Dead Man's Time

they believed the perpetrators had worn.
    It was strange, he thought, how in these past two months since Noah’s birth, violence was affecting him in ways it never had previously. One of the many books he had read on parenting had
predicted that would happen.
    Above the photograph in front of him on the whiteboard was handwritten, in clear but untidy capitals, in black marker pen:
    OPERATION FLOUNDER
    DECEASED. AILEEN McWHIRTER. D.O.B. 24 APRIL 1914.
    RELEVANT PERIOD (ESTIMATED)
    SUNDAY, 19 AUGUST – WEDNESDAY, 22 AUGUST.
    Below was an inventory, provided by the dead woman’s brother, Gavin Daly, of the items he was certain had been stolen from her home.
    But what absorbed Roy Grace at this moment were two sheets of computer printout showing standard family-tree icons and graphs.
    He followed the horizontal then the vertical lines. There was a horizontal black one, with an arrow to
Gordon Thomas McWhirter. Deceased. DOB 26.03.1912
. Her husband, he presumed.
    Then a vertically descending red arrow to the deceased children, and a further arrow to the grandchild. Then to their left, another vertical red arrow pointed to Brendan Daly and Sheenagh Daly.
Beneath Sheenagh Daly was written,
DOB 19.09.1897. Deceased. 18.02.1922.
Beneath Brendan was written,
DOB 07.08.1891. Missing, presumed dead.
    He frowned, thinking back to the books in the dead woman’s library on the early history of New York.
    ‘Ever see that movie,
Gangs of New York
?’ Glenn Branson said, suddenly, standing over his shoulder.
    Grace turned. ‘A while ago, but I fell asleep during it.’
    Branson grinned. ‘Yep, well, that’s what happens at your age!’
    ‘Sod off!’
    Branson patted him on the shoulder. ‘Don’t take it personally; it’s a fact.’
    Grace levelled him with his eyes.
    ‘All that stuff predates Aileen McWhirter. But it gives interesting background during the time the lady was a kid,’ Glenn Branson said, serious now. ‘Back in the 1800s there
were gang wars between the native Americans and the Irish immigrants. We’re picking up decades later, when the White Hand Gang was the principal mob of the Irish Mafia. They controlled the
Manhattan and Brooklyn waterfronts – all the wharfs and piers. Their boss was a character called Dinny Meehan – he was the guy who kicked Frankie Yale and Johnny Torrio, who headed the
Black Hand Gang, out of New York, along with Al Capone, which was why Capone ended up in Chicago. Capone came back to New York with a vengeance in the late-twenties, wiped out the Irish Mafia and
took control. Dinny Meehan was murdered in 1920. Brendan Daly was one of his lieutenants, who was missing, presumed murdered, in a power struggle for control of the White Hand Gang.’
    ‘Thanks for the history lesson!’
    Branson looked at him then shook his head. ‘Didn’t they teach you anything at school?’
    Grace gave him a wry smile. ‘Obviously nothing that mattered!’
    Branson tapped his own chest. ‘Yeah, well, we descendants of slaves need to know about history.’
    ‘You’re not descended from a slave,’ Grace said with a grin. ‘Your dad was a bus driver in London.’
    Ordinarily, his mate would have come back at him with some riposte or a movie quote – he was a total movie buff. But this morning he gave him a strangely sad smile. Grace could read defeat
in his eyes, and that upset him.
    Glenn Branson’s marital life was a train wreck. Grace had helped him out for most of this past year by letting him lodge in his empty house, and the Detective Sergeant managed to keep that
looking, most of the time, like a train wreck too. Feeding Grace’s goldfish, Marlon, seemed to be the limit of Glenn Branson’s housekeeping skills.
    Behind him was a familiar rustling sound. He turned to see that Detective Sergeant Bella Moy was now seated at her workstation, red Maltesers box in front of her. She seemed to live on the
chocolates. Yet she never appeared to put on weight. And recently, he’d noticed, she seemed to have blossomed.
    In her mid-thirties, living with and looking after her sick, elderly mother, Bella used to wear drab clothes, had dull hair and seemed permanently melancholic. But lately she looked a lot more
glamorous.
    He watched her pop a Malteser in her mouth. Heard the crunch. And suddenly he found himself rather fancying one himself. As if clocking this, she held the box out towards him. He took one, and
instantly regretted it, because the moment he had eaten it, he