Dead Man's Time

  The sonar was on, but the image on the green screen, of the river bed below them, was fuzzy and indistinct. Occasionally when he looked at it, Gavin Daly could see a fish flit past, and from time to time something bigger, moving, which he assumed was the diver coming in and out of view.

  There were no anomalies, Campbell had told him. That meant the sonar had shown nothing significant down there on this spot.

  Had the messenger boy who had brought him the watch and the numbers, and the other items, merely delivered someone’s idea of a joke? A cruel, nasty, sick joke? Or had it been someone with a heart?

  It was feeling like a sick joke now.

  He sat, waiting, clutching the watch in his hands, watching the buoy, occasionally staring across at the mess of slab-shaped buildings on the shore. His eyes drifted over some scrubland, and the remains of the last pier still standing that dated back to his childhood. A black and white tug droned past, a row of tyres as makeshift fenders, hanging down its side. He looked back at the watch.

  As he did so, he caught the glint in Lucas’s eye. His son was still standing, looking down at him. Or rather, at the watch.

  Gavin Daly held it up. ‘It’s caused a lot of trouble, hasn’t it, this damned little machine?’

  ‘It’s beautiful.’

  ‘Beautiful?’ Gavin shook his head. ‘You’re not looking at its physical beauty; you’re only looking at its value. That’s what’s beautiful to you.’

  ‘That’s not true, Dad!’

  ‘You killed my sister for it.’

  He saw Campbell frown, as if perhaps he had misheard or misunderstood something.

  ‘Dad, you have to understand—’

  ‘NO!’ he snapped back at his son. ‘I don’t have to understand anything, boy. Do you understand that?’

  As the noise of the tug receded, Gavin Daly heard another sound, very faint at first.

  Lucas heard it too and glanced up, alarmed.

  A moment later, Gavin Daly heard the distant, but unmistakable, thwock-thwock-thwock of a helicopter. He turned and saw a speck heading low over the water towards them; it was getting bigger by the moment.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Lucas said, looking panic-stricken. ‘Oh shit!’

  Gavin Daly held the watch out over the water. ‘This will be for the best,’ he said.

  ‘What are you doing? Dad, no! Are you crazy?’

  ‘We’re done with it, Lucas. I was done with the gun, and now I’m done with the watch.’

  ‘You can’t be serious!’

  ‘What has it done for any of us? What has it brought this family? My dad owned it and he died; my sister had it in her home, and she died. Maybe the damned thing’s cursed. I should just throw it into the water, where it should have gone all those years ago with your grandfather. That’s where it belongs.’

  The thwock-thwock-thwock was getting louder.

  ‘Dad, don’t, it’s sentimental – you can’t throw it in the water. You can’t!’

  Behind Lucas, heading downriver towards them, Gavin could see a launch with a blue hull and grey superstructure. It was travelling at speed, from the size of its bow-wave. He could hear the drone of the engines.

  Lucas, hearing them too, spun round. ‘Oh shit, Jesus!’

  Calmly ignoring the helicopter and the approaching police launch, Gavin Daly said, ‘What do you know about sentiment? You couldn’t be sentimental for anything. You were born with that gene missing.’

  Lucas’s eyes were filled with fear and greed. He kept looking at the watch, then at the approaching launch, then the watch again.

  The launch, bristling with antennae, reached the bridge and now they could see clearly the NYPD markings on it.

  A cold stentorian voice called from a loudhailer. ‘This is the New York Police Department. Everyone on board raise your hands in the air. Do not move! Switch off your engines. We are coming alongside to board.’

  Stuart Campbell looked at Gavin, then Lucas, in fury. ‘What the hell is all this about? You want to explain?’ Before either could respond, he grabbed a megaphone from a locker by the wheel, and shouted back, ‘We have a diver in the water, I repeat, we have a diver in the water – please keep at a safe distance. I will not move the boat away. I repeat, I will not move the boat away. Please let me get the diver back onboard safely.’

  He put the megaphone down, raised his hands in the air, and Lucas followed.

  Gavin Daly remained seated, ignoring the police, looking at the Patek Philippe in his hand. ‘You’re right, Lucas. I can’t just throw it in the water; that would be stupid.’

  ‘Sir, raise your hands in the air,’ the loudhailer boomed, louder as the launch was much closer now, the voice echoing and booming off the superstructure of the bridge above them.

  ‘You know why it would be stupid, Lucas?’ Gavin Daly said, ignoring the police.

  ‘Sir, I’m giving you one more warning: put your hands in the air where I can see them.’ Aaron Cobb standing on the bridge of the launch, held the microphone in his left hand, and his Glock, at full arm’s length, in his right.

  Standing close beside him, Roy Grace took the loudhailer and, holding it to his lips, said, ‘Mr Daly, this is Detective Superintendent Grace – please do what the officer requests.’

  In answer, Gavin Daly picked up the winch handle and raised it in the air.

  Cobb’s finger tightened on the trigger.

  119

  On the launch, as it slipped into the shadow beneath the bridge, Roy Grace put a steadying hand on Cobb’s arm. ‘He’s an old man and his emotions are running high,’ he said quietly. ‘Cut him some slack.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s a regular sweet old guy who just happens to like shooting people in the nuts,’ Cobb retorted drily, without taking his eyes off Daly.

  Grace looked at the water immediately around the marker buoy, looking for air bubbles; meanwhile the police pilot obeyed the request from the dive boat’s skipper and kept the launch a safe distance away.

  ‘I’ll tell you why it would be stupid, Lucas,’ Gavin Daly roared. ‘Because you’d have tried to get it back! And you might have done. This way, I won’t have to worry about that.’

  The diver broke surface a few feet off, but neither Gavin nor Lucas noticed. The old man put the watch on the deck, right in front of his feet.

  ‘Dad, no! No! No!’ Lucas yelled as he suddenly realized what was happening. ‘No, Dad, no! Don’t do that! Don’t do that!’

  Gavin Daly brought the winch handle down with all the force he could muster onto the watch, shattering the glass and splintering the face. He struck it again, just as hard, then again a third time.

  Lucas Daly, Stuart Campbell and the police officers stood watching.

  Gavin Daly scooped up the broken, twisted remains, reached across and lifted the flattened crown from under a lifebelt where it had shot. Then with his fingernails, he carefully scraped the hands off the deck, and then a tiny section of the crescent of the moon. Then he tossed everything overboard. ‘Done,’ he said to Lucas, with a satisfied smile. ‘All gone. Feeling sentimental, are you?’

  He raised his hands in the air and turned towards the police launch.

  ‘Gavin Daly!’ Aaron Cobb called across. ‘You need to know that Eamonn Pollock died in the ambulance thirty minutes ago. You are under arrest for murder. You have the right to remain silent, and anything you do say might be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult with an attorney before speaking to the police and to have an attorney present during questioning now or in the future. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you before any questioning, if you wish.’

  He continued to read him his entire Miranda rights.

  Roy Grace stared at the old man, a whole mixture of emotions running through him, but, most of all, sympathy. In the short while he had known Gavin Daly, he’d found him endearing and charming – but tough, too. Doubtless, he had been a ruthless businessman in his day – not many people achieved his level of w
ealth by being sweet and gentle. Even so, he was unable, fully, to square the horror of what Daly had done, just an hour ago in that Madison Avenue office, with the sad figure he saw in front of him now.

  He switched his attention to the diver, who pushed his goggles up onto his forehead, spat out his breathing tube, then called up to the skipper of the dive boat, ‘Give me a hand, Stu. I got something.’ Then, as he paddled towards the ladder hanging down the side of the boat, he was looking around, bewildered, at the scene facing him: the three men on the dive boat with their hands in the air, and the police launch. ‘Is this a bad time?’ he called up to his colleague as he reached the ladder and gripped it with one hand. ‘Want me to come back another day?’

  120

  Stuart Campbell looked across at Cobb. ‘Sir, may I assist my colleague, please?’

  The Detective Lieutenant nodded.

  Campbell knelt and took the object the diver passed to him in his gloved hand. It was a length of very old, frayed rope, with tendrils of weed on it. Then, with both of them pulling, the diver steadily climbed the ladder, hauling something up by the rope that was clearly extremely heavy.

  Lucas leaned over and helped too, while Gavin sat mesmerized.

  A bundle of black fishing net slowly broke the surface, covered in weed, with chunks of wet mud sliding from it. There was something inside it that looked like a tarpaulin. A large cement block was tied to the bottom of the net, secured with very old rope wound around it several times in all directions. A crab scuttled off and fell back into the dark water.

  Grace watched, equally mesmerized, feeling a lump in his throat for the old man.

  Lucas Daly, Stuart Campbell and Tommy Lovell, the diver, finally hauled the whole thing over the side of the boat and lowered it onto the deck. Mud oozed all around it, as water pooled across the deck. Laid out, it was a good six feet in length.

  Gavin Daly was trembling. With fenders lowered, the police launch moved alongside, and Grace, flanked by Pat Lanigan and Aaron Cobb, had to resist the temptation to jump aboard and hold the old man’s hand.

  The diver produced a sheath knife and began cutting away at the netting. A crew member of the police launch jumped aboard the dive boat with a line, ran it through a mooring eye at the stern, then wound it around a cleat on the launch; then he did the same with another line at the bow.

  But none of the three detectives on the launch moved. They all watched. Sensing something that, at this moment at least, they should only be observing.

  Lovell, helped by Campbell, pulled away the severed strands of fishing net, exposing the cracked tarpaulin beneath. The diver turned to Gavin Daly, as if seeking his approval. The old man nodded.

  Above them the traffic roared. The thwock-thwock-thwock of the helicopter continued. Like a surgeon, the diver made a careful incision in the tarpaulin, a few inches at first, then wider, cutting steadily all the way along. Then the two men pulled it open, as if it were the chest cavity of a post-mortem victim.

  Gavin Daly fell down onto his knees beside it. Grace could see tears rolling down his face.

  He could see inside the tarpaulin now. Bones. A whole tangle of skeletal remains. Every bit of flesh, skin, muscle and sinew gone, picked clean long ago by scavengers that had found ways in through the cracks. And Roy Grace was experienced enough to tell, even from several yards away, that it wasn’t animal bones he was looking at.

  At one end, he could recognize fibula, tibia, metatarsal, cuboid, cuneiform bones, and wished he had a forensic anthropologist present who could have given them all detailed information on what lay before them.

  A few moments later as the two men exposed the full length of the remains, he saw a human skull. Its rictus grin seemed to be saying, Hey guys, what kept ya?

  Gavin Daly pressed his face into the mud and water beside the tarpaulin, sobbing his heart out.

  The three detectives stood watching, as if unsure what to do next.

  Gavin Daly raised his head, moved closer to the tarpaulin, and peered in. Lucas went across and laid a hand tenderly on his father’s shoulder. Then the old man reached in, and pulled out a short length of thin, discoloured chain. He put it on the deck beside him, then looked inside again, and moments later, lifted out another discoloured chain, with a rusty tiny object on it. He held it up to his neck.

  Grace, followed by Lanigan and Cobb, boarded the vessel and walked over to him. ‘What is it, Mr Daly?’ Grace asked. But he already knew the answer.

  ‘You want to tell us what’s going on here?’ Aaron Cobb demanded, more than a little insensitively.

  The old man, through his tears, turned to him and held up the necklace. Even thought it was badly corroded, Grace could make out that it was a tiny rabbit.

  ‘My dad always wore this,’ he said, through his tears. ‘It was given to him by his dad, who was a member of the Irish Dead Rabbits Gang. I used to admire it when I was a kid and he promised me that one day I could have it.’ Then he picked up the corroded length of chain. ‘This was the chain my dad had on his pocket watch.’ He turned back and stared at the skull. Then he put out a shaking, bony hand, blotched with liver spots, and stroked it. ‘They drowned him, the way some people drown a cat. You’re detectives. Here’s a homicide staring at you all. They drowned him. They drowned him like a goddamn cat.’ He buried his face in his hands and sobbed again.

  Then he turned and faced the three detectives. ‘Ninety years ago, I made a promise to my dad that one day I would come to New York and find him. That’s what’s going on here. This is Brendan Daly. He’s my pop. And I’ve found him.’

  121

  They took away his belt and his shoes and his cane, and gave him prison-issue paper slippers, several sizes too big, so that he walked with a shuffle that made him look like a ninety-five-year-old man might be expected to look.

  But Gavin Daly did not care. He was already feeling institutionalized.

  Since being taken ashore in handcuffs, he’d been interviewed by an attorney, then arraigned in front of a sour judge who had refused him bail, remanding him in custody as a flight risk, then examined by a prison doctor. Now he was ensconced in a cell at the grandly named Manhattan Detention Complex. His attorney told him cheerfully that it used to be known as The Tombs.

  He didn’t care.

  He’d found his pop, and avenged him. On the same day. Nothing mattered any more.

  His mood swung from intense sadness to profound happiness. He felt complete, for the first time in his life, as he sat on the hard, blue-foam mattress, writing notes with the ballpoint pen and paper that he had requested, which had been brought by a sympathetic officer.

  There was a barred window, high up, through which he could hear traffic noise. Life. Yellow cabs, sirens, horns. A Monday night in Manhattan. People meeting friends in bars, having dinner, hurrying later to catch trains home to the suburbs. Worrying.

  So many people worried.

  Living lives of quiet desperation.

  Had he worried? Had his life been one of quiet desperation? What had the ninety-five years, that ended in this tiny prison cell where he could reach out and touch the toilet from his bunk – if he so wished – amounted to? A hill of beans? Anything at all?

  Young people who dismissed the elderly overlooked one important thing. The older you were, the less you cared. That was the one, great, liberating thing about old age. Really, you didn’t care any more. You were free.

  He felt free now, like he had never felt free before in his life. He felt happy. In a way that he had never felt happy before.

  Happy in this tiny cell.

  Happier than he had ever been in his grand mansion.

  There was a clank and his cell door opened. In came the officer who had apologized to him for taking his belt and his shoes. He was tubby, close to retirement age, with the face of a man who had seen it all and had learned that the best way to cope is to smile.

  ‘Lights out soon, Mr Daly, just to give you a five-minute warning to finish your
writing. I wanted to check one thing: you don’t eat kosher or halal?’

  Daly shook his head.

  ‘So, right, just so you know, your next meal will be breakfast. Someone will take you over to the shower room first. You’ll be getting cereal, orange – or some other pieces of fresh fruit – milk, bread and breakfast jelly. You have any problem with any of that? You’re not diabetic or anything?’

  ‘I won’t be needing any breakfast,’ he said.

  ‘Well, you’ll be getting it anyway.’

  Gavin Daly smiled.

  The officer hesitated. ‘We don’t get many folk your age in here. If you need anything, let me know. But don’t miss meals because you don’t get nothing in between.’

  Daly smiled again. ‘Thank you, I have everything I need. Everything I’ll ever need.’

  That night, for the first time in ninety years, he slept without dreaming.

  He slept the sleep of the dead.

  122

  At 8.45 a.m., Glenn Branson picked Roy Grace up from Gatwick Airport in a pool car. ‘Want to go straight to Sussex House, or home first?’

  ‘Home first, please, mate. I want to make sure Cleo’s okay, and I need a shower and change of clothes. So how are you? Ari’s funeral tomorrow, isn’t it? At least I’ll be able to come now.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ Branson said. ‘Thank you. I think she actually quite liked you.’

  ‘She had a strange way of showing it,’ Grace replied with a grin.

  ‘Yeah.’ Branson sniffed. ‘She had a lot of strange ways.’

  ‘But you’re okay?’

  ‘Yeah, I am. Her sister’s still looking after the kids – she’s staying to take care of them until the end of this week, giving me a chance to get myself sorted. To be honest, being at work’s the best thing for me. Got a lot to report, old timer, while you’ve been swanning around the US of A.’

  ‘Haha.’

  He felt tired after a cramped, uncomfortable flight, jammed in the centre of three seats, with a bawling baby two rows behind him. And he had been far too wired with his thoughts to sleep, even if the baby had let him. He made a promise never to inflict Noah on any long-haul passengers if he possibly could.