Dead Man's Time

darling, you OK?
    He tapped out a quick reply.
    Another 30 mins. Sorry. XXXXX
    Then he went back into the hall and stared up the staircase at the dark landing. He looked around but could not see a light switch. So he climbed up the stairs, then turned on the torch, again
looking for a switch, and still could not find one.
    He flashed the beam up and down, still without seeing any switch. Then he pushed open the door into Aileen McWhirter’s bedroom and, as he pointed the beam into the darkness and stepped
forward, something hard struck his shins with such force he shouted out in pain, lost his balance and fell to the carpeted floor, the torch rolling away from him.

41
    All his life, Roy Grace had been able to think clearly under pressure. At this moment, in the pitch darkness, as his torch stopped several feet away, he knew his assailant
would be expecting him to lurch forward to grab it. So instead, he rolled sharply away from it, connecting with something hard but yielding right behind him.
    ‘Ouch! Shit. Owwww.’
    Someone cursing dropped something which thudded onto the floor. A torch? A gun? Then he heard the heavier thud of someone falling over. He twisted around in the darkness, balling his right fist,
ready to punch out, rolled fast, grabbed his torch and shone it in the direction of the sounds.
    And saw Gavin Daly, in a green suit, flat on his back, tie askew, eyes shut. For a moment, he thought he had killed the old man. He knelt and shone the beam directly on his face; after a few
moments, Daly blinked.
    ‘You okay?’ Grace asked.
    The old man blinked again, worriedly. Grace shone the beam on his own face for a few seconds, so Daly could see who it was. ‘Jesus!’
    ‘Are you okay?’ he repeated.
    ‘I’m okay,’ Daly gasped.
    ‘You scared the shit out of me.’
    ‘Next time come in a bloody marked police car,’ Daly gasped again. ‘And what the hell are you doing here anyway?’ He struggled with his arms, pushing himself upright,
then exhaled.
    ‘Perhaps you can tell me what you’re doing here, sir,’ Grace said. He stood up and switched on the bedroom light, then helped the old man to his feet. Then he saw his
silver-headed cane on the floor – and realized that was what he had been hit with. He handed it back to Daly.
    ‘I’ve just lost my sister, the only person I had left in the world who I loved.’ He shrugged. ‘I just wanted to be here – to feel her presence. Okay? And one of
your officers told me I should keep an eye on this house. He said the bastards might return and take more stuff, or tell others about the things they didn’t take. I’ve had the most
valuable items they left moved into storage. But someone has been here and taken something.’
    ‘What was it?’ Grace knelt, and examined the painful weals above his ankles.
    ‘Sorry if I hurt you.’
    ‘You’re bloody strong – especially for a man your age,’ Grace said, unable to conceal the admiration in his voice.
    ‘Apologies, but I didn’t know who the hell you were. I thought you might be the bastard who took the photograph of the Patek Philippe watch from Aileen’s album, coming back for
something else.’
    ‘Aileen’s album?’
    ‘It was here, in her bureau, on that Thursday evening when I came here, minus the photograph of the watch.’
    ‘It wasn’t removed by one of my team?’
    Daly shook his head. ‘No, I asked your Detective Branson colleague. It was the album with the pictures of all the high-value contents. It must have been one of the burglars who came back
and took that one photograph to make it harder for you lot to identify the watch, do you think? My guess is they took that photo, as the watch is not insured, so the insurance company would have no
record of it.’
    Grace frowned. If that was the case, it meant the robbery team was even bigger than they had suspected. ‘It’s a possibility, sir, but that must have happened in the past forty-eight
hours – no one would have had access while the house was sealed as a crime scene.’
    ‘Well, I decided to lie in wait for them if they did come back,’ Daly replied. ‘I barely sleep these days, anyway. But I thought you were meant to have a round-the-clock guard
on this house?’
    He was right, Grace knew. But he couldn’t tell him that budget cuts meant that wasn’t possible. ‘It’s being patrolled hourly, sir.’
    ‘It is? Well, I’ve been here since six o’-bloody-clock and I haven’t seen a police car all