He frowned, thinking back to the books in the dead woman’s library on the early history of New York.
‘Ever see that movie, Gangs of New York?’ Glenn Branson said, suddenly, standing over his shoulder.
Grace turned. ‘A while ago, but I fell asleep during it.’
Branson grinned. ‘Yep, well, that’s what happens at your age!’
‘Sod off!’
Branson patted him on the shoulder. ‘Don’t take it personally; it’s a fact.’
Grace levelled him with his eyes.
‘All that stuff predates Aileen McWhirter. But it gives interesting background during the time the lady was a kid,’ Glenn Branson said, serious now. ‘Back in the 1800s there were gang wars between the native Americans and the Irish immigrants. We’re picking up decades later, when the White Hand Gang was the principal mob of the Irish Mafia. They controlled the Manhattan and Brooklyn waterfronts – all the wharfs and piers. Their boss was a character called Dinny Meehan – he was the guy who kicked Frankie Yale and Johnny Torrio, who headed the Black Hand Gang, out of New York, along with Al Capone, which was why Capone ended up in Chicago. Capone came back to New York with a vengeance in the late-twenties, wiped out the Irish Mafia and took control. Dinny Meehan was murdered in 1920. Brendan Daly was one of his lieutenants, who was missing, presumed murdered, in a power struggle for control of the White Hand Gang.’
‘Thanks for the history lesson!’
Branson looked at him then shook his head. ‘Didn’t they teach you anything at school?’
Grace gave him a wry smile. ‘Obviously nothing that mattered!’
Branson tapped his own chest. ‘Yeah, well, we descendants of slaves need to know about history.’
‘You’re not descended from a slave,’ Grace said with a grin. ‘Your dad was a bus driver in London.’
Ordinarily, his mate would have come back at him with some riposte or a movie quote – he was a total movie buff. But this morning he gave him a strangely sad smile. Grace could read defeat in his eyes, and that upset him.
Glenn Branson’s marital life was a train wreck. Grace had helped him out for most of this past year by letting him lodge in his empty house, and the Detective Sergeant managed to keep that looking, most of the time, like a train wreck too. Feeding Grace’s goldfish, Marlon, seemed to be the limit of Glenn Branson’s housekeeping skills.
Behind him was a familiar rustling sound. He turned to see that Detective Sergeant Bella Moy was now seated at her workstation, red Maltesers box in front of her. She seemed to live on the chocolates. Yet she never appeared to put on weight. And recently, he’d noticed, she seemed to have blossomed.
In her mid-thirties, living with and looking after her sick, elderly mother, Bella used to wear drab clothes, had dull hair and seemed permanently melancholic. But lately she looked a lot more glamorous.
He watched her pop a Malteser in her mouth. Heard the crunch. And suddenly he found himself rather fancying one himself. As if clocking this, she held the box out towards him. He took one, and instantly regretted it, because the moment he had eaten it, he immediately wanted another.
There was one absentee from the team of twelve people: DS Norman Potting. Grace looked at his watch. It was 8.35 a.m. Five minutes late in starting already. He was due to meet with his Assistant Chief Constable Peter Rigg at 10 a.m., and Rigg was a stickler for punctuality.
Suddenly he was distracted by his thoughts. He’d long had a near-photographic memory, and as he looked up again at Aileen McWhirter’s serene face, he could picture those books packing the shelves on her study walls so clearly. Title after title, including The Gangs of New York. American Gangsters Then And Now. The First 100 Years of the American Mafia. Young Capone. Early Street Gangs and Gangsters of New York City. Irish Organized Crime. King of the Brooklyn Waterfront.
There were fifty titles, probably more. She hadn’t been an academic or a writer, and this number of books amounted to more than just a passing interest in a subject – this was bordering on an obsession. They might of course have been her husband’s books. Both Daly, which was her maiden name, and McWhirter were Irish names.
He decided, later, to run the names Daly and McWhirter through some Internet searches. Then he turned to his notes, and began the meeting.
29
Ten minutes after the start, Norman Potting shuffled into the briefing looking very gloomy. The Detective Sergeant, who was in his mid-fifties, had joined the police force relatively late in life and was not popular, being regarded as a politically incorrect dinosaur by many, but Roy Grace tolerated him, because he was one of the most reliable and doggedly persistent detectives he had ever worked with.
‘Sorry I’m late, chief,’ he said in his gruff voice. ‘Had to see the quack.’ Then, lowering his voice, he whispered to Grace, ‘Not very good news.’
‘I’m sorry, Norman. Do you want to tell me about it later?’ Grace quizzed, genuinely worried for the man.
Potting shrugged, then gave a defeatist grimace and sat down. Roy Grace frowned as he noticed the exchange of glances between Potting and Bella Moy. He had wondered for a couple of months now if something was going on between them. They seemed too different, and Norman, with his bad comb-over and constant reek of pipe tobacco, never struck him as an appealing man. Yet he’d had four wives, and Grace had long ago learned that life never ceased to surprise you.
Other assembled members of his team included recently married – and now pregnant – DC Emma-Jane Boutwood, Crime Scene Manager David Green, DS Guy Batchelor, Ray Packham from the High Tech Crime Unit, two indexers, a HOLMES (Home Office Large Major Enquiry System) analyst, a crime analyst, the manager for the analysts and indexers, an Intelligence Officer, several Detectives and Press Officer Sue Fleet, a striking redhead. The Chief Constable placed particular importance on keeping the public – or the customers we serve, as the public were now called in the latest police newspeak – properly informed.
Roy Grace had never been able to get his head around that word customers. The police force, in his experience, had always kept a distance between themselves and the general public. But he had no option but to go along with changes, however absurd he felt some of the government’s diktats to be. He looked around fondly at his team, here to serve their customers.
The one regular who was missing was DC Nick Nicholl, who had recently been transferred to the Serious and Organized Crime Branch. He was sorry to lose him, but since becoming a father, Nick had definitely become a less effective detective – in part from lack of sleep. Grace made a mental note not to go the same way. Somehow.
Then he said, ‘Okay, this is the tenth briefing of Operation Flounder.’ He looked at Bella. ‘Can you update us on the actions from the Outside Enquiry Team?’
‘We’re continuing with house-to-house enquiries, sir,’ the DS replied. ‘One problem, as we know, is that Withdean Road is not exactly a closely knit neighbourhood. They’re all large houses in their own grounds; only a few of the people we’ve talked to have ever met their neighbours. We believe the perpetrators must have used at least one substantial van, if not two, for all the items they took, but no one in the area noticed anything – and there is no CCTV on that road or any intersecting roads. There is just one thing of possible interest.’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s a call we had in response to our boards out on the street. What makes this particularly interesting is it was possibly an anniversary visit. The Tuesday night, exactly a week before the robbery.’