Dead Man's Grip

him in his divorce, instead of the rather wishy-washy solicitor he had.
    ‘Mrs Chase,’ Roy Grace said, ‘we have some intelligence on the Revere family. Do you want to hear it before you make your final decision?’
    ‘Anything you can tell me would be helpful.’
    ‘OK. Until recently they owned a club in Brooklyn called the Concubine. They would invite their enemies there for a drink and when they arrived, as special guests of honour, these unfortunates
would be invited downstairs to the VIP lounge. When they entered they would be greeted by three men, one of whom was a tall American-Italian charmer nicknamed Dracula, because he looked like Bella Lugosi. A fourth man, whom they would never see, would shoot them in the back of the head with a silenced handgun. Dracula would drain their blood into a bathtub. Another guy, who had started out as a butcher, would dismember their cadavers into six pieces. The fourth guy would package up each limb, the torso and the head, and dispose of them in various waste dumps around New York and in the Hudson River. It is estimated they murdered over one hundred people. Sal Giordino, Tony Revere’s grandfather, is currently serving eleven consecutive life sentences for this, with a minimum of eighty-seven years in jail. Do you understand the people you would be dealing with?’
    ‘I’ve been Googling them,’ she said. ‘There’s a lot of stuff about Sal Giordino, but I’ve not found anything about his daughter. But from what you’ve told me about their world, isn’t this all the more reason for me to go there and try to talk reason to them?’ she said.
    ‘These people don’t reason,’ Grace said.
    ‘At least give me the chance to try. Do you have their address? The home address?’
    ‘What about emailing or phoning Mrs Revere first, to see what reaction you get?’ Grace asked her.
    ‘No, it’s got to be face to face, mother to mother,’ Carly replied.
    The two detectives looked at each other.
    ‘I can find the address out for you on one condition,’ Roy Grace said.
    ‘Which is?’
    ‘You allow us to arrange an escort for you in New York.’
    After a long silence she said, ‘Could – could I make that decision?’
    ‘No,’ he answered.

75
    At 10.17 an alert pinged on Tooth’s laptop. A voice file was recording. Which meant someone was speaking inside Carly Chase’s house.
    He clicked and listened in. She was on the phone to a woman called Claire, asking about flights to New York today and confirming she had a valid visa waiver, from a trip last year. It sounded like Claire was a travel agent. She reeled off a list of flight times. After some moments of checking availability, she booked Carly Chase on a 14.55 British Airways flight from London to Kennedy Airport, New York, this afternoon. Then they discussed hotels. The travel agent made a reservation for her at the Sheraton at Kennedy Airport.
    Tooth glanced at his watch, double-checking the time and smiling. She was making this very easy for him. She had no idea!
    Next he heard Carly Chase speak to a taxi company called Streamline. She booked a car to Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, to collect her at 11.30 a.m. – just over an hour’s time. Then she made a further call.
    It was to someone called Sarah. The woman sounded like a friend. Carly Chase explained to her that Tyler had a dental appointment at 11.30 a.m. the following morning to have an adjustment made to his tooth brace, which was hurting him. Ordinarily his gran could have taken him, but her doctor had booked her in for a scan on something he wasn’t happy about in her tummy and Carly did not want her to miss that. She explained she had been planning to take Tyler herself, but something urgent had come up – would it be possible for Sarah to take him?
    Sarah could not, because of her father, whose wrist was indeed broken, but she said that Justin had taken the week off to do some work on their new house and she was sure he could pick Tyler up. She said she would call back in a few minutes.
    Tooth made himself another coffee and smoked another cigarette. Then his laptop pinged again and he listened to Sarah telling Carly Chase that everything was fine. Justin, who was presumably her husband, would pick Tyler up from school at 11.15 tomorrow. Carly Chase gave her the address and thanked her.
    Tooth stared down at his notepad, on which he had written Carly Chase’s flight details. She’d only booked one way, on an open ticket. He