Dead Man's Time

sat for a moment,
pensively. He was thinking about the apartment rental, and the next lease payment due on the Porsche. Maybe a bit of prayer was needed, which he hadn’t done in a while, not in any serious
way. Although he was always wary of praying too soon after he had pissed off God. Better to leave some distance.
    He drove off, heading down into Newhaven. Then, as he threaded through the town, heading for the coast road that would take him home to the Marina Village, the
Argus
newspaper banner
hoarding outside a newsagent’s proclaimed, in large black letters:
    McWHIRTER MURDER £100,000 REWARD
    Ignoring the car behind him, Gareth Dupont slammed on the brakes and pulled over onto the kerb. He ran into the shop, bought a copy of the paper, then stood in the entrance reading the frontpage
splash, ignoring the traffic jam along the narrow street his car was causing.
    Gavin Daly, brother of Aileen McWhirter, who was murdered in her Withdean Road mansion last week, has announced a reward of £100,000 for information leading to the
     arrest and conviction of his sister’s brutal killers.
    He read on. There was a phone number to the CID Incident Room, and also the one for anonymous calls to Crimestoppers.
    He grinned. Sometimes in life you got lucky! He mouthed, silently,
Thank you, God. All’s forgiven!

26
    The Scenes of Crime Officers had finished at his sister’s house, and the rota of scene guards had been stood down. Now, at six o’clock in the evening, beneath a
clear sky, Gavin Daly sat in the back of his Mercedes at the top of the driveway down to the house.
    Yellow police signs had been placed a short distance apart, either side of the driveway, each with the same wording on them:
    WERE YOU HERE BETWEEN 6 P.M. AND 10.30 P.M. LAST TUESDAY, 21 AUGUST?
    DID YOU SEE A VAN HERE?
    IF SO, PLEASE CONTACT THE POLICE AND ASK FOR
    THE INCIDENT ROOM FOR OPERATION FLOUNDER.
    01273 470101
    OR PHONE CRIMESTOPPERS ANONYMOUSLY ON:
    0800 555 111
    He instructed his driver to take him down to the house. Then he climbed out, told the driver to leave, that he would call him when he needed him back, walked around to the front of the silent
house, and entered the porch.
    His hand was shaking as he put the key in the lock of the front door, and he had a lump in his throat.
    Then he hesitated, unsure if he actually wanted to go in. Except that he had work to do.
    It was a warm evening, the garden was alive with birdsong, wasps, butterflies, and he could hear, a short distance away, the swish . . . swish . . . swish of a secluded neighbour’s lawn
sprinkler. Summer was officially coming to an end in a few days. How many more summers would he see? he wondered.
    How many more did he want to see?
    Any?
    Everyone he had ever loved was now dead. His mother in a hail of bullets in her bedroom. His father dragged away into the night. He had buried two wives and his brother-in-law. Now, when the
Coroner released her body, he would be burying his sister.
    He did not know how many years he had left before his son would be burying him. He was still mobile, and, despite the walking stick, he remained fairly agile. Thanks to the skills of a local
plastic surgeon, his face still looked two decades or so younger than his years. He’d beaten off heart trouble with a triple bypass, although he had angina now. He’d had his prostate
removed. He’d reached what everyone called a ripe old age. But he did not feel ripe. He felt rotten.
    And unfulfilled.
    He twisted the key and pushed the door open, then stepped inside, carefully using his walking stick to steady himself on the floor plates the SOCOs had laid down, the smells of the place
instantly saddening him further. Old age. Furniture polish. Decaying fabrics. And the new smells of the Crime Scene chemicals. He looked at the empty space, a darker colour than the rest of the
floor, where a particularly fine hall table had stood for decades. At the rectangles on the walls where his sister’s stunning art collection had once hung. The silence was so leaden he felt
it on him like a heavy coat.
    His aunt used to take him and Aileen to church every Sunday. But he’d not had any time for religion as a child. And even less so now. Sure, there had been a time when he was happy –
or at least content. He’d been one of the biggest players in antiques in the country. He’d enjoyed the entertaining, the celebrity that went with it, the customers he befriended. But
all the time it had