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Behind Lucas, heading downriver towards them, Gavin could see a launch with a blue hull and grey superstructure. It was travelling at speed, from the size of its bow-wave. He could hear the drone of the engines.
Lucas, hearing them too, spun round. ‘Oh shit, Jesus!’
Calmly ignoring the helicopter and the approaching police launch, Gavin Daly said, ‘What do you know about sentiment? You couldn’t be sentimental for anything. You were born with that gene missing.’
Lucas’s eyes were filled with fear and greed. He kept looking at the watch, then at the approaching launch, then the watch again.
The launch, bristling with ante
A cold stentorian voice called from a loudhailer. ‘This is the New York Police Department. Everyone on board raise your hands in the air. Do not move! Switch off your engines. We are coming alongside to board.’
Stuart Campbell looked at Gavin, then Lucas, in fury. ‘What the hell is all this about? You want to explain?’ Before either could respond, he grabbed a megaphone from a locker by the wheel, and shouted back, ‘We have a diver in the water, I repeat, we have a diver in the water – please keep at a safe distance. I will not move the boat away. I repeat, I will not move the boat away. Please let me get the diver back onboard safely.’
He put the megaphone down, raised his hands in the air, and Lucas followed.
Gavin Daly remained seated, ignoring the police, looking at the Patek Philippe in his hand. ‘You’re right, Lucas. I can’t just throw it in the water; that would be stupid.’
‘Sir, raise your hands in the air,’ the loudhailer boomed, louder as the launch was much closer now, the voice echoing and booming off the superstructure of the bridge above them.
‘You know why it would be stupid, Lucas?’ Gavin Daly said, ignoring the police.
‘Sir, I’m giving you one more warning: put your hands in the air where I can see them.’ Aaron Cobb standing on the bridge of the launch, held the microphone in his left hand, and his Glock, at full arm’s length, in his right.
Standing close beside him, Roy Grace took the loudhailer and, holding it to his lips, said, ‘Mr Daly, this is Detective Superintendent Grace – please do what the officer requests.’
In answer, Gavin Daly picked up the winch handle and raised it in the air.
Cobb’s finger tightened on the trigger.
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On the launch, as it slipped into the shadow beneath the bridge, Roy Grace put a steadying hand on Cobb’s arm. ‘He’s an old man and his emotions are ru
‘Yeah, he’s a regular sweet old guy who just happens to like shooting people in the nuts,’ Cobb retorted drily, without taking his eyes off Daly.
Grace looked at the water immediately around the marker buoy, looking for air bubbles; meanwhile the police pilot obeyed the request from the dive boat’s skipper and kept the launch a safe distance away.
‘I’ll tell you why it would be stupid, Lucas,’ Gavin Daly roared. ‘Because you’d have tried to get it back! And you might have done. This way, I won’t have to worry about that.’
The diver broke surface a few feet off, but neither Gavin nor Lucas noticed. The old man put the watch on the deck, right in front of his feet.
‘Dad, no! No! No!’ Lucas yelled as he suddenly realized what was happening. ‘No, Dad, no! Don’t do that! Don’t do that!’
Gavin Daly brought the winch handle down with all the force he could muster onto the watch, shattering the glass and splintering the face. He struck it again, just as hard, then again a third time.
Lucas Daly, Stuart Campbell and the police officers stood watching.
Gavin Daly scooped up the broken, twisted remains, reached across and lifted the flattened crown from under a lifebelt where it had shot. Then with his fingernails, he carefully scraped the hands off the deck, and then a tiny section of the crescent of the moon. Then he tossed everything overboard. ‘Done,’ he said to Lucas, with a satisfied smile. ‘All gone. Feeling sentimental, are you?’
He raised his hands in the air and turned towards the police launch.
‘Gavin Daly!’ Aaron Cobb called across. ‘You need to know that Eamo
He continued to read him his entire Miranda rights.
Roy Grace stared at the old man, a whole mixture of emotions ru
He switched his attention to the diver, who pushed his goggles up onto his forehead, spat out his breathing tube, then called up to the skipper of the dive boat, ‘Give me a hand, Stu. I got something.’ Then, as he paddled towards the ladder hanging down the side of the boat, he was looking around, bewildered, at the scene facing him: the three men on the dive boat with their hands in the air, and the police launch. ‘Is this a bad time?’ he called up to his colleague as he reached the ladder and gripped it with one hand. ‘Want me to come back another day?’
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Stuart Campbell looked across at Cobb. ‘Sir, may I assist my colleague, please?’
The Detective Lieutenant nodded.
Campbell knelt and took the object the diver passed to him in his gloved hand. It was a length of very old, frayed rope, with tendrils of weed on it. Then, with both of them pulling, the diver steadily climbed the ladder, hauling something up by the rope that was clearly extremely heavy.
Lucas leaned over and helped too, while Gavin sat mesmerized.
A bundle of black fishing net slowly broke the surface, covered in weed, with chunks of wet mud sliding from it. There was something inside it that looked like a tarpaulin. A large cement block was tied to the bottom of the net, secured with very old rope wound around it several times in all directions. A crab scuttled off and fell back into the dark water.
Grace watched, equally mesmerized, feeling a lump in his throat for the old man.
Lucas Daly, Stuart Campbell and Tommy Lovell, the diver, finally hauled the whole thing over the side of the boat and lowered it onto the deck. Mud oozed all around it, as water pooled across the deck. Laid out, it was a good six feet in length.
Gavin Daly was trembling. With fenders lowered, the police launch moved alongside, and Grace, flanked by Pat Lanigan and Aaron Cobb, had to resist the temptation to jump aboard and hold the old man’s hand.
The diver produced a sheath knife and began cutting away at the netting. A crew member of the police launch jumped aboard the dive boat with a line, ran it through a mooring eye at the stern, then wound it around a cleat on the launch; then he did the same with another line at the bow.
But none of the three detectives on the launch moved. They all watched. Sensing something that, at this moment at least, they should only be observing.