Dead Man's Time

black Venetian mask, naked except for a pair of shiny, wet-look
thigh boots. She had an attractive body, Grace thought, but not in the first bloom of youth. In particular he noticed the bruises below her right collar bone.
    A female member of the team handed her a dressing gown.
    ‘Tickling your fancy, is she?’ Norman Potting asked Gareth Dupont.
    ‘That’s not even funny,’ Gareth Dupont said. ‘She’s got nothing to do with this.’
    Grace stared in growing disbelief at the bruises. He knew them, and he wished to hell he did not. Then, with difficulty, he focused his attention on the suspect.
    ‘Gareth Ricardo Dupont,’ Roy Grace said, ‘evidence has come to light, as a result of which I’m arresting you on suspicion of robbery and the murder of Mrs Aileen
McWhirter. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in
evidence. Is that clear?’
    ‘You sure know how to pick your moment.’
    ‘It’s known as getting your comeuppance!’ Norman Potting said to Dupont. Then, unable to resist, staring pointedly down at the man’s rapidly shrinking member, he added,
‘Or in your case, more of a
comedownance
.’
    Grace stared at the woman in the mask. He hoped she would keep it on, to preserve her anonymity and her dignity for just a little while longer. This was not about her.
    But Sarah Courteney went ahead and removed it.

63
    From an upstairs window of his new home, where he had set up an observation post and where he sat in darkness, Amis Smallbone waited for Roy Grace to arrive home. It was half
past midnight.
    Smallbone had rented the place fully furnished. It was modern stuff, really not to his taste, but it was a lot better than the shithole he had just vacated.
    Tomorrow, he was expecting delivery of two pieces of electronic kit. One was an up-to-date, encrypted police radio from a bent technician who had worked in the Police Communications Department.
The other was a scanning device, which he had bought through a contact of Henry Tilney, that could pick up any phone call, whether a landline or mobile, within a two-hundred-metre radius, and read
any email or text.
    He looked forward to becoming fully acquainted with his new neighbours’ movements. But what he was looking forward to most of all was Detective Superintendent Roy Grace discovering who his
new neighbour was. After years of the detective being in his face, the thought that he was now going to be in Grace’s face was very sweet indeed.
    But not as sweet as all the different possibilities for destroying his life that were going through his mind. As if picking up his thoughts through the wall, he heard a baby crying. The Grace
baby.
    He poured himself another large whisky, and lit another cigarette. Then stiffened.
    Someone was walking through the entrance gate: a man in a suit and tie, holding a bulging briefcase.
    Hey, Noah!
Smallbone mouthed silently.
Daddy’s home!

64
    Gavin Daly poured himself another large Midleton whiskey and relit his cigar. It was just gone half past midnight and he was wide awake, fuming. The news, earlier, from the New
York nautical timepiece dealer Julius Rosenblaum, had lit the fire inside him. He was a man on a mission. A man on fire.
    Laid out on his desk in front of him was a three-foot-tall Ingraham chiming mantel clock. Beside it lay his specialist timepiece tool kit spread out, each item in its velvet sleeve. Also on the
table lay the Colt .32 revolver, with six live rounds in the chambers, that he had been handed all those years back on Pier 54. It was heavy and cold and smelled of the gun-oil with which he
lovingly cleaned it every year, on the anniversary of his father’s disappearance.
    Inside the clock’s fine inlaid mahogany case was a round brass gong. It was hollow, and comprised two brass discs screwed together. It was a slow and intricate job but finally he carefully
removed the gong, laid it down, then began undoing each of the screws. None of them had been touched in over the one hundred and fifty years since the clock had been made, and it took him time to
free each one in turn. He was perspiring by the time he had finished. He laid the discs down and then picked up the revolver, and laid it in one. It fitted snugly.
    He went through to the kitchen, glad that Betty was up in her room, probably asleep, and helped himself to a couple of