‘Innocent, or else she’s a world-class liar.’

‘What are your instincts?’

‘She was targeted by Dupont. No question.’

76

His mobile phone rang. All that came up on the display was INTERNATIONAL.

He answered. ‘Yeah?’

‘Listen carefully – don’t worry, I’m on a secure phone. You should get one too.’

‘I have. I’m on it’

‘It’s the same number I’ve had for weeks.’

‘You’re the only person who has it.’

‘I want you to change it for the next time we speak.’

‘Next time we speak I won’t need it. We’ll be in the same room and I’ll have my hands around your fat neck.’

‘Temper, temper! Listen to me very carefully, we have a big problem. Gareth Dupont’s been charged. He’s been out on licence and now he’s on remand in Lewes Prison.’

‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

‘Do you understand what it means for him if he’s convicted? The rest of his life in prison? I’m worried what the little shit might do to save his skin. He’ll shop Smallbone. Smallbone’s the weak link.’

‘Where the fuck are you?’

‘That doesn’t matter. What matters is that you silence Smallbone. Permanently. Get my drift?’

‘I want my part of the deal.’

‘You’ll get it when I hear Smallbone’s dead.’

‘You expect me to trust you? After the way you’ve behaved?’

‘I have low expectations; that’s a life lesson you should learn, if you want to be content. Toodle-pip!’

There was a click, then silence.

He stared at his phone in fury. But, he realized, the fat bastard was right about one thing. Amis Smallbone.

77

Gavin Daly awoke with a start, confused about where he was. He heard a drilling sound. For a moment he thought it was men digging a hole. But it was a bell. The phone, he realized. He was in his study, and must have fallen asleep in his armchair. His cigar lay in the glass ashtray, with a ring of ash on the end, next to his glass of whiskey, with the ice long melted. His head ached; he’d drunk too much this evening.

He took a moment more to fully orient himself, then picked up the receiver. ‘Gavin Daly,’ he said.

‘Hey Gavin, it’s Julius Rosenblaum here. Apologies for calling so late – hope I didn’t wake you?’ the treacly voice of the New York watch dealer asked. ‘But I thought you’d want to hear this right away.’

Daly looked at his watch. It was 11.30 p.m. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Well, no, not really – I’m – I’m still in my office.’ He was still feeling a little disoriented, not fully awake, but perking up fast. This was the call he had been waiting for, he realized.

‘The guy I told you about, Mr No Name, who called me on Tuesday about the Patek Philippe, came in this afternoon.’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve got the pictures of him and the watch, which I’ve pulled off our CCTV, and just emailed you. Thought I’d give you a heads-up. Do you want to check your mail and see if it is your watch?’

‘Yes – yes, Julius. Can you give me a few minutes?’

‘Take your time.’

‘You’re still in your office?’

‘I’ll be here for another ten minutes, then I have to go to a dinner. I’ll give you my cell and you can call on that if you miss me.’

‘Thank you. So – what did you think of the watch?’

‘He only brought in photographs, but the timepiece looks authentic enough. Quite a bit of damage – the crown and winding arbor are bent, the crystal is cracked and there’s a dent in the rear casing.’

‘That sounds like it,’ Gavin Daly said.

‘I asked him about the provenance. Said it has been in his family since the early 1920s.’

‘Did he now?’

‘Handed down from his grandfather.’

‘That’s a touching story,’ Daly said. ‘Remind me of his name?’

‘Robert Kenton. Does that mean anything to you?’

Daly thought hard for some moments. ‘No.’

‘I asked him how much interest he’d had in the watch, and he was cagey about who he had talked to, but said he was expecting offers next week – subject to the watch being what the photographs show – and he would take the best offer by close of business on Wednesday. I told him I was extremely interested, buttered him up a little, and he’s going to be bringing it in to me on Monday morning, at 11 a.m. If you could get over here, I could bring you into the room, then you’ll be able to see the piece for yourself. If it is yours, I just have to press one button, all the doors will lock, and the police will be on their way.’

‘I’m very grateful.’

‘Check the photographs and call me back.’

Daly eased himself, stiffly, out of the chair, went to over to his desk, sat down and logged on and opened the zipped file. Moments later he was looking at a sequence of low-grade CCTV images. First of a man entering through a door. He was in his mid-sixties, overweight, with short, curly grey hair, and dressed in a blue blazer with silver buttons, open-neck white shirt and paisley cravat. The next image showed a closer and clearer image of the man’s face. The third showed the front of the Patek Philippe watch.

He was certain that it was his watch, with the bent crown and winding and the busted crystal. But to be sure he had another hard rummage around for any photographs of it. He opened all the drawers of his desk, rummaged around through all the other old papers in there but still could not find one. He cast his mind back to when he had last seen one.

He was, he knew, getting a little forgetful. A couple of times recently he had lost important documents, or misfiled them inside others. It would turn up; no matter. He looked back at the screen, at the image of the watch, and began to tremble with anger. The bastard. The fat bastard.

Out of curiosity, he entered Robert Kenton into Google. There were over twenty hits. He then went to Images. None of them remotely matched the face on the photographs he had just looked at. Then he had another thought. Into the Google search he typed Eamonn Pollock.

Moments later he was staring at an old Argus newspaper headline from 1992.

BRIGHTON CHARITY PATRON SENTENCED

The whole story ran below: how Eamonn Pollock, patron of a leading Brighton charity for disabled children, had been convicted of receiving and handling stolen goods, including a haul of watches. But it wasn’t the story that interested him at this moment. It was the man’s photograph. Taken twenty years ago, he was marginally less pudgy, and his hair was darker. But there the differences ended.

It was the face of the man who had given his name to Julius Rosenblaum as Robert Kenton.

The man who, the genealogist Martin Diplock had found out for him, was a descendant of one of the men who had come into his bedroom that night, back in 1922, murdered his mother and dragged away his father.

And now he had stolen his father’s watch.

78

There were mixed feelings at the Friday morning briefing of Operation Flounder. All the team present were pleased that one suspect, Gareth Dupont, had been charged with Aileen McWhirter’s murder. But there was no celebration; they all knew that while one of the monkeys was now potted, the organ-grinder was still at large. Fingers pointed towards Eamonn Pollock, but so far they had no evidence to implicate him in, or even link him to, the crime.

The High Tech Crime Unit had found a series of calls made to Spain from Dupont’s mobile number during July and August. The Spanish numbers changed frequently and were all on untraceable pay-as-you-go mobile phones. They were not even able to tell the region in Spain. Neither Dupont’s work computer nor private laptop had yielded any useful information. Their hopes at the moment lay with Norman Potting, who had flown out to Marbella to liaise with the Spanish police investigating the deaths of the two Irish expats, Kenneth Barnes and Anthony Macario, and to see what he could find out about Eamonn Pollock. Digging away doggedly was one of Potting’s particular talents.