Текст книги "Dead Man's Time"

Автор книги: Peter James

Соавторы: Peter James
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Текущая страница: 28 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

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 wealth 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.

It was a wet day, with a chill in the air, in contrast to the Indian-summer warmth of New York yesterday. The wipers clopped away the water in front of him, although he would almost have preferred it if they didn’t, so he couldn’t see anything. Glenn’s driving seemed to be getting faster and worse the more experience he had. Right now he was accelerating towards a roundabout, when any sane person would be braking. Grace pressed his own feet hard into the footwell, and Branson shot the Ford right in front of a skip lorry that had right of way; he heard the angry blast of the lorry’s horn, felt the rear wheels losing grip, and the slide start to happen. Braking hard now, Branson over-corrected and the tail went in the opposite direction. Somehow, miraculously, they came out of the other side of the roundabout still intact, and headed down the M23 slip road.

‘Do you have any concept of the laws of physics?’ Grace asked.

‘Physics?’

‘Maybe you should study momentum, get your head around that a little. You could try working out that a car going seventy miles an hour in a straight line has to slow down before turning sharp left, and especially in the wet.’

‘That was a controlled power slide. Like Jeremy Clarkson does,’ Glenn said.

‘Ah.’

‘I don’t know why you’re worried – I’ve never had a crash.’

‘Maybe you’re saving it up for the big one.’ Switching subjects, Grace asked, ‘Anything back from the lab on our dog, Humphrey?’ Then he winced as Branson pulled straight across into the fast lane, only inches behind the car in front.

‘No, it will take a couple of days. We found a vial of tablets in Smallbone’s bathroom that we’ve also sent for analysis. We’ve been keeping a careful eye on Cleo; an FLO’s been with her around the clock and the Neighbourhood Policing Team’s been briefed to be extra vigilant. But from the history, don’t you think it likely Smallbone was acting alone?’

‘Let’s hope so.’

‘Okay, we have a significant development regarding the shoe-print found at the letting agent’s, Rand and Co. I told you Haydn Kelly had established a match with shoeprints found in Smallbone’s house.’

‘Yes.’

‘We’ve got a third match – from Eamonn Pollock’s yacht in Marbella. The Spanish police sent it yesterday and Haydn Kelly informed Norman Potting an hour ago! There’s also other sets of shoeprints – from the patterns it appears three other people, not just Macario and Barnes, were on the boat recently.’

Frowning, Grace said, ‘The match is to the ones in the letting agent’s and in Smallbone’s house?’

‘Yes. It’s only a shoe match, but if we could find the shoe—’

Suddenly all Roy Grace’s tiredness had gone. ‘I know who those second shoeprints might have been made by.’ He leaned over the seatback and hefted his briefcase onto his lap. From it he removed a small evidence bag containing a USB flash drive, and held it up triumphantly. ‘Yesterday, Gavin Daly’s son, Lucas, was recorded on videotape in an office in New York admitting involvement in Aileen McWhirter’s robbery.’

‘Daly’s son – her nephew?’ he said, incredulously. ‘He was involved?’

‘Probably the mastermind behind it. Yes, he’s a regular charmer.’

‘Has he been arrested?’

‘No, he’s agreed to DS Batchelor and DC Alexander escorting him back to England. But he’s asked if they can wait a day or so until he knows what’s happening with his father.’

‘Result!’ Glenn Branson said. ‘But – um – how exactly does that help us with the second set of shoeprints on the boat?’

‘We’ll need to get a search warrant and raid his house. And, I think you are going to like this. If we can put Lucas Daly on that boat, then I think we’ll know who the other set belong to.’

‘How?’

‘Lucas Daly flew to Marbella with his henchman. I suspect they’re involved in the deaths of Macario and Barnes. If the shoe-prints on the boat match his henchman’s, then we have him too. Don’t forget there’s an historical association between Amis Smallbone and Eamonn Pollock.’

‘Yes, I’m aware. But there’s one thing still bothering me. All the sets of shoeprints are from trainers: Haydn Kelly’s identified the one in the letting agent’s and Smallbone’s house – and now on the boat – as a Nike shoe, of which there are tens of thousands. The other one on the boat are Asics, again tens of thousands sold.’

‘There are a number of ways to put those people at those scenes,’ Grace replied. ‘In addition to the same make, model and size of the trainers there’s also the comparison of wear patterns – Haydn Kelly explained this to me a few days ago and, if we can obtain the trainers, a comparison can be performed of the insoles in the trainers to the insoles in the suspect’s footwear as these give an imprint of the person’s foot. If there is a match there, then that is pretty much game, set and match! We may also get lucky with DNA deposits inside the trainers.’

‘Good stuff! Brilliant! Plenty of options for us.’

‘If we stay alive long enough,’ Grace said, eyeing the road ahead nervously.

123

In his office at 3 p.m., Grace had just finished a call with Haydn Kelly, discussing in further detail the shoeprints they had. He sipped a strong cup of tea and then yawned. In half an hour a Detective Superintendent from Surrey, whom he had never met, would be arriving to conduct a review of Operation Flounder. It was standard practice, at certain intervals during a major crime investigation, for an experienced outsider to look through the policy book, and all lines of enquiry that the SIO had running, as well as the size and make-up of the team.

It was likely to be a slow and tedious process, Grace knew, and he could seriously have done without this today – particularly with the way things were moving, he was fast getting this whole case wrapped up. With luck the review would be finished by the evening briefing at 6.30 p.m. which he would attend, and then he would head home. He was about to type an email to ACC Rigg to give him a summary, before meeting to brief him fully tomorrow morning, when his phone rang.

It was Pat Lanigan. ‘Hey, how you doing, Roy? Home safe?’

‘Yes, thanks.’

‘Is all okay? Cleo? The baby?’

‘Yes, thanks, all is fine. They’re safe and well.’

‘Hopefully that punk was acting on his own.’

‘I hope so, too.’

Then Lanigan’s tone changed, becoming more serious. ‘Ithought you’d want to know this right away. The old guy, Gavin Daly, didn’t wake up this morning.’

Grace felt a sudden, deep twinge of sadness. ‘He’s dead?’

‘Seems like he passed away peacefully during the night. He had some heart problems, so maybe the stress of being arrested – it’s a pretty big thing for anyone, but especially a guy of that age – maybe that’s what did it. I guess we’ll know more after the autopsy.’

‘I’ll never forget the sight of him on that dive boat, looking inside the tarp. Ever,’ Grace said.

‘Yeah, that was something. You know what? I think he knew he was going to go last night. The prison officer taking care of him said he was very funny about breakfast, saying he wasn’t going to need any. Made him wonder if the guy was a bit suicidal, so he kept an extra eye on him.’

‘I don’t think he was suicidal, Pat. I think he’d done the one thing he had left in his life that he wanted to do. He told me some of his story, about his father and mother, over a cigar in his sister’s garden a couple of weeks back. I was moved.’

‘Uh huh? Maybe. But you know, he spent the evening, before the lights went down, writing instructions. He wanted his father’s remains to be buried in Brooklyn Cemetery as close as possible to his mother’s. He wanted restitution paid to the antiques guy, Rosenblaum, for the gunshot damage in his office. And – you’ll like this – he asked if someone could contact you and apologize for the trouble you’ve been put to.’

‘Very nice of him,’ Grace said, with a grin.

‘To me, that sounds like a suicide note, pal.’

‘Either way, he’s gone, Pat. Does it actually matter? Nothing’s going to bring him back – and, you know, I don’t think he would have wanted to come back. Life’s not compulsory!’

‘I like that!’ Lanigan said. ‘Life’s not compulsory. Think I’m going to use that line next time I have to deal with some total shitbag.’

‘Be my guest.’