Dead Man's Time

Puerto Banus Harbour?’
    ‘I’ve no idea.’
    ‘No idea? Really? You and your Albanian thug, Boris Karloff, went to see them, right?’
    Lucas Daly tried to think fast, on his feet. Not one of his natural talents. ‘Yeah – like – we had a chat with them. They were a bit pissed – been out clubbing. They were
fine when we left them. Like I told you, they said Eamonn Pollock had gone to New York. We searched the boat and found the safe, which had nothing in it. Then we left.’
    ‘I’ve just had a visit from the Senior Investigating Officer on the case, Lucas. He made it pretty damned clear he thinks I’m involved in their deaths.’
    ‘They were drunk when we left them, Dad. Maybe they fell overboard.’
    ‘Did you look up at the night sky?’
    ‘Up at the night sky? What do you mean?’
    ‘Did you look up at the bloody night sky when you were there? After you and Boris left them?’
    ‘His name’s not Boris; it’s Augustine Krasniki.’
    ‘So what did you see when you looked up at the night sky?’
    ‘I don’t think I looked up at the night sky at all, Dad.’
    ‘Shame. You know what you’d have seen?’
    ‘No, what?’
    ‘Pigs flying.’
    ‘Yeah, well, it was cloudy that night.’
    ‘Very funny. Listen. I may need to fly to New York at short notice.’
    ‘New York? Why?’
    ‘Because I think the watch might be there and, if it is, I know who has it.’

68
    Roy Grace’s love of Brighton ran deep in his veins. At his wedding, his best man, Dick Pope, had joked with his typical black humour that if Roy was ever unfortunate
enough to be the subject of a postmortem, the pathologist would find the word
Brighton
repeated right through every bone in his body, like in sticks of Brighton rock.
    For over a decade the city’s football team, the Albion, known by locals as the Seagulls, had been without a proper home, and forced to use an athletics stadium. But during the past year,
thanks to the generosity of an individual benefactor, Tony Bloom, and American Express, they now had the Amex Stadium, a building that by general consensus was one of the finest football stadiums
in Europe.
    Wednesdays were not usual nights for a game, but this was an important Championship game. As Roy Grace sat in the traffic jam on the A27, staring at the stunning sweep of the building over to
the right, he felt a great twinge of pride. The building was not only great for the city, it had rekindled his interest in the game, as it had for thousands of other residents of Brighton and
Hove.
    Ten minutes later, parked on the kerb between two marked police cars, he was escorted by Darren Balkham, the Police Football Liaison Officer, wearing a high-viz jacket and uniform cap, to the
Police Observation Room in the North Stand.
    In an elevated position, directly behind the goal posts, the room had a commanding view of the brightly lit pitch and the terraces. The game was in progess and a quick look at the scoreboard
told Grace the score, at the moment, was nil-nil.
    Over twenty thousand of the twenty-seven thousand fans here today were season-ticket holders and there had been a lot of careful strategizing to minimize trouble when the seating areas had been
allocated. One whole section of the East Stand was for families. Next to them were the fans known to be milder mannered. The rowdiest had been placed at the North Stand, close to the observation
room. Visiting fans were grouped in an area on the South Stand.
    The CCTV controllers behind a bank of monitors in this room could zoom any of the stadium’s eighty-seven cameras in on a troublemaker so tightly they could read the time on his or her
watch.
    Balkham introduced Roy Grace to Chris Baker, the Safety Officer, smartly dressed in a grey suit. ‘You’re looking for someone in the crowd – Lucas Daly?’
    ‘That’s right,’ Grace said.
    ‘I’ve already checked out our list of season-ticket holders and he’s not one of them. You don’t know who he might have come with?’
    ‘No. I tried to get hold of him earlier and his wife said he was coming here.’
    Baker led him over to the bank of monitors and sat Grace down next to an operator.
    Although monitoring potential hooliganism was the primary object of the cameras, they had a secondary function for the CID, which was to observe Persons of Interest to the police. In particular,
to watch where local villains were seated, and who they were with. It was a valuable source of intelligence.
    With the