Dead Man's Time

  Dupont thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘Ah, yeah, I’d gone round to see a lady friend. Quite close to Withdean Road.’

  ‘So she could vouch for you?’

  He looked awkward suddenly, and Grace realized why. He was referring to Sarah Courteney. He made a note to check later whether she had been on air that evening.

  The solicitor was busy looking at a map on his phone. ‘I have the area in front of me,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t cover only Withdean Road – it’s a dense residential area, a whole network of streets.’

  ‘Gareth,’ Bella Moy said, with a pleasant smile. ‘One thing that we don’t quite understand is how your fingerprint came to be on a bronze statuette owned by Mrs McWhirter?’

  Dupont reddened. ‘I dabble a bit in antiques,’ he said. ‘One of my sidelines. It’s hard to make a living out of telesales, these days.’ His body language, thought Grace, looked increasingly flustered. Then he frowned. ‘Like – where was the – the bronze?’

  ‘You tell us,’ Guy Batchelor said.

  Leighton Lloyd placed a hand on his client’s arm. ‘No comment,’ he instructed him.

  ‘Yeah, no comment,’ Dupont said. Then he turned and whispered something to his solicitor that none of them could hear. Leighton Lloyd shook his head firmly.

  ‘Mr Dupont,’ Batchelor said. ‘There’s something that is puzzling me. When I came with my colleague, Detective Superintendent Grace, to talk to you at your office last Friday, we asked you what car you drove. You told us it was a Volkswagen Golf GTI. But subsequently I’ve learned you in fact drive a Porsche cabriolet. Is there any particular reason why you lied to us?’

  Dupont looked even more of a confused mess, Grace thought.

  ‘Yeah, well, the thing is me and my mate Andre Severs swap cars sometimes. Like, he wants to impress a bird, so he borrows the Porsche. Know what I mean?’

  ‘No,’ Guy Batchelor said. ‘I’ve no idea what you mean. I want to know why you lied to two police officers.’

  ‘I guess I didn’t want to look too flash.’

  Batchelor exchanged a look with Bella Moy, then turned back to Dupont. ‘All right, tell me something, how well do you know Withdean Road in Brighton?’

  Dupont shook his head. ‘Don’t know it at all. Never been there.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Batchelor pressed.

  He nodded. ‘Well, yeah – hang on, wasn’t the football there at the Withdean Stadium until last year?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’m a Seagulls fan, right. But that’s not in Withdean Road exactly.’

  ‘So you definitely were not in Withdean Road on the night of Tuesday, August the 21st?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  The two Detective Sergeants exchanged a glance. An imperceptible nod passed between them.

  ‘Let’s go back to your Porsche for a moment,’ Bella Moy said. ‘It’s a nice car – very expensive, I would imagine, and nearly new, judging from the number plate.’

  Dupont shrugged.

  ‘The insurance must be high, I would think?’ she continued.

  ‘High enough, yeah.’

  ‘These days, on expensive cars, the insurance companies make all kinds of demands, I’m told. Such as you’d need to have a tracker fitted. Do you have a tracker on your Porsche?’

  Dupont suddenly looked deeply uneasy. He shot a glance at his solicitor. ‘I do, yes.’

  ‘Smart devices, trackers,’ Guy Batchelor said. ‘They track your car, every few yards of every journey you ever make. And they keep a log. You’re with a company called NavTrak, right?’

  Dupont hesitated, not liking where this was going. ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’ve obligingly given us the log of your Porsche’s movements for the past four weeks. Every journey you’ve made, every stop, and the length of time. On Tuesday, August the 14th, you were outside Aileen McWhirter’s house in Withdean Road, Brighton, from 6.43 p.m. to 7.21 p.m. Presumably, as you claim not to know it, you were lost?’

  ‘Very witty,’ Dupont said.

  ‘You were outside the house again, for a shorter time, on the nights of Wednesday August the 15th, Thursday August the 16th, Friday August the 17th, Saturday August the 18th, and Monday August the 20th, the night before the attack,’ Guy Batchelor said. ‘Can you explain your reasons?’

  Dupont gave Leighton Lloyd a look of desperation. Then turned back to Batchelor. ‘Could I have a private word with my solicitor?’

  Batchelor and Moy switched off the recording equipment, including the CCTV feed, left them alone in the room, and went outside to have a quick playback of the interview with Roy Grace. After ten minutes the solicitor asked them back in.

  ‘My client is willing to make a statement,’ he said, as they recommenced. ‘He accepts what your information from the tracker shows, but that doesn’t put him inside the house. That’s a very important point he wants you to understand.’

  The two detectives nodded. Batchelor signalled to Dupont to begin.

  Dupont rested his hands on the table, looking confident. ‘The thing is, yeah, I was contacted by someone I know, who said I could get good money doing a driving job. A couple of overseas blokes were coming over to do a posh house; they needed a driver who knew the area. So I had to organize a van, meet them at the airport. I admit I drove the van, but I never went in the house.’

  Neither detective spoke for some moments. Then Batchelor said, ‘Not even to give them a hand with the furniture? There were some big pieces.’

  ‘Well, yeah, I helped them load, outside.’

  ‘You are absolutely certain you never went inside the house?’ Bella Moy asked.

  ‘Certain. I’m certain.’

  Batchelor frowned. ‘You’re going to have to help us out here, Mr Dupont. You see, there was a spot of blood found on a radiator on Mrs McWhirter’s landing – the one she was chained to. The report from the lab, which we only got in a short while ago, shows it contains your DNA.’ Batchelor’s eyes fell on Dupont’s knuckle; the scab had gone, leaving a small red mark.

  Dupont looked stricken. He curled his thumb around the mark, twisting it as if he could make it disappear.

  Leighton Lloyd raised a cautioning hand. ‘My client has no further comment.’

  73

  Lucas Daly was having a shit day, and he didn’t know yet, but it was about to get a whole lot worse.

  He stood outside his shop, in light drizzle, smoking a cigarette, then went back inside, repeatedly dialling a number that went to voicemail. Up until a few days ago he’d been able to leave messages, but now when it answered, it no longer gave him that option. He rang again.

  ‘Mailbox full; please try again later.’

  ‘Bastard,’ he said. ‘You bastard.’

  There had been no customers all day, no phone enquiries, not even anyone trying to sell them something. 3.30 p.m. His lunchtime beers had worn off and it was too soon to start drinking again. He was feeling in a murderous mood.

  Call me. Call me, call me, call me, you bastard. If I have to come and find you, I’ll wring your fucking neck.

  He went out again, got a couple of coffees for himself and his assistant from a cafe a short distance away, then returned to the shop. He sat at his desk, his email inbox full of spam and online statements, bills he could not afford to pay. He watched the endless stream of people, mostly tourists, wandering along the Brighton Lanes through the window. Come in and buy something, you morons! No one was coming in to buy anything. Not that he cared too much about that right now. Unless a miracle happened and some lunatic came in and bought the entire stock. That was the kind of money he needed to sort out his current mess.

  Seated in his wheelchair, Dennis Cooper was engrossed in a book of sudoku puzzles, and that was fine by Daly; he wasn’t in any mood for conversation. In any case, he didn’t understand most of the shit Cooper talked about, which was philosophy, spouting quotes by people with strange names he’d never heard of.

  Augustine Krasniki,
whose main use in this shop was humping around heavy items that he’d bought or sold, was upstairs in his flat, no doubt watching some video replay of a football game.

  Daly checked horse race after horse race on his phone. In four races today, so far all he’d got was one lousy place. He didn’t do place bets; they didn’t pay out the kind of winnings he was after. High payout trebles were the only thing that would do it for him.

  Or that phone call he was expecting.

  Then he stiffened as a figure appeared outside, walking with the aid of a stick. ‘What the fuck’s he doing here?’ he said.

  Cooper glanced up. ‘Gosh, a royal visit!’

  Moments later his father entered, and the old man was in an equally foul mood.

  ‘Hi, Dad.’

  Gavin Daly’s eyes darted around the shop, without acknowledging the greeting. ‘You’ve heard they’ve arrested someone? Gareth Dupont. Know anything about him?’

  Lucas shook his head.

  ‘I had a call from Detective Superintendent Grace. Dupont’s been charged with Aileen’s murder, as well as robbery. That means he’ll be remanded in custody, I’m told, in Lewes Prison.’

  ‘That’s good news.’

  Gavin Daly’s face was thunder. ‘What’s good about that? I want the watch back. We need to find someone in the prison who can talk to him. Dupont has to know where it is.’

  ‘I thought you were sure it’s in New York.’

  ‘I thought so too, but I haven’t heard back – which is not a good sign.’

  ‘Maybe your reward will prompt someone in the prison to talk to him.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Gavin Daly’s eyes roamed around the displays in the room. Then he suddenly stomped over towards the pair of Chinese vases that Lucas had failed to sell earlier. ‘What the hell are these doing here?’ he demanded.

  ‘Nice, aren’t they?’ Lucas said. ‘Got a terrific deal on them – bought them for a hundred quid; they’re worth a couple of grand, at least.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, Dad! Nineteenth century, Cantonese.’

  ‘I know that. I know exactly what they are.’

  Lucas tapped the side of his head, grinning proudly. ‘See, some of your knowledge has rubbed off on me.’

  ‘Really?’ Gavin Daly picked up one of the vases and examined it closely. ‘Knowledge, you say?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Who did you buy them from?’

  ‘A bloke I’d never seen before. Walked in off the street and asked me to make an offer. He didn’t know what he had!’

  ‘Nor did you. You’d sell them for two grand?’

  ‘Be a nice profit!’

  ‘They’re Ming dynasty. Got a few chips, which will reduce their value, but auction them at Sotheby’s or Christie’s and we’d be looking at north of a hundred grand.’

  ‘No shit.’ Suddenly Lucas was really excited, seeing a solution to all his problems. ‘Bloody hell!’

  There was a crash, followed by several tinkling sounds, as fragments of centuries-old china slithered across the floor.

  Lucas Daly’s jaw dropped open in numb disbelief. ‘You dropped it. Oh shit, Dad, you dropped it!’

  ‘Clumsy me!’ his father said, picking up the second one. Moments later that slipped from his fingers, too, and shattered on the floor. ‘Whoops!’

  For a moment, Lucas Daly wondered if his father was drunk; or worse, in the early stages of dementia, or some disease of the nervous system. There was no shock, or even mild surprise in his father’s face. Only anger.

  ‘How fucking stupid are you, Lucas?’

  ‘Stupid? Me? Look what you’ve gone and bloody done – are you mad?’

  ‘Mad, no. Angry, yes. And disappointed. I’m disappointed in my son’s stupidity. Those vases belonged to your aunt. Whoever took them didn’t realize their value and chopped them out to some low-grade fence. And then you bought them.’ He shook his head.

  ‘I can’t believe what you just did!’

  ‘You paid a hundred quid for them, what’s your problem?’

  ‘They’re worth a hundred thousand pounds – and you just dropped them?’

  ‘Know what they say about family businesses, Lucas? The three-generation rule?’

  ‘What do they say?’ he replied gloomily, his hope of getting out of his mess lying in pieces on the floor.

  ‘The first generation builds it up. The second generation screws it up. The third generation puts it down the toilet. You’ve managed to skip a generation. Congratulations.’

  His father stomped out of the shop. As he left, two men in business suits entered. For an instant, Lucas looked at them hopefully; then he started bricking it as he recognized them.

  One was six feet, with a shaven head and a face like beaten metal; he looked like he hadn’t taken the coat hanger out of his jacket before putting it on. The other, slightly shorter, was dressed even more sharply than his colleague; he had hooded eyes, circled with black rings, and short, fair, gelled hair brushed forward, and was smoking a cigar.

  Lucas said urgently to Dennis Cooper, ‘Get Krasniki down here, quick!’

  ‘Mr Daly, very nice to see you,’ the shorter one said. He took a deliberately slow drag on his cigar.

  ‘I’m sorry, no smoking,’ Daly said. ‘Business premises – it’s against the law.’

  The shorter one looked down at Dennis Cooper. Then he took another deliberate puff, blowing out the smoke before he spoke. ‘Does the cripple mind?’

  Lucas Daly tempered his anger. He wasn’t in a position to call the shots here.

  ‘Aggression moves in only one direction. It creates more aggression,’ Cooper answered drily.

  ‘Is that right, Quasimodo? Maybe we could apply the same comment to money. That only moves in one direction, too. Into your boss’s pocket, but never back to us. Understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘My name’s not Quasimodo.’

  ‘Then I wasn’t talking to you, sunshine, was I?’ He turned his attention to Lucas Daly. ‘Nice wife you got. Pretty girl.’ He dug his hand into his inside pocket and pulled out an old-fashioned razor. He flicked it and the blade opened. ‘I don’t think Sarah Courteney would be doing any more broadcasts with her face slashed to ribbons, do you?’

  ‘She’s got nothing to do with this,’ Daly said.

  He turned to his colleague. ‘That’s too bad, isn’t it?’

  His shaven-headed colleague nodded. ‘Too bad.’

  Then he turned back to Daly. ‘The thing is, you owe my guv fifty K. I have to persuade you to pay it; that’s my job. Innocents sometimes have to suffer, know what I’m saying? But really, they bring it on themselves. Sarah Courteney should never have shacked up with a dickhead like you. Look at your cripple over there – what happened to him? Motorbike crash? Fall out of a loft? Why does he want to work for a jerk like you?’

  ‘Actually, I was in the army and got shot through the spine in Afghanistan,’ Dennis Cooper said. ‘Since you asked.’

  ‘Oh, great, a bleeding hero.’ Then his expression changed from arrogance to fear as he looked past Lucas Daly.

  Daly glanced over his shoulder, and saw his henchman, Krasniki, brandishing a baseball bat, and looking like he was about to use it at any moment. ‘My boss would like you to leave now,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t like you very much. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ the taller one said.

  His colleague shot him a glance, suddenly looking uneasy.

  Krasniki took a menacing step towards them, raising the bat. ‘Maybe you didn’t hear me. Get out.’

  The two men backed out of the shop. Krasniki stood waiting until they had exited through the door. They hesitated outside, then walked off.

  ‘Good man!’ Lucas Daly said.

  Moments later his mobile phone rang. It wasn’t a number he recognized. ‘Lucas Daly?’ he said.

  ‘Pull another stunt like that and you’ll be in a wheelchair like your cripple. You’ve one week to find the money. Next Thursday,
5 p.m., we’ll see you in your shop. Without Boris Karloff. Understand?’

  The line went dead.

  74

  The world had changed in a lot of ways during the time he had been inside, Amis Smallbone was realizing. Technologically more than culturally. He needed to get up to speed if he wasn’t to be seen as a dinosaur.

  Why was it, he wondered, that the instructions for all electronic equipment were written by someone for whom English was his – or her – fourth language?

  The very expensive scanner, partially assembled, lay in front of him on the top floor of his rented town house. He had imagined opening the box, removing the scanner, and bingo!

  Instead, the first thing he had to do was install the software, via the CD provided, on his computer. He had done that, although he was not entirely sure he had successfully followed all the instructions, which had been there to trick him at every level.

  But finally, he had the thing working, and so far it had picked up little of interest. He had listened in on a banal conversation between Cleo Morey and a girlfriend, comparing notes on feeding babies and sore nipples.

  Purrrleasse!

  What he was most interested in was Roy Grace’s work pattern. He needed a few clear hours when Grace was out of the house and Cleo and Noah were home alone.

  He still had not yet decided which one to hurt, or whether to hurt both. His priority remained, as it had all along, to destroy Roy Grace. What would work best? His beloved Cleo disfigured for life? Their baby dead? Both?

  He felt a warm buzz deep in his bones.

  Both was good.

  75

  Roy Grace and Guy Batchelor sat in the unmarked Ford Focus estate, in Shirley Drive, a short distance up the hill from Sarah Courteney’s house and on the opposite side of the road, giving them a clear view of the property. Her Mercedes SLK was parked in the driveway, alongside the black Range Rover Sport belonging to her husband. It was because of the Range Rover, indicating Lucas Daly was at home, that they had not gone to knock on her door. They knew, from checking with the BBC, that she was on the regional news tonight, at 6.30 p.m. Which meant she would be leaving for the studio very shortly.