It was feeling like a sick joke now.
He sat, waiting, clutching the watch in his hands, watching the buoy, occasionally staring across at the mess of slab-shaped buildings on the shore. His eyes drifted over some scrubland, and the remains of the last pier still standing that dated back to his childhood. A black and white tug droned past, a row of tyres as makeshift fenders, hanging down its side. He looked back at the watch.
As he did so, he caught the glint in Lucas’s eye. His son was still standing, looking down at him. Or rather, at the watch.
Gavin Daly held it up. ‘It’s caused a lot of trouble, hasn’t it, this damned little machine?’
‘It’s beautiful.’
‘Beautiful?’ Gavin shook his head. ‘You’re not looking at its physical beauty; you’re only looking at its value. That’s what’s beautiful to you.’
‘That’s not true, Dad!’
‘You killed my sister for it.’
He saw Campbell frown, as if perhaps he had misheard or misunderstood something.
‘Dad, you have to understand—’
‘NO!’ he snapped back at his son. ‘I don’t have to understand anything, boy. Do you understand that?’
As the noise of the tug receded, Gavin Daly heard another sound, very faint at first.
Lucas heard it too and glanced up, alarmed.
A moment later, Gavin Daly heard the distant, but unmistakable, thwock-thwock-thwock of a helicopter. He turned and saw a speck heading low over the water towards them; it was getting bigger by the moment.
‘Oh shit,’ Lucas said, looking panic-stricken. ‘Oh shit!’
Gavin Daly held the watch out over the water. ‘This will be for the best,’ he said.
‘What are you doing? Dad, no! Are you crazy?’
‘We’re done with it, Lucas. I was done with the gun, and now I’m done with the watch.’
‘You can’t be serious!’
‘What has it done for any of us? What has it brought this family? My dad owned it and he died; my sister had it in her home, and she died. Maybe the damned thing’s cursed. I should just throw it into the water, where it should have gone all those years ago with your grandfather. That’s where it belongs.’
The thwock-thwock-thwock was getting louder.
‘Dad, don’t, it’s sentimental – you can’t throw it in the water. You can’t!’
Behind Lucas, heading downriver towards them, Gavin could see a launch with a blue hull and grey superstructure. It was travelling at speed, from the size of its bow-wave. He could hear the drone of the engines.
Lucas, hearing them too, spun round. ‘Oh shit, Jesus!’
Calmly ignoring the helicopter and the approaching police launch, Gavin Daly said, ‘What do you know about sentiment? You couldn’t be sentimental for anything. You were born with that gene missing.’
Lucas’s eyes were filled with fear and greed. He kept looking at the watch, then at the approaching launch, then the watch again.
The launch, bristling with antennae, reached the bridge and now they could see clearly the NYPD markings on it.
A cold stentorian voice called from a loudhailer. ‘This is the New York Police Department. Everyone on board raise your hands in the air. Do not move! Switch off your engines. We are coming alongside to board.’
Stuart Campbell looked at Gavin, then Lucas, in fury. ‘What the hell is all this about? You want to explain?’ Before either could respond, he grabbed a megaphone from a locker by the wheel, and shouted back, ‘We have a diver in the water, I repeat, we have a diver in the water – please keep at a safe distance. I will not move the boat away. I repeat, I will not move the boat away. Please let me get the diver back onboard safely.’
He put the megaphone down, raised his hands in the air, and Lucas followed.
Gavin Daly remained seated, ignoring the police, looking at the Patek Philippe in his hand. ‘You’re right, Lucas. I can’t just throw it in the water; that would be stupid.’
‘Sir, raise your hands in the air,’ the loudhailer boomed, louder as the launch was much closer now, the voice echoing and booming off the superstructure of the bridge above them.
‘You know why it would be stupid, Lucas?’ Gavin Daly said, ignoring the police.
‘Sir, I’m giving you one more warning: put your hands in the air where I can see them.’ Aaron Cobb standing on the bridge of the launch, held the microphone in his left hand, and his Glock, at full arm’s length, in his right.
Standing close beside him, Roy Grace took the loudhailer and, holding it to his lips, said, ‘Mr Daly, this is Detective Superintendent Grace – please do what the officer requests.’
In answer, Gavin Daly picked up the winch handle and raised it in the air.
Cobb’s finger tightened on the trigger.
119
On the launch, as it slipped into the shadow beneath the bridge, Roy Grace put a steadying hand on Cobb’s arm. ‘He’s an old man and his emotions are running high,’ he said quietly. ‘Cut him some slack.’
‘Yeah, he’s a regular sweet old guy who just happens to like shooting people in the nuts,’ Cobb retorted drily, without taking his eyes off Daly.
Grace looked at the water immediately around the marker buoy, looking for air bubbles; meanwhile the police pilot obeyed the request from the dive boat’s skipper and kept the launch a safe distance away.
‘I’ll tell you why it would be stupid, Lucas,’ Gavin Daly roared. ‘Because you’d have tried to get it back! And you might have done. This way, I won’t have to worry about that.’
The diver broke surface a few feet off, but neither Gavin nor Lucas noticed. The old man put the watch on the deck, right in front of his feet.
‘Dad, no! No! No!’ Lucas yelled as he suddenly realized what was happening. ‘No, Dad, no! Don’t do that! Don’t do that!’
Gavin Daly brought the winch handle down with all the force he could muster onto the watch, shattering the glass and splintering the face. He struck it again, just as hard, then again a third time.
Lucas Daly, Stuart Campbell and the police officers stood watching.
Gavin Daly scooped up the broken, twisted remains, reached across and lifted the flattened crown from under a lifebelt where it had shot. Then with his fingernails, he carefully scraped the hands off the deck, and then a tiny section of the crescent of the moon. Then he tossed everything overboard. ‘Done,’ he said to Lucas, with a satisfied smile. ‘All gone. Feeling sentimental, are you?’
He raised his hands in the air and turned towards the police launch.
‘Gavin Daly!’ Aaron Cobb called across. ‘You need to know that Eamonn Pollock died in the ambulance thirty minutes ago. You are under arrest for murder. You have the right to remain silent, and anything you do say might be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult with an attorney before speaking to the police and to have an attorney present during questioning now or in the future. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you before any questioning, if you wish.’
He continued to read him his entire Miranda rights.
Roy Grace stared at the old man, a whole mixture of emotions running through him, but, most of all, sympathy. In the short while he had known Gavin Daly, he’d found him endearing and charming – but tough, too. Doubtless, he had been a ruthless businessman in his day – not many people achieved his level of wealth by being sweet and gentle. Even so, he was unable, fully, to square the horror of what Daly had done, just an hour ago in that Madison Avenue office, with the sad figure he saw in front of him now.
He switched his attention to the diver, who pushed his goggles up onto his forehead, spat out his breathing tube, then called up to the skipper of the dive boat, ‘Give me a hand, Stu. I got something.’ Then, as he paddled towards the ladder hanging down the side of the boat, he was looking around, bewildered, at the scene facing him: the three men on the dive boat with their hands in the air, and the police launch. ‘Is this a bad time?’ he called up to his colleague as he reached the ladder and gripped it with one hand. ‘Want me to come back another day?’