Dead Man's Time (46 page)

But it was the same, too.

The same place.

His eyes moistened.

He barely noticed the small powerboats and yachts berthed along the marina’s pontoons. He was staring beyond them at the ugly, grey, two-storey superstructure of Pier 54 in the distance,
stretching out into the calm, muddy-looking water.

The very place he had stood, back in 1922, with his sister, Aileen, and his aunt, Oonagh, waiting to board the
Mauretania.

The very place where the messenger had pushed through the melee of departing passengers, and handed him the package with the gun, pocket watch and newspaper cutting with the numbers and the
names.

And the message.

Watch the numbers.

A sign in front of him in large red letters on a white background read,
PRIVATE PROPERTY. OWNERS AND THEIR GUESTS ONLY ON CHELSEA PIERS
.

Beyond was a steep, planked gangway down onto the dock. A substantial open fibreglass day boat, with twin outboards and a steering wheel and midship-mounted controls, was moored alongside. One
man, in his early twenties, with bleached hair and wearing a wetsuit, stood on the boat, while another, older, stood on the dock passing him scuba tanks, fins, a snorkel, and then a cool box.

‘Hudson Scuba?’ Gavin Daly called out, as he made his way carefully down.

‘That’s us!’ the older man, good-looking and tanned, said. ‘Mr Daly?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m Stuart Campbell, and our diver today is Tommy Lovell.’

‘Thank you, gentlemen, I really appreciate this. How do I pay you? You take cards?’

‘We do indeed, sir.’

Stuart Campbell gripped Gavin’s arm and stick, and with Lucas holding his other arm, they helped him aboard. Campbell indicated a wide, cushioned bench seat in the stern.
‘You’ll be most comfortable there, sir. Driest place, too.’ Then Campbell ducked down beneath the helm and produced a credit-card machine, as if by magic. ‘We charge seven
hundred and fifty bucks the first hour, then five hundred an hour after that, sir; fuel’s extra.’ He handed Daly the machine.

The old man slipped in his American Express card, then tapped in the information requested, and handed the machine back to Stuart Campbell.

Campbell looked at it, and then said, dubiously, ‘I think you’ve put a zero in the wrong place, Mr Daly.’

Gavin Daly studied it, then shook his head. ‘No, that’s what I said to the person who answered your phone. That I would give you a bonus of ten thousand dollars for doing this right
away.’ He put his hand against the raised side of the seat to support himself, as the boat rocked in the wash.

‘Well, that’s very generous – incredibly so. But with respect, sir, that is a lot of money.’ Campbell frowned, as if looking at the two men in a different light now.
‘Are you able to give me some kind of assurance there is nothing illegal going on here?’

‘Dear boy, I can categorically assure you there’s nothing illegal whatsoever – if there was, I’d be giving you ten times this amount. Happy now?’

Campbell nodded doubtfully.

Lucas, standing with a sullen expression, leaned against the windshield support.

‘So do you have a specific location, Mr Daly?’

‘Manhattan Bridge.’

‘Manhattan Bridge? Okay.’

‘I’ll give you more details when we get there.’

‘You’re the boss.’ Campbell twisted the key in the ignition, firing up the engines. As they burbled, Tommy Lovell untied the mooring ropes.

For some moments they drifted, free, then with a clunk and a sharp change in pitch of the engines, they began moving forward, the water rustling beneath them. Gavin Daly smelled the tang of salt
and petrol fumes in the air.

Inside he was jangling.

The Crown Victoria raced along Madison Avenue, weaving through the traffic, siren wailing, then slowed as the traffic ahead was heavy and moving at a crawl. Through the
windscreen, Roy Grace saw a mass of strobing red lights ahead.

A cruiser was angled across two lanes, and another, a hundred yards further along, was similarly parked. Two further police cruisers were stopped in the middle of the street, and a large,
box-shaped ambulance, its doors shut, was parked against the kerb. Not a good sign that the ambulance was still there, Grace thought. From his experience it meant they were working on the casualty
in situ; something paramedic crews normally did only when a patient was in a critical condition.

They pulled up alongside the ambulance and he saw yellow and black
POLICE LINE – DO NOT CROSS
tape blocking off the sidewalk either side of a row of shops. Standing
outside the tape were several NYPD cops. To one side, two men in suits, detectives, Grace presumed, were talking to an elderly, flamboyantly dressed and rather distinguished-looking man, who seemed
in shock.

Lanigan, Cobb and Grace climbed out of the car, the two New York detectives flashing their badges at a police Captain who came over to them.

The Captain jerked a finger at the ambulance. ‘Not looking good,’ he said. ‘Femoral artery’s been shot through. The man’s lost a lot of blood; they’re trying
to give him a transfusion before moving him to hospital.’

‘Who’s that guy?’ Pat Lanigan asked, pointing at the old man.

‘Owner of the premises where the shooting happened.’

‘We need to talk to him urgently.’

‘Go right ahead.’

‘Sorry to interrupt, gentlemen,’ Lanigan said, nodding at the two detectives, who he clearly knew, before addressing the old man. ‘Detective Lanigan and Detective Lieutenant
Cobb, and this is Detective Superintendent Roy Grace from Sussex, England. We believe the perpetrator might be an English gentleman, Gavin Daly.’

The man’s eyebrows were twitching, and he was shaking. ‘That’s right. He’s normally a – a very – how you say it – calm, nice guy. He went crazy in my
office.’

‘And you are, sir?’

‘Julius Rosenblaum.’

‘Can you give us any idea where Mr Daly might be now?’

Despite his shaking, Rosenblaum’s voice was calm. ‘My guess would be Manhattan Bridge.’

‘Manhattan Bridge?’ Lanigan repeated.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘On the bridge?’

Rosenblaum shook his head. ‘No, sir, on the water, somewhere underneath it, or close by. His son’s gone with him.’

‘What’s his reason for going to the Manhattan Bridge?’

‘He’s looking for his father.’

As they left the marina, Stuart Campbell opened up the throttle. There was a slight chop on the Hudson, and as the boat came up onto the plane, it hit the waves with a jarring
thump-thump-thump. Gavin Daly steadied himself by gripping the seat either side of him with his hands. To his left was a rack of oxygen tanks, a lifebuoy and a small fire extinguisher secured by
two brackets. A sturdy winch handle lay amid a coil of rope close to his feet.

Ahead of them, the pale-green Statue of Liberty rose high into the sky. Beneath, wound all the way around the grey slab of the concrete base, was a long line of tourists waiting their turn to
take its elevator to the top.

The further towards the open sea the boat headed, the choppier the water became. The salty wind whipped his face, misting his glasses and making his eyes sting, but Gavin Daly stared resolutely
ahead. He was in another world. So many memories now coming back to him. The Wall Street skyline rose to his left, and straight ahead, beyond the white prow of the boat and the green chop of the
water, was the suspension bridge across the Narrows.

The bridge hadn’t been built in 1922 when, as a small boy, he’d sailed from New York. He could still remember clearly how he had watched that statue receding into the mist and dusk
from the stern of the
Mauretania
.

His dad receding.

His life receding.

One day, Pop, I’m going to come back and find you. I’m going to rescue you from wherever you are.

Now he was back.

Finally.

Finally he was going to fulfil that promise he had made, and nothing would stop him.

The boat turned to port, heading around the southern tip of Manhattan. He saw Battery Park; stared at the structures rising on Ground Zero, and the high-rises all around. The Staten Island ferry
was passing a short distance away. A few moments later they hit its wash, and the boat thumped hard, twice, pitching and yawing. The winch handle slithered out of its rope nest and clattered past
him. He reached down, grabbed it and replaced it. Then, as they entered the East River, he stared across at Brooklyn, where he had lived the first five years of his life. A pleasure boat with teeth
painted on its prow thundered past, across their bows, and moments later he had to hold on hard as the wash rocked them. Again the winch handle clattered past him and he grabbed it once more.

A short while later the superstructure of Brooklyn Bridge loomed ahead, its vast, dark-grey pillars rising like monoliths above them. They slipped beneath its inky shadow, heard the roar and
rumble above them, and then they were out the other side in sunlight again. Speeding toward the vast, gridded span of Manhattan Bridge.

A sightseeing cruiser was coming through it, heading downriver, passing them wide to their port side. They passed several drab brown high-rises to starboard. The red brick slab of a power
station, with one chimney stack, was next. Then the bridge.

His heart flipped. He felt butterflies in his stomach. The water was calmer here, crunching beneath them, above the whine of the outboards.

Stuart Campbell eased off the throttle as they slid into the wide shadow beneath the bridge, and Gavin felt the boat decelerate.

He looked up at the concrete pillars rising from the water. The steel columns rising from them, holding up the bridge. The vast, dark span of its underbelly.

It felt cold suddenly.

He began to shiver. The boat was rocking in the wash from the passing pleasure boat. This was never how he imagined it might be. And yet, he was here. He could feel his pop’s presence.
Calling him. His booming voice echoing beneath the bridge. Louder than the incessant traffic roar above them.

Hey, little guy, you still awake?

His gullet tightened. The water was dark, inky dark, ominous. Maybe it was better to leave things be. Better not to disturb its secrets. Was he making a mistake? But he had come too far; he had
to go through with this. He had to know. And he had to keep his promise.

Lucas looked at him, a curious, quizzical expression, but he ignored his son. This was about one person. One promise.

Nothing else mattered. It never had and it never would.

The boat was drifting now.

Stuart Campbell was staring at the compass binnacle. ‘Mr Daly, we are on the bearings you gave us. Forty, spot forty-two, spot four zero four, north. Seventy-three, spot fifty-nine west.
We are three digits short – do you have them? We need them if you want us to pinpoint.’

Gavin Daly pulled the Patek Philippe out of his pocket. Although he knew the numbers by heart, he still felt the need to check.

The hands pointed to 4.05 p.m.

‘Four zero five,’ he said.

Stuart Campbell tapped the numbers into the binnacle. Then he said, ‘Thirty-nine feet of water on this exact location.’

Gavin Daly looked down at the watch, and a shiver rippled through him. Something he had never taken any notice of before. The position of the seconds hand.

It was stopped at 39 seconds.

The diver had been down for fifteen minutes. A pink buoy, tethered to the boat and drifting a short distance from them, marked the spot. Stuart Campbell kept an eye on the
anchor rope, running down from the prow and holding them steady against the rapid current from the falling tide.

The sonar was on, but the image on the green screen, of the river bed below them, was fuzzy and indistinct. Occasionally when he looked at it, Gavin Daly could see a fish flit past, and from
time to time something bigger, moving, which he assumed was the diver coming in and out of view.

There were no
anomalies
, Campbell had told him. That meant the sonar had shown nothing significant down there on this spot.

Had the messenger boy who had brought him the watch and the numbers, and the other items, merely delivered someone’s idea of a joke? A cruel, nasty, sick joke? Or had it been someone with
a heart?

It was feeling like a sick joke now.

He sat, waiting, clutching the watch in his hands, watching the buoy, occasionally staring across at the mess of slab-shaped buildings on the shore. His eyes drifted over some scrubland, and the
remains of the last pier still standing that dated back to his childhood. A black and white tug droned past, a row of tyres as makeshift fenders, hanging down its side. He looked back at the
watch.

As he did so, he caught the glint in Lucas’s eye. His son was still standing, looking down at him. Or rather, at the watch.

Gavin Daly held it up. ‘It’s caused a lot of trouble, hasn’t it, this damned little machine?’

‘It’s beautiful.’

‘Beautiful?’ Gavin shook his head. ‘You’re not looking at its physical beauty; you’re only looking at its value. That’s what’s beautiful to
you.’

‘That’s not true, Dad!’

‘You killed my sister for it.’

He saw Campbell frown, as if perhaps he had misheard or misunderstood something.

‘Dad, you have to understand—’

‘NO!’ he snapped back at his son. ‘I don’t have to
understand
anything, boy. Do
you
understand
that
?’

As the noise of the tug receded, Gavin Daly heard another sound, very faint at first.

Lucas heard it too and glanced up, alarmed.

A moment later, Gavin Daly heard the distant, but unmistakable,
thwock-thwock-thwock
of a helicopter. He turned and saw a speck heading low over the water towards them; it was getting
bigger by the moment.

‘Oh shit,’ Lucas said, looking panic-stricken. ‘Oh shit!’

Gavin Daly held the watch out over the water. ‘This will be for the best,’ he said.