Daly shook his head.
‘So, right, just so you know, your next meal will be breakfast. Someone will take you over to the shower room first. You’ll be getting cereal, orange – or some other pieces of fresh fruit – milk, bread and breakfast jelly. You have any problem with any of that? You’re not diabetic or anything?’
‘I won’t be needing any breakfast,’ he said.
‘Well, you’ll be getting it anyway.’
Gavin Daly smiled.
The officer hesitated. ‘We don’t get many folk your age in here. If you need anything, let me know. But don’t miss meals because you don’t get nothing in between.’
Daly smiled again. ‘Thank you, I have everything I need. Everything I’ll ever need.’
That night, for the first time in ninety years, he slept without dreaming.
He slept the sleep of the dead.
122
At 8.45 a.m., Glenn Branson picked Roy Grace up from Gatwick Airport in a pool car. ‘Want to go straight to Sussex House, or home first?’
‘Home first, please, mate. I want to make sure Cleo’s okay, and I need a shower and change of clothes. So how are you? Ari’s funeral tomorrow, isn’t it? At least I’ll be able to come now.’
‘I’m glad,’ Branson said. ‘Thank you. I think she actually quite liked you.’
‘She had a strange way of showing it,’ Grace replied with a grin.
‘Yeah.’ Branson sniffed. ‘She had a lot of strange ways.’
‘But you’re okay?’
‘Yeah, I am. Her sister’s still looking after the kids – she’s staying to take care of them until the end of this week, giving me a chance to get myself sorted. To be honest, being at work’s the best thing for me. Got a lot to report, old timer, while you’ve been swanning around the US of A.’
‘Haha.’
He felt tired after a cramped, uncomfortable flight, jammed in the centre of three seats, with a bawling baby two rows behind him. And he had been far too wired with his thoughts to sleep, even if the baby had let him. He made a promise never to inflict Noah on any long-haul passengers if he possibly could.
It was a wet day, with a chill in the air, in contrast to the Indian-summer warmth of New York yesterday. The wipers clopped away the water in front of him, although he would almost have preferred it if they didn’t, so he couldn’t see anything. Glenn’s driving seemed to be getting faster and worse the more experience he had. Right now he was accelerating towards a roundabout, when any sane person would be braking. Grace pressed his own feet hard into the footwell, and Branson shot the Ford right in front of a skip lorry that had right of way; he heard the angry blast of the lorry’s horn, felt the rear wheels losing grip, and the slide start to happen. Braking hard now, Branson over-corrected and the tail went in the opposite direction. Somehow, miraculously, they came out of the other side of the roundabout still intact, and headed down the M23 slip road.
‘Do you have any concept of the laws of physics?’ Grace asked.
‘Physics?’
‘Maybe you should study momentum, get your head around that a little. You could try working out that a car going seventy miles an hour in a straight line has to slow down before turning sharp left, and especially in the wet.’
‘That was a controlled power slide. Like Jeremy Clarkson does,’ Glenn said.
‘Ah.’
‘I don’t know why you’re worried – I’ve never had a crash.’
‘Maybe you’re saving it up for the big one.’ Switching subjects, Grace asked, ‘Anything back from the lab on our dog, Humphrey?’ Then he winced as Branson pulled straight across into the fast lane, only inches behind the car in front.
‘No, it will take a couple of days. We found a vial of tablets in Smallbone’s bathroom that we’ve also sent for analysis. We’ve been keeping a careful eye on Cleo; an FLO’s been with her around the clock and the Neighbourhood Policing Team’s been briefed to be extra vigilant. But from the history, don’t you think it likely Smallbone was acting alone?’
‘Let’s hope so.’
‘Okay, we have a significant development regarding the shoe-print found at the letting agent’s, Rand and Co. I told you Haydn Kelly had established a match with shoeprints found in Smallbone’s house.’
‘Yes.’
‘We’ve got a third match – from Eamonn Pollock’s yacht in Marbella. The Spanish police sent it yesterday and Haydn Kelly informed Norman Potting an hour ago! There’s also other sets of shoeprints – from the patterns it appears three other people, not just Macario and Barnes, were on the boat recently.’
Frowning, Grace said, ‘The match is to the ones in the letting agent’s and in Smallbone’s house?’
‘Yes. It’s only a shoe match, but if we could find the shoe—’
Suddenly all Roy Grace’s tiredness had gone. ‘I know who those second shoeprints might have been made by.’ He leaned over the seatback and hefted his briefcase onto his lap. From it he removed a small evidence bag containing a USB flash drive, and held it up triumphantly. ‘Yesterday, Gavin Daly’s son, Lucas, was recorded on videotape in an office in New York admitting involvement in Aileen McWhirter’s robbery.’
‘Daly’s son – her nephew?’ he said, incredulously. ‘He was involved?’
‘Probably the mastermind behind it. Yes, he’s a regular charmer.’
‘Has he been arrested?’
‘No, he’s agreed to DS Batchelor and DC Alexander escorting him back to England. But he’s asked if they can wait a day or so until he knows what’s happening with his father.’
‘Result!’ Glenn Branson said. ‘But – um – how exactly does that help us with the second set of shoeprints on the boat?’
‘We’ll need to get a search warrant and raid his house. And, I think you are going to like this. If we can put Lucas Daly on that boat, then I think we’ll know who the other set belong to.’
‘How?’
‘Lucas Daly flew to Marbella with his henchman. I suspect they’re involved in the deaths of Macario and Barnes. If the shoe-prints on the boat match his henchman’s, then we have him too. Don’t forget there’s an historical association between Amis Smallbone and Eamonn Pollock.’
‘Yes, I’m aware. But there’s one thing still bothering me. All the sets of shoeprints are from trainers: Haydn Kelly’s identified the one in the letting agent’s and Smallbone’s house – and now on the boat – as a Nike shoe, of which there are tens of thousands. The other one on the boat are Asics, again tens of thousands sold.’
‘There are a number of ways to put those people at those scenes,’ Grace replied. ‘In addition to the same make, model and size of the trainers there’s also the comparison of wear patterns – Haydn Kelly explained this to me a few days ago and, if we can obtain the trainers, a comparison can be performed of the insoles in the trainers to the insoles in the suspect’s footwear as these give an imprint of the person’s foot. If there is a match there, then that is pretty much game, set and match! We may also get lucky with DNA deposits inside the trainers.’
‘Good stuff! Brilliant! Plenty of options for us.’
‘If we stay alive long enough,’ Grace said, eyeing the road ahead nervously.
123
In his office at 3 p.m., Grace had just finished a call with Haydn Kelly, discussing in further detail the shoeprints they had. He sipped a strong cup of tea and then yawned. In half an hour a Detective Superintendent from Surrey, whom he had never met, would be arriving to conduct a review of Operation Flounder. It was standard practice, at certain intervals during a major crime investigation, for an experienced outsider to look through the policy book, and all lines of enquiry that the SIO had running, as well as the size and make-up of the team.