Dead Man's Time (25 page)

‘It’s bad for antiques.’

‘So, what information do you have for me?’

‘There’s a man named Eamonn Pollock,’ Daly said. ‘His current main residence is on a yacht based in Marbella called
Contented.
As I said, it’s a long shot.
But I’m happy to pay whatever you charge these days to find out if he is related, in any way, to a man in New York back in the 1920s called Mick Pollock. I think he would have been Irish, and
a member of the White Hand Gang.’

‘Do you have any more details than that, Gavin?’

‘Back then, Mick had only one leg – I gather he got gangrene in it after being shot in a gang fight. He had the nickname of
Pegleg
.’

‘
Pegleg Pollock.
Anything else?’

‘No, I’m afraid not. Could you try to prepare as detailed a family tree as you can?’

‘I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t promise anything.’

‘Give me an address to wire some money to.’

‘There’s no charge. Tell you the truth, I’m bored. Be good to have a challenge. Is there any urgency?’

‘Everything’s urgent at our age, Martin.’

Like most police officers he knew, Roy Grace always felt uncomfortable entering a prison. In part it was the knowledge that prisoners had a pathological hatred of the police,
and in part it was the loss of control. As a police officer you were normally in control of any environment you found yourself in. But from the moment the first of the prison’s doors was
locked behind you, you were in the hands of the Prison Governor and his or her officers.

Convicted policemen, given custodial sentences, were treated by other prisoners on a par with paedophiles.

Sussex had two prisons: Ford, an open, Category D prison, filled mostly with relatively minor and low-risk offenders, as well as some lifers approaching the end of their custodial terms,
gradually getting accustomed to the world they were soon to re-enter. The other, Lewes, a Category B, was a grim, forbidding place. Roy Grace had passed it many times, as a child with his parents,
and back then it had always both fascinated and scared him.

Built like a fortress, it had high, flint walls and tiny barred windows. When as a small boy his dad once told him that the
bad people
were locked up in there, Roy Grace used to imagine
bad people
as monsters who would rip people’s heads off, if given the chance. Now, with his years of experience in the force behind him, he knew a little different. But he was only
too aware that if anything were to kick off when a police officer was inside a prison, for any reason, he – or she – would be damned lucky to get out unharmed.

Which was why, to Roy Grace’s relief, having checked in at the registration office where he had to leave his private and police phones in a locker, he was greeted by Alan Setterington, the
duty Governor, who told him he had an interview room reserved for him in the main office section.

Setterington, a lean, fit-looking man with a fine physique from being a weekend racing cyclist, was dressed in a smart suit and a bright tie with his white Prison Service shirt. As with every
prison Grace had ever been inside, all the doors were unlocked then locked again behind them as they made their way further through into the gloomy, windowless interior with its cold stone floors,
drab walls decorated with the occasional Health and Safety poster, fire buckets and large, strong doors.

Alan Setterington made him a coffee, then went off to fetch the informant who was prepared to talk to Grace. For favours, of course.

Donny Loncrane came into the room in his green prison work tunic. Aged fifty-five, he looked as most long-term prisoners did: a decade older than his years, from the lifestyle and badly cut
drugs. Roy Grace was shocked at his appearance. Last time he had encountered the serial car thief – and police informant – had been a good ten years ago. Setterington tactfully left
them to it, closing the door behind him.

Loncrane, tall, with bad posture, his short, grey hair brushed forward over his forehead, gave him a sheepish grin, shook Grace’s hand with his own damp one, as if he had just washed it in
deference, and sat down opposite him. ‘Hello, sir,’ he said. He exuded a sharp, earthy smell of clothes that were in need of a wash.

Grace shook his head. ‘What are you doing still inside? You told me you were going straight last time I saw you.’

Loncrane shrugged. ‘Yeah, well, I was. Problem is, you see, I love motors.’

‘You always did.’

‘The thing is, they’re harder to nick these days. The high-end jobs, right? The Audis, Beemers, Mercs, Ferraris, Bentleys? I used to be able to hotwire one in thirty seconds. You
know how long it takes now?’

‘How long?’

‘Well, with all their security systems it takes about four hours. So the only way is either to get one on the road, taser the driver, pull him or her out – or else break into the
owner’s house and nick the keys.’

‘Last time we talked you told me you were doing a degree in fitness and nutrition. That you had plans to start a gym when you came out, Donny.’

Loncrane shrugged again. ‘Yeah, that was the plan.’

‘So what went wrong?’

‘It’s not so easy out there. Not so many people want to help an old con like me. You need references, bank loans, stuff like that. I don’t exactly have the world’s best
CV.’ He grinned wistfully.

Grace smiled back. Donny Loncrane wasn’t a fool. But he’d never had a chance in life. His father had been busted for drugs when his mother was pregnant with him – her fourth
child. She’d been on drugs too. He’d always been obsessed with fast cars and had his first conviction, for joyriding, at fourteen. At seventeen he was making good money, and having fun,
stealing exotic cars to order for an organized crime gang in London. ‘You know, it’s never too late, Donny.’

The old lag nodded. ‘Yeah. I have my dreams, sir,’ he said with a sad expression.

‘What are they?’

‘I’d like to be married again. Live in a nice house. Have kids. Have a nice car. But it ain’t going to happen.’

‘Why not? You’re only fifty-five. I’m sure you could start over.’

He shrugged yet again, a forlorn look on his face. ‘I’m fifty-five, with one hundred and seventy previous. No one wants to know me outside of here, except other crims. And you know
what, sir? I don’t mind it inside. I’ve got me telly; the electricity’s paid for; the grub’s all right; I’ve got me mates here.’

‘Can’t I help you?’ Grace asked.

‘Yeah, you could give me the keys to a Ferrari 458. Not driven one of them yet.’ He grinned. ‘So what do you want from me?’

‘You’re not doing this stretch just for nicking cars – it’s for nicking antiques also, right?’

Loncrane nodded. ‘Yeah, well, the thing is, like I said, the easiest way to nick a fancy motor these days to break into the house where it’s parked. And if you’re inside, you
might as well take some stuff while you’re there.’

‘Of course.’ Grace couldn’t help grinning at the man’s warped logic.

Loncrane looked at him hard for some moments. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, if you hadn’t chosen to be a copper, I think you’d have made a good burglar,
sir.’

‘I’m flattered.’

‘No, I’m serious. You’re a good detail man. Burglary’s all about planning and detail. Anyhow, you ain’t come here for career counselling. How can I help
you?’

‘There was a nasty tie-up robbery, just under a fortnight ago, in Withdean Road, Brighton. Ten million quid’s worth of antiques taken and the house owner, an old lady called Aileen
McWhirter, was tortured and died subsequently. Ten million is a lot of stuff by anyone’s reckoning. I was curious if you’d heard any word in here?’

Loncrane was silent for some moments. ‘And if I had?’

‘Two hundred quid, Donny – and the possibility of a good word to your governor.’

‘I thought the going rate was ten per cent of value?’

Grace smiled. ‘That was in the days before our budget was slashed to ribbons.’

There was a time when informants could receive as much as a tenth of the value of the stolen goods they helped recover; the payment was good because being an informant was a highly risky
business, particularly in a prison. Loncrane would have had to have given a very plausible reason to his fellow prisoners why he was going through to the Governor’s office area – and
would undoubtedly be getting a lot of suspicious questions about it afterwards from his fellow inmates.

The prisoner shot him a wary glance. ‘Know what happens to grasses in here?’

‘I’ve a fair idea.’

‘Boiling water thrown in your face. Razor blades in your food. It’s not clever.’

Loncrane fell silent, and for a moment Roy Grace worried that he was going to clam up on him. But then the prisoner held up his hand, showing three fingers.

‘Okay, three hundred, we have a deal. Who do you want the money paid to, Donny?’

‘I’ll give you the number of my Swiss bank account,’ he said with such a deadpan look that Grace believed he really might have one.

‘Dicky bird tells me that if I were you, Detective Superintendent, sir, I’d be looking hard at an expat called Eamonn Pollock who might be behind this.’

Roy Grace stared back at him; in the overall scheme of things, three hundred pounds was neither here nor there, but he would still have to justify the expenditure to his seniors. He hoped it was
money well spent. ‘Pollock rings a faint bell,’ he said, frowning in thought.

‘Used to be involved with Amis Smallbone going back some years.’

‘Amis Smallbone?’ Grace said.

‘Yeah. They were pretty thick at one time.’

‘Tell me more about Pollock.’

‘A fat bastard who stitches up everyone he deals with. Lives abroad, Marbella. Used to live in Brighton. He’s flash, likes expensive watches. High-end fence; wouldn’t touch
anything below ten grand value. Also got a loan-sharking business with extortionate interest rates. Always kept under the police radar, somehow, but made a lot of enemies. I’m told he lives
on a boat in Marbella, surrounded by henchmen. Only people who are desperate do business with him.’

‘Sounds a nice man.’

‘He’s a regular sweetheart.’

Grace’s first action, after recovering his mobile phone, and walking out through the prison gates, was to phone Emma-Jane Boutwood at the Incident Room, and instruct her to drop everything
and start working on an Association Chart for Eamonn Pollock.

Then he turned right and walked down the slope towards the visitors’ car park, thinking hard. Pollock. The name was very definitely ringing a bell, but he could not immediately place
it.

PC Susi Holiday took the call on her radio as they were driving west along Portland Road in Hove, approaching the spot where they had attended a fatal accident earlier this
year, where a cyclist had gone under a lorry. Her colleague Dave Roberts, who was driving the response car this morning, could hear the conversation on his, too. ‘Old Rectory, Ovingdean. Know
that?’ she asked.

He frowned. ‘No.’

‘Sounds like another potential G5.’ She punched the address into the satnav. ‘Spin her round.’

‘Thought we’d had our quota for this year,’ Roberts replied.

‘Dead people can’t count,’ she retorted, cynically.

As he indicated left, then turned down towards the seafront, her radio crackled again with the voice of the Controller. She inclined her head, listening, then said to Roberts, ‘Been called
in by a lady called Carol Morgan. She has a tenant in a cottage and is worried about him.’

Ovingdean, a village to the east of Brighton’s Kemp Town, just a mile north of the sea, behind Roedean Girls’ School, surrounded by stunning rolling farmland, was a place that Dave
Roberts had often thought he would like to retire to, if he could afford it. ‘Do we have his name?’

‘Lester Stork.’ She grinned. ‘Funny name.’

‘Lester Stork? He’s a shitbag.’

‘Oh?’

‘Small-time fence. He was one of the first people I ever nicked when I first started on the force. Must be as old as God, I’m surprised he’s still alive.’

‘Sounds like he might not be.’

They turned left on the seafront and headed east, passing the marina, Roedean, and made another left just before St Dunstan’s, the famous home for blind ex-servicemen, and threaded round
uphill, into the village. A short distance on, the satnav told them they had arrived.

Almost immediately on their left was an imposing Sussex flint farmhouse, with a large paddock behind it. ‘This is it!’ Susi said, reading the name,
THE OLD
RECTORY
, smartly sign-written.

He turned the car into the circular drive and pulled up in front of the porch. As they got out, into a strong wind, an extremely attractive woman in her mid-forties, with long, wavy blonde hair,
dressed in jodhpurs, riding boots and a sleeveless puffa, appeared from around the side of the house, leading a horse, which was pulling reluctantly against its reins.

‘Henry!’ she remonstrated, in one of those naturally posh voices that Susi secretly envied. Then she saw the police car and the two uniformed officers climbing out of it, pulling on
their hats, raised a hand, turned to the horse again, spoke sternly to it, then waited for the officers. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘He’s in a bit of a strop this
morning, that’s all.’

‘Mrs Carol Morgan?’ Susi Holiday asked.

‘Yes, that’s me. Thank you for coming. Gosh, you’re jolly prompt. I had visions of you taking a couple of days!’

‘We’d hope not,’ Dave Roberts said. ‘We had a report that you are concerned about a tenant.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’ She pointed at the side of the house. ‘We have a little cottage at the rear that we’ve rented out for the past five years. He’s a strange
character, very pleasant, nothing bad to say about him, sort of keeps himself to himself.’ She frowned. ‘But last night I heard his van – it has rather a distinctive sound; my
husband, John, thinks it needs a new exhaust – coming home just before midnight. Then this morning, when I woke up, I could hear the engine running. I went out to feed Henry at 7 a.m. The
front door of the house was shut. I rang the bell, but there was no answer. I gave it a few hours, then tried again at midday. That’s when I decided to phone you. I really hope I’m not
wasting your time . . .’