‘Gavin, calm down, let’s hear him out.’
He turned to Pollock. ‘I’m all ears, you piece of blubber.’
‘I lent Lucas money – he came to me and I helped him out.’
‘How nice of you. Then he didn’t pay you back? Did I get that one right?’
‘Yes, Dad, he has a moneylending business,’ Lucas interjected.
‘You’re a moneylender, are you?’ Gavin Daly’s finger was shaking on the trigger. ‘A proper little Shylock?’
Julius Rosenblaum took a step towards his desk.
‘Don’t move another inch, Julius. You hit your panic button and I’ll shoot you too, God help me I will.’
‘Gavin, you have to calm down!’ Rosenblaum said.
‘No, I’m ninety-five years old; I don’t have to calm down.’ He looked back at Pollock. ‘You sent two pieces of shit – maybe three pieces of shit – to
rob a ninety-eight-year-old lady who’d done no harm to anyone in her life. They tortured the fuck out of my sister, and you want mercy from me? Yes?’
‘Those were never my instructions.’
‘Oh, really? You had the code to the safe from my piece-of-shit son, so why did they have to torture my sister? They stole ten million pounds’ worth of antiques, and they tortured
her to death for her credit card pin codes, for a few hundred lousy quid. Did they do it for fun, or is that because you were too greedy to pay them decently for doing your filthy work for
you?’
Pollock was shaking. ‘I didn’t, no, that’s not right.’
‘Stand up!’
Eamonn Pollock pushed himself upright and stood, cowed and quivering.
Gavin Daly stared at the dark stain around his groin. ‘You’ve just pissed yourself. What kind of a man are you?’
Pollock stared wildly around, as if looking for an escape route.
‘Dad, let’s be calm!’ Lucas said.
‘Calm? From a man who beats up his wife regularly, that’s rich!’ He turned to Julius Rosenblaum. ‘She’s a very pretty, very smart television presenter. When Lucas
hits her, he makes sure it is always below the neckline, so it doesn’t show in public, so it doesn’t hurt her ability to earn a high salary – for him to squander. He’s a
brave man, my son is. Know what I’ve always believed?’ He covered all three in turn with the gun. ‘You judge a man by the friends he keeps. Eamonn and Lucas, you deserve each
other.’
‘Hurting Aileen was never intended, please believe me,’ Eamonn Pollock whimpered. ‘Please believe me.’
‘You employed those men, Ken Barnes and Tony Macario. They’d worked for you for a long time. You must have known what they were like, what they would do when you set them loose on an
elderly, defenceless lady? What’s to believe?’
‘Please believe me.’
Gavin Daly pulled the trigger. There was another thunderclap and an explosion of blood in Pollock’s right shoulder, sending him hurtling back onto the floor. His mouth was wide open, his
eyes looking like they were shorting out.
‘Oops, sorry, Eamonn, I didn’t mean to do that. Do you believe me?’
‘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.
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.’
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.
If Smallbone’s death was not an accident, and he had been pushed, it had to be for altogether another reason.
To silence him?
Was the connection between Eamonn Pollock and Amis Smallbone, however historic, a factor?
Pat Lanigan took a call, but Grace barely noticed, he was so deep in thought. Could Pollock have wanted Smallbone silenced? Had Smallbone been involved in this robbery in some way? As a fence?
Donny Loncrane had said Pollock was a fence – so were the two of them involved?
One person might know: Gareth Dupont – but would he talk?
He switched to a different track. Eamonn Pollock’s two henchmen in Spain had been found dead. Almost certainly, Lucas Daly was involved. Daly had travelled to Marbella with Augustine
Krasniki; his golf caddy, he had said. Bollocks.
Intelligence on Krasniki had revealed him to be Lucas Daly’s minder. An Albanian immigrant; a thug; Lucas Daly’s hired muscle. So had the two of them gone to Marbella to kill Macario
and Barnes. For what reason? Why would they have wanted those two men dead? Revenge? To silence them? Or another motive altogether?
And now Lucas Daly, like his father, was in New York. What the hell was going on?
Suddenly, Pat Lanigan was leaning over the front-seat headrest, holding his phone in his hand, terminating a call. ‘Roy, I think we’ve found our man. There’s just been a
shooting in a Manhattan antique dealer’s office. Victim identified as Eamonn Pollock, seriously injured.’
The Lincoln Town Car cruised slowly along the vast, ugly, concrete and brick wharf buildings. As they passed the closed steel doors of a loading bay, Gavin Daly, peering out of
the rear window, said to the driver, ‘Here!’
The car pulled to a halt outside the entrance, marked P
IER
92 and with a big yellow stripe around a concrete pillar.
‘Wait for us,’ Daly said. ‘We’ll be a while.’
‘I’ll be right here, sir!’ The driver jumped out and helped Gavin Daly to his feet, handing him his cane. Lucas Daly followed his father into the open entrance to the
building.
Gavin Daly read the company names on the wall, then went through a door into a huge restaurant. It had a high ceiling with an exposed metal grid superstructure. A window ran the full length,
giving a fine view across a small marina, the West River, and New Jersey on the far shore.
Mid-morning, the place was empty. Shiny wooden tables were neatly laid with place settings and bottles of ketchup. To their left was a curved bar, behind which was a row of tall copper beer
vats. A balding, middle-aged bartender, polishing a beer glass, gave them a friendly smile. ‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’
‘We’re looking for Hudson Scuba,’ Gavin Daly replied. ‘They told us to come here.’
‘You’re in the right place.’ The man pointed. ‘Go through that far door; you’ll see them on the boat, down at the dock.’
They walked through the bar and as Gavin Daly stepped outside, he stopped in his tracks, the memories catching him like a snare.
Something twisted inside his heart.
It was different now, of course it was. Ninety years later.