Dead Man's Time

last time he had looked at it was to check the serial number, after he had become an expert in watches and realized it possibly had a high value. He had been right.
    The watch was extremely rare and even in its busted form had a value of at least two million pounds today. Not that he or Aileen needed the money or would ever have sold it. They had both wanted
to keep it as it was, the day he had been given it. Often he had thought of having it repaired and using it, wearing it with pride, but he could never bring himself to do it. With this busted watch
he felt a connection with his father and he was scared to lose that.
    He had never questioned in his mind how his father, a humble stevedore, had come by something so valuable. He’d stolen it from somewhere, almost certainly.
    As executor of his sister’s will, Gavin knew she’d left everything to her granddaughter, with the exception of some bequests to her staff and to charity. As he stared at it, tears
welling in his eyes, a voice from the past came back to him, like a ghost. It was long, long, ago.
    On the Manhattan wharf in 1922. As he stood there, a small boy, with his sister and his aunt, the youth with a cap, pushing through the crowd, thrusting a heavy brown-paper bag into his hand,
containing a gun, the watch and the newspaper front page.
    Watch the numbers.
    He had been trying to puzzle out what the boy had meant for ninety years. He was scared he would go to his grave never knowing.
    Tears rolled down his cheeks. He felt an unbearable emptiness.
    He stared at the watch.
I’m going to get you back
, he promised silently.
I don’t care what it costs, I’m getting you back.

27
    Gareth Dupont liked modern churches. In particular he liked the Church of the Good Shepherd in Portslade. The district to the west of Brighton, inland from Shoreham Harbour,
was where he had lived as a child, and he had always been drawn to the sharp, angular brick building.
Surely God didn’t just do old stuff?
he always thought. He always felt more in
tune communing with God in here than in some dusty old place.
    He entered beneath a sign which proclaimed: THERE ARE NO STRANGERS IN THIS CHURCH, ONLY FRIENDS YOU HAVEN’T MET . He breathed in the smell of dry wood, polish and
candle wax, and walked a short distance along the aisle and sat down, placing his copy of the
Argus
next to him. Then he knelt, closed his eyes and pressed his hands together, the way his
mother had taught him, the way you were supposed to pray. He was
supposed
to be in a Catholic church, but he preferred Anglican, and he figured that would be okay with God. Particularly as
the Anglican church was okay with divorce, thanks to Henry VIII, and, by inference, infidelity. And he was currently mixing it with two ladies: one single and one very married. Playing with fire.
He liked fire.
    When he left it was 7.15 p.m. He needed to hurry home to shower and change; he was picking up Suki Yang at 8 p.m. and taking her for a meal at Spoons. A couple of hours ago he’d been
worrying about taking her to such an expensive place and wondering whether to go for something cheaper. But now he felt much better about it.
    He climbed into the Porsche, but kept the roof shut, and keyed in a number on his phone.
    A crisp, hostile voice he recognized answered.
    ‘It’s Gareth Dupont,’ he said.
    ‘I don’t like being called on my mobile – what do you want?’
    ‘I just saw the
Argus.’
    ‘What about it?’
    ‘It’s pretty tempting.’
    ‘Are you insane?’
    ‘Not at all. I’d like to talk business. Like – renegotiate terms?’
    ‘I’m not talking any more on this phone. I’ll meet you at the Albion pub, Church Road, Hove at 8 p.m.’
    Dupont was thinking about his date with Suki Yang. ‘Eight’s difficult.’
    ‘Not for me it isn’t.’

28
    Trudie’s was one of the few perks of Sussex House, Roy Grace thought. The former CID HQ – now renamed, in the ever changing police world, as the Force Crime and
Justice Department – was situated on a dull industrial estate. But this mobile cafe, a short walk away, produced the best bacon butties to be had in the county, along with the cheeriest staff
behind the counter. Despite Cleo’s best efforts at persuading him to eat a healthy diet, Roy Grace had picked up a fried egg and bacon sarnie from them on his way in at 7 a.m.
    Then he had become so absorbed in checking through the overnight logs of serious crimes in Sussex, responding to a ton of