Smallbone had rented the place fully furnished. It was modern stuff, really not to his taste, but it was a lot better than the shithole he had just vacated.
Tomorrow, he was expecting delivery of two pieces of electronic kit. One was an up-to-date, encrypted police radio from a bent technician who had worked in the Police Communications Department. The other was a scanning device, which he had bought through a contact of Henry Tilney, that could pick up any phone call, whether a landline or mobile, within a two-hundred-metre radius, and read any email or text.
He looked forward to becoming fully acquainted with his new neighbours’ movements. But what he was looking forward to most of all was Detective Superintendent Roy Grace discovering who his new neighbour was. After years of the detective being in his face, the thought that he was now going to be in Grace’s face was very sweet indeed.
But not as sweet as all the different possibilities for destroying his life that were going through his mind. As if picking up his thoughts through the wall, he heard a baby crying. The Grace baby.
He poured himself another large whisky, and lit another cigarette. Then stiffened.
Someone was walking through the entrance gate: a man in a suit and tie, holding a bulging briefcase.
Hey, Noah! Smallbone mouthed silently. Daddy’s home!
64
Gavin Daly poured himself another large Midleton whiskey and relit his cigar. It was just gone half past midnight and he was wide awake, fuming. The news, earlier, from the New York nautical timepiece dealer Julius Rosenblaum, had lit the fire inside him. He was a man on a mission. A man on fire.
Laid out on his desk in front of him was a three-foot-tall Ingraham chiming mantel clock. Beside it lay his specialist timepiece tool kit spread out, each item in its velvet sleeve. Also on the table lay the Colt .32 revolver, with six live rounds in the chambers, that he had been handed all those years back on Pier 54. It was heavy and cold and smelled of the gun-oil with which he lovingly cleaned it every year, on the anniversary of his father’s disappearance.
Inside the clock’s fine inlaid mahogany case was a round brass gong. It was hollow, and comprised two brass discs screwed together. It was a slow and intricate job but finally he carefully removed the gong, laid it down, then began undoing each of the screws. None of them had been touched in over the one hundred and fifty years since the clock had been made, and it took him time to free each one in turn. He was perspiring by the time he had finished. He laid the discs down and then picked up the revolver, and laid it in one. It fitted snugly.
He went through to the kitchen, glad that Betty was up in her room, probably asleep, and helped himself to a couple of J-cloths. Then he returned to his study.
He wrapped the revolver in the cloths, binding them with Scotch tape, then placed the package inside one disc of the gong. He placed the other disc over it, then held the gong up and shook it. To his immense satisfaction, there was no sound at all.
Then, with painstaking care, he began to replace the gong in the clock, and reassemble the chiming mechanism. It was important, if anyone were to take a close look, that it was in perfect working order.
He finished shortly before 3 a.m. But still he wasn’t tired.
Still he burned.
A fire that had been lit on a February night in 1922 burned even more intensely now, early on this September morning nine decades later.
He crushed the tiny remaining stub of his cigar out in the ashtray, then looked down once more at the page of the Daily News. At the four names written in the margin.
At one in particular.
Pollock.
Mick Pollock.
Pegleg Pollock.
Then at the list of names, scribbled in his shaky handwriting, on the notepad on his desk. The ones given to him by the genealogist Martin Diplock.
Coincidence? God’s calling cards?
Or a dead man whose time had come?
65
At 4 a.m. Noah began crying, wanting another feed. Feeling totally exhausted, Grace climbed out of bed and followed Cleo through into his room as she switched on the light.
‘Go back to bed, darling,’ she said, lifting Noah out of his cot.
‘I’ll sit up with you.’ In truth, he felt wide awake. He was still finding it hard to believe that the lovely Sarah Courteney was having an affair with that little shit, Gareth Dupont. And he sincerely hoped for her sake that her thug of a husband, Lucas, never found out.
Cleo carried Noah back into the bedroom, then sat on the edge of the bed and lowered her nightdress over her right breast. Roy Grace watched, mesmerized. This tiny creature was their son. His son. One day he would play football with him. Cricket. Go swimming. Maybe cycling. This frail human, sucking away on Cleo’s breast. They had made this little person. Brought him into the world. They would be responsible for him for ever.
Cleo had a small rash above her breast. Her hair tumbled around her face as she looked down at Noah, with such deep love in her eyes that Grace felt his own eyes filling. Noah’s thin, straggling hair was matted forward across his forehead in a way that reminded him of the character of Bill Cutting that Daniel Day-Lewis played in Gangs of New York.
Throughout his career, he had confronted a few monsters. But you couldn’t pigeon-hole murderers into any one category. Some were tragic people who killed in the heat of the moment out of jealousy, and spent the rest of their lives regretting those few minutes of madness. Some were greedy villains with no conscience, who would kill for a bag of beans. And then there were the predators who slaked a lust by killing.
There was one common denominator among most of the people he had ever locked up. They came from broken homes.
He hoped that Noah would never find himself in a broken home. Cleo had been upset with him a few days ago, for working so late. Looking at the woman he loved and the child he loved, he knew, as much as he loved his job, that if he had to make a choice right now between his career and being a good father to his son, he would quit the police tomorrow.
Then, in his mind, he saw the photograph of Aileen McWhirter’s face – like a ghost.
It was followed by the image of Lucas Daly’s wife, the broadcaster Sarah Courteney, with her incredibly sexy body, taking off her mask in Gareth Dupont’s bedroom. She was shagging him? Shagging a man who had robbed and murdered her husband’s aunt?
Just what the hell was all that about?
Different scenarios played in his mind. Had Gareth Dupont targeted her as an unwitting stooge? Perhaps to get information about the old woman’s movements? He was casting his mind back to the visit he had paid her at her Shirley Drive home, with DS Batchelor. She had told him then she was close to Aileen McWhirter. She had also seemed genuinely upset over her death. Crocodile tears?
He didn’t think so. She had a bullying husband, which made her vulnerable; had Gareth Dupont preyed on that? That was the most likely scenario, he decided. He’d called her, to try to make an appointment to go and talk to her again – without her husband present – but she told him she was out of town for two days, working on a pilot for a new daytime television show.
‘I think we’ve got new neighbours,’ Cleo said.
‘Oh?’
‘The house next door that was up for rent.’
‘The owners are in Dubai, right?’
‘Yes, I think on a two-year contract. The TO LET sign’s been taken down and I saw lights on in there this evening.’
‘You haven’t met them?’
‘No – and so far they’ve been very quiet.’
‘Do you think we should invite them over for a drink sometime?’