Dead Man's Time

colleague, please?’
    The Detective Lieutenant nodded.
    Campbell knelt and took the object the diver passed to him in his gloved hand. It was a length of very old, frayed rope, with tendrils of weed on it. Then, with both of them pulling, the diver
steadily climbed the ladder, hauling something up by the rope that was clearly extremely heavy.
    Lucas leaned over and helped too, while Gavin sat mesmerized.
    A bundle of black fishing net slowly broke the surface, covered in weed, with chunks of wet mud sliding from it. There was something inside it that looked like a tarpaulin. A large cement block
was tied to the bottom of the net, secured with very old rope wound around it several times in all directions. A crab scuttled off and fell back into the dark water.
    Grace watched, equally mesmerized, feeling a lump in his throat for the old man.
    Lucas Daly, Stuart Campbell and Tommy Lovell, the diver, finally hauled the whole thing over the side of the boat and lowered it onto the deck. Mud oozed all around it, as water pooled across
the deck. Laid out, it was a good six feet in length.
    Gavin Daly was trembling. With fenders lowered, the police launch moved alongside, and Grace, flanked by Pat Lanigan and Aaron Cobb, had to resist the temptation to jump aboard and hold the old
man’s hand.
    The diver produced a sheath knife and began cutting away at the netting. A crew member of the police launch jumped aboard the dive boat with a line, ran it through a mooring eye at the stern,
then wound it around a cleat on the launch; then he did the same with another line at the bow.
    But none of the three detectives on the launch moved. They all watched. Sensing something that, at this moment at least, they should only be observing.
    Lovell, helped by Campbell, pulled away the severed strands of fishing net, exposing the cracked tarpaulin beneath. The diver turned to Gavin Daly, as if seeking his approval. The old man
nodded.
    Above them the traffic roared. The
thwock-thwock-thwock
of the helicopter continued. Like a surgeon, the diver made a careful incision in the tarpaulin, a few inches at first, then
wider, cutting steadily all the way along. Then the two men pulled it open, as if it were the chest cavity of a post-mortem victim.
    Gavin Daly fell down onto his knees beside it. Grace could see tears rolling down his face.
    He could see inside the tarpaulin now. Bones. A whole tangle of skeletal remains. Every bit of flesh, skin, muscle and sinew gone, picked clean long ago by scavengers that had found ways in
through the cracks. And Roy Grace was experienced enough to tell, even from several yards away, that it wasn’t animal bones he was looking at.
    At one end, he could recognize fibula, tibia, metatarsal, cuboid, cuneiform bones, and wished he had a forensic anthropologist present who could have given them all detailed information on what
lay before them.
    A few moments later as the two men exposed the full length of the remains, he saw a human skull. Its rictus grin seemed to be saying,
Hey guys, what kept ya?
    Gavin Daly pressed his face into the mud and water beside the tarpaulin, sobbing his heart out.
    The three detectives stood watching, as if unsure what to do next.
    Gavin Daly raised his head, moved closer to the tarpaulin, and peered in. Lucas went across and laid a hand tenderly on his father’s shoulder. Then the old man reached in, and pulled out a
short length of thin, discoloured chain. He put it on the deck beside him, then looked inside again, and moments later, lifted out another discoloured chain, with a rusty tiny object on it. He held
it up to his neck.
    Grace, followed by Lanigan and Cobb, boarded the vessel and walked over to him. ‘What is it, Mr Daly?’ Grace asked. But he already knew the answer.
    ‘You want to tell us what’s going on here?’ Aaron Cobb demanded, more than a little insensitively.
    The old man, through his tears, turned to him and held up the necklace. Even thought it was badly corroded, Grace could make out that it was a tiny rabbit.
    ‘My dad always wore this,’ he said, through his tears. ‘It was given to him by his dad, who was a member of the Irish Dead Rabbits Gang. I used to admire it when I was a kid
and he promised me that one day I could have it.’ Then he picked up the corroded length of chain. ‘This was the chain my dad had on his pocket watch.’ He turned back and stared at
the skull. Then he put out a shaking, bony hand, blotched with liver