki.’

  ‘So what did you see when you looked up at the night sky?’

  ‘I don’t think I looked up at the night sky at all, Dad.’

  ‘Shame. You know what you’d have seen?’

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘Pigs flying.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it was cloudy that night.’

  ‘Very funny. Listen. I may need to fly to New York at short notice.’

  ‘New York? Why?’

  ‘Because I think the watch might be there and, if it is, I know who has it.’

  68

  Roy Grace’s love of Brighton ran deep in his veins. At his wedding, his best man, Dick Pope, had joked with his typical black humour that if Roy was ever unfortunate enough to be the subject of a postmortem, the pathologist would find the word Brighton repeated right through every bone in his body, like in sticks of Brighton rock.

  For over a decade the city’s football team, the Albion, known by locals as the Seagulls, had been without a proper home, and forced to use an athletics stadium. But during the past year, thanks to the generosity of an individual benefactor, Tony Bloom, and American Express, they now had the Amex Stadium, a building that by general consensus was one of the finest football stadiums in Europe.

  Wednesdays were not usual nights for a game, but this was an important Championship game. As Roy Grace sat in the traffic jam on the A27, staring at the stunning sweep of the building over to the right, he felt a great twinge of pride. The building was not only great for the city, it had rekindled his interest in the game, as it had for thousands of other residents of Brighton and Hove.

  Ten minutes later, parked on the kerb between two marked police cars, he was escorted by Darren Balkham, the Police Football Liaison Officer, wearing a high-viz jacket and uniform cap, to the Police Observation Room in the North Stand.

  In an elevated position, directly behind the goal posts, the room had a commanding view of the brightly lit pitch and the terraces. The game was in progess and a quick look at the scoreboard told Grace the score, at the moment, was nil-nil.

  Over twenty thousand of the twenty-seven thousand fans here today were season-ticket holders and there had been a lot of careful strategizing to minimize trouble when the seating areas had been allocated. One whole section of the East Stand was for families. Next to them were the fans known to be milder mannered. The rowdiest had been placed at the North Stand, close to the observation room. Visiting fans were grouped in an area on the South Stand.

  The CCTV controllers behind a bank of monitors in this room could zoom any of the stadium’s eighty-seven cameras in on a troublemaker so tightly they could read the time on his or her watch.

  Balkham introduced Roy Grace to Chris Baker, the Safety Officer, smartly dressed in a grey suit. ‘You’re looking for someone in the crowd – Lucas Daly?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Grace said.

  ‘I’ve already checked out our list of season-ticket holders and he’s not one of them. You don’t know who he might have come with?’

  ‘No. I tried to get hold of him earlier and his wife said he was coming here.’

  Baker led him over to the bank of monitors and sat Grace down next to an operator.

  Although monitoring potential hooliganism was the primary object of the cameras, they had a secondary function for the CID, which was to observe Persons of Interest to the police. In particular, to watch where local villains were seated, and who they were with. It was a valuable source of intelligence.

  With the assistance of the operator, steadily scanning the 27,000-strong crowd, it took Grace just under fifteen minutes to spot Lucas Daly, on the twelfth row of the West Stand. He was wearing a leather aviator’s jacket with a fleece collar, a roll-neck sweater and jeans, and a blue and white Seagulls scarf draped around his shoulders. Grace recognized him from the photographs in the living room of his home when he had gone to talk to his wife, Sarah Courteney. He also recognized the men seated either side of him. One, Ricky Chateham, was a local wheeler-dealer, in the vending-machine trade as a day job, but a known handler of highend stolen goods, whom the police had been watching for some time; he was also suspected of being behind the supply of drugs into several clubs around Sussex and its neighbouring counties, but so far there had never been enough evidence to nail him. The Albion records showed he was the season-ticket holder for the three seats they occupied. The other man was a criminal solicitor favoured by many of the city’s villains called Leighton Lloyd. Handy, Grace thought, cynically. Daly might well be needing him sometime soon.

  It was a lacklustre game, enlivened by a couple of early yellow cards, and then some minutes later by a tantrum thrown by the team manager, Gus Poyet, after a player was sent off in a highly disputed decision by the referee.

  The crowd roared and broke into their regular angry chant against the ref. The referee’s a wanker!

  But Roy Grace wasn’t following the game. He was glued to Lucas Daly’s every movement. Daly wasn’t following the game, either. He was engaged in what looked like very intense discussions with the two men. Grace dearly wished he had a lip-reader with him at this moment.

  Ten minutes before the final whistle he left the observation room and made his way along past the exits to the West Stand, then waited. All the supporters would have to pass him, whether heading towards the car parks, the buses or the train station.

  As they poured out, his target, flanked by Chateham and the solicitor, stopped less than ten yards from him to light a cigarette. Grace stepped forward, holding up his warrant card. ‘Lucas Daly? Detective Superintendent Grace. I’m the Senior Investigating Officers on your aunt’s murder. Wonder if I could have a quick word?’

  Ricky Chateham gave Grace an uneasy glance of recognition and strode on. The solicitor stood his ground, giving Daly an inquisitive glance.

  ‘See you in the car park, Leighton,’ Daly said, dismissing him. Then he looked levelly at Grace, showing no surprise or any other emotion. ‘Yes?’

  Grace put Lucas Daly’s age at around late-forties. He studied his face for any signs of his father in it, but saw none. Unlike his father, whose aged face was etched with character, Lucas Daly had blandly thuggish good looks, with an unreadable expression, and exuded all the personality of an unplugged fridge.

  ‘How was your golf this weekend?’

  Daly frowned, then took a moment to reply. ‘It was all right.’

  ‘Nice golf courses around Marbella?’

  ‘Does my golf have something to do with my aunt, Detective – er – sorry – didn’t get your name?’

  ‘Grace.’ Then in answer to the question he said, ‘Yes, perhaps it does.’ He noticed the man’s discomfort, and his eyes all over the place. ‘You were in Marbella this past weekend?’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘On a golfing holiday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who did you go with?’

  ‘On my own – went to meet up with s
ome friends who live out there.’

  ‘Expats?’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘You didn’t actually go alone, did you?’

  Daly stared at him, looking uneasy, his eyes all over the place. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘You travelled with a gentleman called Augustine Krasniki – you bought return tickets for both of you on easyJet.’

  ‘Oh yeah, right – him.’ His eyes continued moving around wildly. ‘He’s my assistant, you know.’

  ‘Caddies for you, does he?’

  ‘Yeah, exactly.’

  ‘Good golfer, are you?’

  ‘Average.’

  ‘What’s your handicap?’

  As Daly dragged on his cigarette, Grace watched the man’s eyes.

  ‘Twelve.’

  Roy Grace had had a go at taking up golf some years back, but had given up after a few months of Sandy complaining about him being away so much during his precious hours of free time. He knew that a twelve handicap was impressive; you didn’t get that unless you played regularly. And if you played regularly, every now and then you would win a trophy. Which you would put on display. ‘Where do you play locally?’

  ‘Haywards Heath, mostly. I’m sorry, what does this have to do with my aunt – my late aunt?’

  ‘Do the names Anthony Macario and Kenneth Barnes mean anything to you, Mr Daly?’

  Daly squinted at him, as if a stream of smoke had gone into his eyes. ‘No, never heard of them.’

  Grace nodded. ‘So it wasn’t you or your father who had anything to do with them ending up in the harbour at Puerto Banus, then?’

  For a moment Grace really thought, from Daly’s ferocious expression, that he was going to be punched in the face; he braced himself to duck. But the punch never came. Instead, Lucas Daly pointed an arm in the direction that the crowd was taking. ‘Never heard of them. Okay if I go now? I want to beat this mob out of the car park.’

  ‘You can go, but I want you to know something. No one’s above the law, Mr Daly. Okay? I’m very sorry about your aunt. What happened to her should not happen to any human being, ever. But you need to know I don’t allow vigilantes.’