‘Gavin!’ Rosenblaum shouted, in shock.
‘Dad!’ Lucas shouted.
‘That was for my ma; this is for my pop!’ Gavin Daly fired again. Pollock jumped in the air, as if a defibrillator had gone off on his chest, and a crimson patch of blood began spreading from his left shoulder.
‘No! No! No!’ Eamonn Pollock was thrashing on the floor, crying in pain and terror, holding his hands in the air, in front of his face as if they could stop the next bullet.
‘Gavin!’ Rosenblaum said. ‘Stop, man! Have you gone crazy?’ He took another step towards his desk.
Daly pointed the gun at Rosenblaum. ‘Don’t move.’
He swung the gun back at Pollock.
‘No, for God’s sake, no. Please. Oh God, no!’ Pollock squealed, crabbing his way across the carpet on his back.
Daly took careful aim at Pollock’s crotch. ‘This one’s for Aileen.’
‘No!’ he screeched. ‘Please no, please no, please no!’
He fired straight into the dark stain.
Pollock let out an animal howl. He sat up straight, his face contorted, his hands pressing desperately at his groin, his whole body convulsing; a low yammering, which was getting louder and louder every second, came from somewhere deep inside his throat.
‘Jesus Christ, Gavin!’ Rosenblaum said.
He pointed the gun at Lucas. ‘We’re out of here, son.’
Lucas was frozen to the spot.
Gavin Daly walked across to the door, swinging the gun towards his son and then Julius Rosenblaum, then his son again. ‘I’m sorry, Julius, sorry it had to be here.’
Pollock’s screams were almost deafening now.
Daly reached the door, still keeping Rosenblaum motionless with his gun. Then he looked down at Pollock, sheet white, his face a contorted, agonized, clammy mass of perspiration, his eyes rolling; he was breathing in short, fast gasps, still clutching his groin, his hands covered in blood.
‘Have fun next time you try to screw someone, Pollock.’ Then he pointed the gun at his son, who was holding the chart and looking like a rabbit caught in headlights. ‘You, you’re coming with me.’
Then he threw the gun on the floor. ‘I’m done with it,’ he said. ‘Maybe my dad sent it to me for a purpose. I don’t know. But I’m done with it.’
Followed by Lucas, Gavin Daly stomped past the secretary, who looked frozen in shock, out and into the elevator.
‘Dad, this is insane!’ Lucas said as the elevator clanked its way down. ‘Have you lost your fucking mind?’
‘Just shut the fuck up. I’ve not even started with you yet, boy.’
Lucas Daly said nothing. When they reached the ground floor, Gavin stepped out into the busy street.
The black Town Car limousine was right outside. The driver jumped out as they emerged, and held the back door open.
Lucas climbed in first, then slid across the wide seat.
‘How’s your day been so far, sir?’ the driver asked, taking the cane, helpfully, as Gavin Daly lowered himself onto the seat.
‘Pretty average,’ he replied.
113
Inside the car, Gavin heard a siren. Anxiously, he looked over his shoulder through the darkened rear window. To his relief it was an ambulance, not a police car. Moments later it went wailing past.
‘Driver, go two blocks, make a right, then stop where you can,’ he instructed.
‘You realize what you’ve done, Dad,’ Lucas said, peering back anxiously at the door to Julius Rosenblaum’s offices. ‘Shit, you know what kind of a mess you’re in?’
‘Give me that chart.’
‘Why did you do that? Why?’
‘You want to know why? Because I might not live much longer and I don’t trust the justice system. I’m satisfied now; I’ve got some justice for Aileen. Some, at least. Give me that chart,’ he said again.
Lucas handed it to him, and he scrutinized it carefully. Then he pulled out the Patek Philippe watch, and studied that for some moments, before returning to the chart.
The limousine made a right turn, then pulled over to the kerb. Gavin Daly, keeping a weather eye on his son, leaned forward and said to the driver, ‘You have any kind of internet connection in here?’
‘Got my iPhone, sir.’
‘I want you to look up scuba-diving companies in Manhattan for me.’ Gavin Daly pulled out his wallet and handed the man two fifty-dollar bills.
‘That’s not necessary, sir, but thank you. Scuba-diving companies, you say?’
‘Please.’
The driver picked his phone off the seat beside him and began tapping. In the distance, Gavin Daly heard another siren, followed by another. Both of them stopped a short distance away. Then he heard another.
‘Got a whole list here!’ the driver said, and passed the phone to him.
Daly ran his eyes down them. One in particular stood out for him. Hudson Scuba. Lessons on our own dive boat, moored in central Manhattan.
‘Call them for me, please,’ he asked.
A few moments later, the driver handed him back the phone, just as it was answered by a breezy-sounding male voice.
‘Hudson Scuba. How can we help?’
‘This may be an unusual request,’ Gavin Daly said. ‘I need a dive boat, with a trained scuba diver, in thirty minutes – or sooner. I don’t know what you charge, but on top of that I’m prepared to give you a ten thousand dollar bonus if you can make it happen.’
114
Roy Grace was in a subdued mood as Detective Lieutenant Cobb drove the Crown Victoria over the Brooklyn Bridge, heading back to Pat Lanigan’s office. He’d arranged to rendezvous there with Guy Batchelor and Jack Alexander to discuss their next moves – but he did not know, at this moment, what they should be.
It wasn’t helping that he’d slept badly, or that he was in a foreign city – one countless times larger than Brighton, and one that, despite his previous visits here, and his love of it, currently felt totally alien. Although he had the full resources of the NYPD at his disposal, it was hard to work out how and where to deploy them to his best advantage. In England he would have had no such problem.
Glancing out of the window and down towards the Hudson, he noticed a helicopter lifting off from a pad close to the water; then a barge laden with timber making its way upriver, about to pass beneath them on the sparkling, cobalt water. As the tyres bumped almost silently over the joins in the surface beneath him, he was preoccupied with his thoughts. How the hell had Amis Smallbone been allowed to rent the house next door to Cleo? The bloody Probation Service were meant to monitor things like that – why hadn’t they? Or was he being unfair to them through his tiredness?
Because the house was in Cleo’s name and no one had made the connection, he knew. That was the truth. They’d had a lucky escape. Shit.
He shuddered.
Just how close an escape had Cleo and Noah had?
How the hell could he protect them in the future? What could he do? Quit the police force and spend the rest of his life guarding them? That was how he felt right now.
His thoughts switched to the link that the informer, Donny Loncrane in Lewes Prison, had told him about. Amis Smallbone and Eamonn Pollock, thick together, many years back.
He hadn’t given it too much significance at the time, but the latest news about Smallbone was making him rethink, hard. Smallbone had rented the house next door to Cleo, clearly with some very nasty intent, and had installed listening equipment so he could eavesdrop on them. Now he was dead, apparently fallen from the rooftop fire escape the day after someone had broken into the letting agency’s offices and stolen the spare keys to his rented house.
How coincidental was that?
Smallbone’s house was now a crime scene, and SOCOs would be hunting for any evidence of an intruder. Who had wanted Smallbone dead? It could have been any number of people who the nasty little shit, and his equally vile criminal family, had crossed over the years. But if someone wanted to get Smallbone for revenge purposes, they would almost certainly have had him sorted during his twelve years in prison. That was the place scores were settled.