The forensic podiatrist whom Grace had used to great effect on a previous case was due to join this morning’s briefing at Grace’s request. ‘I’ve asked Dr Haydn Kelly to join us this morning as he has some significant information regarding Barnes and Macario. He will be along soon as he has a Faculty of Surgery board meeting to attend this morning and he’s been good enough to come straight over to us afterwards.’ At that point there was a knock at the door. He had arrived. Grace nodded at their visitor.

Haydn Kelly, in his mid-forties, had an open, pleasant face, with close-cropped hair, and had a relaxed air about him. He was wearing a navy linen suit, a crisp white shirt with a vivid emerald-green tie, and tan loafers; he could have just stepped out of a villa on the French Riviera. But when he turned to face the group, his demeanour became serious and focused. ‘Hi, team,’ he said. ‘Good to see you all again. The Marbella police have sent me casts taken from the feet of Kenneth Barnes and Anthony Macario. I’ll now explain, briefly, the matching I’ve done to the trainer prints taken from Mrs McWhirter’s house.’

Kelly spent the next five minutes explaining the calculations and his computer analysis, concluding that the shoeprints taken at the crime scene were a match to Barnes and Macario.

Roy Grace thanked him. ‘Okay, we now have three people at the crime scene. Two are dead, and the third, Gareth Dupont, is staring into the abyss. I’m having him taken out of prison on a Production Order, and am going to chat to him on an informal basis – see if we can get any names out of him – in exchange for a few privileges.’

‘How about a Jacuzzi in his cell?’ Dave Green said.

‘I wish!’ Grace replied. Giving prisoners favours was no longer an option. Any privileges had to be given, unofficially and unsanctioned, while the prisoner was with the police and away from the prison.

Bella Moy reported that one sharp-eyed member of her outside enquiry team had spotted an Art Deco mirror taken from Aileen McWhirter’s house on an antiques stall in Lewes. The owner said he’d bought it from a man who walked in off the street. He was sketchy about his description, but it sounded to her like Lester Stork.

‘That would fit,’ Grace said.

‘Presumably before he was dead?’ Guy Batchelor said. ‘Or did he get it dead cheap?’

Several of the team groaned. Then Roy Grace turned to the antiques expert, Peregrine Stuart-Simmonds. ‘You have a possible development.’

‘Yes, I do. I have a list of all forthcoming auctions around the world for the next three months, which I’ve pinned up there.’ He pointed to one of the whiteboards. ‘I’ve also obtained all their catalogues. The thing is with many of them entry remains open until fairly close to auction time. I’ve given all of them the details we have of the Patek Philippe, and I’m fairly confident they will notify me if someone tries to place it. At the same time, I’ve been in touch with all the dealers capable of either buying a timepiece at this price level, or handling the sale of one. So I’m hopeful between the auction houses and the dealers we may soon get some information.’

Glenn Branson raised his hand. ‘Mr Stuart-Simmonds, you said at a previous meeting it was likely a number of the items taken would have been presold to private collectors. Might that be the case with this watch – in which case it wouldn’t show up on your radar?’

‘Well, the thing is,’ the antiques expert replied, ‘the perpetrators would have had to have prior detailed knowledge of any of the items, if they were stealing them to order. I think it is very significant for Operation Flounder that almost everything that has been taken was detailed on the insurance inventory, while the other pieces missing, some of which appear to have been fenced locally, do not. The watch was not on the insurance, so in my view, it’s unlikely it was known about in advance.’

‘So do you think it’s possible the mastermind behind this still doesn’t know about it?’ Guy Batchelor asked.

‘Yes, very possible. It could be, of course, that whoever took it is not aware of its value.’

Grace said nothing. He was thinking about the concealed safe, and back to yesterday, to his brief interview with Sarah Courteney in her car. She’d acted a little strangely when he’d asked her the price of her own wristwatch – but maybe that was out of embarrassment at the extravagance of it. Yet she had said that she and Aileen McWhirter were very friendly, and that she used to pop in often. Had the old lady shown her the Patek Philippe? If so, did Sarah Courteney mention it inadvertently to Dupont? Pillow talk? What was that old saying? He remembered seeing it on a warning poster from the Second World War: Loose lips sink ships.

Sarah Courteney had big lips, very beautiful ones, so full they almost looked unreal. Were they loose?

79

Roy Grace had never harboured any ambition to be a rich man. He’d been to grand houses on a number of occasions, visiting them either for charity functions or as crime scenes; Sandy had been a member of the National Trust, and at weekends they would sometimes visit one of its stately homes. But while he enjoyed the beauty of their landscaped gardens, their architecture and art treasures, what he always found far more intriguing, with his policeman’s mind, was where the money had come from to buy everything in the first place. You did not have to go back too many generations with most aristocratic families to find robber barons, he knew.

That thought was going through his mind now, as the wrought-iron gates of Gavin Daly’s mansion swung open. He drove along an avenue lined with beech trees for half a mile, and then saw the front of the house looming. It was a truly grand residence by anyone’s definition, with a portico of four columns atop the steps, rising almost the entire height of the building, and although Grace did not know much about architecture, the aged stone and fine, classical proportions of the façade gave him the sense that this was the real thing and not some modern pastiche.

Either way, he could not imagine how many millions it would be worth. Tens, probably; yet all his investigations into Gavin Daly’s background had yielded nothing criminal. A wily character who sailed close to the wind, but not a crook. Grace felt sorry for him. A lonely man at the end of his life, his sister brutally killed. Did all this wealth give him any comfort or joy?

Parked near the entrance, close to an elaborate fountain adorned with stone figurines, was an elderly navy blue Mercedes limousine with an even more elderly uniformed chauffeur.

Grace rang the front doorbell, aware of the CCTV cameras scrutinizing him, wondering if he would be let in after their previous altercation. A good couple of minutes later the uniformed housekeeper opened it, and greeted him in her pleasant rural Sussex burr. ‘Good morning, sir. I’ll take you through to Mr Daly.’

He noticed a large suitcase standing by the front door, then followed her as she walked slowly and stiffly across the hallway, and knocked on the door to Gavin Daly’s study.

Grace went in, breathing in the dry reek of old cigar smoke, which seemed ingrained in the oak panelling and the furniture. He’d always liked the smell, because it reminded him of his father, who enjoyed the occasional cigar. Daly, dressed in a crisply pressed sports jacket, checked shirt, cavalry twill trousers and suede brogues, stood up. ‘How can I help you, Detective Superintendent?’ he said, looking distinctly uneasy. He strode across the room with his stick, shook Grace’s hand with his own bony grip, then ushered him to a sofa, and perched on the one opposite.

‘I hope you don’t mind me popping in to see you, sir?’