“So,” he says quietly. “Where did you get this, Adam?”
“It’s not stolen, if that’s what you think.”
He gives me a strange look. “Not recently, anyway.”
“What does that mean?”
“Did you buy it from someone?”
I take a sip of my Americano, relishing the instant dark hit of caffeine.
“I take it you got my details from the manager of the jeweler’s shop in town?”
“Correct.”
He had been looking for this particular watch, he says, for years—setting up online alerts on all the big internet trading websites, registering what he called an NIPC advisory—a Notice of Interest in the Proceeds of Crime—with jewelers and pawnbrokers all over the Midlands. Checking in with them all every so often in case they had come across a Rolex Explorer with a very specific engraving on the back.
“I knew it would surface sooner or later,” he says. “A valuable piece like that, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to cash in.”
“Seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to for a wristwatch. No matter how fancy it is.”
“I’m interested in why you suddenly wanted it back,” he says, “only a few days after getting rid of it. I’m guessing it’s something to do with the cuts and bruises on your arms? Those fresh stitches in the back of your head?”
Feeling suddenly exposed, I lean back in my chair.
“Tell me,” I say. “What sort of police work did you used to do?”
“A mixture. Thirteen years in uniform then CID. Ended up on major crime, retired when my thirty years was up. But this wasalways the case that stayed with me, the one that I could never let go of. So when they offered me the gig as a civilian investigator with the Special Operations Unit, I jumped at the chance.”
“What case? A stolen wristwatch?”
He shakes his head, taking another deep puff on the vape and blowing a thick stream of gray smoke above my head. “You’re not in any trouble, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“That’s a matter of opinion.”
This seems to get his attention. He studies me over the lip of his glass, small blue eyes holding me with an unblinking stare.
“Howdidyou get that bang on the head, Adam?”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to lie, to skirt around what had really happened rather than open myself up to this man, this stranger who had found his way to my door. But then I think of Jess and the children, of the threats to burn down my house, the seeming inability of the police to do anything to protect us, and can’t see what else I’ve got to lose by just telling the truth.
“Someone came into my house,” I say. “On Saturday night. They cut the power and when I confronted them, they kicked me down the cellar stairs. I was knocked out cold for a bit.”
He sits up straighter in his chair, setting his pint glass down hard on the table.
“I see,” he breathes. “So they found you already? Did they take anything?”
“Who isthey, exactly?”
“In a minute. Tell me everything first—start from the beginning.”
I drink more of my coffee and briefly run through the other events of the past ten days, including the pursuit and crash last night.
He taps the plastic-wrapped watch that lies between us.
“So it wasn’t just this?” he says. “You found other items too in this chest of drawers? It would help if I could examine all of it.”
“Hold on,” I say. “You’ve barely told me anything about your interest in all of this. Your turn to givemesomething, I think.”
