‘Really?’ Grace disliked the intrusion of telesales people, although he could not help having a tiny amount of sympathy for them, trying to make a living. ‘How?’

‘We have a representative working in your area next week. Perhaps I could make an appointment at a time convenient for you?’

‘A representative for what, exactly?’

‘Loft insulation.’

‘Loft insulation?’

‘We are England’s leading specialists. The insulation we put in is so effective it will have fully paid for itself in just nine years from savings on your fuel bills.’

Quite apart from anything else, with their plans to move, Cleo wasn’t about to spend any money on this place that wasn’t absolutely necessary. Mischievously, he said, ‘Are you aware you’re calling a crime scene?’

‘A crime scene?’

‘I need your name, address, date of birth and your connection with the murder victim. Are you willing to come voluntarily to Brighton police station to make a statement?’

There was a sudden silence. It was followed by the click of the line disconnecting.

Yesss! Grace smiled at his small triumph. He looked down at his sleeping son.

Moments later his mobile rang. He answered. It was the new duty Detective Inspector at Brighton’s John Street police station, who had replaced the recently promoted Jason Tingley. Any call from him was unlikely to be good news.

‘Sorry to bother you, sir. We have a nasty tie-up domestic robbery in Withdean Road. A ninety-eight-year-old lady has been tortured. She’s been taken to the ITU at the Royal Sussex County Hospital. Looks like her home may have been stripped of antiques and paintings.’

Stepping away from Noah, to the far end of the room, he asked, ‘Is she going to survive?’

‘Well, she’s slipping in and out of consciousness, sir.’

‘What do you have on it?’ he asked.

‘Nothing so far. This is a very vicious attack. I’ve attended myself and my feelings are this is something for Major Crime to handle. All the indications are that this is a high-value robbery, and I don’t think the victim will make it.’

Thugs who hurt elderly people were high up on Roy Grace’s list of what made him truly angry. ‘Okay,’ he said, masking his reluctance to be involved. ‘Give me the details.’

He scribbled them down on a pad. Then, when he had finished with the DI, he called Detective Sergeant Glenn Branson, whom he had made an acting Detective Inspector on the last case they had been on together, two months back, when a stalker was threatening the life of a popstar-turned-actress who had been making a movie in Brighton.

‘Doing anything important right now, Glenn?’ he asked.

‘Apart from dealing with the divorce papers from my bitch wife?’ he replied.

‘Good. Meet me at 146 Withdean Road in thirty minutes.’

‘Smart address, that street.’

‘So be on your best behaviour!’

14

Yet again he sat in the elderly, borrowed, S-Type Jaguar outside the entrance to the gated development where Roy Grace now lived with his beloved Cleo Morey and their two-month-old baby, Noah. Noah Jack Grace.

The windows of the Jaguar were illegally blackened. No one could see him. No one could see the mask of hatred that was his face.

Noah Jack.

He’d got all the details from the Registry Office at Brighton Town Hall.

Noah Jack Grace.

Leave him alone, friends had said. Move on.

No way. You could not just forget a man who had totally screwed your life. You had to take things one step at a time. And this was the first step. You had to level the score. Last night he’d watched, through night-vision binoculars, as one of the residents had punched the code into the number panel beside the gates. Later he’d entered himself, checked there was no one watching and no CCTV cameras, and stood in the darkness outside the Grace house, as he liked to call it. He’d watched through the slats in the blinds as Detective Superintendent Grace and his slut, Cleo, lay curled up on the sofa in front of the television, with the baby monitor beside them.

Such a cosy scene.

How sweet would it be for Cleo Morey, Senior Anatomical Pathology Technician at Brighton and Hove Mortuary, to attend the recovery of a baby, suffocated by a plastic bag over its head, from a rubbish dump? And then find it was her own?

How symbolic would that be?

Rubbish father, rubbish baby.

He liked that image so much. But he also liked the image of Grace coming home to find his beautiful slut permanently disfigured. Acid in her face might teach her not to fraternize with cops.

Options. He liked having options. You didn’t have much freedom of choice when you were in prison, but free, you had all the options in the world.

Yes.

He crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray.

And now the gates were opening. Someone was walking out. Suited and booted. Detective Superintendent Roy Grace. Looking a bit tired.

He watched him stride, in the afternoon sunshine, up the road towards the black Alfa Romeo Giulietta in the residents’ parking bay a short distance away.

He saw the brake lights come on, then the car drive away into the summer afternoon.

He thought about the pleasure he would get from Detective Superintendent Roy Grace’s suffering.

Oh yes. The joy of revenge. A dish best eaten cold.

A cold baby.

He liked that idea a lot.

The unit that was for rent was number 4. The Grace House was next door. The adjoining property. Just a few formalities to settle and then, in a week or so’s time, he would become their next-door neighbour.

In Roy Grace’s face, for a change, instead of the copper being in his.

How sweet was that going to be?

15

New York, 1922

An icy breeze blew, and sleet was falling, as the small boy stood, with his sister and his stern aunt, amid the huge crowd of people along the wharf at Pier 54. He was dressed in a long coat, woollen gloves and a tweed cap, and he looked forlorn. The few possessions he owned in the world were crammed into the small leather valise which sat on the ground beside him. He felt dwarfed by the crowd.

He was five years old, feeling lost and bewildered – and angry at his aunt. She was taking him and his sister away from his ma and pa. His ma was in the cemetery and she wasn’t coming home, he understood that much; that she had left for ever. She had gone to another place. She was in Heaven.

But his pa might come home at any time. He wanted to wait, but his aunt wouldn’t let him. His pa wasn’t ever coming back, she told him. His sister believed her, but he refused to. The big guy, with a silver rabbit on a chain around his neck, who hoisted him up on his shoulders, who pitched balls at him, who took him on the rides at Coney Island, and went swimming in the sea, and kissed him with his bristly face, and smelled of beer and tobacco, and told him stories about the Man in the Moon, and sneaked off with him to the zoo when he had promised his mother he was taking him to church – he was coming home.

He was. He knew it.

‘I don’t want to go,’ he said petulantly. ‘I want to go home and wait for Pa. I hate you!’ Then he stamped his foot on the ground.

‘You’re going to like Ireland,’ she said. ‘It’s a better place. Safer. Less troubles there.’

‘Maybe Pa will be there.’

Oonagh Daly said nothing.

‘Maybe? Do you think?’ he asked hopefully.

She still said nothing.

There was a tang of salt in the air, peppered with an acrid stench of burning coke, sweet snatches of cigarette and pipe smoke. All around was the constant grinding of machinery, men shouting, the cry of gulls. A crate swung on creaking ropes, and pulleys clanked and squeaked high above him. The dark hull of the ship rose even higher, like a mountain. The boy looked around him. His pa worked on the waterfront; maybe he was working here today? He watched every face. Every single face.