Dead Man's Time

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