by Peter James
2012
Ricky Moore was fifty-three, with a balding dome, and long, lank grey hair that covered his ears and the top of his collar. He was dressed in a shiny open-neck white shirt, with half its buttons undone to show off his gold medallion, a cheap beige jacket, and his fingers were adorned with chunky rings. With his booze-veined face and sallow complexion, he looked more like an ageing, drug-addled rocker than an antiques dealer; but he knew how to charm his way into any old lady’s house, no matter how canny she might be.
It hadn’t been hard to find him. He drank here three nights a week.
The Cock Inn at Wivelsfield was a proper pub, in Moore’s view. It had bar billiards, a dartboard and shove ha’penny, was decorated with beer mats from all over the world, and had a friendly landlord and staff, especially a barmaid whom he lusted after. It didn’t have a stupid, manufactured name, or the ghastly muzak or the pinging electronic gaming machines that blighted so many establishments these days. And it served a good pint.
But none of those were the real reasons he drank here. Situated in the countryside, fourteen miles north of Brighton where he lived, it wasn’t convenient, particularly with the drink-driving laws these days – every time he came here it was a risk. But that had to be balanced against the benefits, as with any business.
As one of the few remaining antiques knocker-boys, he made a comfortable enough living, ripping off the low-hanging fruit – picking up bargains in gullible people’s homes. He had charm and good patter, and despite his rough appearance, people took a liking to him. Especially old ladies, for some reason he didn’t understand – and certainly did not question. He’d carved himself a niche market, a nice little earner. Stuff he could con little old ladies out of. But every now and then, when he entered a home, he would hit a treasure trove.
Like the house in Withdean Road a few weeks ago. That little old lady knew fine well what she had and she wasn’t parting with any of it, at least not to him. She’d sent him packing with a flea in his ear.
Now, he had read in today’s Argus that she was dead. Stupid old bat. She should have sold him the items he had wanted. Then he might have left it at that, instead of phoning his contacts.
Although maybe he would have phoned them anyway.
The five grand in folding, his advance on his commission, was burning a hole in his pocket.
Tax free, too.
The first benefit of this pub was that no one from Brighton drank here. He’d made a fair number of enemies over the years, tucking people up, and sooner or later in Brighton pubs, he’d run into someone bigger than him who hadn’t forgotten. The second and far more important one was the rich pickings to be had from this place.
It was the way he had operated for years. Find a pub in a nice, wealthy pocket of the countryside. Get known and liked and trusted. Sit up at the bar, buy the occasional round, nip outside now and then for a smoke. Keep your ears open. Sooner or later you’d hear about nice big isolated properties. And sooner or later the locals would invite you to value some of the stuff in their homes, or their mum’s homes, or whatever. You’d secretly take photographs, make the calls, email the pictures, then after a few months, move on.
He raised a pint of Harvey’s to himself. He was doing all right, yeah. Life was sweet. A bit quiet in here for a Friday night, he thought. The barmaid he fancied was off sick tonight. But everything was all right. Very sweet.
Yeah.
Out of slight boredom he studied a framed photograph on the wall showing the members of a football team. Written at the bottom in large letters was WIVELSFIELD WANDERERS.
Suddenly he felt a vibration in his trouser pocket. He pulled out his iPhone and checked the display; it was a withheld number. He brought it to his ear and answered quietly. ‘Yeah?’
‘Ricky Moore?’ asked the caller.
‘Yeah.’
The caller hung up.
He frowned, and waited some moments, in case whoever it was called back. But the caller had no intention of calling back. He had all the information he needed to confirm the man’s identity. He was standing out in the darkness, outside the pub, watching through the window as Moore pocketed his phone and drained his pint. His identity proven.
Ricky Moore put his glass down on the counter, then looked around for someone to play bar billiards with, but didn’t spot any of his regular players. Deciding to head home soon, he ordered another pint – one for the road – and another whisky chaser.
His missus, Kjersti, the beautiful Norwegian woman whom he had finally decided to settle down and spend the rest of his life with – after two acrimonious divorces – hankered after a Rolex watch. Now, thanks to the McWhirter house, he had the dough to buy one – and with any luck he’d buy a stolen one, below retail, from a bent jeweller he knew.
She’d go nuts when she saw it!
He downed his drinks and left the pub with a smile on his face. He’d phone her when he got to the car; tell her to get her kit off and be waiting in bed for him.
*
Had Ricky Moore been sober, he might have been more aware. But four pints, accompanied by whisky chasers, had dulled his wits. As he stepped out into the darkness, pulling his cigarettes out of his pocket, he didn’t notice anything out of place. If he had looked around the car park, he might have wondered about the Mercedes limousine with blacked-out rear windows that really did not belong in a rural pub car park. Nor, above the rasp of a passing motorbike, did he hear its engine start.
He was preoccupied with thoughts about what he was going to do in bed with Kjersti tonight. She had a very dirty mind; and right now, loaded with drink, he was feeling increasingly rampant.
As he made his way, unsteadily, towards his elderly BMW estate, he stopped to light a final cigarette for the evening. Kjersti did not let him smoke indoors. A strong wind was blowing and he had to cup his hands over his lighter to prevent the flame being blown out. He heard a car slowing down alongside him, but concentrating on the cigarette, he ignored it. He ignored the sound of the door opening, too, as he clicked the lighter for the third time.
Then he dropped the lighter and the cigarette fell from his mouth as an agonizing vice clamp gripped his arm so hard he cried out in pain.
‘Sorry,’ said the Apologist, yanking him into the rear of the car, across his knees, and slamming his head into the offside door, dazing him. Then he pulled the door shut. ‘I’m very sorry,’ he said, as the car shot forward.
The interior of the car smelled of leather and stale cigar smoke.
‘What the—?’
‘I’m sorry. I truly am. You have to believe me. I don’t like hurting people.’ Then he gripped the man’s left thigh, trapping the nerve. Moore screamed and writhed in so much agony he was unable to speak.
‘I’m sorry. Don’t know my own strength.’
Moments later, Moore felt his phone being removed from his pocket.
‘Hey!’
The Apologist was six foot seven inches tall and weighed three hundred and forty pounds, most of which was muscle, and not much of which was brain. The last time he had been in prison, he’d thrown a full-size fridge up two flights of stairs. Because he was angry. It wasn’t good to be around him when he got angry.
Moore was panting and sweating. In the glare of oncoming headlights, he saw the man’s face above him. He looked almost Neanderthal, his high forehead capped with a fringe like a monk’s tonsure. ‘What do you want?’ he gasped. All he could see of the driver in front of them was shaggy hair beneath a chauffeur’s cap.
‘Nothing,’ the Apologist replied. ‘I’m just doing my job. It’s not a nice job. I need the code for your phone.’
Moore screwed his eyes up in agony. The car was turning left. More streetlights flashed past. ‘You’ve made a mistake. I think you want someone else.’
The Apologist squeezed his leg, making Moore scream again. ‘Please trust me, I haven’t. I haven’t made a mistake. You’ll have to trust me on that. I need the code.’
> Now the car was turning left again. ‘Where – where are we going?’ Ricky Moore gasped, both in agony and terror.
‘I’m sorry,’ the Apologist said. ‘I can’t tell you. You have to believe me. I’m truly sorry.’
He noticed for the first time music playing. A choral sound. ‘Ode To Joy’, although he didn’t know its name, nor did he appreciate the irony. Classical music wasn’t his thing. It sounded sinister and creepy. He saw the tail lights of a vehicle ahead, through the windscreen. They seemed to be following it along a dark country lane.
Then he felt the vice-like grip on his left thigh again.
‘Stop!’ he screamed.
But the grip kept tightening.
‘I’m sorry,’ the Apologist said, ‘but I have to make sure you don’t try to run away. I’m sorry if I’m hurting you, I really am. The gentleman who wants to see you won’t be nearly as gentle. Trust me. Now the code, please.’
Moore gave him the four digits. He saw his captor tap them in and the display came alive.
The vehicle in front, a Range Rover, halted and the Mercedes stopped behind it. A man walked up to the rear window, and Ricky Moore became increasingly afraid. He heard the window go down, felt the cool breeze on his face, smelled freshly mown grass, heard the rumble of the Range Rover’s engine. He saw his iPhone being passed through the window, then it closed again.
‘Hey! I want that back,’ he said.
His captor said nothing. Several minutes passed. The Range Rover remained static in front of them. Then, suddenly, it drove off. The Mercedes followed.
‘My phone!’ Ricky Moore said.
The Apologist squeezed his thigh again, even harder, and he shouted out in pain, anger and fear.
‘Sorry.’
21
A half-smoked cigar, with undisturbed ash on the end, lay in the large glass ashtray, beside a crystal tumbler of Midleton whiskey, Gavin Daly’s regular tipple, for which he paid £267 a bottle. The thought of what the rare Irish whiskey cost gave him even more pleasure than the taste. It meant there was a little bit less of his fortune for his idiot, debt-ridden son, Lucas, to get his hands on after he was gone, although he had no problem leaving it to his sister’s granddaughter and family. But at this moment, for one of the few times in his adult life, his son was proving useful.
Dressed in his blue smoking jacket, Daly was seated at his wide, leather-topped desk in the study of his magnificent Palladian mansion, ten miles north-east of Brighton, blinking away tears. Trying to occupy his mind by focusing on the rare J. J. Elliott clock he was checking for a client before freighting it later this week to an important auction in New York, while he waited for some of the people he had phoned today to call him back.
There were only a limited number of dealers in the world who handled really high-end vintage clocks and watches. Most of them were straight, but over the years he’d had a good relationship with the straight ones and the crooked ones. He’d put the word out and reckoned there was a strong chance that if any were approached by someone trying to sell his father’s watch, most of them would phone him.
Although he was ninety-five, he had never really retired, just gradually wound down over the years. Even now he still kept an eye on the shop that bore his name in the Brighton Lanes, despairing because his son was letting the business slide away. Not that he really cared, he had more than enough money to see out his days in the style in which he liked to live. And he still had a few clients whom he advised on timepieces, and for whom he sometimes bought and sold, such as this clock he was selling for a wealthy English collector, which kept him occupied.
His chest pains from angina, becoming increasingly frequent now, were returning. His doctor had told him to stop drinking and smoking, but what the hell did it matter? He popped a nitroglycerin tablet under his tongue, waited until it had dissolved, then relit his cigar. He’d always had an eye for fine craftsmanship, and this clock was a particular beauty. Its square case, with its fine marquetry and gold inlay, was a masterpiece of carving, and its movement, with a single hammer to strike its large brass gong, was exquisite. It would never tell the time as accurately as one of today’s quartz watches you could buy for a few quid, but that was not the point.
He made a small adjustment to the length of the pendulum, then put his tools down. He was tired, and his mind was all over the place. He’d barely slept a wink last night; he just felt sick all the time. Sick with grief. And now he felt utterly alone in the world.
He had everything. This beautiful house, a staffed villa on Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera, more money than he could ever spend, and none of it mattered; that was the damned irony. He stared bleakly out through the sash window into the darkness. All around him in the oak-panelled room were reminders of his past. The black-and-white photograph of his stern, deeply religious maiden aunt, Oonagh, who had raised him and his sister. Next to her was a row of framed photographs of his father, Brendan Daly.
One, a youthful picture, showed the big guy striding towards the camera, wearing a three-piece suit, white shirt, black tie and a boater at a jaunty angle; he was flanked by two of his White Hand Gang cohorts, Mick Pollock – later known as Pegleg Pollock after he lost a leg to gangrene following a shooting incident – and Aiden Boyle. Two of the men whose names were written on the reverse of the front page of the Daily News from February 1922, in which the shooting of his mother and the abduction of his father was the headline story. The paper he had been given all those years back by the messenger boy on Pier 54.
Next to that was a photograph of his father in bathing trunks, on Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach. He was grinning, his jet-black hair tousled, a chain with a silver rabbit hung around his neck. The chain had belonged to Gavin’s grandfather, his aunt had once told him; he had been one of the lieutenants in the New York Irish Mafia’s Dead Rabbits Gang in the 1880s. Another photo showed his father, sharply dressed, wearing a Derby.
He heard a knock, then the door behind him opened. It was Betty, his faithful housekeeper, only a few years junior to himself. ‘You’ve not touched your supper, Mr Daly,’ she chided.
He raised a hand in acknowledgement, without turning around.
‘I’m clearing up,’ she said. ‘Would you like a hot drink or anything before I go to bed?’
‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘I’m expecting visitors, but I’ll see them in.’
She wished him goodnight and closed the door.
The house felt gloomy and lonely since his second wife, Ruth, had died. In front of him sat a framed photograph taken way back when she was in her late-thirties and he was in his mid-fifties. The two of them on a terrace in the South of France, with the flat blue Mediterranean Sea behind them. She had been a red-haired beauty then; Irish, like his first wife Sinead; but unlike Sinead she had been faithful, he was certain, for all the time they were together. Sinead, his son’s mother, had died of an overdose of barbiturates after years of addiction to booze and affairs. He did not have her photograph anywhere in his home. Lucas, his son, was a bitter enough reminder of her.
Lucas had tried for some time to persuade him to think about moving into sheltered accommodation, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He loved this place and remembered thinking, when he had bought it all those decades ago, how proud his dad would have been of him. To be sure, he hadn’t made all his money honestly, but then who in the antiques world had? He’d been a player in the Brighton antiques ring, rigging prices at auction, and once – something that still made him smile – at a big country-house auction he had even locked a big London dealer in the lavatory to prevent him from bidding against him.
On another occasion, many years before satellite navigation had come in, he and his ring of Brighton antiques dealers had altered all the road signs the night before one of the largest country-house auctions in the county, so that none of the major London dealers had been able to find the place.
He glanced up, impatiently now, at the CCTV screen showing the front of the house and the d
riveway, waiting for his son’s black Range Rover to appear. Lucas had inherited some of his mother’s bad genes. He was a lousy son, a school dropout who had failed to maintain the family business, and who had on several occasions narrowly avoided doing time both for violence and for drug dealing. Gavin felt sorry for his son’s wife, who was a decent person and, in his view, deserved someone better.
He drank some more whiskey, then puffed his cigar back to life and stared around the room where he used to bring his most important customers, and where he now spent most of his time these days. It was designed to impress, to give the air of a learned man of culture, an aristocrat who was no more than a curator of all he had inherited from his ancestors and would one day pass on to his heirs.
Except Gavin Daly had inherited nothing. Every item in this room, just as with almost everything in this fine house, he had bought, with great care, with the sole intention of impressing others like him, who were prepared to spend vast sums on antiques to line their grand homes in America, Japan and more recently China, to give the impression they were privileged people of taste.
There were two large, studded red-leather chesterfields. On Doric plinths stood busts of some of his past great fellow countrymen – Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, William Butler Yeats, J. M. Synge, James Joyce and T. E. Lawrence, whose father had been an Irishman, and whose writings he admired. Wall-to-wall bookcases lined with leather-bound tomes. In daylight, the window looked out on a view, framed by a line of Italian cypresses, of acres of lush gardens, an ornamental lake fringed by statues, and the distant rolling hills of the South Downs.
He removed from his desk drawer a crimson, leather-bound book and opened it. It contained a yellowed, decaying front page of the New York Daily News from February 1922, protected in a clear plastic envelope.
There had not been a day in his life when he had not looked at this page of the newspaper, and at the names and numbers on the reverse. Four names that filled him with knuckle-clenching hatred every time he saw them.