Betty had prepared him his favourite supper, one he ate at least twice a week: smoked salmon from the local Sussex smokery, Springs, with a large wedge of lemon and scrambled eggs on the side. Oily fish. Something else to which he attributed his fitness in old age. Not that he cared if he keeled over right now, in his current mood.
But this evening he finished his meal more quickly than usual, anxious to return to his study.
Back at his desk, with his study lights on, he removed the brown envelope, containing a photograph of the broken Patek Philippe watch, from a drawer. But to his surprise, the envelope was empty. He frowned, wandering where he had put it. He could visualize it so clearly; the bent crown. The hands, frozen permanently since 1922. The Man in the Moon forever invisible, behind the quarter yellow disc against the blue background and gold night stars.
Then he fretted again over the numbers that had been handwritten, in now fading ink, on the reverse of that page from New York’s Daily News.
9 5 3 7 0 4 0 4 2 4 0 4
Watch the numbers, the messenger who had given him the gun, the watch, and the page of the newspaper had said.
He drank some more wine, then clipped the end of his next cigar. Something was staring him in the face. Something blindingly obvious. So damned obvious it had taken him nearly ninety years, and countless experts, to still not see it.
It was there. He knew that. It was there as loudly and clearly as if his father was whispering into his ear, from the grave.
Hey, little guy, you still awake?
Yep, big guy, I am! Can I see your watch?
Time was running out on him.
People said that life was a gift. Maybe. Or perhaps a curse. In his view, life was a journey. A kind of circular journey. He was back in New York, in 1922, as a child. Remembering that night his mother was killed and his father abducted. Remembering his promise, on the stern of the Mauretania.
One day, Pop, I’m going to come back and find you. I’m going to rescue you from wherever you are.
There was a Hemingway quote he repeated often to himself. He did not fully understand it, but he knew it applied to him.
There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things, and because it takes a man’s life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.
What, Gavin Daly asked himself often, had he got from life?
Vast riches. No one to share them with, and just Aileen’s granddaughter and family to leave it to. Just a small bequest to his son, on legal advice, to make it hard for Lucas to challenge the will. What the hell had been the point of it all?
Sure, at times he had enjoyed the ride. For several decades he’d been the undisputed King of the Brighton antiques scene. And now?
And now?
Ever since Black Monday, and then 9/11, when Americans had stopped coming here, the antiques trade, particularly in brown furniture, had died a rapid and brutal death.
That was all history now. None of it mattered. Within the next few years he’d be out of here. And a few decades after that, his name would be completely forgotten, as if he had never even been born. How many people, he often wondered, could remember their great-grandparents? Could anyone? Certainly not many. That was how it was.
Then his phone rang. ‘Gavin?’
It was the treacly-rich New York accent of a very charming Manhattan rogue, Julius Rosenblaum, who had carved a good living from handling valuable timepieces of dubious provenance. He had contacted Rosenblaum because one of his specialities was rare nautical watches and clocks. But all kinds of precious watches and clocks, whether illegally looted from sunken ships or stolen in robberies and burglaries, had passed through his hands with few questions asked. ‘Gavin, thought this might be something in relation to our conversation earlier. I got a call a short while ago from a guy with an English accent saying he has a Patek Philippe pocket watch circa 1910, asking would I be interested in taking a look at it. Says he’s looking for the best offer over three million dollars.’
‘Oh?’
‘Well, there’s a few things that didn’t feel right. He was pretty evasive on the timepiece’s history; his terminology when I asked him about the watch’s complications was real layman stuff – you’d expect a guy who has a timepiece that rare to have a little knowledge, right?’
‘Ordinarily, yes,’ Gavin said. ‘Did you get a phone number or anything?’
‘No, but he’s going to bring it in – he said he’d call me in the morning – he was tied up the rest of the day.’
‘Could you take some photos when he brings it in – fax or email them to me?’
‘Of course.’
‘While you’re at it, get a photograph of him, too.’
‘No problem, I have CCTV here.’
‘Did he give you his name?’
‘Robert Kenton.’
‘Robert Kenton?’
‘Do you know him?’
‘No, I’ve never heard of him.’
‘No guarantee that’s his real name.’
‘Indeed.’ Gavin thanked him and hung up. He debated for some moments whether to phone Detective Superintendent Grace, then decided against it.
Instead, he poured himself another drink, relit his cigar and thought hard.
61
‘Team, we have a result,’ Glenn Branson announced, rejoining the evening briefing after having stepped out to take a phone call. ‘Boss, that call I had this afternoon at the funeral, right? The two bodies found in the harbour at Puerto Banus close to the yacht, Contented? Its upturned dinghy near them. The boat owned by the man your informant in Lewes Prison told you about, yeah?’
Grace looked up at the large rectangle of paper that had been slightly crookedly Blu-Tacked to a whiteboard. On it was written, OPERATION FLOUNDER – ASSOCIATION CHART. EAMONN POLLOCK. Computer-generated, it looked like a family tree from school history books, but with modern heads and shoulders, the men in blue, the women red.
‘The one who has previous for fencing, you were told,’ Branson continued.
‘Yes, that’s right – with another old friend of ours.’ Grace pointed at a line running to a small box to the right on the Association Chart. ‘Look what we have here, our very own Six Degrees of Separation. Except there’s no separation. On the fencing job Pollock was done for – a haul of watches – Amis Smallbone was known to be involved. I had a look at the file; Smallbone was charged but released for lack of evidence.’ He turned to the indexer, Annalise Vineer. ‘Nice work, Annalise,’ he said, then turned back to Branson.
‘I think you got your money’s worth from your informant, chief.’
‘Tell me more.’
Glenn Branson had everyone in the Conference Room’s attention. Roy Grace shot a glance at Bella Moy then at Norman Potting. Although they were both on his team, they both deserved some happiness. So as far as he was concerned, good luck to them.
‘That was my Spanish Interpol contact calling me. They’ve got positive IDs on both of the bodies. One’s called Anthony Joseph Macario and the other Kenneth Oliver Barnes. Both – despite Macario’s name – Irish citizens.’ He looked at the indexer. ‘Can you do a nationwide check on those names as quickly as possible and see if that throws up anything?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good work, Glenn,’ Grace said. ‘So, we have the knocker-boy, Ricky Moore, who we think may have been the originator of this burglary, apparently tortured within twenty-four hours of Aileen McWhirter being found. Then Gavin Daly’s son goes to Marbella on a “golfing” holiday, despite there being no evidence he’s ever picked up a golf club in his life. Eamonn Pollock becomes a possible Person of Interest. And now two bodies are found in the vicinity of his boat. If we could connect Macario or Barnes to the house in Withdean Road or to Pollock, we might be getting somewhere.’