Dead Man's Time

the front-seat headrest, holding his phone in his hand, terminating a call. ‘Roy, I think we’ve found our man. There’s just been a
shooting in a Manhattan antique dealer’s office. Victim identified as Eamonn Pollock, seriously injured.’

115
    The Lincoln Town Car cruised slowly along the vast, ugly, concrete and brick wharf buildings. As they passed the closed steel doors of a loading bay, Gavin Daly, peering out of
the rear window, said to the driver, ‘Here!’
    The car pulled to a halt outside the entrance, marked P IER 92 and with a big yellow stripe around a concrete pillar.
    ‘Wait for us,’ Daly said. ‘We’ll be a while.’
    ‘I’ll be right here, sir!’ The driver jumped out and helped Gavin Daly to his feet, handing him his cane. Lucas Daly followed his father into the open entrance to the
building.
    Gavin Daly read the company names on the wall, then went through a door into a huge restaurant. It had a high ceiling with an exposed metal grid superstructure. A window ran the full length,
giving a fine view across a small marina, the West River, and New Jersey on the far shore.
    Mid-morning, the place was empty. Shiny wooden tables were neatly laid with place settings and bottles of ketchup. To their left was a curved bar, behind which was a row of tall copper beer
vats. A balding, middle-aged bartender, polishing a beer glass, gave them a friendly smile. ‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’
    ‘We’re looking for Hudson Scuba,’ Gavin Daly replied. ‘They told us to come here.’
    ‘You’re in the right place.’ The man pointed. ‘Go through that far door; you’ll see them on the boat, down at the dock.’
    They walked through the bar and as Gavin Daly stepped outside, he stopped in his tracks, the memories catching him like a snare.
    Something twisted inside his heart.
    It was different now, of course it was. Ninety years later.
    But it was the same, too.
    The same place.
    His eyes moistened.
    He barely noticed the small powerboats and yachts berthed along the marina’s pontoons. He was staring beyond them at the ugly, grey, two-storey superstructure of Pier 54 in the distance,
stretching out into the calm, muddy-looking water.
    The very place he had stood, back in 1922, with his sister, Aileen, and his aunt, Oonagh, waiting to board the
Mauretania.
    The very place where the messenger had pushed through the melee of departing passengers, and handed him the package with the gun, pocket watch and newspaper cutting with the numbers and the
names.
    And the message.
    Watch the numbers.
    A sign in front of him in large red letters on a white background read, PRIVATE PROPERTY. OWNERS AND THEIR GUESTS ONLY ON CHELSEA PIERS .
    Beyond was a steep, planked gangway down onto the dock. A substantial open fibreglass day boat, with twin outboards and a steering wheel and midship-mounted controls, was moored alongside. One
man, in his early twenties, with bleached hair and wearing a wetsuit, stood on the boat, while another, older, stood on the dock passing him scuba tanks, fins, a snorkel, and then a cool box.
    ‘Hudson Scuba?’ Gavin Daly called out, as he made his way carefully down.
    ‘That’s us!’ the older man, good-looking and tanned, said. ‘Mr Daly?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I’m Stuart Campbell, and our diver today is Tommy Lovell.’
    ‘Thank you, gentlemen, I really appreciate this. How do I pay you? You take cards?’
    ‘We do indeed, sir.’
    Stuart Campbell gripped Gavin’s arm and stick, and with Lucas holding his other arm, they helped him aboard. Campbell indicated a wide, cushioned bench seat in the stern.
‘You’ll be most comfortable there, sir. Driest place, too.’ Then Campbell ducked down beneath the helm and produced a credit-card machine, as if by magic. ‘We charge seven
hundred and fifty bucks the first hour, then five hundred an hour after that, sir; fuel’s extra.’ He handed Daly the machine.
    The old man slipped in his American Express card, then tapped in the information requested, and handed the machine back to Stuart Campbell.
    Campbell looked at it, and then said, dubiously, ‘I think you’ve put a zero in the wrong place, Mr Daly.’
    Gavin Daly studied it, then shook his head. ‘No, that’s what I said to the person who answered your phone. That I would give you a bonus of ten thousand dollars for doing this right
away.’ He put his hand against the raised side of the seat to support himself, as the boat rocked in the wash.
    ‘Well,