She shrugged. ‘I suppose that would be a nice gesture. Sometime when you are actually here,’ she added pointedly.
He nodded.
‘Go to bed, darling,’ she said. ‘You look exhausted.’
‘I was thinking,’ he said, and smiled.
‘Thinking what?’
‘How lucky Noah is to have such an amazing mother.’
‘His dad’s not bad, either!’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Yeah.’ She wrinkled her nose in agreement, and grinned. ‘Sometimes.’
Noah burped.
Grace went back to bed, but sat up, picked up the book he had been reading, and found his place. It was one from the pile of books on the early gang history of New York that he had bought from City Books.
Halfway through the first page of the chapter he saw a name, and froze.
66
Gavin Daly was feeling his age this morning. He’d stayed up until 5 a.m. phoning his old contacts in America, first in New York, then, as it became late, he switched to a contact in Denver, Colorado, followed by one in Los Angeles. He was feeling ready for his eleven o’clock glass of wine and his first cigar of the day. Then he heard the front doorbell ring.
A few minutes later his housekeeper knocked on his study door and entered. ‘There’s a police officer asking if he could have a word with you, Mr Daly.’
He nodded, his eyes feeling raw. ‘Show him in – I’ll see him here.’
Moments later, Roy Grace entered. Daly stood up and mustered a cheery smile. ‘Detective Superintendent, what a pleasant surprise. Do you have some news for me?’
‘I’d like to have a chat with you, Mr Daly.’
He ushered Grace to one of the studded red chesterfields. ‘I was about to have a drink. Do you like white Burgundy?’
‘I do, but I’m on duty, sir. Some coffee would be very welcome.’
The detective looked and sounded as tired as he himself felt. Daly instructed Betty to bring coffee and his wine, then sat back in his chair and swivelled round to face Grace. ‘Do you have some news for me?’
‘We made an arrest last night, sir, of a male suspect involved in your sister’s robbery.’
‘That’s extremely welcome news. May I know his name?’
‘Do you have any views on possible suspects yourself, sir?’
‘I don’t, no.’
‘Other than the knocker-boy, Ricky Moore?’ Grace watched his eyes carefully.
‘Other than Moore, no.’
‘I’d appreciate your keeping this confidential, for the moment.’
‘Of course.’
‘The man we arrested is called Gareth Dupont. Does that name mean anything to you?’
Daly shook his head. Then echoed the name. ‘Gareth Dupont?’
Grace continued studying his face. ‘I can’t say too much at the moment, but we have evidence linking him to the scene. You’ve never heard your sister mention his name?’
‘Never.’
‘I’m trying to find out if he would ever have had a legitimate reason for being in the house.’
‘Not so far as I know.’
‘I wonder if you could tell me in a little more detail about the watch that was taken from your sister’s safe? To help us try to identify it. It’s extremely difficult without a photograph, as I’m sure you can appreciate. We know the make and we have a description, but there are quite a number that may fit that description.’
Daly shook his head. ‘No, this was unique. Well, let me qualify that, almost unique. I don’t know how much you know about watches, Detective Superintendent?’
Grace glanced down at the sturdy but heavily scratched Swiss Army watch Sandy had given him for his thirtieth birthday, the day she disappeared; its leather strap was almost worn out. ‘Very little, I’m afraid.’
‘Well, it’s pretty fair to say that Patek Philippe & Cie, founded in 1851, is the inventor of the pocket watch, which evolved into the wristwatch familiar to us all today. The firm invented automatic winding, the perpetual calendar, the split-seconds hand, the chronograph, the minute repeater – as a result, vintage Patek Philippes tend to have an exceptionally high value. The world record price ever paid for a watch was $11.3 million, at auction some years ago, and that was for a unique Patek Philippe – it was known as the Patek Philippe Henry Graves Supercomplication.’
‘So, the one that was stolen from your sister’s safe – would there be many identical ones?’
‘To be honest with you, it was always a mystery how my father obtained the watch in the first place. He was a humble dockworker – all right, he was in a gang, but the gang basically existed to protect the rights of Irish people on the Manhattan and Brooklyn waterfronts. Even back then the watch would have had a very high value. But you have to remember parts of New York were pretty lawless in those days. I like to think he might have won it in a poker game, or been given it in lieu of a debt, but I know from the history he was a hard man – you had to be to survive then. It’s possible he got it some other way.’
The two men smiled at each other, the innuendo hanging, unresolved, in the air.
‘Now, as to your question about other identical ones. Some years back when I realized the watch was so valuable, I tried to find its provenance. I contacted Patek Philippe in Geneva and gave them the serial number, but they said that it did not tally with their records; the number was wrong.’
Grace frowned. ‘Is that implying the watch is a fake?’
‘That’s what I thought at first. But then I found out something that was common practice back in those days. You see, at that time, all their watches were bespoke, commissioned by buyers. Many months of work would go into a single pocket watch. Well, apparently, top apprentices would make themselves a duplicate at the same time, secretly of course. I suspect that’s what my father’s watch is. I believe in the rag-trade, where workers make themselves duplicate garments from left-over cloth, it is called cabbage.’
‘Some cabbage!’ Grace said, and smiled. ‘And it doesn’t detract from its value?’
‘Far from it,’ Gavin Daly said. ‘It’s an important piece. Part of watchmaking history.’
‘You never took photographs?’
‘Oh, I did, I have them somewhere. But maybe they got misfiled or thrown out. I’ve searched high and low and so far nothing. And, of course, the photo Aileen had has gone.’
Changing the subject abruptly, Grace asked, ‘So how did your son get on with his golfing weekend in Marbella?’
‘To be honest, I wouldn’t know. Lucas and I are not that close.’
He nodded, then sat in silence for some moments. ‘Do you know an Anthony Macario or a Kenneth Barnes?’
‘No, I don’t.’ He answered too quickly, as if he had expected to be asked. And that, together with his eye movements, gave Grace a strong indication he was lying. Daly compounded this by scratching his nose, a further tell-tale sign.
‘They were found floating in the water at Puerto Banus yesterday morning, with a capsized dinghy near them. It normally takes two to three days for a body to rise to the surface after being put into the sea in warm water. Your son went to Marbella on Friday. I always like to look at coincidences.’
Grace paused as the housekeeper came in with a tray on which was a bottle of wine opened, a single glass, a china cup and saucer, a small coffee pot and a milk jug. While she was setting down their drinks, he took the opportunity to look around the room, seeing what he could learn about the old man from his lair.
He looked at the crammed bookcases, the busts, some on shelves, some on plinths, and at the beautiful gardens beyond the window. Then at the fine inlaid mahogany clock with a Roman numeral dial on the old man’s desk.
The housekeeper departed, and Grace took a grateful sip of his coffee.
Daly was glaring at him, his mood perceptibly different now, bordering on openly hostile. ‘Just what are you insinuating, Detective Superintendent?’