Dead Man's Time

uncertainly. ‘Just a little family dispute, Marjorie.’
    ‘Shall I call the police?’
    ‘That won’t be necessary.’
    She retreated, slamming the door hastily behind her.
    ‘Dad, I can explain,’ Lucas said.
    ‘I said I’m listening. But I know what your involvement is, you little shit. Money to pay your debts, right?’
    ‘Because you wouldn’t give me any.’
    ‘At your age, isn’t it about time you learned to support yourself, instead of sponging off me and your wife? Or are you planning to kill a member of the family every time you need
money?’
    ‘Dad, I told you, that was never the plan. It just all went – it went – wrong. No one ever intended to harm Aileen, you have to understand that!’
    ‘I only understand one thing. My sister is dead, and the watch that was in her safe, that belonged to the two of us, is lying on that table. And you two are behind this.’
    Daly swung the gun on Pollock. ‘I want to hear from you. I want the whole damned story. I want to know everything you know.’
    ‘Don’t kill me!’ Pollock pleaded, raising his hands. ‘Please don’t kill me.’ Heavy beads of sweat were guttering down his face, and he was shaking.
    ‘Why not? Did your thugs show any mercy to my sister? I don’t think so, Mr Pollock.’
    ‘Please, I’ll tell you everything I know.’
    ‘Go right back in time. I want to know about Pegleg. I want to know about the night he shot my mum and took my dad away. How much do you know about that? What are your family stories? Did
your uncle boast to you about the night he murdered my mum?’
    ‘I know a little of the story,’ he yammered. ‘My – my dad used to talk about my uncle. I grew up in Brooklyn until my dad was put in prison. My mum was from England and
she took me back there. My dad told me my uncle, Mick – Pegleg – was murdered a few years after your dad.’
    ‘What a sad loss,’ Gavin Daly said acidly. ‘Your uncle was a murderer and your dad a jailbird. And you’re a murderer. What a nice family. You can all have a happy reunion
in Hell.’
    ‘I know a bit about how your dad died.’
    Gavin Daly stared at him in silence for some moments. The words seemed to echo inside his head, and to go on echoing. He steadied himself on his stick, his hands shaking. ‘What do you
know?’
    ‘You ever heard the expression,
take a long walk down a short pier
?’
    Daly stared back at him icily.
    ‘My dad told me one day about Brendan Daly – your father. They took him for that walk one night.’
    ‘Which night? The night they took him from our home? Or did they keep him prisoner for a while and torture him?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘What pier?’
    ‘There was a wharf at the end of the tobacco warehouse beneath the Manhattan Bridge. Almost all of that old Brooklyn waterfront’s gone. Redeveloped.’
    Gavin stood still, letting it sink in, continuing to point the gun alternately at Pollock, then Lucas. There was no surprise, not now, not after all this time.
    ‘There was snow on the ground,’ Pollock said. ‘My dad told me it was lucky that the cops weren’t very smart back then, otherwise they might have noticed.’
    ‘Noticed what?’
    ‘There were five sets of footprints walking along the pier out into the East River, and only four sets walking back the other way.’
    ‘Three and a half, if your uncle was one of them.’
    Pollock looked at him warily, as if unsure whether he should smile.
    ‘Did your dad say anything to you about numbers?’ Gavin Daly asked.
    ‘Numbers?’
    ‘Twelve numbers.
9 5 3 7 0 4 0 4 2 4 0 4.
Those mean anything to you?’
    Pollock frowned. ‘Can you repeat them?’
    Daly said them again.
    Pollock shook his head.
    ‘I was about to board the
Mauretania
, with Aileen and my aunt Oonagh. Someone, a messenger, came up to me,’ Gavin Daly said. ‘He gave me the watch, busted and stopped
like it is now; he gave me this gun; and he gave me a newspaper cutting with four names written on it – your uncle among them – and those twelve numbers. And he gave me a message.
“
Watch the numbers
,” he said, then he vanished.’
    Now Julius Rosenblaum was frowning. ‘What were those numbers again, Gavin?’
    Daly repeated them and Rosenblaum scribbled them down. Then he stared at them for some moments, and frowned. ‘I’ve done it again – I’ve reversed them! This is really
interesting!’ He held up the sheet on which he had written, then rewritten, the numbers, excitedly.
    ‘I