He focused on the film, shocked by the brutality of the Dead Rabbits Gang. If this movie was even remotely accurate, life in several boroughs of New York from the 1850s up until the time of the Depression was hellish. Hell’s Kitchen was an apt name.
Gavin Daly was a tough old bird, for sure. He wondered if he could be that energetic and sharp at ninety-five – if he ever made it that far, which was unlikely. Historically, life expectancy for retired police officers was among the lowest of any profession. His father had been a textbook example. Dead within three years of retiring.
He looked at the baby monitor. Listened to the sound of Noah’s breathing. And wondered if he would live long enough to be a grandfather.
Daly was going strong at ninety-five. From all accounts Aileen McWhirter had been on course to live well past a hundred, until she had been savagely cut down. That made him feel very sad. Civilization, he knew, was a fragile veneer. You only had to read or watch or listen to the news every morning to witness the hell in which so many people on this planet existed. He never forgot how lucky he was to have been born in England, and to have grown up in a country which was relatively peaceful. But there were threats here all the time. Terrorist threats from within the UK and outside. And threat from villains.
He was in a rare position, he knew, to be able to do something for the citizens of Brighton and Hove, and of Sussex, which he loved so much. Aileen McWhirter should have died peacefully in her sleep, from old age, a few years from now. After all she and her brother had endured in their early childhood, as he had learned from him over a cigar in her garden, she deserved at least that. Instead she had died from terrible injuries in hospital.
He had never felt more determined in his life to find the perpetrators of a crime and lock them up. Hopefully for ever. If he got lucky and didn’t end up with a woolly-minded liberal of a judge.
He looked back across at Marlon. And momentarily was distracted by the thought of packing up the house, and all those past years of his life. Then he focused back on the film and what he could learn from it that might, in any way, help him with this case.
51
Someone else was packing up his life too, and it was hurting. It wasn’t the memories that were painful – Amis Smallbone didn’t have any memories he wanted to pack into a suitcase, other than a photograph of his father and his mother that had been the only decoration in his cell. He no longer had photographs of his ex-wives, or his two long-estranged children, whom his wife had taken to Australia twenty years ago.
The packing, little though it was, hurt him physically. Every moment. His whole body was in pain from the beating he’d had. But what upset him most of all was the damage to his mouth. Not long before his arrest, thirteen years ago, he’d paid a fortune for work on his teeth. Now, five of his front teeth were missing, and his jaw was broken, and hurting like hell. His dentist told him he needed surgery on it. He didn’t have time for surgery, so he dulled the pain as best he could with Nurofen and whisky. He’d get it fixed when he got paid on this deal; until then, in public, he’d have to keep his mouth shut.
It was just past midnight, but he was wide awake, with a cigarette clamped between his lips, as he double-checked the cupboards in his basement flat. The last night in this shithole, he thought with some relief. He was spending the weekend with his mate Benny Julius in his Dyke Road Avenue mansion, just a few doors away from the huge house he used to live in himself, with his Ferrari parked outside. He’d had his villa in Marbella, and a boat in Puerto Banus, too.
All he had here now was one large, cheap suitcase, only half full. How great was that? He was sixty-two years old and his worldly possessions – his clothes and washing kit – did not even fill half a suitcase.
He laid his parents’ photograph down carefully on top of a folded shirt. Maurice Smallbone had been a tall man, with big shoulders and a lean, handsome face, his hair, dyed dark brown to the end of his life, brushed straight back. His mother had been tall and elegant, too. So why the hell was he only five foot one inch? Why had life dealt him such a shitty hand?
Why had Roy Grace picked on him all those years back? Everything he used to have was gone, thanks to Roy Grace’s determination to destroy him. Grace assured him at the time it wasn’t personal, but it was. Amis Smallbone knew that. And Grace was not going to get away with it.
His friends told him to forget it, that Grace had merely been a copper doing his job, but Smallbone didn’t see it that way. He found out from an old lag in prison that Grace’s father, also a detective, had spent much of his career pursing his father, and that one of his big regrets was never potting him.
So it was personal for Grace. The detective had been in his face for years. Even after he had done his time, Grace had continued to go after him. Accusing him of etching a message on his girlfriend’s car, kidnapping him after a funeral and dumping him on top of the Devil’s Dyke, leaving him to walk five miles home in the pissing rain.
Thanks to this one man, not only did he have nothing in his life, but most of his old acquaintances didn’t want to know him any more, as if he was some kind of pariah, a has-been. His father had been the big guy of the Brighton crime scene. Everyone feared and respected him. No one dared touch Maurice Smallbone, not even the police, most of whom he’d had in his pay back in his heyday.
What the fuck had gone wrong?
Detective Superintendent Roy Grace would go to his grave regretting what he had done. You didn’t take away twelve years of someone’s life; and all the other shit that went with it. The prison doctor had warned him about not getting angry, because of his high blood pressure. But fuck that. He stubbed the butt out and lit another cigarette. Then spotted something he had missed. Another framed photograph of his father outside Lewes Crown Court. His father was beaming, arms wide out like he owned the world – and actually he had owned a handsome slice of it. In this photograph, taken minutes after being acquitted by a coerced and frightened jury, his father was walking free from a whole bunch of charges.
Amis Smallbone had not been so lucky, following in his dad’s footsteps.
Thanks to Detective Inspector Roy Grace, as he had been back then.
Promoted now. Huh.
A father now.
On Monday he would become Detective Superintendent Grace’s neighbour. Renting the three-storey house next door to where he was living with his blonde slapper, Cleo Morey. His Probation Officer, who had to approve any change of address, had queried how he would pay the rent in his new abode. Smallbone had explained that his mate Henry Tilney, who owed him a favour, would be paying it for him, until a new business they were setting up, dealing in second-hand cars, was up and running. The Probation Officers had swallowed it.
Roy Grace thought his slapper and baby would be safe inside that little gated residence, did he?
Smallbone smiled. As the saying went, if you can’t beat them, join them.
Roll on Monday!
52
Roy Grace had to hold the Saturday morning briefing in the Conference Room of the Major Incident Suite in order to accommodate his growing team. He had a full turnout, including, he was pleased to see, Glenn Branson, who told him his sister-in-law had taken the kids swimming and was looking after them for the day.
Bella Moy was the first to speak. ‘Working on the information from your contact Hector Webb, who felt it likely the major portion of the items stolen would have been shipped out of the UK in a container, I’ve been focusing on ships capable of carrying containers out of our local harbours.’