Dead Man's Time

spots, and stroked it. ‘They drowned him, the way some people drown a cat. You’re detectives. Here’s a
homicide staring at you all. They drowned him. They drowned him like a goddamn cat.’ He buried his face in his hands and sobbed again.
    Then he turned and faced the three detectives. ‘Ninety years ago, I made a promise to my dad that one day I would come to New York and find him. That’s what’s going on here.
This is Brendan Daly. He’s my pop. And I’ve found him.’

121
    They took away his belt and his shoes and his cane, and gave him prison-issue paper slippers, several sizes too big, so that he walked with a shuffle that made him look like a
ninety-five-year-old man might be expected to look.
    But Gavin Daly did not care. He was already feeling institutionalized.
    Since being taken ashore in handcuffs, he’d been interviewed by an attorney, then arraigned in front of a sour judge who had refused him bail, remanding him in custody as a flight risk,
then examined by a prison doctor. Now he was ensconced in a cell at the grandly named Manhattan Detention Complex. His attorney told him cheerfully that it used to be known as
The
Tombs.
    He didn’t care.
    He’d found his pop, and avenged him. On the same day. Nothing mattered any more.
    His mood swung from intense sadness to profound happiness. He felt complete, for the first time in his life, as he sat on the hard, blue-foam mattress, writing notes with the ballpoint pen and
paper that he had requested, which had been brought by a sympathetic officer.
    There was a barred window, high up, through which he could hear traffic noise. Life. Yellow cabs, sirens, horns. A Monday night in Manhattan. People meeting friends in bars, having dinner,
hurrying later to catch trains home to the suburbs. Worrying.
    So many people worried.
    Living lives of quiet desperation.
    Had he worried? Had his life been one of
quiet desperation
? What had the ninety-five years, that ended in this tiny prison cell where he could reach out and touch the toilet from his
bunk – if he so wished – amounted to? A hill of beans? Anything at all?
    Young people who dismissed the elderly overlooked one important thing. The older you were, the less you cared. That was the one, great, liberating thing about old age. Really, you didn’t
care any more. You were free.
    He felt free now, like he had never felt free before in his life. He felt happy. In a way that he had never felt happy before.
    Happy in this tiny cell.
    Happier than he had ever been in his grand mansion.
    There was a clank and his cell door opened. In came the officer who had apologized to him for taking his belt and his shoes. He was tubby, close to retirement age, with the face of a man who had
seen it all and had learned that the best way to cope is to smile.
    ‘Lights out soon, Mr Daly, just to give you a five-minute warning to finish your writing. I wanted to check one thing: you don’t eat kosher or halal?’
    Daly shook his head.
    ‘So, right, just so you know, your next meal will be breakfast. Someone will take you over to the shower room first. You’ll be getting cereal, orange – or some other pieces of
fresh fruit – milk, bread and breakfast jelly. You have any problem with any of that? You’re not diabetic or anything?’
    ‘I won’t be needing any breakfast,’ he said.
    ‘Well, you’ll be getting it anyway.’
    Gavin Daly smiled.
    The officer hesitated. ‘We don’t get many folk your age in here. If you need anything, let me know. But don’t miss meals because you don’t get nothing in
between.’
    Daly smiled again. ‘Thank you, I have everything I need. Everything I’ll ever need.’
    That night, for the first time in ninety years, he slept without dreaming.
    He slept the sleep of the dead.

122
    At 8.45 a.m., Glenn Branson picked Roy Grace up from Gatwick Airport in a pool car. ‘Want to go straight to Sussex House, or home first?’
    ‘Home first, please, mate. I want to make sure Cleo’s okay, and I need a shower and change of clothes. So how are you? Ari’s funeral tomorrow, isn’t it? At least
I’ll be able to come now.’
    ‘I’m glad,’ Branson said. ‘Thank you. I think she actually quite liked you.’
    ‘She had a strange way of showing it,’ Grace replied with a grin.
    ‘Yeah.’ Branson sniffed. ‘She had a lot of strange ways.’
    ‘But you’re okay?’
    ‘Yeah, I am. Her sister’s still looking after the kids – she’s staying to take care